The Rock Rats

the Moon since the Peacekeepers had been driven off. Their chief of security was a Russian named Grigor. He told Harbin he had a difficult but extremely rewarding assignment for a man of courage and determination.

Harbin asked only, “Who do I have to kill?”

Grigor told him that he was to drive the independent prospectors and miners out of the Belt. Those working under contract to HSS or Astro were to be left untouched. It was the independents who were to be “discouraged.” Harbin grimaced at the word. Men like Grigor and the others back at Selene could use delicate words, but what they meant was anything but refined. Kill the independents. Kill enough of them so that the rest either quit the Belt or signed up with HSS or Astro Corporation.

So this one had to die, like the others.

“This is Waltzing Matilda,” he heard his comm speaker announce. The face on his display screen was a young male Asian, head shaved, eyes big and nervous. His cheeks seemed to be tattooed. “Please identify yourself.”

Harbin chose not to. There was no need. The less he spoke with those he must kill, the less he knew about them, the better. It was a game, he told himself, like the computer games he had played during his training sessions with the Peacekeepers. Destroy the target and win points. In this game he played now, the points were international dollars. Wealth could buy almost anything: a fine home in a safe city, good wines, willing women, drugs that drove away the memories of the past.

“We are working this asteroid,” the young man said, his shaky voice a little higher-pitched than before. “The claim has already been registered with the International Astronautical Authority.”

Harbin took in a deep breath. The temptation to reply was powerful. It doesn’t matter what you have claimed or what you are doing, he answered silently. The moving finger has written your name in the book of death, nor all thy piety nor wit shall lure it back to cancel half a line; nor all thy tears wash out a word of it.

By the time he’d made his eighth ore-ferrying trip, George felt dead tired. And starving.

He turned off the laser and said into his helmet microphone, “I’m comin’ in.”

The Turk replied only, “Copy that.”

“I’m sloshin’ inside this suit,” George said. “The power pack needs rechargin’, too.”

“Understood,” said Nodon.

George unhooked the power pack and toted it in his arms back to Matilda’s airlock. It was twice his size, and even though it weighed virtually nothing he was careful handling it; a mass that big could squash a man no matter what the ambient gravity. The law of inertia had not been repealed.

“What’s our visitor doin’?” he asked as he sealed the lock’s outer hatch and started pumping air into it.

“Still approaching on the same course.”

“Any word from ’im?”

“Nothing.”

That worried George. By the time he had wormed his way out of the ripe-smelling suit and plugged the big power pack into the ship’s recharging unit, though, his first priority was food.

He half-floated up the passageway to the galley.

“Spin ’er up a bit, Nodon,” he hollered to the bridge. “Gimme some weight while I chow down.”

“One-sixth g?” the Turk’s voice came back down the passageway.

“Good enough.”

A comfortable feeling of weight returned as George pulled a meager prepackaged snack from the freezer. Should’ve loaded more food, he thought. Didn’t expect to be out here this long.

Then he heard a scream from the bridge. The air-pressure alarm started hooting and the emergency hatches slammed shut as the ship’s lights went out, plunging George into total darkness.

CHAPTER 18

Amanda was aghast. “You refused to sell at any price?”

Fuchs nodded grimly. Some of the blazing fury he had felt during his meeting with Humphries had burned off, but still the smoldering heat of anger burned deep in his guts. Only one thing was certain: he was going to fight. On the way from Humphries’s office to their hotel suite Fuchs had made up his mind once and for all. He was going to wipe the smug smile from Humphries’s face, no matter what it cost.

Amanda was in the sitting room of their suite when Fuchs barged through the door, angry and impatient. He saw the expectant look on her face and realized she’d been waiting for him all the while; she’d never gone shopping or done anything other than wait for his return.

“I couldn’t do it,” Fuchs said, so low that he wasn’t sure she’d heard him. He cleared his throat, repeated, “I couldn’t sell to him. Not at any price.”

Amanda sank into one of the small sofas scattered about the room. “Lars…what do you expect to do now?”

“I don’t know,” he told her. That wasn’t quite true, but he wasn’t sure of how much he could tell her. He sat in the chair next to Amanda and took her hands in his. “I told him I was going back to Ceres and start over.”

“Start over? How?”

He tried to smile for her, to hide his true thoughts. “We still have Starpower. We can go back to prospecting, I suppose.”

“Live aboard the ship again,” she murmured.

“I know it’s a step backward.” He hesitated, then found the courage to say, “You don’t have to come with me. You can stay on Ceres. Or … or wherever you would prefer to live.”

“You’d go without me?” She looked hurt.

Fuchs knew that if he told her his real plans, his true goal, Amanda would be terrified. She would try to talk him out of it. Or worse, once she realized that he was unshakable, she would insist on staying with him every step of the way.

So he temporized. “Amanda, dearest… it wouldn’t be fair for me to ask you to live that way again. I’ve made a mess of things, it’s up to me to—”

“Lars, he’ll kill you!”

She was truly frightened, he saw.

“If you go back to the Belt by yourself,” Amanda said urgently, “he’ll have someone track you down and murder you.”

Fuchs remembered Humphries’s words: You’re a dead man, Fuchs.

“I can take care of myself,” he said grimly.

Amanda thought, I’ve got to go with him. Martin won’t strike at Lars if there’s a possibility of hurting me.

Aloud, she said to her husband, gently, soothingly, “I know you can take care of yourself, darling, but who’s going to take care of me?” And she reached up to stroke his cheek.

“You’d go with me?”

“Of course.”

“You want to go with me?” He was filled with joyful wonder at the idea.

“I want to be with you, Lars,” Amanda said softly, “wherever you go.”

To herself, though, she said, It’s me that Martin wants. I’m the cause of all this. I’m the reason my husband is in such danger.

And Fuchs was saying to himself, She wants to be away from Humphries. She’s afraid of him. She’s afraid that if I’m not near enough to protect her, he’ll steal her away from me.

And the embers of his anger burst into flaming rage again.

WALTZING MATILDA