The Rock Rats

CHAPTER 27

Harbin listened intently to the messages that Fuchs was beaming out. Coldly, he thought, If the fool kept himself restricted to laser signals I wouldn’t have been able to detect him. Radio signals expand through space like a swelling balloon. Like a flower opening up to the sun. A blossom of death, he realized. He knew that he had to conserve his propellant supply; it was already low enough to be of concern. Not a danger, not yet, but he couldn’t roar out to his prey at full thrust, not if he wanted to have enough propellant to get back to an HSS tanker. But there was no rush. Let Fuchs rescue whoever is left alive on Matilda. I’ll simply cruise toward them and intercept Starpower on its way back to Ceres.

He kept his communications receivers open, and soon heard Fuchs reporting excitedly back to Ceres that he had located Waltzing Matilda and its two crewmen were still alive. Not for long, Harbin thought.

Then a new thought struck him. It was not all that unusual for a prospector’s ship to disappear out in the lonely vastness of the Belt. He had destroyed several of them; others had failed without his help. A single ship like Waltzing Matilda could wink out of contact, never to be heard from again, and no one would know the cause. Of course, there were grumbles about piracy here and there, but no one really took that seriously.

On the other hand, if Matilda’s crew is alive, they will be able to tell what actually happened to them. They’ll inform the IAA that they were deliberately attacked and left for dead. I can’t allow them to survive.

But on the other other hand, Harbin mused on, how will it look if the ship that rescues Matilda’s crew also disappears? That will raise the rumbles of piracy to the level of a major investigation.

He shook his head, trying to clear his thoughts. I’m out here alone; I can’t call back to Grigor or anyone else for instructions. I’ve got to make the decision here and now.

It took him less than a minute to decide. Let Starpower rescue Matilda’s crew and then destroy the lot of them. Perhaps I can kill them before they can blab their whole story to Ceres or the IAA.

Amanda’s heart clutched in her chest when she answered the incoming message signal on her computer and Lars’s image took shape on her wallscreen.

He looked tense; there were dark circles under his eyes. But his normally severe, gloomy face was smiling widely.

“I’ve found them! George and his crewman. They’re alive and I’m going to pick them up.”

“What happened to them?” Amanda asked, forgetting that her husband was too far away for interactive conversation.

“Their ship is disabled,” Fuchs was saying, “but they are both uninjured. That’s all I know at the moment. I’ll send more information after I’ve taken them aboard my ship.”

The screen went blank, leaving Amanda awash in a thousand questions. But none of them mattered to her. Lars is all right and he’s not doing anything dangerous. He’s going to rescue George and his crewman and then he’ll come back here, back to me.

She felt enormously relieved.

The airlock compartment felt cramped, crowded once George and his crewman came through the hatch in their bulky spacesuits. And as soon as they started pulling off their suits, Fuchs nearly gagged from the stench.

“You both need showers,” he said, as delicately as he could manage.

George grinned sheepishly through his wildly tangled beard. “Yeah. Guess we don’t smell so sweet, eh?”

The Asian said nothing, but looked embarrassed. He was only a youngster, Fuchs saw.

As Fuchs led them along the passageway to the lav, George said cheerfully, “Hope you’ve got a full larder.”

Fuchs nodded, resisting the urge to hold his nose. Then he asked, “What happened to you?”

Shooing the silent Nodon into the shower stall, George answered, “What happened? We were attacked, that’s what happened.”

“Attacked?”

“Deliberately shot to pieces by a bloke with a high-power laser on his ship.”

“I knew it,” Fuchs muttered.

Nodon discreetly stepped into the shower stall before peeling off his coveralls. Then they heard the spray of water, saw tendrils of steamy air rising from the stall.

“I guess we’re not the first to be chopped,” said George. “Lady of the Lake. Aswan… four or five others, at least.”

“At least,” Fuchs agreed. “We’ll have to inform the IAA of this. Maybe now they’ll start a real investigation.”

“Dinner first,” George said. “Me stomach’s growlin’.”

“A shower first,” Fuchs corrected. “Then you can eat.”

George laughed. “Suits me.” Raising his voice, he added, “If we can get a certain Asian bloke out of the fookin’ shower stall.”

Harbin was glistening with perspiration as he exercised on the ergonomics bike. Shanidar was cruising at one-sixth g, the same grav level as the Moon, but Harbin’s military upbringing unsparingly forced him to maintain his conditioning to Earth-normal standards. As he pedaled away and pumped at the hand bars, he watched the display screen on the bulkhead in front of him.

It was a martial arts training vid, one that Harbin had seen dozens of times. But each time he picked up something new, some different little wrinkle that he had overlooked before or forgotten. After his mandatory twenty klicks on the bike, he would rerun the vid and go through its rigorous set of exercises.

But his mind kept coming back to the central problem he faced. How can I prevent Fuchs from informing Ceres of what happened to Waltzing Matilda? He’s already sent one brief message to his wife. Once he beams out their whole story the IAA will launch a full investigation.

He almost smiled. If that happens, my career in piracy is finished. Grigor’s superiors might even decide that it would be safer to terminate me than to pay me off.

It’s imperative, then, that I silence Starpower as quickly as possible. But how? I can’t jam their transmissions; I don’t have the proper equipment aboard.

I could accelerate, get to them at top speed, knock them out before they get a message back to Ceres. But then I’d be too low on fuel to get back to a tanker. I’d have to signal Grigor to send a tanker to me.

And what better way to be rid of me than to let me drift alone out here until I starve to death or the recyclers break down? That way Grigor and his HSS bosses get total silence, for free.

With a grim shake of his head, Harbin decided he would continue on his present course and speed. He’d catch up to Starpower and destroy the ship. Fuchs would die. Harbin only hoped that he could finish the job before Fuchs told Ceres what was going on.

That’s in the lap of the gods, he thought. It’s a matter of chance. A quatrain from the Rubaiyat came to him:

Yes, Harbin thought. That would be pleasant, to shatter this world to bits and rebuild it into something better. To have a woman to stand beside me, to love me, to be my heart’s desire.

But that is fantasy, he told himself sternly. Reality is this godforsaken emptiness, this dreary ship. Reality is studying ways to kill.

With a deep, heartfelt breath, he said silently, Reality is this damned bike, going nowhere but taking all my energy to get there.