that?' Laura asked in a whisper…
Gray glanced the head of his household. 'Must be some of the staff didn't show up for work. Probably down at the airport leaving with the rest of them.'
'Are a lot of people leaving?' Gray nodded, seemingly unconcerned.
'But that's all right. Everything's highly automated.' He looked back at Janet 'Everything but domestic work.'
'But can you continue your operations with so few people?'
'A couple hundred would do fine. Look, don't worry, Laura.'
'I've laid out a pair of fresh blue jeans, sir,' Janet said, stressing the word 'blue' with her distinctly Australian accent. She smiled as she headed off with the broom and dustpan.
'Well, she's as loyal as can be,' Laura said, probing to see if the departing employees were a sore subject.
'Janet's great,' he replied casually. 'She's also, I would guess, the highest-paid majordomo in the history of the profession.'
'She told me you plan on colonizing space,' Laura threw out abruptly — an intentional ambush.
Gray's eyes fixed on Laura, his look changing from surprise to amusement. 'Now why would she say that,' he asked from behind the facade. Laura's question had struck something solid.
'Isn't that what you said last night in your 'town meeting'?'
Gray shrugged and shook his head, a light rain of dirt falling to the marble and adding to Janet work. 'Where would she get an idea like that?'
'She said you called it 'phase two.''
'Well… sure. I discussed phase two. And it does involve significant manned operations in space. In connection with mining the asteroid and spin-off industrial production. Even a permanent manned presence — on a rotational basis.'
'And maybe,' Laura continued nonchalantly, 'landing on the moon, the other planets, stuff like that?'
Gray opened his mouth to speak, but only a burst of air came out. He chose his words carefully. 'Eventually. Even though the asteroid and other ones like it that I'll retrieve in the near future provide an excellent source of heavy metals, we also need lighter elements like silicates. You can only get those from the surface of planetary bodies. Did you know you can extract oxygen from lunar soil?'
Laura shook her head. 'Nope. Sure didn't.'
Gray obviously knew he hadn't thrown Laura off the trail because he kept on talking. 'But I never used the word 'colonization' or anything like it.'
'Maybe just… described the process in rough, broad-brush terms possibly?'
'Laura,' he said in a soothing tone, 'look… Janet must just be' — he shook his head—'you know, imagining things. Maybe it's some vestigial cultural trait in the British character. A legacy of all of England's years of empire that makes them think in terms of colonies.'
'She's Australian.'
He fell silent. After a moment delay he said, 'Oh.' Laura marveled that he knew so little about the trusted, devoted head of his household. 'Well, I've really got to get cleaned up. Was there something that you needed?'
'Where did you and Hoblenz go when you went 'off-roading' last night?'
He again opened his mouth to speak, and again hesitated. 'You know, you can't just ask me anything you think of and expect to get all answered.'
'Why not?'
Gray didn't seem to have a satisfactory response and grew flustered. He sighed and said, 'You realize of course that Hoblenz doesn't think I should talk to you anymore. He doesn't trust you.'
'What about you? Do you trust me?'
It was a casually asked question, not one she'd given much thought. But he looked up at her — his eyes locking on hers. 'Yes,' he said in earnest reply, and she instantly regretted having asked.
His answer created in her a sense of obligation to him. A loyalty she could one day be forced to betray. 'As much as I can trust anyone, I suppose.'
The bond was broken, and she felt free again. Free, and disappointed. 'Then, where were you? What were you doing?'
Gray seemed diminished, fatigued. His gaze fell to the floor and he said, 'We were out in the jungle near Launchpad A.'
'What were you doing out there?'
His hesitation this time seemed less a reluctance to reveal a secret than evidence of Gray's difficulty in discussing the subject.
The expression on his face darkened, and he hung his head with a look of great sadness. 'We were looking for tracks,' he finally said in a faraway voice.
'What kind of tracks? You mean footprints?' Gray nodded slowly.
'Like what you just sent Hoblenz off to look for on the beaches?'
Again, Gray nodded. 'Did you find any?'
'That's it, Laura. That's all I can say.'
He turned to leave, and she grabbed his filthy arm. Mud cascaded to the floor. 'No it's not, Joseph Gray. That's not our deal.'
He turned quickly to look at her. His face was inches away. She was keenly aware of just how close together they stood.
'Just what's our deal, Laura?' he asked quietly.
The question hung in the air for her to decipher. 'Our deal,' she said, swallowing to wet her throat, 'was that you would keep me better informed.' She let his arm go.
'So… what? Are you going to quit, too?' He was clearly exhausted, overburdened by the weight on his shoulders.
'No,' she replied softly. She wanted to reach out to him again, to touch his arm, to take a warm washcloth and gently cleanse the handsome face which lay beneath the grime.
Gray reached up and rubbed both eyes vigorously. When he looked back her way, his eyes weren't the bright blue windows to the genius inside. They were the red and bleary lenses through which people on the verge of a breakdown view the world.
'We've had an intruder,' he said. 'Hoblenz's men found tracks in the night using thermal imagers. The footprints were still warm from the man's body heat.'
'How do you know it was a man? Did you find him?'
Gray blinked and focused his eyes. Then with what looked to be great effort he turned to face her. 'Yes.'
'Out there in the middle of that thick jungle by the launch pad.'
Gray nodded. 'Who is he?'
'A soldier.' His voice had a distant quality to it, as if he were reliving the scene in his mind as he spoke.
'From what country?'
'Hoblenz thinks Belgium,' Gray said before drifting farther away. 'The guy had placed a monitoring device near the edge of the jungle. Hoblenz says it would've fed still video images of the assembly building and computer center to a satellite. Standard, off-the-shelf NATO stuff.'
'Where's the man now?'
Gray was slumped over in fatigue. He didn't answer.
'Oh, my God,' she whispered, raising her hands to her mouth. 'Hoblenz didn't…? You didn't… hurt him?'
Gray shook his head, and Laura relaxed. 'He was already dead.'
He couldn't look her in the eye.
'How?' she finally asked. 'How did he die?'
'Trauma,' Gray said with a tired sigh. He looked up at her. 'Dismemberment.'
'Jesus Christ, Joseph. A robot!' He grew highly uncomfortable again. 'Is that what it was? Could it have been a robot, because I saw a Model Seven — two of them, in fact — come out of that very same area when I walked out to the launch pad to meet you yesterday. And you know, come to think of it, they had sort of a… a suspicious manner, like I'd caught them doing something they—'
