group that can represent you, maybe get Astro to set up another facility—”
“fire,” said the synthesized computer voice from the speakers by the Pub’s entryway. “fire in section four- cee.”
“That’s my warehouse!” Fuchs blurted.
The crowd bolted through the entryway and out into the tunnel. Fuchs jumped down from the bar, grabbed Amanda by the hand, and raced along behind the others.
Each section of the underground settlement was connected to the others by the tunnels. Airtight hatches stood in the tunnels every hundred meters or so, programmed to seal themselves shut in case of a drop in air pressure or other deviation from normal conditions. By the time Fuchs reached the entrance to his warehouse, still grasping Amanda’s hand, the hatch that sealed off the cave had long been shut tight. He pushed through the crowd from the Pub, coughing violently at the dust they had raised, and touched the hatch’s metal surface. It felt hot.
“The warehouse cameras are out,” said one of the technicians. “Must be a pretty intense fire.”
Fuchs nodded, scowling. “Nothing to do but wait until it consumes all the air in there and kills itself off.”
“Was anyone inside?” Amanda asked.
“I don’t believe so,” Fuchs said. “Not any of our people; they were all at the meeting.”
“So we wait,” said the technician. He fumbled in his coverall pocket, then pulled out a breathing mask and slipped it on.
Several people in the crowd murmured condolences. Most of the others drifted off, buzzing with low-voiced conversations. Here and there someone coughed or spluttered from the dust.
“He did this,” Fuchs muttered.
“Who?” asked Amanda.
“Humphries. One of his people.”
“No! What would he—”
“To convince us to leave Ceres. The money offer he made was a ruse. We haven’t told him of our decision to accept it, so now he uses force.”
“Lars, I can’t believe that he’d do that.”
“I can.”
Amanda looked at the few people remaining in the tunnel and said to her husband, “There’s nothing we can do here. We should go home; we can come back later, when the fire’s burned itself out.”
“No,” Fuchs said. “I’ll wait here.”
“But you don’t have a breathing mask and—”
“You go. I’ll wait here.”
Amanda tried to smile, failed. “I’ll wait with you.”
“There’s no need…”
“I’d rather be with you,” Amanda said, taking his big-knuckled hand in both of hers.
Standing there with nothing to do except wait, coughing in the gritty dust, Fuchs felt a seething anger rising within him, a burning hatred for the man who could order such a thing and his henchmen who actually did it.
The swine, he said to himself. The filthy, sneaking, murderous swine. A fire! In a sealed community like this. If the safety hatches didn’t work they could have killed us all! The fire could consume all our air and asphyxiate every one of us!
Murderers, he told himself. I’m dealing with men who would commit murder to get what they want. I’m taking Humphries’s money and running away from this place like a lackey being paid off by the lord of the manor.
“Lars, what wrong?” Amanda asked.
“Nothing.”
She looked truly worried. “But you were trembling. You looked—I’ve never seen such an expression on your face before.”
He tried to control the rage boiling inside him, tried to hide it, keep it bottled up where no one could see it, not even his wife.
“Come on,” he said gruffly. “You were right. There’s nothing we can do here until we can open the hatch and see how much damage has been done.”
When they got back to their apartment, he picked at the dinner Amanda set before him. He could not sleep. The next morning, when he and a pair of technicians went back to the warehouse, the airtight hatch was fused shut. They had to use one of Astro’s mining lasers to cut it open and then wait several minutes for the big, gutted chamber to fill with breathable air.
The warehouse was a blackened shambles. The technicians, both of them young men new to Ceres, stared at the wreckage with round eyes.
“Jeez,” muttered the one on Fuchs’s right as they played their hand lights around the still-hot ruins.
Fuchs couldn’t recognize the place. The shelving had collapsed, metal supports melted by the heat of the blaze. Tons of equipment were reduced to molten lumps of slag.
“What could’ve caused such a hot fire?” wondered the kid on Fuchs’s left.
“Not what,” Fuchs muttered. “Who.”
CHAPTER 12
It’s a good thing that it takes so long for communications to go back and forth, Amanda thought. Otherwise Lars would be screaming at the woman by now.
She had watched her husband, his face grimed from the ashes of the warehouse and his mood even darker, as he placed his call to their insurance carrier to inform them of the fire. Then he had called Diane Verwoerd, at Humphries Space Systems’ offices in Selene.
Even though messages moved at the speed of light, it took more than an hour for Ms. Verwoerd to respond. With the distance between them, there could be no real conversation between Ceres and the Moon. Communications were more like video mail that true two-way links.
“Mr. Fuchs,” Verwoerd began her message, “I appreciate your calling me to inform us about the fire in your warehouse. I certainly hope that no one was injured.”
Fuchs started to reply automatically, and only stopped himself when Verwoerd coolly went on, “We will need to know the extent of the damage before opening our negotiations on acquiring Helvetia Limited. As I understand it, a major part of your company’s assets consisted of the inventory in your warehouse. I understand that this inventory was insured, but I’m certain that your insurance won’t cover much more than half the value of the damaged property. Please inform me as soon as you can. In the meantime, I will contact your insurance carrier. Thank you.” Her image winked out, replaced by the stylized logo of Humphries Space Systems.
Fuchs’s face looked like a thundercloud, dark and ominous. He sat at the computer desk of their one-room apartment, staring silently at the wallscreen. Amanda, sitting on the bed, didn’t know what she could say to make him feel better.
“We won’t be getting ten million,” he muttered, turning to her. “Not half that, I imagine.”
“It’s all right, Lars. Three or four million is enough for us to—”
“To run away with our tails between our legs,” he snapped.
Amanda heard herself answer, “What else can we do?”
Fuchs’s head drooped defeatedly. “I don’t know. I don’t know. We’re wiped out. The warehouse is completely gutted. Whoever set the fire did a thorough job.”
Warily, she asked, “Do you still think it was deliberately set?”
“Of course!” her husband shouted angrily. “He never intended to pay us ten million! That was a lure, a ruse. He’s kicking us off Ceres, out of the Belt entirely.”
“But why would he make the offer…?” Amanda felt confused.
Almost sneering with contempt, Fuchs said, “To put us in the proper frame of mind. To get us accustomed to the idea of leaving the Belt. Now he’s waiting for us to come crawling to him and beg for as much of the ten million as he’s willing to give us.”
