The Rock Rats

CHAPTER 18

Amanda was aghast. “You refused to sell at any price?”

Fuchs nodded grimly. Some of the blazing fury he had felt during his meeting with Humphries had burned off, but still the smoldering heat of anger burned deep in his guts. Only one thing was certain: he was going to fight. On the way from Humphries’s office to their hotel suite Fuchs had made up his mind once and for all. He was going to wipe the smug smile from Humphries’s face, no matter what it cost.

Amanda was in the sitting room of their suite when Fuchs barged through the door, angry and impatient. He saw the expectant look on her face and realized she’d been waiting for him all the while; she’d never gone shopping or done anything other than wait for his return.

“I couldn’t do it,” Fuchs said, so low that he wasn’t sure she’d heard him. He cleared his throat, repeated, “I couldn’t sell to him. Not at any price.”

Amanda sank into one of the small sofas scattered about the room. “Lars…what do you expect to do now?”

“I don’t know,” he told her. That wasn’t quite true, but he wasn’t sure of how much he could tell her. He sat in the chair next to Amanda and took her hands in his. “I told him I was going back to Ceres and start over.”

“Start over? How?”

He tried to smile for her, to hide his true thoughts. “We still have Starpower. We can go back to prospecting, I suppose.”

“Live aboard the ship again,” she murmured.

“I know it’s a step backward.” He hesitated, then found the courage to say, “You don’t have to come with me. You can stay on Ceres. Or … or wherever you would prefer to live.”

“You’d go without me?” She looked hurt.

Fuchs knew that if he told her his real plans, his true goal, Amanda would be terrified. She would try to talk him out of it. Or worse, once she realized that he was unshakable, she would insist on staying with him every step of the way.

So he temporized. “Amanda, dearest… it wouldn’t be fair for me to ask you to live that way again. I’ve made a mess of things, it’s up to me to—”

“Lars, he’ll kill you!”

She was truly frightened, he saw.

“If you go back to the Belt by yourself,” Amanda said urgently, “he’ll have someone track you down and murder you.”

Fuchs remembered Humphries’s words: You’re a dead man, Fuchs.

“I can take care of myself,” he said grimly.

Amanda thought, I’ve got to go with him. Martin won’t strike at Lars if there’s a possibility of hurting me.

Aloud, she said to her husband, gently, soothingly, “I know you can take care of yourself, darling, but who’s going to take care of me?” And she reached up to stroke his cheek.

“You’d go with me?”

“Of course.”

“You want to go with me?” He was filled with joyful wonder at the idea.

“I want to be with you, Lars,” Amanda said softly, “wherever you go.”

To herself, though, she said, It’s me that Martin wants. I’m the cause of all this. I’m the reason my husband is in such danger.

And Fuchs was saying to himself, She wants to be away from Humphries. She’s afraid of him. She’s afraid that if I’m not near enough to protect her, he’ll steal her away from me.

And the embers of his anger burst into flaming rage again.