The Rock Rats

Fuchs’s teeth were grinding together so furiously his jaw began to ache. Amanda was trying hard to keep from crying.

“I’m perfectly fine,” she was saying. “This all happened late last night. The morning shift found Inga on the floor in a pool of blood and Oscar tied and gagged all the way in the rear of the warehouse. And—and that’s the whole story. I’m all right, no one’s bothered me at all. In fact, everyone seems to be very protective of me today.” She brushed at her hair again. “I suppose that’s all there is to say, just at this moment. Hurry home, darling. I love you.”

The screen went blank. Fuchs pounded a fist against the unyielding bulkhead and roared a wordless howl of frustration and rage.

He leaped off the cot and ripped open the flimsy sliding door of his cubicle. Still clad in nothing but his shorts he stormed up the ship’s passageway to the bridge.

“We must get to Ceres as fast as possible!” he shouted to the lone crewwoman sitting in the command chair.

Her eyes popped wide at the sight of him.

“Now! Speed up! I have to get to Ceres before they murder my wife!”

The woman looked at Fuchs as if he were a madman, but she summoned the captain, who came onto the bridge wrapped in a knee-length silk robe, rubbing sleep from his eyes.

“My wife is in danger!” Fuchs bellowed at the captain. “We must get to Ceres as quickly as possible!”

It was maddening. Fuchs babbled his fears to the captain, who finally understood enough to put in a call to IAA mission control for permission to increase the ship’s acceleration. It took nearly half an hour for a reply to come back from IAA headquarters on Earth. Half an hour while Fuchs paced up and down the bridge, muttering, swearing, wondering what was happening at Ceres. The captain suggested that they both put on some clothes, and went back to his quarters. Nodon appeared, then left without a word and returned minutes later carrying a pair of coveralls for Fuchs.

Tugging them on and sealing the Velcro closures, Fuchs asked the crewwoman to open a communications channel to Ceres. She did so without hesitation.

“Amanda,” he said, “I’m on the way. We are asking for permission to accelerate faster, so I might be able to reach you before our scheduled arrival time. I’ll let you know. Stay in your quarters. Ask some of the people who work for us to act as guards at your door. I’ll be there as soon as I can, darling. As soon as I can.”

By the time the captain returned to the bridge, face washed, hair combed, and wearing a crisp jumpsuit with his insignia of rank on the cuffs, the answer arrived from IAA control.

Permission denied. Lubbock Lights will remain at its current velocity vector and arrive at Ceres in three and a half more days, as scheduled.

Trembling, Fuchs turned from the robotlike IAA controller’s image on the screen to the uniformed captain.

“I’m sorry,” said the captain, with a sympathetic shrug of his shoulders. “There’s nothing I can do.”

Fuchs stared at the man’s bland, scrubbed face for half a moment, then smashed a thundering right fist into the captain’s jaw. His head snapped back and blood flew from his mouth as he buckled to the deck. Turning on the gape-mouthed crew woman, Fuchs ordered, “Maximum acceleration. Now!”

She glanced at the unconscious captain, then back at Fuchs. “But I can’t—”

He ripped an emergency hand torch from its clips on the bulkhead and brandished it like a club. “Get away from the controls!”

“But—”

“Get out of that chair!” Fuchs bellowed.

She jumped to her feet and stepped sideways, slipping along the curving control panel, away from him.

“Nodon!” Fuchs called.

The young Asian stepped through the open hatch. He glanced nervously at the captain lying on the deck, then at the frightened crewwoman.

“See that no one enters the bridge,” Fuchs said, tossing the hand torch to him. “Use that on anyone who tries to get in here.”

Nodon gestured the woman toward the hatch as Fuchs sat in the command chair and studied the control board. Not much different from Starpower or the other vessels he’d been on.

“What about the captain?” the crewwoman asked. He was groaning softly, his legs starting to move a little.

“Leave him here,” said Fuchs. “He’ll be all right.”

She left and Nodon swung the hatch shut behind her.

“Lock it,” Fuchs ordered.

The captain sat up, rubbed at the back of his neck, then looked up blearily at Fuchs sitting at the controls.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” the captain growled.

“I’m trying to save my wife’s life,” Fuchs answered, pushing the ship’s acceleration to its maximum of one- half normal Earth gravity.

“This is piracy!” the captain snapped.

Fuchs swung around in the command chair. “Yes,” he said tightly. “Piracy. There’s a lot of it going around, these days.”

CHAPTER 38

“He’s what?” Hector Wilcox did not believe his ears.

Zar looked stunned as he repeated, “He’s taken over the Lubbock Lights. He’s accelerating at top speed to Ceres. Our flight controllers have ordered him to cease and desist, but he’s paying no attention to them.”

Wilcox sagged back in his desk chair. “By god, the man’s committed an act of piracy.”

“It would seem so,” Zar agreed cautiously. “According to our people on Ceres, someone broke into Fuchs’s warehouse and cleaned out everything. They murdered one of the people working there. A woman.”

“His wife?”

“No, an employee. But you can understand why Fuchs wants to reach Ceres as quickly as he can.”

“That doesn’t justify piracy,” Wilcox said sternly. “As soon as he arrives at Ceres, I want our people there to arrest him.”

Zar blinked at his boss. “They’re only flight controllers, not policemen.”

“I don’t care,” Wilcox said sternly. “I won’t have people flouting IAA regulations. This is a matter of principle!”

Diane Verwoerd had spent most of the morning combing her apartment for bugs. She found none, which worried her. She felt certain that Humphries had bugged her place; how else would he know what she was doing? Yet she could find no hidden microphones, no microcameras tucked in the ventilator grills or anywhere else.

Could Martin have been guessing about Bandung Associates? She had thought she’d covered her trail quite cleverly, but perhaps naming her dummy corporation after the city in which her mother had been born wasn’t so clever, after all.

Whatever, she decided. Martin knows that I’ve winkled him out of several choice asteroids and he’s willing to let that pass—if I carry his cloned baby for him.

She shuddered at the thought of having a foreign creature inserted into her womb. It’s like the horror vids about alien invaders we watched when we were kids, she thought. And she had heard dark, scary stories about women who carried cloned fetuses. It wasn’t like carrying a normal baby. The afterbirth bloated up so hugely that it could kill the woman during childbirth, they said.

But the rational part of her mind saw some possible advantages. Beyond the monetary rewards, this could put me in a position of some power with Martin Humphries, she told herself. The mother of his clone. That puts me in a rather special position. A very special position, actually. I might even gain a seat on his board of directors, if I