The Aftermath

up and trying to take some responsibilities. Or maybe she just wants to keep an eye on me now that I know about her boyfriend. Whichever, it’s okay.

If my spoiled brat sister actually lets me tell her what to do in the workshop, he added.

TORCH SHIP ELSINORE

It’s a freaking floating palace, Victor thought as the two uniformed crew members—one man and one woman—led him through the carpeted corridors and spacious lounges of the Elsinore.

The lounges were empty and quiet, the corridors nearly so. The crew seemed to far outnumber the passengers.

The same two crew members had flown a shuttlecraft and plucked Victor from the command pod that had been his home for nearly two weeks. They had delivered him to Elsinore’s small but well-stocked infirmary, where a pair of medics—again, one woman and one man—checked him thoroughly and pronounced him physically fit, except for slight dehydration.

Now they walked him through the ship.

“Where are we going?” Victor asked at last, as they climbed a carpeted staircase.

“To meet the man who diverted our ship to pick you up,” said the crewman walking on Victor’s right side.

“The captain? I’d certainly like to thank him.”

“Not the captain,” replied the woman on his left.

“Who then?”

They reached the top of the stairs. Another lounge, with fabric-covered walls and muted music purring softly from overhead speakers. Two people were sitting at one of the little round tables; the lounge was otherwise empty except for the human bartender standing behind the bar. The man at the table rose to his feet like the Sun climbing above the horizon: a huge mountain of a man with wild red shaggy hair and beard and a mug of what had to be beer in one ham-sized hand.

Victor recognized him immediately: George Ambrose, chairman of the ruling council at Ceres. Big George, the rock rats’ leader. A brightly attractive woman was sitting at the table with George. She too looked familiar to Victor but he couldn’t quite place her. She appeared to be young, with bountiful blonde hair framing her pretty, smiling, cheerleader’s face.

“You’re Victor Zacharias?” Big George asked in a surprisingly sweet tenor voice. He was not smiling, however. If anything, he looked grimly angry.

Victor extended his hand and Big George engulfed it in his massive paw.

“We’ve met before,” Victor said, “but it was in a crowd at a party aboard Chrysalis; I don’t suppose you remember me.”

“Chrysalis,” George muttered, plunking himself down on his chair; it groaned beneath his weight.

Victor turned to the woman.

“I’m Edith Elgin,” she said, still smiling as she raised her hand toward him.

“Edie Elgin. The news anchor,” Victor said, recognizing her at last. “But I thought you lived in Selene.”

“I came out here to do a story on the war in the Belt,” she said, her smile fading.

“And walked into a fookin’ massacre,” Big George growled.

A moment of awkward silence. Then George hollered over to the bartender, “We’ve got a thirsty man here!” Turning to Victor he added, “I guess maybe you want a drink, too, eh?”

Despite himself, Victor grinned. He asked the barman for a glass of red wine. Edith Elgin shook her head when the barman offered to refill her glass of soda.

“I want to thank you for picking me up,” Victor said. “I didn’t think anybody—”

“Got a message from some astronomers Earthside,” George interrupted. “They saw your laser signal. Thought they’d found fookin’ little green men, at first. Big disappointment to them.”

“I’m not disappointed,” Victor said. He picked up his stemmed wine glass and took a long, slow, delicious sip. “You weren’t aboard Chrysalis” he asked Big George, “when… when it happened?”

George swung his red-maned head. “I was here on Elsinore, chattin’ up our visitor.”

“What happened to you?” Edith Elgin asked Victor. “How did you get into this mess?”

Victor began to speak, but the words caught in his throat. “My family… they’re still out there…”

“Where?”

“I don’t know!” Victor groaned. “The ship was heading outward…”

“Syracuse?” she asked.

For the first time in his adult life Victor had to struggle to hold back tears. He nodded at the two of them and managed to choke out, “He attacked us. For no reason! I separated the pod, drew him away. My wife… two children… they’re out there, drifting outward.”

Edith Elgin looked up at George Ambrose. “We’ve got to find them.”

Big George sat unmoving, like an implacable mountain. At last he said, “How can we find ’em when we don’t know where they are?”

“They’re drifting outward,” Victor said.

“Yes, but what’s their track? We can’t go traipsin’ all over the Belt to search for them. There’s too much to do here and too little to do it with.”

“Can’t you scan the area with radar?” Edith Elgin asked. “They have those huge radar arrays back Earthside. They can pick out a thumbtack a million kilometers away.”

George slowly shook his shaggy head. “They can pick up a beacon from a spacecraft, that’s what they do.”

Edith turned back to Victor. “Your ship’s sending out a beacon, isn’t it? A tracking beacon?”

Victor felt totally hollowed out. “He destroyed our antennas. Syracuse can’t send out any kind of signal.”

George took another huge gulp of beer, then placed his mug firmly on the tiny table.

“Face it, mate,” he said to Victor. “Your family’s gone and there’s nothin’ we can do for ’em.”

ORE SHIP SYRACUSE: THEO’S COMPARTMENT

Theo was stretched out on the bunk of his tight little compartment, VR goggles over his eyes and sensor gloves on his hands, deeply immersed in the virtual reality program. He knew he should be studying the navigation program, but he’d spent all day staring at graphs and lists and numbers. Now he was trying to relax with an entertainment VR he had smuggled past his parents’ watchful eyes.

I’m old enough to have adult VRs, he said to himself. Old enough to really experience what these women are doing. Full sensory input: sight, sound, touch…

He heard a faint tapping and then the squeak of his accordion-pleated door starting to slide open. With a sudden twitch of guilty-fear he yanked the goggles off his head and pulled off the gloves.

“May I come in, Theo?” his mother asked.

Shoving the goggles and gloves under his pillow, Theo sat up, swinging his long legs off the bunk.

“I knocked at your door, Thee,” said Pauline as she entered the compartment, “but I guess you didn’t hear me.”

Not over the panting and moaning of the scene you interrupted, Mom, he replied silently.