The Aftermath

Humphries could keep the news of an alien artifact completely suppressed. The tale spread to the Moon and to Earth, she was certain, where most people took it as gossip from the rock rats, a fable from the frontier, a legend without basis in fact.

Strange that the scientists of the IAA and the universities haven’t spoken out, Elverda thought. Has Humphries silenced them? Money can buy almost anything, she knew, but would all the scientists in the solar system remain silent?

Then a new thought struck her. Perhaps he’s destroyed the artifact! Blown up the little asteroid in which it was found, wiped it out of existence. That would be just like Humphries: destroy what he feels is threatening him. Just as he is determined to destroy us.

“Radar contact.” Dorn’s voice issued from the intercom speaker set into the passage’s overhead, as flatly unemotional as a computer’s synthesized announcement.

He’s human, Elverda reminded herself. Despite the machinery that keeps him alive, he’s a human being. He has feelings, emotions, just as I do. We wouldn’t be out here trying to recover the dead if he didn’t.

Yet that machinery is failing. One day he’ll be as dead as the corpses we’re trying to retrieve.

She hurried along the passageway to see what he’d found.

* * *

Freshly showered and dressed in a set of coveralls that bore his captain’s stripes on its cuffs, Kao Yuan slid into the command chair and nodded to the man sitting at the communications console.

“Give me a channel for all three ships,” he commanded.

A green light in his chair’s armrest winked on.

“This is the captain speaking,” Yuan said, trying to make his voice firm, authoritative.

“We are about to enter battle against an experienced and ruthless opponent. I have every confidence that if each of us performs his assigned task properly we will destroy our adversary.

“The Asteroid Wars have been over for some years now,” Yuan went on, “but the mission we’re on is a piece of unfinished business. The enemy we seek is the man who wiped out the Chrysalis habitat. He slaughtered more than a thousand defenseless men, women and children. Our mission is to bring justice to him and anyone aboard his ship assisting him. Our goal is to avenge those thousand people he murdered.”

The others on the bridge were staring at him. Keeping his face solemn, Yuan added, “We have been sent on this mission by Mr. Martin Humphries himself. He has a personal interest in seeing that the last remnant of the old wars is erased once and for all. Once we’ve fulfilled our mission and returned to Earth, each of us will receive a very generous bonus—but our real reward will be the knowledge that we have paid a rightful and fitting retribution to the mass murderer, Dorik Harbin.”

Yuan looked around the bridge. All his officers’ eyes were on him. He half expected applause but they simply gazed at him, waiting for his next words.

So he said, “All ships, battle stations.”

HABITAT CHRYSALIS II: OBSERVATION BLISTER

Victor Zacharias stood alone in the observation blister and looked out at the distant, uncaring pinpoints of light. The stars gazed back at him, cold and silent. Jupiter glowed in the darkness; Victor thought he could make out two sparks of moons near its ruddy, flattened disk. Off to his left a blue light gleamed: Earth.

Curving away on either side of the glassteel blister was the massive wheel shape of the unfinished habitat. Victor knew every girder, every panel, every weld. To one side of him the wheel was nothing more than unfinished ribs of metal, like the fossil bones of a giant dinosaur. He saw flashes of welders’ lasers flickering in the darkness out there. Construction crews worked twenty-four/seven under the booming roar of Big George’s demands.

But the construction of Chrysalis II was not urgent to Victor. His family was, and he chafed under the inflexible restraints that Ambrose had bound upon him. It’s not Big George, Victor told himself. It’s the war, it’s that murdering sonofabitch who wiped out the original Chrysalis, it’s the laws of physics, it’s fate. Victor felt the weight of the universe trying to bow him down, bend his knees.

He squared his shoulders and stood straighter. “I’ll find you,” he muttered. “Through hell and time and space I’ll find you out there.”

Ceres was a pitted ball of rock, close enough, it seemed, to reach out and touch. None of the other asteroids were bright enough to be seen but Victor knew they were swinging in their ever-shifting orbits out there in the cold darkness. And among them was a ship, his ship, Syracuse, and the family he wanted to save.

Are they already dead? He asked himself for the thousandth time. And he found the same answer as always: No. They’re alive. The ship may be crippled but they’re alive. They have provisions enough to last for years. Pauline will keep them going. She’s strong, brave, resourceful.

It all depends on Theo, he realized. He’s the one with the technical smarts and know-how. But he’s only fifteen! Then Victor realized, no, he must be nearly nineteen by now. A young man, with the responsibility of keeping the ship’s systems functioning. Pauline can help him, but Theo’s the one I was training to run the ship.

And Angela, my little angel. What of her? She should be here at Ceres finding a husband, starting her own family, starting her own life. Instead she’s marooned on a crippled ship drifting through the Belt.

I’ve got to find them, Victor told himself again. I’ve got to get a ship, one way or the other, and find them.

He heard the soft hiss of the hatch sliding open, a tinkle of bracelets clinking together.

“I thought you’d be here.”

Pulled out of his thoughts, Victor turned to see the darkly clad figure of Cheena Madagascar step through the hatch into the dimly lit glassteel blister.

“It’s like standing in empty space, isn’t it,” she half-whispered once the hatch slid shut behind her and the lights dimmed again. “Like a god walking among the stars.”

He snorted disdainfully. “Take a good look at Ceres, pitted and cracked and ugly as sin.”

Cheena chuckled in the shadows. “Very romantic, Victor.”

“I hate this place.”

She came up and stood beside him. He could see her gold-flecked eyes shining in the shadows of the diffused lighting.

“I like the beard,” she said. “Makes you look… dangerous.”

He didn’t know what to say, so he merely shrugged his shoulders.

“You’ve been avoiding me,” she said softly.

Despite himself, he smiled at her. “It’s best to avoid temptation.”

“Really? You didn’t avoid me when you were on Pleiades.”

“You were the ship’s captain. I had to follow orders.”

“You seemed to enjoy the duty.”

He shrugged. “I’m only flesh and blood.”

“What a compliment.”

“Cheena, please, what happened aboard Pleiades was very good, but—”

“No buts,” she whispered, sliding her arms around his neck.

“This isn’t right, Cheena. I have a wife. She’s alive, I know she is.”

“Even if she is, my reluctant lover, she’s far, far away and I’m right here, in your arms.”

He hadn’t realized that he’d wrapped his arms around her waist. She was pressing close to him. He could smell the clean tang of her shampoo, feel her breathing, the beating of her heart.

“Life belongs to the living, Victor,” Cheena murmured.

“She’s not dead,” he insisted, in a whisper.