“Yes, and it’s damned expensive, too,” Humphries added.
“Then there is the out-and-out murder of Niles Ripley on Ceres by a Humphries employee,” Fuchs went on doggedly.
Humphries snapped, “From what I hear, you took care of that yourself. Vigilante justice, wasn’t it?”
“I stood trial. It was declared justifiable self-defense.”
“Trial,” Humphries sniffed. “By your fellow rock rats.”
“Your employee murdered Niles Ripley!”
“Not by my orders,” Humphries replied, with some heat. “Just because some hothead on my payroll gets himself into a brawl, that’s not my doing.”
“But it was to your benefit,” Fuchs snapped.
Coolly, Verwoerd asked, “How do you come to that conclusion, Mr. Fuchs?”
“Ripley was the key man in our habitat construction program. With him gone, the work is stopped.”
“So?”
“So once you acquire Helvetia, the only organization capable of finishing the project will be HSS.”
“And how does that benefit me?” Humphries demanded. “Finishing your silly-assed habitat doesn’t put one penny into my pocket.”
“Not directly, perhaps,” said Fuchs. “But making Ceres safer and more livable will bring more people out to the Belt. With your company in control of their supplies, their food, the air they breathe, even, how can you fail to profit?”
“You’re accusing me—”
Verwoerd interrupted the budding argument. “Gentlemen, we’re here to negotiate the sale of Helvetia, not to discuss the future of the Asteroid Belt.”
Humphries glared at her again, but took in a breath and said grudgingly, “Right.”
Before Fuchs could say anything, Verwoerd added, “What’s done is done, and there’s no way of changing the past. If an HSS employee committed murder, you made him pay the full price for it.”
Fuchs searched for something to say.
“Now we should get down to business,” said Verwoerd, “and settle on a price for Helvetia.”
Humphries immediately jumped in with, “My original offer was based on your total assets, which have gone down almost to nothing since the fire in your warehouse.”
“Which was deliberately set,” Fuchs said.
“Deliberately set?”
“It was no accident. It was arson.”
“You have proof of that?”
“We have no forensics experts on Ceres. No criminal investigators.”
“So you have no proof.”
“Mr. Fuchs,” Verwoerd said, “we are prepared to offer you three million international dollars for the remaining assets of Helvetia Limited, which—frankly—amounts to the good will you’ve generated among the miners and prospectors, and not much more.”
Fuchs stared at her for a long, silent moment. So sure of herself, he thought. So cool and unruffled and, yes, even beautiful, in a cold, distant way. She’s like a sculpture made of ice.
“Well?” Humphries asked. “Frankly, three million is pretty much of a gift. Your company’s not worth half that much, in real terms.”
“Three hundred million,” Fuchs murmured.
“What? What did you say?”
“You could make your offer three hundred million. Or three billion. It doesn’t matter. I’m not going to sell to you.”
“That’s stupid!” Humphries blurted.
“I won’t sell to you at any price. Never! I’m going back to Ceres and starting all over again.”
“You’re crazy!”
“Am I? Perhaps so. But I would rather be crazy than give in to you.”
“You’re just going to get yourself killed,” Humphries said.
“Is that a threat?”
Again Humphries looked at Verwoerd, then turned back to Fuchs. He smiled thinly. “I don’t make threats, Fuchs. I make promises.”
Fuchs got to his feet. “Then let me make a promise in return. If you want to fight, I can fight. If you want a war, I’ll give you a war. And you won’t like the way I fight, I promise you that. I’ve studied military history; it was required in school. I know how to fight.”
Humphries leaned back in his desk chair and laughed.
“Go ahead and laugh,” Fuchs said, pointing a stubby finger at him. “But consider: you have a great deal more to lose than I do.”
“You’re a dead man, Fuchs,” Humphries snapped.
Fuchs nodded agreement. “One of us is.”
With that, he turned and strode out of Humphries’s office.
For several moments, Humphries and Verwoerd sat there staring at the doorway Fuchs had gone through.
“At least he didn’t slam the door,” Humphries said with a smirk.
“You’ve made him angry enough to fight,” Verwoerd said, with a troubled frown. “You’ve backed him into a corner and now he feels he has nothing to lose by fighting.”
Humphries guffawed. “Him? That little weasel? It’s laughable. He knows how to fight! He’s studied military history!”
“Maybe he has,” she said.
“So what?” Humphries replied testily. “He’s from Switzerland, for god’s sake! Hardly a martial nation. What’s he going to do, smother me in Swiss cheese? Or maybe yodel me to death.”
“I wouldn’t take it so lightly,” said Verwoerd, still looking at the empty doorway.
CHAPTER 17
“Piracy?” Hector Wilcox’s eyebrows rose almost to his silver-gray hairline.
Erek Zar looked uncomfortable, unhappy, as the two men strolled along the lane through the park just outside the IAA office building. Spring was in the air, the trees were beginning to bud, the local St. Petersburg populace was thronging the park, glad to see the sun. Women were sunbathing on the grass, their long dark coats thrown open to reveal their lumpy, thick bodies clad only in skimpy bikinis. It’s enough to make a man take a vow of celibacy, Wilcox thought, eying them distastefully.
Zar was normally a placid, cheerful, good-natured paper shuffler whose most urgent demands were for an extra day off here and there so he could nip off to his family in Poland for a long weekend. But now the man’s ruddy, round face was dead serious, flushed with emotion.
“That’s what he’s charging,” Zar said. “Piracy.” Wilcox refused to have his postprandial constitutional destroyed by an underling suddenly gone bonkers. “Who is this person?”
“His name is Lars Fuchs. Tomasselli brought the matter to me. Fuchs is accusing Humphries Space Systems of piracy, out in the Asteroid Belt.”
“But that’s ridiculous!”
“I agree,” Zar said swiftly. “But Tomasselli’s taken it seriously and opened an official file on it.”
“Tomasselli,” said Wilcox, as if the word smelled bad. “That excitable Italian. He saw a conspiracy when Yamagata made that takeover offer to Astro Corporation.”
“The takeover was never consummated,” Zar pointed out, “mainly because Tomasselli got the GEC to go on record as opposing it.”
“And now he’s taking accusations of piracy seriously? Against Humphries Space Systems?”
Nodding unhappily, Zar said, “He claims there’s some evidence to substantiate the accusation, but as far as I can see it’s all circumstantial.”
“What on earth does he expect me to do about it?” Wilcox grumbled mildly. He was not the kind of man who lost his self-control. Not ever. You didn’t get as far up on the intricate chain of command of the International Astronautical Authority as he had by recklessly blowing off steam.
“It’s an open file now,” Zar said, apologetically.
“Yes. Well, I suppose I’ll have to look it over.” Wilcox sighed. “But, really, piracy? In the Asteroid Belt? Even if it’s true, what can we do about it? We don’t even have an administrator on Ceres, for goodness’ sake. There isn’t an IAA presence anywhere in the Belt.”