The Sam Gunn Omnibus

by Ben Bova

  I kept some good cognac in my quarters. Hardly ever touched it myself, but it looked good in its cut crystal decanter and I thought it might help calm Grace down. Me, I prefer beer.

  “What the hell happened in there?” I asked Grace.

  She sat in the couch, still quivering so much there were almost whitecaps on her cognac. I pulled up the powered recliner chair to face her, with the coffee table between us. My quarters aren’t luxurious, but there’s a little more space to them than the passengers’ suites. Rank hath its privileges, after all.

  Grace knocked back half her cognac, then said, “I can’t take any more of her, Sam. She’s driving me nuts.”

  “Sheena?”

  “Who else? The way she flaunts herself. Makes eyes at all the men.”

  “I thought she had settled onto Hubble.”

  “She’s after you, Sam. Can’t you see that?”

  “Me? I haven’t laid a glove on her since the first month out.”

  “And she resents it.”

  “That’s crazy.”

  Grace put her snifter down on the coffee table. It was plastic, of course, but painted to look like ebony.

  “Sam, she’s looking for a father figure. That’s you.”

  “That’s Hubble,” I corrected her.

  Grace shook her head. “It was Hubble until the food orgy. Then she saw that Lowell was just as human and silly as the rest of us. But, you, mon capitaine, were aloof and noble and doing your duty on the bridge while the rest of us were stuffing ourselves—in more ways than one, I might add.”

  “I don’t want to hear about it,” I said.

  “You’ve got to listen to me, Sam! You asked me to find out who the Rockledge agent is....”

  “Sheena?”

  “No, of course not. But if she’s sore at you, if she feels you’ve rejected her, she could become a very willing tool for whoever among us is working for Rockledge.”

  That stopped me. “Sheena, helping Rockledge. Hmp. With an enemy like that, who needs friends?”

  “This isn’t funny, Sam.”

  But it made me laugh anyway.

  Suddenly Grace got up from the couch, came around the coffee table, and plopped herself in my lap.

  “You big dummy,” she said. “I’m trying to protect you. Can’t you see that?”

  Then she said the words that strike terror into the heart of any man.

  “Sam—I think I’ve fallen in love with you.”

  Well, what could I do? I mean with her sitting in my lap and all? One thing led to another and we wound up in bed. Grace is very tender, very sweet, underneath that facade of the tough Hollywood columnist that she wears most of the time.

  But now she wants to hang around my neck. And this ship isn’t big enough for me to hide! Besides, if she’s right about Sheena I ought to be working on her, getting on her good side, so to speak.

  [Computer]: In bed, you mean?

  That’s her best side, pal.

  [Computer]: Is that necessary? It will complicate the interpersonal relationships....

  Everything’s already so goddamned complicated that I feel like I’m a pretzel trapped in a spaghetti factory. What should I do?

  [Computer]: What do you want to do?

  I want to get them both off my back!

  [Computer]: And what would be the best way to do that, do you think?

  That’s what I’m asking you!

  [Computer]: How do you feel about this situation?

  Oh Christ! I know this program. Whenever you’re stuck you ask me how I feel. Get lost! Turn off!

  [Computer]: Are you certain you want to do this?

  End the program, dammit! When I want to jerk off I’ll do it in the bathroom.

  WELL, THOSE SNEAKING, slithering, slimy bastards at Rockledge have struck again.

  This morning we got an order from the International Astronautical Authority—bless ‘em—that forbids us from mining any more asteroids until further notice.

  A moratorium on asteroid mining! Only temporary, they say. But “temporary” to those lard-bottomed bureaucrats could mean years! I could be old and senile before they lift the moratorium.

  Those fatheaded drones claim that we’ve perturbed the orbit of Aphrodite so much that there’s a chance it might strike the Earth. There’s not much left of Aphrodite, but she’s still big enough to cause damage

  wherever she lands. The media are already talking about the “killer asteroid” and running stories about how an asteroid hit wiped out the dinosaurs sixty-five million years ago.

  Absolute bullshit!

  What’s happened is that Rockledge and the other big boys are putting pressure on the IAA to stop me—uh, us, that is. Now that they know we can undercut their price for water, they’re using Aphrodite as an excuse. If the asteroid’s orbit poses a threat, the IAA can send a team out with enough rocket thrusters to nudge it away from the Earth, for chrissakes. I’ll pay the friggin’ cost of the mission, if I have to. Take it off as a business expense; lower my goddamned taxes.

  But what the IAA’s done is put a moratorium on all operations that might change an asteroid’s natural orbit. Hell, we’re the only operation out here in the Belt. They’re trying to stop us.

  Well, fuck them!

  I ordered Lonz to ignore the message. I’m not even going to acknowledge receiving it. We’re going ahead and mining that big chunk of nickel-iron, and then we’ll head back home with enough high-grade metal to make all the off-Earth settlements drool. They’ll want to do business with us, and there’s nothing the friggin’ IAA can do to stop them from buying what I’m selling.

  Then we’ll let the lawyers fight it out. I’ll have all the space settlements on my side, and the media will love a story that pits us little guys against the big, bad corporate monsters.

  Moratorium, my ass!

  YESTERDAY WE NAMED the asteroid Pittsburgh. I called the partners together again and told them, not asked them, what the name would be. I was born in Pittsburgh, and back in its heyday it was a big steel-making town. So will this asteroid be. Our sensors show she’s practically solid metal.

  This morning I sent my claim in to the IAA. I haven’t acknowledged their moratorium order, and I haven’t told the partners about it. Filing a claim for the asteroid doesn’t violate their moratorium, of course, but it’ll sure make them suspicious. What the hell! There’s nothing they can do about it. It’d take them a year to get a ship out here to try to stop us.

  You’re not allowed to claim possession of an astronomical body, but once you’ve informed the IAA that you’ve established a working facility someplace you’ve got the right to use its natural resources there without anybody else coming in to compete with you. The facility can be scientific, industrial, or a permanent habitat. It could even be commercial, like a tourist hotel. That’s how the various settlements on the Moon were established; no nation owns them, but once a group lays claim to a territory, the IAA prevents any other group from muscling in on the same territory.

  With a chunk of metal like Pittsburgh the LAA ought to give S. Gunn Enterprises, Unlimited, exclusive rights to mine its resources— moratorium or no fucking moratorium. The asteroid’s too small to allow another company to start whittling away at it. At least, that’s the legal position that the IAA agreed to before the Argo left Earth orbit. Now we’ll have to see if they stick to it.

  In the meantime, there’s work to do.

  PITTSBURGH’S A BEAUTY! We’re hovering about five hundred meters from her. At this distance she’s huge, immense, like a black pitted mountain hanging over our heads. I’ve spent most of the day taking the partners out for EVAs. To say they were impressed would be the understatement of the decade.

  Imagine an enormous lump of coal-black metal, its surface roughened and pitted, its ridges and crater rims gleaming where the Sun strikes them. It’s so big it dwarfs you when you go outside, makes you feel like it’s going to crush you, almost.

  I brought the partners o
ut in twos. Each time a pair of them floated free of the airlock and looked up through their bubble helmets I heard the same sound out of them: a gasp—surprise, awe, fear, grandeur, all that and more.

  Hubble asked for permission to chip some samples for himself, to study in the little lab he’s set up in his quarters. Bo Williams started reciting poetry, right there in his space suit. Even Jean Margaux, the Ice Queen, was audibly impressed.

  Everybody except Darling came out to look.

  “There’s our fortune,” I told each one of them over the suit-to-suit comm link. “Considering the mass of this beauty and the prices on today’s metals market, you’re looking at ten billion dollars, on the hoof. At least.”

  That made them happy. Which was a good thing, because we’re getting down to the last of the preserved food. In a day or two we’re going to have to start eating the recycled stuff.

  The IAA is still sending their moratorium to us, every hour on the hour. I’ve instructed the crew to ignore it and not to tell the partners about it. I’ve ordered them not to acknowledge any incoming messages from anybody. Then I sent out a message to my own office in Florida that we were experiencing some kind of communications difficulty, and all the incoming transmissions were so garbled we couldn’t make them out.

  Lonz gave me a funny look when I sent that out. A guilty look.

  “Nobody’s gonna hold you responsible,” I told him. “Don’t worry about it.”

  “Right, boss,” he said. But he still looked uneasy. And he’s never called me boss before.

  I SPENT M0ST of the night watching the videos of Darling’s movements during the time I was taking the other partners outside to see Pittsburgh close-up.

  It bothered me that he refused to go EVA like the rest of them. So I activated the ship’s internal monitoring system, the cameras that are set unobtrusively into the overhead panels of every section of the ship. I suppose I could have been watching everything that everybody does since the moment we left Earth orbit. Maybe that would’ve told me who the Rockledge fink is. Certainly it would have been as good as watching porno flicks.

  But there are seven of them and only one of me. I’d have to spend seven times the hours I actually have in the hopes of catching somebody performing an act of sabotage—or doing something in bed I haven’t done myself, and better.

  Anyway, I discovered Darling’s secret. Trouble is, it’s got nothing to do with Rockledge or possible sabotage. The sneaky lard-ass has been hoarding food! While the rest of the partners were up in the command center or suiting up at the main airlock, he was tiptoeing down to the food lockers and hauling armfuls of goodies back to his own suite. He’s got packaged food stored in his bureau drawers, canned food stuffed under his bed, whole cases of food hidden in his closets.

  God knows how long he’s been stealing the stuff. His personal wine cooler is filled with frozen food, which the bastard must have been stealing since before the freezers went on the fritz.

  Did he know the freezers were going to commit hara-kiri?

  THE WORK ON Pittsburgh is going slower than I had planned. The metal’s so good that it’s tougher than we had expected. So it takes longer for the laser torches to cut through it. Once we’ve got a slice carved off, the smelting and refining equipment works fine. We’re building up a nice payload of high-quality steel for the Lagrange habitats and the steelhungry factories in Earth orbit.

  To say nothing of the lovely ingots of twenty-four carat gold and pure silver that we’re cooking out of the ore. And the sheets of platinum!

  Argo is starting to look like a little toy doughnut sitting alongside a cluster of shiny steel grapes. See, in zero gravity, when we melt down a slab of ore it forms itself into a very neat sphere of molten metal. Like a teeny little sun, glowing outside the ship. After we remove the impurities (the gold and silver and platinum, that is) we inject gas into the sphere to hollow it out while it’s solidifying. A hollow sphere is easier for our customers to work with than a solid ball of steel. The gas comes right from the asteroid itself, of course; a byproduct of our mining operation.

  All this is done remotely, without any people outside. Lonz and Will control the operation from the command center. They only go EVA if something goes wrong, some piece of equipment breaks down. Even then, the little maintenance robots can take care of the routine repairs. They’ve only had to go EVA twice in all the weeks we’ve been working on Pittsburgh.

  We’ll have to leave the asteroid soon if we want to get back to Earth on a reasonable schedule. The partners are grumbling about the recycled food—Darling’s bitching the loudest, the lying thief. He’s feasting on the real food he’s cached in his suite while the rest of us are nibbling on shitburgers. All the other partners are marveling that he’s gaining weight while the rest of us are slimming down.

  Finally I couldn’t stand it anymore. This evening when I came into the dining lounge there was fat-ass Darling in his homemade toga, holding a green briquette of recycled crap in one hand with his chubby pinky up in the air.

  “I will never come out on a fly-by-night operation like this again,” he was saying.

  Jean Margaux sniffed at the red briquette she had in front of her. They were odorless, but her face looked as if she was getting a whiff of a pigsty on a blazing afternoon in August. Marj Dupray and Bo Williams were off at a table by themselves, whispering to each other with their heads nearly touching over their table.

  “I’m sorry you don’t like the food,” I said to Darling. I could feel the tightness in my face.

  “It’s inedible,” he complained.

  “Then you’ll just have to go back to your suite and gorge yourself on the food you’ve got hidden there,” I said.

  His fleshy face turned absolute white.

  Jean looked amused. “Don’t tell me you’ve got a candy bar hidden under your bed,” she said to Darling.

  “I resent your implication,” the fat bastard said to me.

  “Resent it all you like,” I shot back. “After you’ve taken us to your suite and opened up your wine cooler.”

  He heaved himself to his dainty little feet. “I won’t stay here and be insulted.”

  Jean looked kind of curious now. Bo and Marj had stopped their tete-a-tete and were staring at us.

  With as much dignity as a small dirigible, Darling headed for the hatch.

  I called after him, “Come on, Rick, invite us to your suite. Share the food you’ve hoarded, you puffed-up sonofabitch.”

  He spun around to face me, making the fringes of his toga flap and swirl. “You retract that statement or, so help me, when we get back to Earth I’ll sue you for every penny you’ve got!”

  “Sure, I’ll retract it. After you’ve invited us to your suite.”

  “That’s an invasion of my privacy!” he said.

  Jean drew herself up to her full height. “Richard, dear, are you actually hiding food from us?”

  Bo Williams got off his chair, too. “Yeah—what’s the story, Rick? How come you’re getting fatter while we’re all getting thinner?”

  Darling’s eyes swung from one of them to the other. Even Marjorie was on her feet now, scowling at him.

  “Can’t you see what he’s doing?” Darling spluttered and pointed a fat finger at me. “He’s trying to make a scapegoat out of me! He’s trying to get you all to hate me and forget that he’s the one who’s gotten us into this mess!”

  “There’s an easy way to prove you’re innocent,” Williams said. “Invite us in to your suite.”

  Bo can look menacing in his sleep, with that burly build of his and the shaved scalp. He’s really a gentle guy, a frustrated poet who makes his living writing documentaries. But he looks like a Turkish assassin.

  “I don’t have to prove anything,” Darling answered, edging back toward the hatch. “A man’s innocent until proven guilty. That’s the law.”

  What little patience I have snapped right then and there. “I’m the law

  aboard this ves
sel,” I said. “And I order you to open up your suite for inspection. Now.”

  He hemmed and hawed. He blubbered and spluttered. But with Bo and me pushing him, he backed all the way down the corridor to his suite. Sure enough, there was enough food cached away in there to cater a party.

  Which is exactly what we had. I called Grace, Sheena, and Lowell Hubble. Even invited the crew while I went up to the command center and kept an eye on the automated equipment. They ate and drank everything Darling had squirreled away. He just sat on his own bed and cried until there was nothing left but crumbs and empty bottles.

  Served him right. But I couldn’t help feeling sort of sorry for the poor jerk when they all left him in his own suite, surrounded by the mess.

  I KIND OF hate to leave Pittsburgh. This asteroid has made me filthy rich. We can’t stay long enough to mine everything she’s got to give us; even if we did the Argo would be toting so much mass that our thrusters would never be able to get us back to Earth.

  No, we’ll leave Pittsburgh with our smelting equipment and a beacon on her, to verify our claim. If the IAA works the way they should, nobody else will be able to touch her. In a few years the lawyers ought to have wrangled out this moratorium business, and I’ll be able to send out a fleet of ships to finish carving her up and carting the refined metals back Earthward.

  I’ll be a billionaire!

  Marooned

  Those bastards at Rockledge have shown their hand at last. They’re going to kill me and my partners and steal my claim to Pittsburgh and the metals we’ve mined. As well as the water and volatiles we got from Aphrodite.

  I’m beyond anger. A kind of a cold freeze has gripped me. I can’t even work up the satisfaction of screaming and swearing. They’ve marooned us on the asteroid; me and all my partners. We’ll die on Pittsburgh. I’m talking into the recording system built into my space suit. Maybe someday after we’re all dead somebody will find us and listen to this chip. If you do, take our bodies—and this chip—straight to the IAA’s law enforcement people. Murder, piracy, grand larceny, conspiracy, kidnapping—and it all goes right to the top of Rockledge. And God knows who else.