The Rock Rats

CHAPTER 54

“Will you release my crew once we reach Ceres?” Fuchs asked dully, mechanically.

Harbin replied, “That’s not up to me. That decision will be made—”

“By Martin Humphries, I know,” said Fuchs. Harbin studied the man. They were sitting at the small table in Shanidar’s galley, the only space in the ship where two people could converse in privacy. The hatch to the bridge was shut, by Harbin’s orders. Fuchs had looked utterly weary, dispirited, when he had first been brought aboard Shanidar. The look of defeat: Harbin had seen it before. A man stops fighting when he becomes convinced that no hope is left; victory begins when the enemy’s will to resist crumbles. But now, after a decent meal and a few hours to adjust his thinking to his new situation, Fuchs seemed to be regaining some spark of resistance.

He was a powerfully-built man, Harbin saw, despite his smallish stature. Like a badger, or—what was that American creature? A wolverine, he remembered. Small but deadly. Sharp teeth and utter fearlessness.

For a few moments Harbin contemplated what would happen if Fuchs tried to attack him. He had no doubt that he could handle the man, despite Fuchs’s apparent strength and potential ferocity. It would simplify everything if I had to kill him in self-defense, Harbin thought. Perhaps I can goad him into attacking me. His wife is apparently a sore point with him.

But then Harbin thought, to be convincing, I’d need at least one witness. That would be self-defeating. With another person in the room Fuchs probably would be smart enough to keep his hands to himself. If I tried to goad him, the witness would witness that, too.

Fuchs broke into his thoughts with, “Where is my crew? What have you done with them?”

“They’ve been placed aboard my other ships,” Harbin said. “No more than two to a ship. It’s safer that way; they won’t be tempted to try anything foolish.”

“I expect them to be treated properly.”

Harbin bobbed his head once. “As long as they behave themselves they will be fine.”

“And I want them released when we get to Ceres.”

Barely suppressing a smile at Fuchs’s growing impudence, Harbin said, “As I told you, that decision will be made by higher authority.”

“I take full responsibility for everything that’s happened.”

“Naturally.”

Fuchs lapsed into silence for a few moments. Then he said, “I suppose I’ll have to speak to Humphries directly, sooner or later.”

Harbin answered, “I doubt that he’ll want to speak to you.”

“About my crew—”

“Mr. Fuchs,” Harbin said, getting to his feet, “the fate of your crew is something that neither you nor I have the power to decide.”

Fuchs rose also, barely reaching Harbin’s shoulder.

“I think it would be best,” Harbin said, “if you remained in your privacy cubicle for the rest of the flight. We’ll be at Ceres in less than thirty-six hours. I’ll have your meals brought to you.”

Fuchs said nothing, but let Harbin lead him down the passageway to the cubicle they had assigned him. There was no lock on the sliding door, which was so flimsy that a lock would have been useless anyway. Fuchs realized that Harbin had been clever to break up his crew and parcel them out among the other ships in his fleet.

I’m alone here, he thought as Harbin gestured him into the cubicle. The door slid closed. Fuchs sat heavily on the hard spring-less cot. Like Samson captured and blinded by the Philistines, he told himself. Eyeless in Gaza.

At least I wasn’t sold out by Amanda. She’d never be a Delilah, never betray me. Never.

He desperately wanted to believe that.

“The essence of our agreement, then,” said Stavenger, “is that both Astro and Humphries Space Systems disband their mercenary forces and allow the independent prospectors to operate without harassment.”

“And without placing any controls on the prices for ores,” Humphries added, with a satisfied nod.

“No price controls,” Pancho agreed.

Dieterling said, “Pardon my bluntness, but don’t you feel that your refusal to accept price controls is blatantly selfish?”

“Not at all,” snapped Humphries.

“Works the other way around, Willi,” Pancho said, quite seriously. “Supply and demand works in favor of the buyer, not the seller.”

“But you buy the ores from the prospectors—”

“And sell the refined metals to you,” Humphries pointed out.

Frowning slightly, Dieterling muttered, “I’m not an economist…”

“I think a free market works in Selene’s favor,” Stavenger said. “And Earth’s.”

Pancho hunched forward in her chair. “See, if you leave the market open, then the more ores the prospectors locate the lower the price’ll go. Supply and demand.”

“But Earth needs vast amounts of those raw materials,” Dieterling said.

Stavenger put a hand on the diplomat’s sleeve, gently. “Doctor Dieterling, I don’t think you have any idea of how enormous the resources in the Asteroid Belt are. There are trillions of tons of high-grade ores out there. Hundreds of trillions of tons. We’ve only begun to scratch the surface, so far.”

“Price controls would work in favor of the prospectors, not the ultimate consumers on Earth,” Humphries said firmly.

“Or Selene,” added Stavenger.

Still worrying that uncontrolled prices for asteroidal ores would somehow work against Earth’s best interests, Dieterling reluctantly agreed to drop the issue and allow Astro and HSS to draft an agreement. The International Astronautical Authority would be empowered to adjudicate claims against one corporation or the other.

“There’s one remaining problem,” Stavenger pointed out, just as everyone was getting ready to call the conference a success.

Humphries, halfway out of his chair, grumbled, “What now?”

“Enforcement,” Stavenger said. “There’s nothing in the draft agreement about enforcing the peace.”

Sitting down again, Humphries asked, “You don’t trust us to live up to the terms we agree to?”

Pancho grinned. “I know you can trust Astro.”

“Sure we can,” Stavenger replied, grinning back at her. “But I’d prefer to see something on paper.”

George spoke up. “We’ll enforce the peace,” he said.

Everyone turned to him.

“You?” Humphries scoffed. “The rock rats?”

“We’ve got a government now, or the beginnings of one,” George said. “We’ll police Ceres. Any complaints from the prospectors, we’ll handle ’em.”

“How could you—”

“Everything goes through Ceres,” George explained. “That’s where the ships get fitted out and supplied. We hold the water taps, mate. And the food cupboards and fuel tanks and even the foo—the bleedin’ oxygen for breathin’. We’ll keep law and order for ya. It’s in our own best interests.”

Dieterling turned back to Stavenger. “Could that work?”

“We can make it work,” said Kris Cardenas, sitting across the table from George.

Stavenger had a strange expression on his face. “This means that the rock rats will have political control of the Belt.”

“Which is the way it should be,” Cardenas said firmly. “We’re the people who live there, we ought to be able to control our own destiny.”

Looking from her to Stavenger and back again, Dieterling said, “That is a great deal of power. The entire Asteroid Belt…”

“We can handle it,” George said, totally serious. “Like Kris here said, it’s the way things oughtta be.”