The Silent War

TORCH SHIP ELSINORE

Doug Stavenger rode with Edith all the way up to the torch ship, waiting in a tight orbit around the Moon. He went with her through Elsinore’s airlock as the ship’s captain personally escorted his passenger to her quarters, a comfortable little cabin halfway down the passageway that led to the bridge.

Once the captain had left them alone and had slid the passageway door shut, Stavenger took his wife in his arms.

“You don’t have to do this, Edie,” he said.

“Yes I do,” she replied. She was smiling, but her eyes were steady with firm resolve.

“You could send someone else and have him report what he finds to you. You could stay here at Selene and produce the news show or documentary or whatever—”

“Doug,” she said, sliding her arms around his neck, “I love you, darling, but you have no idea of how the news business works.”

“I don’t want you risking your neck out there.”

“But that’s the only way to get the story!”

“And there’s a solar storm approaching, too,” he said.

“The ship’s shielded, darling.” She nuzzled his nose lightly, then said, “You’d better be getting back to Selene before the radiation starts building up.”

He frowned unhappily. “If something should happen to you…”

“What a story it would make!” She smiled as she said it.

“Be serious.”

Her smile faded, but only a little. “I’m being serious, Doug. The only way to break this conspiracy of silence is for a major news figure to go to Ceres and report on the situation firsthand. If Selene broadcasts my story it’ll be picked up by independents on Earth. Then the Earth-side nets will have to cover it. They’ll have no choice.”

“And if you get killed in the process?” “I won’t,” she insisted. “I’m not going to go out into the Belt. I’ll stay at Ceres, on the habitat the rock rats have built for themselves, where it’s perfectly safe. That’s one of the tricks of this business: Give the appearance of being on the front line, but stay at headquarters, where it’s safe.”

Stavenger tightened his grip around her waist. “I really don’t want you to go, Edie.”

“I know, dearest. But I have to.”

Eventually he gave up and released her. But all the way back to Selene on the little shuttle rocket, all the way back to his home in the underground city’s third level, Doug Stavenger could not shake the feeling that he would never see his wife again. He told himself he was being a foolish idiot, overly protective, overly possessive, too. Yet the feeling would not leave him.

Two ships left Selene, heading toward the Belt. Elsinore, carrying Edith Elgin, was going to the habitat Chrysalis, in orbit around the asteroid Ceres. Cromwell, an Astro Corporation freighter, was ostensibly going to pick up a load of ores that she would tote back to Selene.

Both ships turned on their electromagnetic radiation shielding as soon as they broke orbit around the Moon. The vast and growing cloud of energetic ionizing radiation that had been spewed out by the solar flare soon engulfed them both. Aboard Elsinore, the ship’s crew and her sole passenger watched the radiation count climb with some unavoidable trepidation. Aboard Cromwell, the crew counted on the radiation cloud to shield their approach to Vesta. Cromwell carried no human passengers, of course. Its cargo was a pair of missiles that carried heavily insulated warheads of nanomachines, the type commonly called gobblers.

Unable to communicate with Cromwell, and equally unable to contact Pancho, Jake Wanamaker had nothing better to do but pace the communications center and glower at the technicians working the consoles. At last he thumped himself down at an empty console and pulled up Pancho’s messages. Maybe there’s something in here that can tell me what she thinks she’s up to, he told himself, knowing it was just an excuse to engage in some busywork before he started smashing the furniture.

A long string of routine calls, mostly from Astro offices or board members. But one of the messages was highlighted, blinking in red letters. A Karl Manstein. No identification; just a call with no message attached. Yet it was highlighted. Wanamaker routed the call through Astro’s security system, and the Mainstein name dissolved before his eyes, replaced by the name Lars Fuchs.

Lars Fuchs had called Pancho, Wanamaker realized. He remembered that she had wanted to contact Fuchs and was chewing out her security people because they couldn’t find him.

The man’s right under their noses, Wanamaker said to himself. Right here in Selene. But he left no callback number.

Wanamaker had the computer trace the origin of Fuchs’s call. It had come from a wall phone up in the equipment storage area. Is he hiding up there? Wanamaker wondered.

He picked up the console microphone and instructed the communications computer to put through any call from Fuchs or Karl Manstein directly to him.

Nothing to do but wait, Wanamaker thought, leaning back in the console’s little wheeled chair. Wait to see what’s happening with Pancho. Wait to find out how Cromwell’s mission to Vesta turns out. Wait for Fuchs to call again.

He hated waiting.

Then he realized that someone was standing behind him. Swiveling the chair he saw it was Tashkajian, looking just as somber and apprehensive as he felt.

Martin Humphries was strolling through his expansive underground garden when Victoria Ferrer hurried along the curving brick path, breathless with news of the rumors about Pancho.

“Who the hell would kidnap Pancho?” Humphries snickered.

Walking alongside him through the wide beds of colorful flowers, Ferrer said, “The betting upstairs is that you did.”

“Me? That’s ridiculous.”

“Is it?” she asked.

“I wouldn’t mind having her assassinated. But why kidnap her?” Ferrer shrugged slightly. “She might have run off with some guy. They say this man running the Nairobi operation is quite a slab of beefcake.”

“Pancho wouldn’t do that,” Humphries said, shaking his head.

“Well, the Astro security people are floundering around, wondering where she is.”

Humphries stopped in the middle of the path and took in a deep breath of flower-fragrant air. “Well, let’s hope that she’s dead. But I doubt it. Pancho’s a tough little guttersnipe.”