“Hard to believe, isn’t it?” said the crew chief. “I’ve been in this business for twenty years, Mr. Jukes, and I’ve never seen anything like this. This is the fastest I’ve ever brought in ferros.”
Ferros, or ferromagnetic metals, the most valuable of minerals extracted from asteroids.
“The scoopers are working well, I take it?” said Lem.
“It’s like trolling for fish, Mr. Jukes. We stick out the magnetized scoopers, move the ship back and forth through the dust cloud, and when we bring the scoopers back in, they’re teeming with ferro particles. My whole career has been digging and scraping and blasting away at rock to get metal up out of a mine, but this glaser turns that whole model on its head. Now we blast the rock to dust, wave some magnets in the cloud, and the minerals come to us.” He laughed and shook his head. “Damndest thing I ever saw.”
“Yes, yes. This is all very impressive.”
“We picked the right asteroid for it, too,” said the crew chief. “It’s no wonder those free miners were camped here. This rock was the mother lode. All kinds of high-value metals, and plenty of them to go around. Most miners see a rock this good once every few years or so. I got to hand it to you, Mr. Jukes, you picked one helluva rock to blow up.”
Lem was only half listening. “Yes, wonderful. Well, keep up the good work. Is there anything you need?”
“More people,” said the crew chief. “This is a research vessel, so we’re shorthanded. Our boys smelting the dust and making the cylinders are already working two shifts.”
“How many do you need?”
“Another ten would work wonders.”
“I’ll have Chubs send some people down.”
“Thank you, Mr. Jukes.” He pulled off his hat and scratched at his head, looking hesitant. “Now, you’re sure you don’t want us to load up a few quickships? We’ll get a much bigger haul if we send some of these cylinders straight on to Luna.”
“No,” said Lem. “I don’t want to send anything back ahead of us. Once we load the cargo bays, we’ll pull out.”
The crew chief shrugged. “Seems a shame to leave the cloud when there’s so much metal here for the taking. We only have four cargo bays on the ship, and we’ll fill those easy. That’s quite a big load, to be sure. But using quickships, we could double that. That’s a lot of money we’re letting slip through our fingers.”
“I appreciate your dedication to the company bottom line,” said Lem. “In any other circumstances, I’d agree with you. But I don’t want my father or the Board to know we have a full load. I’d like it to be a surprise when we arrive.”
The crew chief winked. “Smart thinking, Mr. Jukes. Those suits will be surprised all right. They’ll probably give us all a hearty bonus when this is all over.”
Lem knew the man was fishing, and he obliged. “If they don’t give us a bonus, I’ll give you one myself. You’ve done exceptionally well.”
The man beamed. “Thank you, Mr. Jukes.”
The man looked like he was going to speak further, but Lem didn’t give him the chance. He turned and flew away, heading back to the push tube. The Board would be surprised all right. And when Lem told them that their files had been compromised and that the schematics for the glaser were likely in the hands of free miners, or that the same free miners likely had incriminating video of a Juke vessel killing someone, video that would almost assuredly result in a public-relations nightmare of a lawsuit, they’d be much more than surprised.
Lem could see the Board of Directors now. Fine mission, Lem. Well done. Too bad you killed a man and lost us billions of credits in R amp;D and the very future of this company. Too bad you made a jackass of yourself. Other than that little snafu we’d say the mission was a smashing success. We were warming up this seat here at the board table for you, but you see, we have a strict policy against idiots. We’ll have to give it to this spineless Ivy League bastard instead. So sorry. I’m sure you understand.
Lem climbed into the tube and spoke the order for the helm, shooting away.
These people have stained me, he told himself. These damn free miners have stained me. Thank you, Concepcion Querales. Thank you for taking the last two years of my life and flushing them down the crapper. No, not just the last two years, but my whole life, everything I’ve worked for. This will cancel out all of my previous achievements. My reputation will be ruined. And not only that-now that he thought about it-but his fortune as well. The company wouldn’t just sue him, they’d take him for everything he was worth, which was no small sum. They’d tag the whole ordeal as gross negligence and roast him alive. And Father wouldn’t do anything to stop it. He’d turn a blind eye. He’d chalk it up as another of Lem’s “life lessons.” You got yourself into this mess, Lem. You can get yourself out.
No, he was going to correct this. The Board would never know. By the time they reached Luna, all would be resolved. The free miners might be beyond their reach at the moment, but he was certain there was a solution, even if he had no idea at the moment what it might be.
He reached the helm and pulled Chubs aside into one the conference rooms. Chubs floated near the entrance, but Lem felt like walking. He turned on his greaves and vambraces and paced back and forth in front of the window, beyond which was the murky dust cloud and the dotted black of space.
“We have a situation,” said Lem. “One that I would prefer to keep very quiet.”
“All right,” said Chubs.
“When we bumped the free miners, there were three men on the hull. One of them was struck with one of the sensors we cut away.”
“I remember,” said Chubs. “It looked ugly.”
“Yes, well, ugly is putting it mildly. The man is dead. We killed him.” Lem put a little emphasis on the word “we,” hoping to spread the blame around.
Chubs furrowed his brow. “How can you possibly know that?”
Lem told him about the message from Concepcion.
Chubs whistled. “Podolski know about this?”
“I called him to my room, and he checked the system. You ready for the fun part? They downloaded us. Not only did they hack us and leave us a lovely little message, but they also took our files. Everything.”
Chubs swore under his breath. “Are we sure about this? Podolski confirmed?”
“They used a snifferstick. They poked their little noses in here without us knowing it and they copied us clean. Podolski showed me on the records. They duped us.”
Chubs swore again. “Not good, Lem.”
“No, not good. Schematics of the glaser. All of our research. The engineers’ journals. And my favorite part: all the video of the bump.”
Chubs stopped rubbing his eyes and looked up at Lem.
“Yes,” said Lem. “They have video of us killing one of their crew. Do you know what the press would do with that? What the courts would do with that?”
“It was an accident,” said Chubs. “We weren’t aiming for the guy. We didn’t even know he was out there.”
“Prosecutors won’t care,” said Lem. “Besides, it doesn’t look that way in the video. I reviewed it myself. In slow motion. It looks like we were gunning for him. They’ll call it incontestable. And when they do, corporate will cut us off at the knees. They’ll sue us as well. If we don’t do something about this, you and me and everyone on this ship is malja. Toast. Game over.”
“They stole from us,” said Chubs. “That has to account for something. They stole corporate secrets.”
“That will win us no sympathy. You think people will shed tears for the largest, wealthiest corporation in the world? Oh boo-hoo. Poor Juke Limited. Those fat, greedy corporate executives will only get a hundred billion credits on their yearly bonus this year instead of a hundred and twenty. What a shame. No. No one will care. The media would have a field day with this. The poor and middle class will dance in the streets. They eat this stuff up. They can’t be happy until everyone else is brought down to their level.”
“We can fix this,” said Chubs.
“How? We can’t track them. I already asked the navigator. They’re long gone. We could go looking for them, but there’s no guarantee we’d find them. We probably wouldn’t.”
“We don’t have to find them,” said Chubs. “We just have to know where they’re going and be there first, waiting for them when they arrive.”
