The Rock Rats

WALTZING MATILDA

“What spooks me,” George was saying, “is how the fookin’ bastard knew where our antennas were.”

He and Nodon were taking off their spacesuits, dog-tired after a five-hour EVA. They had patched the laser-punched holes in the propellant tanks, but most of the hydrogen and helium had already leaked away. Their communication antennas, even the backups, were slagged and useless.

“He must have had complete specs on this ship,” Nodon said, as he lifted off the torso of his hard-shell suit and placed it carefully on its rack. “Every detail.”

“Every fookin’ detail,” George agreed. He sat on the tiny bench in front of the suit racks, filling it so completely that Nodon sat on the deck to start removing his boots. George felt too weary even to bend over and pull his boots off.

Piece by piece they finished unsuiting at last, then made their way to the galley. George mused aloud, “Y’know, somebody must’ve given him the specs for this ship.”

“Yes,” Nodon agreed, trailing along behind him. The passageway was too narrow for them to proceed side by side.

“But who? This is a piece of private property, its specs aren’t public knowledge. You can’t look ’em up in a fookin’ net site.”

Nodon scratched his lean, bristly chin, then suggested, “Could he have access to the manufacturer’s records?”

“Or to the maintenance files at Ceres, maybe,” George muttered.

“Yes, that is possible.”

“Either way,” said George, with growing conviction, “it has to be somebody in Humphries Space Systems. Their people do the maintenance on it.”

“Not Astro?”

“Naw. HSS offered me a bargain price if I signed up for the maintenance contract.”

“Then it must be someone in HSS,” Nodon agreed.

“But why? Why did the bastard attack us?”

“To invalidate the claim to the asteroid, certainly.”

George shook his head irritatedly. “There’s millions of rocks in the Belt. And Humphries is the richest shrewdie in the fookin’ solar system. What’s he need a lousy asteroid claim for?”

“Perhaps not him,” Nodon said. “Perhaps someone in his corporation.”

“Yeah.” George nodded. “Maybe.”

With a resigned shrug, Nodon said, “It is all academic, anyway.”

“Whatcha mean, mate?”

Tapping a lean finger against the small wallscreen that displayed the galley’s contents, Nodon pointed out, “We have enough food for only another twenty-two days. Perhaps as much as forty days, if we cut our daily ration to starvation level.”

George grunted at him. “No sense starvin’ ourselves. We’re gonna die anyway.”