The Rock Rats

CHAPTER 52

As Fuchs studied the image of asteroid 38-4002, Nodon ducked through the hatch and stepped into the bridge. Fuchs heard him ask the pilot if the long-range scan showed any other ships in the area. “None,” said the pilot.

What could raise a lump on a beanbag collection of pebbles? Fuchs asked himself for the dozenth time. Nautilus was approaching the asteroid at one-sixth g; they would have to start a braking maneuver soon if they were going to establish an orbit around it.

Wishing he had a full panoply of sensors to play across the asteroid’s surface, Fuchs noted again that there were several noticeable craters on its surface, but none of them had the raised rims that formed when a boulder crashed into a solid rock. No, this is a collection of nodules, he thought, and the only way to build a blister like that is for something to push the pellets up into a mound.

Something. Then it hit him. Or someone. He turned in his chair and looked up at Nodon. “Warm up laser number one,” he commanded.

Nodon’s big eyes flashed, but he nodded silently and left the bridge.

Turning back to the image of the approaching asteroid, Fuchs reasoned, If something natural pushed up that mound, then there should be a depression next to it, from where the pebbles were scooped up. But there isn’t. Why not? Because something is buried under that mound. Because someone dug a hole in that porous pile of rubble and buried something in it.

What?

“Cut our approach velocity in half,” he said to the pilot. The Asian complied wordlessly.

Several minutes later, Nodon called from the cargo bay, “Laser number two is ready.”

“Number two?” Fuchs replied sharply. “What happened to number one?”

“Its coolant lines are being flushed. Routine maintenance.”

“Get it on line,” Fuchs snapped. “Get number three on line, too.”

“Yes, sir.” Fuchs could hear Nodon speaking in rapid dialect to someone else down in the cargo bay.

“Slave number two to my console,” Fuchs ordered.

He began to reconfigure his console with fingertip touches on its main display screen. By the time he had finished, the laser was linked. He could run it from the bridge.

He put the asteroid on-screen and focused on that suspicious mound of rubble. He saw the red dot of the aiming laser sparkling on the dark, pebbly ground and walked it to the middle of the mound. Then, with a touch of a finger, he fired the high-power laser. Its infrared beam was invisible to his eyes, but Fuchs saw the ground cascade into a splash of heat, a miniature fountain of red-hot lava erupting, spraying high above the asteroid’s surface.

His face set in a harsh scowl, Fuchs held the cutting laser’s beam on the spewing geyser of molten rock. Ten seconds. Fifteen. Twenty…

The mound erupted. Half a dozen spacesuited figures scurried in all directions like cockroaches startled out of their nest, stumbling across the rough surface of the asteroid.

“I knew it!” Fuchs shouted. The three Asians on the bridge turned toward him.

Nodon called from the cargo bay, “They were waiting for us to pick up the transceiver!”

Fuchs ignored them all. He swung the laser toward one of the figures. The man had tripped and sprawled clumsily in the minuscule gravity of the little asteroid, then when he tried to get up, he had pushed himself completely off the ground. Now he floated helplessly, arms and legs flailing.

Fuchs walked the laser beam toward him, watched its molten path as it burned across the asteroid’s gravelly surface.

“Waiting to trap me, were you?” he muttered. “You wanted to kill me. Now see what death is like.”

For an instant he wondered who was inside that spacesuit. What kind of a man becomes a mercenary soldier, a hired killer? Is he like my own crew, the castoffs, the abandoned, so desperate that they’ll do anything, follow anyone who can give them hope that they’ll live to see another day? Fuchs watched the spacesuited figure struggling, arms and legs pumping frantically as he drifted farther off the asteroid. He certainly had no experience in micro-gravity, Fuchs saw. And his comrades are doing nothing to help him.

You’re going to die alone, he said silently to the spacesuited figure.

Yet he turned off the cutting laser. His hand had touched the screen icon that deactivated its beam before his conscious mind understood what he had done. The red spot of the low-power aiming laser still scintillated on the asteroid’s surface. Fuchs moved it to shine squarely on the flailing, contorted body of the mercenary.

Kill or be killed, he told himself. It took an effort, though, to will his hand back to the high-power laser’s firing control. He held it there, poised a bare centimeter above it.

“Two ships approaching at high acceleration,” called the pilot. “No, four ships, coming in from two different directions.”

Fuchs knew he couldn’t murder the man. He could not kill him in cold blood. And he knew that their trap had worked.

It all fell in on him like an avalanche. They knew where the transceivers were hidden. Someone had told them. Someone? Only Amanda knew where the transceivers were located. She wouldn’t betray him, Fuchs told himself. She wouldn’t. Someone must have ferreted out the information somehow. And then sold it to Humphries.

“Six ships,” called the pilot, sounding frightened. “All approaching at high g.”

Trapped. They were waiting for me to show up. Six ships.

Nodon’s voice came over the intercom. “Lasers one and three ready to fire.”

I’ll get them all killed if I try to fight back, Fuchs realized. It’s me that Humphries wants, not my crew.

Suddenly he felt tired, bone tired, soul weary. It’s over, he realized. All this fighting and killing and what has it gained me? What has it gained anyone? I’ve walked my crew into a trap, like a fool, like a wolf caught in the hunter’s net. It’s over. It’s finished. And I’ve lost everything.

With a feeling of resignation that overwhelmed him, Fuchs touched the communications key and spoke, “This is Lars Fuchs aboard the Nautilus. Don’t fire. We surrender.”

Harbin heard the defeat in Fuchs’s voice. And he cursed Martin Humphries for saddling him with this oversized armada and company of troops. I could have done this by myself, he thought. Given the information about where he planted his transceivers, I could have trapped him by myself, without all these others—all these witnesses.

By himself, Harbin would have sliced Fuchs’s ship into bits and killed everyone aboard it. Then he would have carried Fuchs’s dead body back to Diane and her boss, so Humphries could glory in his triumph and Harbin could claim the immense bonus that would be rightfully his. Then he would take Diane for himself and leave Humphries to gloat over his victory.

But there were more than a hundred men and women aboard this fleet that Humphries had insisted upon. It was nonsense to believe that each of them would remain quiet if Harbin killed Fuchs after the man had surrendered. It would be too big a story, too much temptation. Someone would cash out to the news media, or to spies from Humphries’s competitors in Astro Corporation.

No. Against his instincts, against his judgment, Harbin knew he had to accept Fuchs’s surrender and bring the man and his crew back to Ceres. Then he smiled grimly. Perhaps once he’s on Ceres something might happen to him. After all, the man’s made many enemies there. They might even put him on trial and execute him legally.