his office door a few moments later.
“Come in, Grigor,” said Humphries.
The security chief was a new hire: a lean, silent man with dark hair and darker eyes. He wore an ordinary business suit of pale gray, the nondescript costume of a man who preferred to remain in the background, unnoticed, while he noticed everything. He remained standing despite the two comfortable chairs in front of Humphries’s desk.
Tilting his own chair back slightly to look up at him, Humphries said, “Grigor, I want the benefit of your thinking on a problem I have.”
Grigor shifted slightly on his feet. He had just been recruited from an Earth-based corporation that was floundering financially because most of its assets had been destroyed in the greenhouse flooding. He was on probation with Humphries, and he knew it.
“Those rock rats out in the Belt are getting a bigger and bigger share of their supplies from Helvetia Ltd. instead of from Humphries Space Systems,” Humphries said, watching the man closely, curious about how he would respond.
Grigor said nothing. His face betrayed no emotion. He listened.
“I want Humphries Space Systems to have exclusive control of the rock rats’ supplies.”
Grigor just stood there, unmoving, his eyes revealing nothing.
“Exclusive control,” Humphries repeated. “Do you understand?”
Grigor’s chin dipped in the slightest of nods.
“What do you think must be done?” Humphries asked.
“To gain exclusive control,” said Grigor, in a throaty, guttural voice that sounded strained, painful, “you must eliminate your competitor.”
“Yes, but how?”
“There are many ways. One of them is to use violence. I presume that is why you have asked my opinion.”
Raising one hand, Humphries said sharply, “I don’t mind violence, but this needs to be done with great discretion. I don’t want anyone to suspect that Humphries Space Systems has anything to do with it.”
Grigor thought in silence for a few heartbeats. “Then the action must be taken against individual prospectors, rather than Helvetia itself. Eliminate their customers and the company will shrivel and die.”
Humphries nodded. “Yes,” he said. “Exactly.”
“It will take some time.”
“How much time?”
“A few months,” Grigor said. “Perhaps a year.”
“I want it done faster than that. Sooner than a year.”
Grigor closed his eyes briefly, then said, “Then we must be prepared to escalate the violence. First the individual prospectors, then personnel and facilities on Ceres itself.”
“Facilities?”
“Your competitor is constructing an orbital habitat there, is he not?”
Humphries fought to suppress a satisfied grin. Grigor’s already been studying the situation, he realized. Good.
When his employer failed to reply, Grigor continued, “Stopping the habitat project will help to discredit the man who started it. If nothing else, it will show that he is powerless to protect his own people.”
“It’s got to look accidental,” Humphries insisted. “No hint of responsibility laid at my doorstep.”
“Not to worry,” said Grigor.
“I never worry,” Humphries snapped. “I get even.”
As Grigor left his office, silent as a wraith, Humphries thought, Carrot and stick. Diane will offer the carrot. Grigor’s people will provide the stick.
“Ooh, Randy,” gushed Cindy, “you’re so
“And hard,” added Mindy.
Randall McPherson lay back in the small mountain of pillows while the naked twins stroked his bare skin. Some guys liked sex in microgravity, but Randy had spun up his ship to almost a full terrestrial g for his encounter with the twins. His partner, Dan Fogerty, complained about the fuel cost of spinning up the ship, but Randy had ignored his bleating. Fogerty was known to all the miners as Fatso Fogerty, he had allowed himself to blubber up so shamelessly, living in microgravity most of the time. McPherson spent hours of his spare time in their ship’s exercise centrifuge, or had the whole ship spun up to keep his muscles in condition. Fogerty was lucky to have a levelheaded man such as McPherson to team with him, in McPherson’s opinion.
The twins were actually back at Ceres, of course, but the virtual reality system was working pretty well. Hardly a noticeable lag between a request by Randy and a smiling, slinky, caressing response from Cindy and Mindy.
So Randy was more than a little irked when Fogerty’s voice broke into his three-way fantasy.
“There’s a bloomin’ ship approaching us!”
“What?” McPherson snapped, sitting up so abruptly that the VR images of the twins were still wriggling sensuously on the pillows even though he was no longer lying between them.
“A ship,” Fatso repeated. “They’re askin’ to dock with us.”
McPherson muttered a string of heartfelt profanities while the twins lay motionless, staring blankly.
“Sorry, ladies,” he said, pushing himself up off the pillows, feeling half embarrassed, half infuriated. He lifted the VR goggles off and saw the real world: a dreary little compartment on a scruffy clunker of a ship that badly needed a refit and overhaul after fourteen months of batting around the Belt.
Awkwardly peeling off his VR sensor suit and pulling on his coveralls as he made his way up to the bridge, McPherson bellowed, “Fatso, if this is one of your goddam jokes I’m gonna wring your neck till I hear chimes!”
He ducked through the hatch and into the cramped, overheated bridge. Fogerty overflowed the pilot’s seat, one hand clenching half a meat pie; most of the rest of it was spattered over his chins and his coveralls front. He was globulously lumpy, stretching the faded orange fabric of his coveralls so much that McPherson was reminded of an overripe pumpkin. He smelled overripe, too, and the additional spicy aroma from the meat pie made McPherson’s stomach churn. Reckon I don’t smell much better, McPherson told himself, trying to keep an even temper.
Fogerty half-turned in the creaking chair and jabbed a thick finger excitedly toward the main display screen. McPherson saw the two-kilometer-long chunk of rock they had just claimed, dark and lumpy, and a silvery spacecraft that looked too sleek and new to be a prospector’s ship.
“A mining team?” Fogerty half-suggested.
“Out here already?” McPherson snapped. “We just sent in our claim. We haven’t contacted any miners.”
“Well, there they are,” said Fogerty.
“That’s not a miner’s ship.”
Fogerty shrugged. “Shall I give ’em permission to come aboard?”
McPherson had to squeeze past his partner’s bulk to get into the right-hand seat. “Who in blazes are they? And what are they doing here? With the whole Belt to poke into, why are they sticking their noses into our claim?”
Fogerty grinned at his partner. “We could ask ’em.”
Grumbling, McPherson flicked on the communications channel. “This is
The screen swirled with color momentarily, then a darkly bearded man’s face took form. He looked vaguely oriental to McPherson: high cheekbones, hooded eyes.
“This is
