“I’m afraid that the point has to be considered,” O’Banian said. She tried to make it as mild and noncommittal as possible, but she was not going to let this point pass without a full discussion. She deliberately kept her eyes away from Pancho, afraid that her gratitude would show.
The discussion wrangled on for nearly two hours. Each board member demanded to have his or her say, whether or not the same sentiment had already been expressed by someone else. O’Banian sat patiently through it all, watching their egos on parade, trying to figure out how she could bring this to a vote. Throw Humphries off the board? Gladly. But there weren’t enough votes for that. The best she could hope for was to pull his fangs.
Humphries was no fool. He too listened to the board members’ repetitious ramblings, clearly impatient, obviously calculating his odds. By the time it was his turn to speak in his own defense, he had come to a decision.
Rising to his feet, he said slowly, calmly, “I’m not going to dignify the accusation that Ms. Lane made by trying to defend myself against it. I think the facts speak for themselves—”
“They sure do,” Pancho muttered, loud enough for everyone to hear.
Humphries kept his temper, barely. “Therefore,” he continued, “I will withdraw my opposition to this Jupiter concept.”
O’Banian realized she had been holding her breath. She let it out with a gush, surprised at how displeased she felt. She had hoped that Humphries would do the gentlemanly thing and resign from the board.
“But let me tell you this,” Humphries added, with an upraised finger. “When the costs mount up and the whole idea collapses around our heads, don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
O’Banian took another breath, then said, “Thank you, Martin, on behalf of the entire board.”
But Humphries’s clique on the board still opposed the Jupiter project. The best they would agree to was to allow Pancho to seek a partner that would share at least one quarter of the project’s costs. Failing that, the board would not allow the program to be started.
“A partner?” Pancho groused. O’Banian threw her a sharp warning look. If Pancho complained openly that no one would join Astro in such a partnership, it merely proved Humphries’s point that the idea was impractically far-fetched.
“I think you might open up a dialogue with some of the major utilities corporations,” O’Banian suggested. “After all, they have the most to gain from an assured supply of fusion fuels.”
“Yeah,” Pancho mumbled. “Right.”
As the meeting broke up and the board members made their way out of the conference room, muttering and chattering to one another, Humphries came up to O’Banian.
“Are you satisfied?” he asked, in a low, confidential voice.
“I’m sorry it had to come to this, Martin,” she replied.
“Yes, I can see how sorry you are.” He glanced across the room, to where Pancho was talking to the old red-faced man as they filed out of the room. “Clever work, using Pancho as your stalking horse.”
O’Banian was genuinely shocked. “Me? Using…?”
“It’s all right,” Humphries said, smiling thinly. “I expect sneak attacks now and then. It’s all part of the game.”
“But, Martin, I had no idea—”
“No, of course you didn’t. Well, go ahead with this Jupiter nonsense, if you can find some idiot foolish enough to go along with you. Once it flops I’ll be able to use it to get you off the board. And that damned grease monkey, too.”
WALTZING MATILDA
“What spooks me,” George was saying, “is how the fookin’ bastard knew where our antennas were.”
He and Nodon were taking off their spacesuits, dog-tired after a five-hour EVA. They had patched the laser-punched holes in the propellant tanks, but most of the hydrogen and helium had already leaked away. Their communication antennas, even the backups, were slagged and useless.
“He must have had complete specs on this ship,” Nodon said, as he lifted off the torso of his hard-shell suit and placed it carefully on its rack. “Every detail.”
“Every fookin’ detail,” George agreed. He sat on the tiny bench in front of the suit racks, filling it so completely that Nodon sat on the deck to start removing his boots. George felt too weary even to bend over and pull his boots off.
Piece by piece they finished unsuiting at last, then made their way to the galley. George mused aloud, “Y’know, somebody must’ve given him the specs for this ship.”
“Yes,” Nodon agreed, trailing along behind him. The passageway was too narrow for them to proceed side by side.
“But who? This is a piece of private property, its specs aren’t public knowledge. You can’t look ’em up in a fookin’ net site.”
Nodon scratched his lean, bristly chin, then suggested, “Could he have access to the manufacturer’s records?”
“Or to the maintenance files at Ceres, maybe,” George muttered.
“Yes, that is possible.”
“Either way,” said George, with growing conviction, “it has to be somebody in Humphries Space Systems. Their people do the maintenance on it.”
“Not Astro?”
“Naw. HSS offered me a bargain price if I signed up for the maintenance contract.”
“Then it must be someone in HSS,” Nodon agreed.
“But why? Why did the bastard attack us?”
“To invalidate the claim to the asteroid, certainly.”
George shook his head irritatedly. “There’s millions of rocks in the Belt. And Humphries is the richest shrewdie in the fookin’ solar system. What’s he need a lousy asteroid claim for?”
“Perhaps not him,” Nodon said. “Perhaps someone in his corporation.”
“Yeah.” George nodded. “Maybe.”
With a resigned shrug, Nodon said, “It is all academic, anyway.”
“Whatcha mean, mate?”
Tapping a lean finger against the small wallscreen that displayed the galley’s contents, Nodon pointed out, “We have enough food for only another twenty-two days. Perhaps as much as forty days, if we cut our daily ration to starvation level.”
George grunted at him. “No sense starvin’ ourselves. We’re gonna die anyway.”
CHAPTER 21
Through the week-long trip on the Harper, Amanda sensed a strangeness in her husband, something odd, different, something she couldn’t put her finger on. He seemed—not distant, exactly—certainly not distant: Lars spent almost the entire journey in bed with her, making love with a fierce intensity she had never known before. And yet, even in the midst of their passion there was something withdrawn about him; something that he was hiding from her. She had always been able to read his thoughts before: one look at the set of his jaw and she knew. He had never held anything back from her. But now his face was impassive, his expression guarded. His deepset blue eyes showed her nothing.
It frightened Amanda to realize that Lars was keeping a secret from her. Perhaps more than one.
Once they arrived back at their quarters on Ceres and began unpacking their travel bags, Amanda decided to confront the issue directly.
“Lars, what’s the matter?”
He was stuffing a handful of socks and underwear into his bureau drawer. “The matter?” he asked, without looking up at her. “What do you mean?”
“Something’s on your mind and you’re not sharing it with me.” Straightening up, he came back toward her at the bed. “I’m thinking of everything that we have to do. The insurance, restocking the warehouse, getting Starpower back.”
Amanda sat on the bed, next to her opened bag. “Yes, of course. And what else?”
His eyes shifted away from her. “What else? Isn’t that enough?”