The Rock Rats

CHAPTER 23

Starpower swung lazily in the dark star-choked sky above Ceres. Strange, Fuchs noted as he climbed aboard the shuttlecraft, that the sky still seems so black despite all those stars. Other suns, he thought, billions of them blazing out their light for eons. Yet here on the rubble-heap surface of Ceres the world seemed dark, shadowy with menace.

Shaking his head inside the fishbowl helmet, Fuchs clambered up the ladder and ducked through the shuttlecraft’s hatch. No sense taking off the suit until I’m inside Starpower, he told himself. The shuttle flight would take mere minutes to lift him from the asteroid’s surface to his waiting ship.

The shuttle’s hab module was a bubble of glassteel. Two other prospectors were already aboard, waiting to be transferred to their spacecraft. Fuchs said a perfunctory hello to them through his suit radio.

“Hey, Lars,” one of them asked, “what are you gonna do about the habitat?”

“Yeah,” chimed in the other one. “We put up good money to build it. When’s it going to be finished so we can move in?”

Fuchs could see their faces through their helmets. They weren’t being accusative or even impatient. They looked more curious than anything else.

He forced a weak smile for them. “I haven’t had a chance to recruit a new project engineer, someone to replace Ripley.”

“Oh. Yeah. Too bad about the Ripper.”

“You did a good thing, Lars. That sonofabitch murdered the Ripper in cold blood.”

Fuchs nodded his acknowledgment of their praise. The voice of the IAA controller told them the shuttlecraft would lift off in ten seconds. The computer counted off the time. The three spacesuited men stood in the hab module; there were no seats, nothing except a tee-shaped podium that held the ship’s controls, which weren’t needed for this simple flight, and foot loops in the deck to hold them down in microgravity.

Liftoff was little more than a gentle nudge, but the craft leaped away from Ceres’s pitted, rock-strewn surface fast enough to make Fuchs’s stomach lurch. Before he could swallow down the bile in his throat, they were in zero-g. Fuchs had never enjoyed weightlessness, but he put up with it as the IAA controller remotely steered the shuttle to the orbiting ship of the other two men before swinging almost completely around the asteroid to catch up with Starpower.

Fuchs thought about hiring a replacement for Ripley. The funding for the habitat was adequate, barely. He had put the task on Amanda’s list of action items. She’ll have to do it, Fuchs said to himself. She’ll have to use her judgment; I’ll be busy doing other things.

Other things. He cringed inwardly when he thought of the angry words he had flung at Humphries: I’ve studied military history… I know how to fight. How pathetic! So what are you going to do, go out and shoot up Humphries spacecraft? Kill his employees? What will that accomplish, except getting you arrested eventually, or killed? You think too much, Lars Fuchs. You are quick to anger, but then your conscience frustrates you.

He had thought long and hard about searching out HSS vessels and destroying them. Hurt Humphries the way he’s hurt me. But he knew he couldn’t do it.

After all his bold words, all his blazing fury, the best he could think of was to find an asteroid, put in a claim for it, and then wait for Humphries’s hired killers to come after him. Then he’d have the evidence he needed to make the IAA take official action against Humphries.

If he lived through the ordeal.

Once the shuttle made rendezvous with Starpower and docked at the spacecraft’s main airlock, Fuchs entered his ship and began squirming out of the spacesuit, grateful for the feeling of gravity that the ship’s spin imparted. The bold avenger, he sneered at himself. Going out to offer yourself as a sacrificial victim in an effort to bring Humphries down. A lamb trying to trap a tiger.

As he entered the bridge, still grumbling to himself, the yellow message waiting signal was blinking on the communications screen.

Amanda, he knew. Sure enough, the instant he called up the comm message, her lovely face filled the screen.

But she looked troubled, distraught.

“Lars, it’s George Ambrose. His ship’s gone missing. All communications abruptly shut off several days ago. The IAA isn’t even getting telemetry. They’re afraid he’s dead.”

“George?” Fuchs gaped at his wife’s image. “They’ve killed George?”

“It looks that way,” said Amanda.

Amanda stared at her husband’s face on the wallscreen in their quarters. Grim as death, he looked.

“They killed George,” he repeated.

She wanted to say, No, it must have been an accident. But the words would not leave her lips.

“He had George killed,” Fuchs muttered. “Murdered.”

“There’s nothing we can do about it,” Amanda heard herself say. It sounded more like a plea than a statement, even to her own ears.

“Isn’t there?” he growled.

“Lars, please… don’t do anything… dangerous,” she begged.

He slowly shook his head. “Just being alive is dangerous,” he said.

Dorik Harbin studied the navigation screen as he sat alone on the bridge of Shanidar. The blinking orange cursor that showed his ship’s position was exactly on the thin blue curve representing his programmed approach to the supply vessel.

Harbin had been cruising through the Belt for more than two months, totally alone except for the narcotics and virtual reality chips that provided his only entertainment. A good combination, he thought. The drugs enhanced the electronic illusion, allowed him to fall asleep without dreaming of the faces of the dead, without hearing their screams.

His ship ran in silence; no tracking beacon or telemetry signals betrayed his presence in space. His orders had been to find certain prospectors and miners and eliminate them. This he had done with considerable efficiency. Now, his supplies low, he was making rendezvous with a Humphries supply vessel. He would get new orders, he knew, while Shanidar was being restocked with food and propellant.

I’ll have them flush my water tanks, too, and refill them, Harbin thought idly as he approached the vessel. After a couple of months recycled water begins to taste suspiciously like piss.

He linked with the supply vessel and stayed only long enough for the replenishment to be completed. He never left his own ship, except for one brief visit to the private cabin of the supply vessel’s captain. She handed him a sealed packet that Harbin immediately tucked into the breast pocket of his jumpsuit.

“Must you leave so soon?” the captain asked. She was in her thirties, Harbin judged, not really pretty but attractive in a feline, self-assured way. “We have all sorts of, um… amenities aboard my ship.”

Harbin shook his head. “No thank you.”

“The newest recreational drugs.”

“I must get back to my ship,” he said curtly.

“Not even a meal? Our cook—”

Harbin turned and reached for the cabin’s door latch.

“There’s nothing to be afraid of,” the captain said, smiling knowingly.

Harbin looked at her sharply. “Afraid? Of you?” He barked out a single, dismissive laugh. Then he left her cabin and went immediately back to his own ship.

Only after he had broken away from the supply vessel and was heading deeper into the Belt did he open the packet and remove the chip it contained. As he expected, it contained a list of ships to be attacked, together with their planned courses and complete details of their construction. Another death list, Harbin thought as he studied the images passing across his screen.

Abruptly, the specification charts ended and Grigor’s lean melancholy face appeared on the screen.

“This has been added at the last moment,” Grigor said, his dour image replaced by the blueprints of a ship. “The ship’s name is Starpower. We do not have a course for it yet, but that data will be sent to you via tight-beam laser as soon as it becomes available.”

Harbin’s eyes narrowed. That means I’ll have to get to the preplanned position to receive the laser beam and loiter there until they send the information. He did not like the idea of waiting.

“This is top priority,” Grigor’s voice droned over the image of Starpower’s construction details. “This must be done before you go after any other ships.”

Harbin wished he could talk back to Grigor, ask questions, demand more information.

Grigor’s face appeared on the screen again. “Destroy this one ship and you might not need to deal with any of the others. Eliminate Starpower and you might be able to return to Earth for good.”