Again Humphries looked at Verwoerd, then turned back to Fuchs. He smiled thinly. “I don’t make threats, Fuchs. I make promises.”
Fuchs got to his feet. “Then let me make a promise in return. If you want to fight, I can fight. If you want a war, I’ll give you a war. And you won’t like the way I fight, I promise you that. I’ve studied military history; it was required in school. I know how to fight.”
Humphries leaned back in his desk chair and laughed.
“Go ahead and laugh,” Fuchs said, pointing a stubby finger at him. “But consider: you have a great deal more to lose than I do.”
“You’re a dead man, Fuchs,” Humphries snapped.
Fuchs nodded agreement. “One of us is.”
With that, he turned and strode out of Humphries’s office.
For several moments, Humphries and Verwoerd sat there staring at the doorway Fuchs had gone through.
“At least he didn’t slam the door,” Humphries said with a smirk.
“You’ve made him angry enough to fight,” Verwoerd said, with a troubled frown. “You’ve backed him into a corner and now he feels he has nothing to lose by fighting.”
Humphries guffawed. “Him? That little weasel? It’s laughable. He knows how to fight! He’s studied military history!”
“Maybe he has,” she said.
“So what?” Humphries replied testily. “He’s from Switzerland, for god’s sake! Hardly a martial nation. What’s he going to do, smother me in Swiss cheese? Or maybe yodel me to death.”
“I wouldn’t take it so lightly,” said Verwoerd, still looking at the empty doorway.
CHAPTER 17
“Piracy?” Hector Wilcox’s eyebrows rose almost to his silver-gray hairline.
Erek Zar looked uncomfortable, unhappy, as the two men strolled along the lane through the park just outside the IAA office building. Spring was in the air, the trees were beginning to bud, the local St. Petersburg populace was thronging the park, glad to see the sun. Women were sunbathing on the grass, their long dark coats thrown open to reveal their lumpy, thick bodies clad only in skimpy bikinis. It’s enough to make a man take a vow of celibacy, Wilcox thought, eying them distastefully.
Zar was normally a placid, cheerful, good-natured paper shuffler whose most urgent demands were for an extra day off here and there so he could nip off to his family in Poland for a long weekend. But now the man’s ruddy, round face was dead serious, flushed with emotion.
“That’s what he’s charging,” Zar said. “Piracy.” Wilcox refused to have his postprandial constitutional destroyed by an underling suddenly gone bonkers. “Who is this person?”
“His name is Lars Fuchs. Tomasselli brought the matter to me. Fuchs is accusing Humphries Space Systems of piracy, out in the Asteroid Belt.”
“But that’s ridiculous!”
“I agree,” Zar said swiftly. “But Tomasselli’s taken it seriously and opened an official file on it.”
“Tomasselli,” said Wilcox, as if the word smelled bad. “That excitable Italian. He saw a conspiracy when Yamagata made that takeover offer to Astro Corporation.”
“The takeover was never consummated,” Zar pointed out, “mainly because Tomasselli got the GEC to go on record as opposing it.”
“And now he’s taking accusations of
Nodding unhappily, Zar said, “He claims there’s some evidence to substantiate the accusation, but as far as I can see it’s all circumstantial.”
“What on earth does he expect me to do about it?” Wilcox grumbled mildly. He was not the kind of man who lost his self-control. Not ever. You didn’t get as far up on the intricate chain of command of the International Astronautical Authority as he had by recklessly blowing off steam.
“It’s an open file now,” Zar said, apologetically.
“Yes. Well, I suppose I’ll have to look it over.” Wilcox sighed. “But, really,
“We have two flight controllers at Ceres.”
“Bah!” Wilcox shook his head. “What do they call themselves out there? Rock rats? They pride themselves on their independence. They resisted the one attempt we made to establish a full-fledged office on Ceres. So now they’re crying to us about piracy, are they?”
“It’s only one person making the accusation: this man Fuchs.”
“A maniac, no doubt,” said Wilcox.
“Or a sore loser,” Zar agreed.
WLTZING MATILDA
Big George’s stomach rumbled in complaint.
He straightened up—no easy task in the spacesuit—and looked around.
Been too many hours since you’ve had a feed, eh? he said to his stomach. Well, it’s gonna be a few hours more before we get any tucker, and even then it’ll be mighty lean.
The asteroid on which George stood was a dirty little chunk of rock, a dark carbonaceous ’roid, rich in hydrates and organic minerals. Worth a bloody fortune back at Selene. But it didn’t look like much: just a bleak lump of dirt, pitted all over like it had the pox, rocks and pebbles and outright boulders scattered across it. Not enough gravity to hold down a feather. Ugly chunk of rock, that’s all you are, George said silently to the asteroid. And you’re gonna get uglier before we’re finished with ya.
Millions of kilometers from anyplace, George realized, alone in this cold and dark except for the Turk sittin’ inside
And yet he felt happy. Free as a bloomin’ bird. He had to make a conscious effort not to sing out loud. That’d startle the Turk, he knew. The kid’s not used to any of this.
Shaking his head inside the fishbowl helmet, George returned to his work. He was setting up the cutting laser, connecting its power pack and control module, carefully cleaning its copper mirrors of clinging dust and making certain they were precisely placed in their mounts, no wobbles. It was all hard physical work, even though none of the equipment weighed anything in the asteroid’s minuscule gravity. But just raising your arms in the stiff, ungainly suit, bending your body or turning, took a conscious effort of will and more muscular exertion than any flatlander could ever appreciate. Finally George had everything set, the laser’s aiming mirrors pointing to the precise spot where he wanted to start cutting, the power pack’s superconducting coil charged and ready.
George was going to slice out chunks of the asteroid that
As he worked, a memory from his childhood school days back in Adelaide returned unbidden to his mind; a
