“And very nice that’ll sound if there’s an inquiry,” Ed applauded. “Now what’s the real reason?”
Des gave a wolfish grin. “It won’t hurt to put a bit of a scare into Nadezda before we take this one out. Besides, if we stop a suspicious-looking character at the gate and find unlawful arms on him, we’re just doing our duty. If we shoot him down just in time to prevent an assassination attempt, we’re Heroes of the Republic.”
Ed sighed. “You already got your money back. Now you want revenge on Nadezda and a Hero of the Republic medal? Ever hear the story of the fisherman’s wife who wished to be pope?”
“Pope who?”
“Never mind. He’s coming into range now; let’s see if the scanners can pick up just what he’s carrying in that bulging left pocket.” Ed activated the beams, focused them, and gave a long, low whistle. “Holy Kezdet…we shouldn’t have disabled the weapons scanners at the main gate.”
“We didn’t want him stopped for carrying a pocket laser or something like that,” Des reminded him.
“Pocket laser! Ha! The idiot’s got a tungsten bomb in there!”
“You’re kidding!”
“Wish I were. Here-take a look at the reading.”
Des glanced at the scanner screens and blanched. “He didn’t mention this was a suicide mission. If that thing goes off, he won’t only get Nadezda. He’ll blow up the bloody ship!”
“He’ll blow up the whole bloody hangar,” Ed corrected him.
“Maybe the whole spaceport.”
“A chunk of West Celtalan.”
“Hero of the Republic,” Ed said, “is not what they’re going to hang around your neck for letting this one through, boyo.”
“If we don’t stop him,” Des said tersely, “I won’t have a neck left for them to hang me by. And if he sees us, he might panic and set the thing off prematurely…. Hell, he’s so dumb he might set it off by accident anyway!”
Both men were jogging down the internal security hall by the middle of this conversation, so well attuned to each others’ thoughts and reactions that they didn’t even need to discuss what to do next. If they could round two sides of the hangar and cut off Tapha before he reached the Uhuru, if one of them could get a clear shot at him, they just might be able to save themselves and a largish chunk of West Celtalan from molecular disintegration.
“Alarm?” puffed Ed as they passed a security station.
“Nope. Don’t want to startle him.” Des was in no better shape than his colleague, but his adrenaline high was enough to keep him from feeling out of breath yet.
They made it to their target corner with seconds to spare, Ed leading. He drew his stunner, peered around the wall, and swore. “Too many fardling workers in the way. I can’t get a clear shot.”
“Screw the workers,” Des said. “They’d rather be shot in passing than disintegrated by a tungsten bomb, wouldn’t they?” He leaned over Ed’s crouching form, utilizing every advantage of his superior height and reach, and squeezed off a series of narrow-band stunner shots without even seeming to pause to take aim.
“Got him,” he said with satisfaction, and sprinted for Tapha’s fallen form to defuse the bomb, Ed close behind. “Let’s hope it’s a standard arming device,” he said, reaching into the baggy pocket they had spotted as containing the weapon. “Be a damn shame to lose the hands that have such perfect aim to a misfired tungsten bomb.”
“This thing goes off,” Ed said sourly, “you’ll never have time to miss your hands.” He knelt over Tapha and watched, breath held, as Des twirled the combination detonator on the tungsten bomb without a trace of nervousness. Three clicks, an agonizing pause, and then the bones of Ed’s skull registered the cessation of the almost subliminal buzzing that had signaled an armed tungsten bomb ready to detonate on signal. Now for the first time he noticed the people around them; the crowd of mechs shouting misinformation at one another, and two of the miners pushing their way through the crowd. Rafik Nadezda was the first to reach them.
“Hey,” Rafik said, looking down, “that’s—”
“A tungsten bomb,” Des Smirnoff said, rising to his feet with the dismantled halves of the bomb, one in each hand. “Whoever this was really didn’t like you, Nadezda—even more than I don’t like you. You owe me one. Another one,” he said with heavy meaning.
“I was about to say,” said Rafik with dignity, “that’s my cousin, Tapha.”
“You got the tense wrong,” Des said with a tight-lipped smile. “That was your cousin Tapha. I set my stunner on max when I got a maniac with an armed tungsten bomb wandering around the port, Nadezda, and he took half a dozen shots to the head. Fried his brains.” He thought that over. “His hypothetical brains.”
“How did he get past security?” somebody wondered aloud.
“These terrorists are fiendishly cunning,” Des said, raising his voice to roar over the noise of the crowd.
“Terrorists?” Gill repeated. “I thought it was a personal—”
“The Guardians of the Peace have been watching this man for some time,” Des said loudly. “We have reason to believe he is closely associated with the Child Labor League, those notorious terrorists who are doing their best to wreck the economy of our happy, peaceful, and productive planet.”
Gill’s face turned as red as his beard. Rafik stepped backward and landed heavily on his toe.
“A happy end to an unfortunate situation,” he said over Gill’s rumblings of anger. “Allow me to congratulate you on your prompt handling of the crisis, Guardian Smirnoff. And—er—that little episode on the asteroid was a mistake. We had no idea you would be marooned there for any length of time. I owe you an apology for that incident.”
Smirnoff’s face darkened. “You owe me more than an apology,” he said under his breath, “and I still intend to collect, Nadezda. Later!”
“How about a formal report and recommendation that you be nominated as a Hero of the Republic?” Rafik suggested in equally low tones. “You’ve definitely earned it today.”
Smirnoff paused, visibly undecided.
“And no inquiry as to how this…terrorist…made it through security,” Rafik added.
“You can pull that off?”
“An off-planet miner may not have that much influence,” said Rafik, “but the heir to the Harakamian Empire has.”
“You?”
Rafik stood looking down at Tapha’s body, his face expressionless. “I am now. You’ll permit me to collect his personal effects?” he added after a moment’s silence. “I should have something to send to his father.”
“Go right ahead,” Des offered. “And—”
Rafik’s lips curved slightly. “I won’t forget the report, no. Congratulations—Hero of the Republic!”
Calum missed the excitement of Tapha’s second assassination attempt, as he had missed most of what was going on around him since Dr. Zip produced the results of his study. Zip had concentrated on the sector of space nearest where Acorna was found and had been downcast to report that the upsilon-V studies of stars in that sector showed a very low chance of any primary producing planets rich in the precise mix of metals used in the pod, a report that was borne out by the mass diffusion imaging of the nearest M-type stars and their planets.
But Calum rather thought Zip, in his pride at being able to report the constituents of distant planets through new technology, had overlooked a few things. The one sure thing they knew about Acorna’s people was that they had a sophisticated space-faring system. If he and Gill and Calum could take rhenium from the asteroid Daffodil to make solar thermal-thrust chambers on Theloi, why couldn’t Acorna’s people also have mined a number of systems to collect the metals for this alloy?
That concept turned the problem of locating Acorna’s home world from a straightforward task of astrophysical analysis to a complex optimization program requiring sophisticated operations research techniques.
“You see,” Calum had explained to Gill when he started working
on the program, “we are also going to assume, going from what we know of Acorna, that her people are not stupid or wasteful. They wouldn’t go farther than necessary to get their metals. So first I have to use Zip’s data to design a program to find all the subsets of stars within a given volume of space that would, collectively, provide the necessary substances, then, for each such subset, find the M-type planet that most nearly approaches an optimal location for all the required mining missions.”
“Hey,” Rafik said, “if Zip can come up with planetary emissions studies for all these systems, why don’t we use him to locate good mining areas for us?”
“Costs too much,” Calum said. “You wouldn’t believe what Li has spent on this problem already.”
He quoted figures until even Rafik reluctantly agreed that it wouldn’t be cost-effective to retain Zip’s services as a prospector.
“But,” he said, brightening, “he has already produced all this data in search of Acorna, has he not? Surely there would be no objection to our using it for other purposes?”
“Probably not,” Calum agreed. He was rather annoyed at the way his friends kept missing the point. Who cared about mining? He wanted them to appreciate his elegant approach to the problem of identifying Acorna’s home. “I’m treating the entire collection of stars as overlapping subsets, each containing one or more M-types. By the Axiom of Choice, there must be—”
Rafik had left abruptly then, muttering something about mad dogs and mathematicians. Calum was a bit surprised that Rafik didn’t share his joy in the beauties of applied linear programming, but then it took all sorts, didn’t it? Whistling under his breath, he commandeered one of the parallel-processing units used by the banking branch of the Li consortium, raided another branch for statistical analysis software that could be perverted to serve his ends, and proceeded to put together his very own astronomical and mining optimization program. For the past weeks his conversation at mealtimes had been limited to cryptic statements such as, “I’d have it done if I didn’t have to put the data structures from all these different bloody star charts into canonical form first,” or, “No, the fact that it’s in an infinite loop doesn’t mean the program doesn’t work; it just entered a state with which I was previously unfamiliar.” And whenever Judit would let him get away with it, he skipped meals altogether in favor of a quick snack that he could eat one-handed while gliding through visual displays of his program in the windowless room dedicated to the project.
Now, at last, he was getting results. Inconclusive, maybe, but results. He barely heard Gill’s excited account of the assassination attempt and its aftermath. “Tapha’s dead? Good, that’s one less person after us.”
“And I think Rafik’s squared Des Smirnoff. So the Guardians of the Peace won’t be bothering us, either. Calum, you should have seen Smirnoff defusing that tungsten bomb! The man may be a corrupt cop, but he can take a place on my bomb squad any day. Talk about nerves of steel!”
“Mmm. Good job he defused it,” Calum said, nodding over the latest printout. “A bomb like that could’ve caused a power outage as far as here, couldn’t it? I could’ve lost a lot of data.”
Gill suggested that Calum take his data and do something anatomically improbable with it, then stomped off to find a more appreciative audience. Calum barely registered his disappearance; he was thinking about ways to narrow down the long list of possible planets to check out. The trouble with his brainstorm was that they’d gone from zero possibles to over a hundred, none of them conveniently close. Of course, they wouldn’t be close. He snorted at his own naïveté. If they were nearby we’d’ve met Acorna’s people by now. And he might not be able to rule out any of this long list of possibles, but he could rank them for the search by running a second optimization, this time minimizing the total travel time and distance required. It would be a simple variant of the classic traveling-salesman problem.
The only trouble was, then what? Calum longed to test his results, and the only way he could see to do that was to go and look for himself. Delszaki Li would probably be willing to retrofit the Uhuru with superdrives that would minimize the travel time. But it would still be a five-year project just to check out the nearest group of possible planets. How could he abandon his buddies and take their ship for five years? Rafik and Gill needed him; neither of them was enough of a mathematician to manage subspace navigation on his own.
Calum came out of his particular haze when he realized he had not seen Rafik and, at breakfast, asked if Rafik was living aboard the Uhuru.
Acorna giggled. “I told you that eventually he would notice,” she said to Mr. Li, who was smiling benignly on her.
“Well? Is he?” He addressed this query to Gill.
“In a manner of speaking, he is,” Gill replied around a mess of kippered herrings which Mr. Li had imported especially for him. Though Calum was as British in origin as himself, the mathematician did not like kippered herrings.
Waiting for Gill to continue, he even wrinkled his nose as the reek of the delicacy wafted in his direction.
“He’s on a sorrowful mission,” Acorna said, giggling again.
Calum wished she wouldn’t giggle. It wasn’t like his Acorna. She had never been silly, but maybe it was part of the girlish things that Judit was teaching her. Although he couldn’t remember Judit giggling.
“What?” and Calum addressed this inquiry to Mr. Li as the only sensible member at the dining table.
“His cousin, Tapha,” Mr. Li supplied.
“Can no one give me a straight answer?” Calum complained.
“Considering that all we’ve had out of you recently has been either statistical probabilities or astronomical variables,” Judit said, a touch peevishly, “a straight answer is improbable, isn’t it?” Then she relented as Calum did indeed look hurt and had been trying so hard to locate Acorna’s home world. “He decided he’d better take Tapha’s ashes back to Uncle Hafiz and explain how he met his death.”
“Oh!” Calum digested this along with several mouthfuls of a delightful breakfast omelet before he let his fork fall from his hand. “But he’s now his uncle’s heir.”
“We know,” Judit replied.
“Will he come back at all? Gill said something about Rafik finally finding his element in all the trading he’s had to do for the Moon Mines.”
Gill glowered at him. “He won’t leave us until he’s finished that, because that will prove to Hafiz that he’s really sown his wild oats and is ready to settle down and represent House Harakamian.”
“Oh!” Calum said, digesting that before he picked up his fork. “Yes, it would rather, wouldn’t it? But Rafik wouldn’t do that, would he? Not yet, when we haven’t finished the moon base or found Acorna’s planet.”
“I don’t think he would,” Gill said, half his mind on getting the last flake of kippered herring onto his fork and into his mouth.
Pal entered, looking concerned. “I just heard that Hafiz Harakamian’s fastest ship docked here this morning, in fact, in the berth the Uburu was using.”
“Uh-oh,” Gill said, looking at Acorna. “That idiot son of his must have told him you’re here.”
“How could he know?” Acorna was dismayed.
“How could he know?” And Gill went falsetto in mimicry. “Because you’ve been doing your Lady of the Lights and the healed wounds and purified water act all over Celtalan is how he knows. How many unicorn horns are there on Kezdet?” He stood, throwing down his napkin, the bristles of his beard trembling with sincerity. “And I’m going to stick as close to you as your shadow.”
“Oh, good, when Calum goes back to his computers, we can go out. I have just a little errand to do. I would have asked Pal, but he’s doing something for Mr. Li, and I have a call in to Pedir,” she spared a glance at the elegant antique carriage clock on the mantelpiece, “and he will be here shortly. Do say you’ll come?”
“You better go,” Calum said, “because I haven’t spent hours, days…”
; “Weeks?” Judit put in, grinning from him to Gill.
“…trying to locate where you came from, to let Uncle Hafiz get you first.”
“So Pedir found out where she is?” Judit asked.
Acorna nodded. “He’s been so helpful.”
Judit looked as if she were about to add something, then saw the belligerent look on Gill’s face. “I can’t come this morning.” She turned to Mr. Li. “We have that appointment with the head of the Public Works about proving the moon base design meets code.”
“That sounds like an engineering problem,” Gill objected.
“It’s politics,” Judit said. “He knows the base design is safe, and he knows we know it. At this stage, Delszaki doesn’t need an engineer to reiterate the facts and get red in the face. He needs a psycholinguist to maneuver the talks the right way.”
“You mean, Kezdet’s objecting?” Gill asked, for he’d heard rumors which Rafik had discounted.
“Nothing that can’t be discreetly settled, my boy,” Mr. Li said, and moved his hover-chair back from the table. “Come along, Judit. Gill, I’d rather you accompanied Acorna and Nadhari since Judit cannot.”
“As you wish, Mr. Li,” Gill said, but he wasn’t looking forward to it. Nadhari Kando wasn’t his idea of a pleasant female companion for an excursion. “You’ll be safe with me.” Actually, he didn’t think they needed Nadhari at all, but it was better to be safe than sorry.
He could add that to Calum’s list of famous last words. Climbing into Pedir’s skimmer—he’d met the man previously, since his vehicle seemed to be constantly in use by Judit and Acorna for their “shopping trips”—he had no idea where they were going. Pedir started right in telling Acorna about some very useful items he heard were going for nothing in the market which he thought she should check out. That ought to have warned Gill, but he was thinking about Tapha and Rafik and worrying that Rafik’s wily uncle might somehow hold him on Laboue, and the Li Moon Mining Company Ltd. might grind to a halt. Rafik had so much in his head and not on paper that it would take Gill months to catch up if Rafik didn’t return in a timely fashion.
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