The Rock Rats

“I won’t fookin’ shave,” he warned them.

“That’s all right, George,” said one of the young women on the board. “But could you just tone down your language a little?”

Thus it was that Big George Ambrose, now the reluctant “mayor” of the rock rats, became their representative in the conference that took place at Selene, where he had once lived as a fugitive and petty thief.

“I’m not goin’ by meself,” George insisted. “I’ll need some backup.”

The governing board decided they could afford to send two assistants with George. His first real decision as the newly-elected Chief Administrator of Ceres was to pick the two people who would go with him. His first choice was easy: Dr. Kris Cardenas.

As he tussled in his mind over who the other appointee should be, Amanda surprised him by volunteering for the post.

She popped into his “office”—actually nothing more than his everyday living quarters—and told him that she wanted to be part of the delegation to Selene.

“You?” George blurted. “How come?”

Amanda looked away from his eyes. “I’ve done as much work to create this government as anyone. More, in fact. I deserve to go.”

George said warily, “This won’t be a fookin’ vacation, y’know.”

“I understand that.”

He offered her his best chair, but she shook her head and remained standing in the middle of his one-room residence. She seemed calm, and very determined. The place is pretty messy, George thought: bed’s not made, plates in the sink. But Amanda simply stood there staring off into infinity, seeing—what? George wondered.

“Humphries is there, in Selene,” he said.

Amanda nodded, her face expressionless, frozen, as if she were afraid to show any emotion at all.

“Lars won’t like you goin’.”

“I know,” she said, her voice almost a whisper. “I’ve thought it all out, George. I must go with you. But I don’t want Lars to know. Please don’t tell him.”

Scratching his beard, trying to sort out what she was saying, George asked, “How can I tell ’im? The only way I get any word to him is through you.”

“I’ve got to go with you, George,” Amanda said, almost pleading now. “Don’t you see? I’ve got to do whatever I can to put an end to this fighting. To save Lars before they find him and kill him!”

George nodded, finally understanding. At least, he thought he did.

“All right, Amanda. You can come with us. I’ll be glad to have you.”

“Thank you, George,” she said, smiling for the first time. But there was no happiness in it.

Amanda had wrestled with her conscience for two days before asking George to let her go with him to Selene. She knew that Lars would not want her to be so near to Humphries, especially without him there to protect her. She herself did not fear Humphries any longer; she felt that she could handle him. Martin wouldn’t hurt me, she told herself. Besides, George and Kris will be there to chaperone me.

What worried her was Lars’s reaction. He would be dead-set against her going to Selene, to Humphries’s home territory. So, after two days of inner turmoil, Amanda decided to go. Without telling Lars.

A total of twenty-two ships made rendezvous above the ruined base on Vesta. The dust cloud from Fuchs’s attack had finally settled, but Harbin could see nothing of the base, not even the crater in which it had been situated. It was all obliterated by a new set of overlapping craters, fresh, sharp, raw-looking circular scars on the asteroid’s dark surface. They reminded Harbin of the scars left on sperm whales by the suckers of giant squids’ tentacles.

With no little bit of irony, Dorik Harbin considered his position as he stood on the bridge of Shanidar. A man who treasured his solitude, who had never wanted to be dependent on anyone else, now he was the commander of an entire fleet of spacecraft: attack ships, tankers, even surveillance drones that were spreading across the Belt seeking one infinitesimal speck in all that dark emptiness: Lars Fuchs.

Although he far preferred to work alone, Harbin had been forced to admit that he could not find Fuchs by himself. The Belt was too big, the quarry too elusive. And, of course, Fuchs was aided covertly by other rock rats who gave him fuel and food and information while they secretly applauded his one-man war against Humphries Space Systems. Probably Astro Corporation was also helping Fuchs. There was no evidence of it, Harbin knew; no outright proof that Astro was supplying the renegade with anything more than gleeful congratulations on his continuing attacks.

But Humphries himself was certain that Astro was behind Fuchs’s success. Diane had told Harbin that Humphries was wild with rage, willing now to spend every penny he had to track down Fuchs and eliminate him, once and for all. This armada was the result: its cost to Humphries was out of all proportion to the damage that Fuchs had done, but Humphries wanted Fuchs destroyed, no matter what the cost, Diane said.

Diane. Harbin reflected soberly that she had become a part of his life. I’ve become dependent on her, he realized. Even with the distance between them, she protected him against Humphries’s frustrated anger. She was the one who had convinced Humphries to give Harbin command of this all-out campaign against Fuchs. She was the one who would be waiting for him when he returned with Fuchs’s dead body.

Well, he thought as he surveyed the display screens showing a scattering of his other ships, now I have the tools I need to finish the job. It’s only a matter of time.

The surveillance probes were already on their way to quarter the Belt with their sensors. Harbin gave the orders to his fleet to move out and start the hunt.

Satisfaction showed clearly on Martin Humphries’s face as he sat down at the head of the long dining table in his mansion. Diane Verwoerd was the only other person at the table, already seated at his right.

“Sorry I’m late for lunch,” Humphries said, nodding to the servant waiting to pour the wine. “I was on the phone with Doug Stavenger.”

Verwoerd knew her boss expected her to ask what the call was about, but she said nothing.

“Well, he’s done it,” Humphries said at last, just a little bit nettled. “Stavenger’s pulled it off. We’re going to have a peace conference right here at Selene. The world government’s agreed to send their number-two man, Willi Dieterling.”

Diane Verwoerd made herself look impressed. “The man who negotiated the Middle East settlement?”

“The very same,” said Humphries.

“And the rock rats are sending a representative?” she prompted.

“Three people. That big Australian oaf and two assistants.”

“Who’ll represent Astro?”

“Probably Pancho,” he said lightly. “She’s the real power on the board these days.”

“It should be interesting,” said Verwoerd.

“It should be,” Humphries agreed. “It certainly should.”

Lars Fuchs scowled at his visitor. Yves St. Claire was one of his oldest and most trusted friends; Fuchs had known the Quebecois since their university days together in Switzerland. Yet now St. Claire was stubbornly refusing to help him.

“I need the fuel,” Fuchs said. “Without it, I’m dead.”

The two men stood in Nautilus’s cramped galley, away from the crew. Fuchs had given them orders to leave him alone with his old friend. St. Claire stood in front of the big freezer, his arms folded obstinately across his chest. When they had been students together he had been slim and handsome, with a trim little pencil moustache and a smooth line of patter for the women, despite his uncouth accent. In those days his clothes had always been in the latest fashion; his friends joked that he bankrupted his family with his wardrobe. During his years of prospecting in the Belt, however, he had allowed himself to get fat. Now he looked like a prosperous middle-aged bourgeois shopkeeper, yet his carefully draped tunic of sky blue was designed to minimize his expanding waistline.