I’ve got to tell Joanna. She shouldn’t feel any guilt about this.
Paul nodded to himself, satisfied that he had all the necessary pieces to the puzzle.
One puzzle, he remembered. There’s still the question of who got Melissa to set me up. Was it Brad? And if it was, how can I prove it?
He shook his head slowly. It’s gonna be one helluva board meeting. One helluva meeting.
OVER THE ATLANTIC
Supersonic aircraft were not allowed to fly above Mach 1 over populated areas, because their sonic booms disturbed people and rattled their homes. Fanners complained of milk cows gone dry because of sonic booms. Environmentalists protested against sonic pollution.
So Bradley Arnold’s flight angled out over the Atlantic after taking off from the corporation’s private airstrip outside Savannah. Alone in the passenger compartment, sitting in one of the plane’s luxurious padded chairs, Arnold had no time to admire the procession of deep swells on the steel-gray ocean far below him. He had expected Paul and Joanna to come with him to New York, but Stavenger had backed out at the last pьnute.
“We’ll fly up in my plane,” Paul had told the board chairman.
“But I thought we would all be going together,” Arnold had said.
“I’ve got a few things to do here this afternoon. We’ll fly up overnight.”
What Paul did not tell Arnold was that he wanted to tell Joanna what McPherson had dug up about Gregory’s cancer. Paul had no intention of letting the board chairman in on the news, not until the directors’ meeting, when he would spring it on all of them, including Greg.
Disappointed, Arnold had grumbled, “This is going to be an extremely important meeting, Paul. We could use the time to get our strategy ironed out”
But Paul had insisted that he could not fly with Arnold to New York, He had other things to do. More important than strategy session with me, Arnold groused to himself.
He doesn’t trust me. Arnold frowned with the realization that despite everything he had said to Scavenger, the new CEO still did not trust him. That’s Joanna’s doing, he thought. She’ never liked me. All the years I tried to help her husband, and all the help I’ve given to young Greg, and she still hates the sight of me.
Well, it’s too bad for them, he said to himself as he swung out the keyboard set into the swivel table built into the plane bulkhead beside him. He stabbed at the telephone key and a soon as the computer’s smoky female voice asked, “How may I help you, sir?” he told the phone to get Greg Masterson. “His private line,” he added.
Greg’s face appeared on the screen almost instantly, but i was only his recorded answer. With a grave smile his image said, “I am unable to take your call right now, but please leave your name and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can Thank you.”
Nettled, fuming, Arnold blurted, “Greg, it’s me. Arnold. I need to talk to you now! Wherever you are, call me right—”
The smiling image was replaced by a more serious Gregory Masterson III. He was sitting in front of a window that looked out on Central Park and the towers of midtown Manhattan.
“Brad? Where are you?”
I’m on my way to New York, ” Arnold replied testily. “Where else would I be?”
“Oh. Of course.” Greg looked relieved.
“I have some upsetting news.”
Greg looked more amused than worried. “Really?”
“McPherson’s come up with evidence that your father was dying of prostate cancer.”
Greg’s slightly smug smile winked off like a light turned out.
“It looks as if he committed suicide, after all.”
“No,” Greg snapped. “That’s crazy. Prostate cancer can be treated. My father wouldn’t allow the cancer to go so far that it was going to kill him.”
“My source in McPherson’s office tells me that Paul’s getting statements from half a dozen doctors who either examined your father or counselled him.”
“With enough money you can get anyone to say anything.”
“But Paul’s going to use these medical statements at the board meeting tomorrow, to show that your father killed himself, after all.”
Greg fell silent. He glanced at his wristwatch. Then he said, “He wants to use these statements to counterbalance the videodisk, is that it?”
Nodding, Arnold said, “I think he’s outmaneuvered us.”
Greg’s expression hardened. “Even if my father had cancer he could still have been murdered.”
“That doesn’t make much sense.”
“Doesn’t it?”
“I don’t think so,” Arnold said. “It doesn’t seem reasonable.”
“My father would never commit suicide, Brad. I know that. And so do you.”
“What do you mean?”
“Whoever killed my father deserves to die.”
“But you don’t know that he was murdered,” Arnold said.
“I know enough,” said Greg. “I may not be entirely certain of who the murderer is, but I know enough to act.”
“You mean at tomorrow’s meeting? What do you plan to do?”
Greg looked at his wristwatch again. “Thanks for the information, Brad. It was good of you to call.”
“What? Is that all you’ve got to say?”
“That’s all you’ve got time for,” said Greg.
Arnold blinked his frog’s eyes, puzzled. “What are you talking about? We’ve got to figure out some way—”
The plane lurched so hard that Arnold was hurled out of his seat and banged against the tabletop keyboard. The sudden pain in his middle made him feel he’d been carved in two. For an instant he hung there, then the plane pitched up sharply anc he was thrown back into his chair.
“Seatbelts!” the pilot’s frantic shout came over the intercom. “We’ve lost power on—”
Another staggering tumble, and the plane plunged downward.
“Mayday! Mayday!” the intercom was blaring. “Lost power on both engines. Going down!”
Horrified, pinned in his seat, unable even to lift his arms! Arnold saw the steel gray Atlantic rushing up toward him Then a frightful shriek of tortured metal and part of the wing ripped away.
He was too terrified to scream. But Greg’s face on the little screen smiled grimly and said, “Goodbye, Brad.”
The screen went blank and then the plane hit the water and exploded.
MARE NUBIUM
Paul pulled himself onto the flat top of the huge boulder and lay on his belly panting and sweating for long minutes.
Like when we used to climb up onto the roofs of the warehouses, when we were kids, he thought. But he knew the difference. Back then he could scramble up the warehouse walls like a monkey and then spend the rest of the day running races across the flat roofs or playing hide-and-seek with his bro’s among the cooling towers and other structures on the roofs. He remembered the chicken game they played, jumping from one roof to the next across the alleyways separating the buildings. One slip and it was the morgue or the hospital. And the police.
Good thing everything weighs one-sixth here, Paul thought. I’m sure in no shape to play tag now.
Slowly, carefully, he forced himself to his knees, and then to his feet. The GPS signal was still coming through loud and clear. No tears in the suit. Probably saved half an hour, at least, he told himself.
He walked across the big rock. Its top was not as flat as it had looked. It was pitted here and there with small, sharp craters, almost like bullet holes.
Then Paul got to the far side. He peered over the boulder’s edge. This side was much steeper than the other had been. Looks like the pissin’ rock was sheared off with a big cleaver. How the hell am I gonna get down there? There’s hardly anyplace for a toehold.
I could jump, he thought. Only about thirty feet. But he knew that, lunar gravity or not, a man could break bones jumping that far .Paul recalled a couple of wise asses who disregarded the safety regs when they had first started working on the Moon. One broke his leg. The other, his neck. How surprised the poor sonofabitch looked, even through the visor of his helmet. Died before they could get a medical team to him.