The Rock Rats

CHAPTER 33

“So he’s getting a hearing with the IAA,” Humphries said as he mixed himself a vodka and tonic.

The bar in his palatial home was a sizable room that also served as a library. Bookshelves ran up to the ceiling along two walls, and a third wall had shelves full of video disks and cyberbook chips stacked around a pair of holowindows that showed slowly-changing views of extraterrestrial scenery.

Humphries paid no attention to the starkly beautiful Martian sunset or the windswept cloud deck of Jupiter. His mind was on Lars Fuchs.

“The hearing will be held in the IAA offices here in Selene,” said Diane Verwoerd. Seated on a plush stool at the handsome mahogany bar, she nursed a long slim glass of sickly greenish Pernod and water.

Verwoerd was the only other person in the room with Humphries. She was still in her office clothes: a white sleeveless turtle-neck blouse under a maroon blazer, with dark charcoal slacks that accentuated her long legs. Humphries had already changed to a casual open-necked shirt and light tan chinos.

“Is he bringing his wife with him?” Humphries asked as he stepped out from behind the bar.

“Probably.” Verwoerd swiveled on her stool to follow him as he paced idly along the rows of leather-bound books. “You don’t know for certain?”

“I can find out easily enough,” she said.

Humphries muttered, “He wouldn’t leave her alone on that rock.”

“It didn’t do you any good the last time he brought her here.”

He shot her a venomous look.

“We have something else to worry about,” Verwoerd said. “This man Harbin.”

Humphries’s expression changed. It didn’t soften: it merely went from one object of anger to another.

“That’s why you wanted to talk to me alone,” he said.

She raised a brow slightly. “That’s why I agreed to have a drink with you, yes.”

“But not dinner.”

“I have other plans for dinner,” she said. “Besides, you should be thinking about Harbin. Thinking hard.”

“What’s the situation?”

She took a sip of her drink, then placed the glass carefully on the bar. “Obviously, he failed to eliminate Fuchs.”

“From what I’ve heard, Fuchs nearly eliminated him.”

“His ship was damaged and he had to break off his attack on Starpower. Apparently Fuchs was expecting him; at least, that’s what Harbin believes.”

“I don’t care a termite fart’s worth for what he believes. I’m paying him for results and he’s failed. Now I’m going to have the idiotic IAA to deal with.”

Humphries kicked at an ottoman that was in his way and sat heavily on the sofa facing the bar. His face was an image of pure disgust.

“You have Harbin to deal with, too.”

“What?” He looked up sharply at her. “What do you mean?”

“He knows enough to hurt you. Badly.”

“He’s never seen me. He dealt entirely with Grigor.”

With deliberate patience, Verwoerd said, “If Harbin tells the IAA what he’s been doing, do you think they’ll lay the blame in Grigor’s lap or yours?”

“They can’t—”

“Don’t you think they’re intelligent enough to realize that Grigor would never authorize attacks on prospectors’ ships unless you ordered them?”

Humphries looked as if he wanted to throw his drink at her. It’s dangerous being the messenger, Verwoerd told herself, when you bring bad news.

“You’ll have to eliminate Harbin, then,” he said. “Maybe Grigor, too.”

And then me? Verwoerd asked herself. Aloud, she replied, “Harbin’s thought of that possibility. He claims he’s sent copies of his ship’s log to a few friends on Earth.”

“Nonsense! How could he—”

“Tight-beam laser links. Coded data. It’s done every day. It’s the way he communicated with our own tankers out there in the Belt.”

“Send messages all the way back to Earth?”

Verwoerd took up her drink again. “It’s done every day,” she repeated.

“He’s bluffing,” Humphries mumbled.

She got off the stool and stepped toward the sofa where he was sitting. Nudging the ottoman into position with one foot, she sat on it and leaned toward him, arms on her knees, drink in both hands.

“Even if he’s bluffing, it’s too big a risk to take. Eliminating him won’t be easy. He’s a trained fighter and he’s tough.”

“He’s coming here to Selene on an HSS vessel, isn’t he?” Humphries pointed out. “The crew can get rid of him.”

Verwoerd sighed like a schoolteacher facing a boy who hadn’t done his homework. “Then you’d have half a dozen people who’d have something on you. Besides, I don’t think the entire crew could take him. As I said, he’s trained and he’s tough. Things could get quite messy if we try to take him out.”

“Then what do you recommend?” he asked sullenly.

“Let me deal with him. Personally.”

“You?”

She nodded. “Keep Grigor out of this. Harbin is most likely worried that we want to take him out, especially since he failed with Fuchs and he knows enough to hang us all. Let me show him that it’s not that way. I’ll offer him a bonus, send him back to Earth with a fat bank account.”

“So he can blackmail me for the rest of his life.”

“Yes, of course. That’s exactly what he’ll think. And we’ll let him go on thinking that until he’s living it up on Earth and his guard is down.”

A crooked smile slowly curled across Humphries’s lips.

“Delilah,” he murmured.

Verwoerd saw that he was satisfied with her plan. She took a long swallow of the licorice-flavored Pernod, then agreed, “Delilah.”

Humphries’s smile turned sardonic. “Are you going to fuck him, too?”

She made herself smile back. “If I have to.”

But she was thinking, You don’t know whose hair is going to get trimmed, Martin. And there’s more than one way to screw a man; even you.

Fuchs had dreaded this moment. He knew it had to come, though. There was no way around it. The IAA official was due to arrive at Ceres in another few hours.

He started packing his travel bag for the trip to Selene. When Amanda took her bag from the closet and laid it on the bed beside his, he told her that he was going without her.

“What do you mean?” Amanda asked, obviously startled by his decision.

“Precisely what I said. George, Nodon and I are going. I want you to remain here.”

She looked puzzled, hurt. “But, Lars, I—”

“You are not going with me!” Fuchs said sharply.

Shocked at his vehemence, Amanda stared at him open-mouthed as if he had slapped her in the face.

“That’s final,” he snapped.

“But, Lars—”

“No buts, and no arguments,” he said. “You stay here and run what’s left of the business while I’m in Selene.”

“Lars, you can’t go without me. I won’t let you!”

He tried to stare her down. This is the hardest part, he realized. I’ve got to hurt her, there’s no other way to do this.

“Amanda,” he said, trying to sound stern, trying to keep his own doubts and pain out of his voice, out of his face. “I have made up my mind. I need you to remain here. I’m not a little boy who must bring his mother with him wherever he goes.”

“Your mother!”

“Whatever,” he said. “I’m going without you.”

“But why?”

“Because that’s what I want,” he said, raising his voice. “I know that you think I’d be safer if you were with me, that Humphries won’t attack me if he believes you might be hurt, too. Poppycock! I don’t need your protection. I don’t want it.”

She burst into tears and fled to the lavatory, leaving him standing by the bed in agony.

If he’s going to try to kill me, it won’t matter to him whether Amanda’s with me or not. The closer I get to hurting him, the more desperate he becomes. She’ll be safer here, among friends, among people who know her. He wants to kill me, not her. I’ll face him without her. It will be better that way.

He was certain he was right. If only he couldn’t hear her sobbing on the other side of the thin door.

Hector Wilcox felt extremely uneasy about going to the Moon. His flight from the spaceport at Munich had been terrifying, despite all the reassurances of the Astro Corporation employees. Their stout little Clippership looked sturdy enough when he boarded it. The flight attendant who showed him to his seat went on at length about the ship’s diamond structure hull and the reliability records that Clipperships had run up. All well and good, Wilcox thought.

He strapped himself firmly into his seat and, fortified by several whiskies beforehand and a medicinal patch plastered on the inside of his elbow to ward against spacesickness, he gripped the seat’s armrests and listened with growing apprehension to the countdown.

Takeoff terrified him. It was like an explosion that jolted every bone in his body. He felt squashed down in his seat, then before he could utter a word of complaint he was weightless, floating against the straps of his safety harness, his stomach rising up into his throat despite the medicine patch. Swallowing bile, he reached for the retch bags tucked into the pouch on the seat back in front of him.

By the time the Clippership had docked with the space station, Wilcox was wishing that he’d insisted on holding the damnable hearing on Earth. There were plenty of smiling, uniformed Astro personnel to help him out of the Clippership and into the transfer vehicle that would go the rest of the way to the Moon. Groaning in zero gravity, Wilcox allowed them to haul him around like a helpless invalid and tuck him into a seat on the transfer ship that was far less comfortable then the Clippership’s had been.

At least there was some feeling of gravity when the transfer vehicle started its high-thrust burn Moonward. But that dwindled away all too soon, and for the next several hours Wilcox wondered if he was going to survive this journey.

Gradually, though, he began to feel better. His stomach didn’t feel so queasy; the pressure behind his eyes eased off. If he didn’t turn his head or make any sudden moves, zero gravity was almost pleasurable.

Once they landed at Selene’s Armstrong spaceport, the light lunar gravity gave Wilcox a renewed sense of up-and-down. He was able to unstrap and get out of his chair without help. He stumbled at first, but by the time he had been checked through customs and rented a pair of weighted boots, he felt almost normal.

The soothing elegance of the Hotel Luna’s lobby helped Wilcox to feel even more at home. Quiet luxury always pleased him, and although the lobby was slightly tatty here and there, the general tone and atmosphere of the place was reassuring. The local IAA flunkies had taken the best suite in Selene’s only hotel for him. Spare no expense, Wilcox thought as he looked around the sumptuous sitting room, so long as it’s coming out of the taxpayers’ pocketbook and not mine. An assistant manager brought him to the suite, unpacked his bags for him, and even politely refused the tip Wilcox preferred. The hotel staff had prepared everything for him, including a well-stocked bar. One good jolt of whisky and Wilcox felt almost normal again.

There was a tap on the door, and before Wilcox could say a word, the door slid open and a liveried servant pushed in a rolling table laden with covered dishes and a half-dozen bottles of wine.

Surprised, Wilcox began to protest, “I didn’t order—”

Then Martin Humphries walked into the suite, all smiles.

“I thought you’d appreciate a good meal, Hector,” said Humphries. “This is from my own kitchen, not the regular hotel fare.” Gesturing toward the bottles, he added, “From my own cellar, too.”

Wilcox broke into a genuinely pleased smile. “Why, Martin, for goodness’ sake. How kind of you.”

As the waiter silently set out their dinner, Humphries explained, “We shouldn’t be seen in a public restaurant together, and I couldn’t invite you down to my home without it seeming improper…”

“Quite so,” Wilcox agreed. “Too many damnable snoops willing to believe the worst about anyone.”

“So I decided to bring dinner to you. I hope you don’t mind.”

“Not at all! I’m delighted to see you again. How long has it been?”

“I’ve been living here in Selene for more than six years now.”

“Has it been that long?” Wilcox brushed his moustache with a fingertip. “But, eh … aren’t we running the risk of seeming impropriety? After all, with the hearing coming up—”

“No risk at all,” Humphries said smoothly. “This man is a loyal employee of mine, and the hotel people can be relied on to be discreet.”

“I see.”

“You can’t be too careful these days, especially a man in such a high position of trust as you are.”

“Rather,” said Wilcox, smiling as he watched the waiter open the first bottle of wine.