The Rock Rats

CHAPTER 51

The asteroid had no name. In the catalogue files it was merely 38-4002. Barely a kilometer long and half that at its widest, it was a dark carbonaceous body, a loose aggregation of pebble-sized chondrules, more like a beanbag than a solid rock. Fuchs had left one of his transceivers there weeks earlier; now he was returning to the asteroid to retrieve it and see what information Amanda had been able to beam to him.

She’s gone to Selene, he kept repeating in his mind. To a conference. To Humphries. Without telling me. Without mentioning a word of it. He saw St. Claire’s face again as the man told him the news, almost smirking. Your wife didn’t tell you? he heard St. Claire ask, again and again. She never even mentioned it to you? It’s probably in the messages waiting for me, Fuchs told himself. Amanda must have put it into the latest batch of messages just before she left for Selene. For Humphries’s home. His guts knotted like fists every time he thought of it.

Why didn’t she tell me beforehand? he raged silently. Why didn’t she discuss this with me before she decided to go? The answer seemed terribly clear: Because she didn’t want me to know she was going, didn’t want me to know she would be seeing Humphries.

He wanted to bellow his rage and frustration, wanted to order his crew to race to Selene, wanted to take Amanda off the ship that was carrying her to the Moon and keep her safely with him. Too late, he knew. Far too late. She’s gone. She’s there by now. She’s left me.

Nautilus’s propellant tanks were full. Fuchs felt a slight pang of conscience about taking the hydrogen and helium fuels from his onetime friend St. Claire, but he had no choice. He had left St. Claire on less than friendly terms, but nevertheless the Quebecois waited six full hours before putting in an emergency call for a tanker, as Fuchs had ordered him to do.

Shaking his head as he sat in the command chair on Nautilus’s bridge, Fuchs wondered at how the human mind works. St. Claire knew I wouldn’t harm him. Yet he waited the full six hours before calling for help, giving me plenty of time to get safely away. Is he still my friend, despite everything? Or was he afraid I’d come back and fire on him? Pondering the question, Fuchs decided, most likely St. Claire was simply playing it safe. Our friendship is dead, a casualty of this war. I have no friends.

I have no wife, either. I’ve driven her away. Driven her into Humphries’s territory, perhaps into his arms.

The Asian navigator seated to one side of the bridge said to the woman who was piloting the ship, “The rock is in visual range.” He spoke in their native Mongol dialect, but Fuchs understood them. It’s not a rock, he corrected silently. It’s an aggregate.

Glad to have something else to occupy his mind, Fuchs commanded his computer to put the telescopic view of the asteroid on his console screen. It was tumbling slowly along its long axis, end over end. As they approached the ’roid, Fuchs called up the computer image that showed where they had planted the transceiver.

He hunched forward in his chair, studying the screen, trying to drive thoughts of Amanda out of his mind. It showed the telescope’s real-time image of the asteroid with the computer’s grid map superimposed over it. Strange, he thought. The contour map doesn’t match the visual image any more. There’s a new lump on the asteroid, not more than fifty meters from where the transceiver should be sitting.

Fuchs froze the image and peered at it. The asteroids are dynamic, he knew. They’re constantly being dinged by smaller chunks of rock. An aggregate like this ’roid wouldn’t show a crater, necessarily. It’s like punching your fist into a beanbag chair: it just gives and reforms itself.

But a lump? What would cause a lump?

He felt an old, old fervor stirring inside him. Once he had been a planetary geochemist; he had first come out to the Belt to study the asteroids, not to mine them. A curiosity that he hadn’t felt in many years filled his mind. What could raise a blister on a carbonaceous chondritic asteroid?

Dorik Harbin was half a day’s journey distant from the carbonaceous asteroid, even at the 0.5 g acceleration that was Shanidar’s best speed. He had dropped his ship into a grazing orbit around the jagged, striated body of nickel-iron where Fuchs had left one of his transceivers. His navigator was still sweating and wide-eyed with apprehension. His pale blond Scandinavian second-in-command had warned him several times that they were dangerously close to crashing into the rock.

But Harbin wanted to be so close that an approaching ship would not spot him. He wished this chunk of metal was porous, like the carbonaceous rock where one of Fuchs’s other transceivers had been found. The crew there had simply detached their habitation module from the rest of their ship and buried it under a loose layer of rubble. Then the remainder of the ship, crewed only by a pilot and navigator, flew out of range. If Fuchs showed up there, all he would see would be an innocent pile of dirt. A Trojan horse, Harbin thought grimly, that would disgorge half a dozen armed troops while calling all of Harbin’s armada to close the trap.

The Scandinavian was clearly unhappy orbiting mere meters from the scratched and pitted surface of the asteroid. “We are running the danger of having the hull abraded by the dust that hovers over the rock,” she warned Harbin.

He looked into her wintry blue eyes. So like my own, he thought. Her Viking ancestors must have invaded my village some time in the past.

“It’s dangerous!” she said sharply.

Harbin made himself smile at her. “Match our orbit to the rock’s intrinsic spin. If Fuchs comes poking around here, I don’t him to see us until it’s too late for him to get away.”

She started to protest, but Harbin cut her off with an upraised hand. “Do it,” he said.

Clearly unhappy, she turned and relayed his order to the navigator.

“Let’s break for lunch,” said Doug Stavenger.

The others around the conference table nodded and pushed their chairs back. The tension in the room cracked. One by one, they got to their feet, stretched, took deep breaths. Stavenger heard vertebrae pop.

Lunch had been laid on in another conference room, down the hall. As the delegates filed out into the corridor, Stavenger touched Dieterling’s arm, detaining him.

“Have we accomplished anything?” he asked the diplomat.

Dieterling glanced at the doorway, where his two nephews stood waiting for him. Then he turned back to Stavenger. “A little, I think.”

“At least Humphries and Pancho are talking civilly to each other,” Stavenger said, with a rueful smile.

“Don’t underestimate the benefits of civility,” said Dieterling. “Without it, nothing can be done.”

“So?”

With a heavy shrug, Dieterling answered, “It’s clear that the crux of the problem is this man Fuchs.”

“Humphries certainly wants him out of the way.”

“As long as he is rampaging out there in the Belt there can be no peace.”

Stavenger shook his head. “But Fuchs started his… rampage, as you call it, in reaction to the violence that Humphries’s people began.”

“That makes no difference now,” Dieterling said, dropping his voice almost to a whisper. “We can get Humphries and Ms. Lane to let bygones be bygones and forget the past. No recriminations, no acts of vengeance. They are willing to make a peaceful settlement.”

“And stick to it, do you think?”

“Yes. I’m certain of it. This war is becoming too expensive for them. They want it ended.”

“They can end it this afternoon, if they want to.”

“Only if Fuchs is stopped,” Dieterling said. “He is the wild card, the terrorist who is beyond ordinary political control.”

Stavenger nodded glumly. “He’s got to be stopped, then. Dammit.”

Humphries stepped into the washroom, relieved himself of a morning’s worth of coffee, then washed up and popped another tranquilizing pill. He thought of them as tranquilizers, even though he knew they were much more than that.

As he stepped out into the corridor, Amanda came out of the ladies’ room. His breath caught in his throat, despite the pill. She was dressed in a yellow pant suit that seemed faded from long use, yet in Humphries’s eyes she glowed like the sun. No one else was in sight; the others must have all gone into the room where lunch was laid out.

“Hello, Amanda,” he heard himself say.

Only then did he see the cold anger in her eyes.

“You’re determined to kill Lars, aren’t you?” she said flatly.

Humphries licked his lips before replying, “Kill him? No. Stop him. That’s all I want, Amanda. I want him to stop the killing.”

“Which you started.”

“That doesn’t matter anymore. He’s the problem now.”

“You won’t rest until you’ve killed him.”

“Not—” He had to swallow hard before he could continue. “Not if you’ll marry me.”

He had expected her to be surprised. But her eyes did not flicker, the expression on her utterly beautiful face did not change one iota. She simply turned and headed up the corridor, away from him.

Humphries started to after her, but then he heard Stavenger and Dieterling coming up the hall behind him. Don’t make an ass of yourself in front of them, he told himself sternly. Let her go. For now. At least she didn’t say no.