Tugging them on and sealing the Velcro closures, Fuchs asked the crewwoman to open a communications channel to Ceres. She did so without hesitation.
“Amanda,” he said, “I’m on the way. We are asking for permission to accelerate faster, so I might be able to reach you before our scheduled arrival time. I’ll let you know. Stay in your quarters. Ask some of the people who work for us to act as guards at your door. I’ll be there as soon as I can, darling. As soon as I can.”
By the time the captain returned to the bridge, face washed, hair combed, and wearing a crisp jumpsuit with his insignia of rank on the cuffs, the answer arrived from IAA control.
Permission denied. Lubbock Lights will remain at its current velocity vector and arrive at Ceres in three and a half more days, as scheduled.
Trembling, Fuchs turned from the robotlike IAA controller’s image on the screen to the uniformed captain.
“I’m sorry,” said the captain, with a sympathetic shrug of his shoulders. “There’s nothing I can do.”
Fuchs stared at the man’s bland, scrubbed face for half a moment, then smashed a thundering right fist into the captain’s jaw. His head snapped back and blood flew from his mouth as he buckled to the deck. Turning on the gape-mouthed crew woman, Fuchs ordered, “Maximum acceleration. Now!”
She glanced at the unconscious captain, then back at Fuchs. “But I can’t—”
He ripped an emergency hand torch from its clips on the bulkhead and brandished it like a club. “Get away from the controls!”
“But—”
“Get out of that chair!” Fuchs bellowed.
She jumped to her feet and stepped sideways, slipping along the curving control panel, away from him.
“Nodon!” Fuchs called.
The young Asian stepped through the open hatch. He glanced nervously at the captain lying on the deck, then at the frightened crewwoman.
“See that no one enters the bridge,” Fuchs said, tossing the hand torch to him. “Use that on anyone who tries to get in here.”
Nodon gestured the woman toward the hatch as Fuchs sat in the command chair and studied the control board. Not much different from Starpower or the other vessels he’d been on.
“What about the captain?” the crewwoman asked. He was groaning softly, his legs starting to move a little.
“Leave him here,” said Fuchs. “He’ll be all right.”
She left and Nodon swung the hatch shut behind her.
“Lock it,” Fuchs ordered.
The captain sat up, rubbed at the back of his neck, then looked up blearily at Fuchs sitting at the controls.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” the captain growled.
“I’m trying to save my wife’s life,” Fuchs answered, pushing the ship’s acceleration to its maximum of one-half normal Earth gravity.
“This is piracy!” the captain snapped.
Fuchs swung around in the command chair. “Yes,” he said tightly. “Piracy. There’s a lot of it going around, these days.”
CHAPTER 38
“He’s what?” Hector Wilcox did not believe his ears.
Zar looked stunned as he repeated, “He’s taken over the Lubbock Lights. He’s accelerating at top speed to Ceres. Our flight controllers have ordered him to cease and desist, but he’s paying no attention to them.”
Wilcox sagged back in his desk chair. “By god, the man’s committed an act of piracy.”
“It would seem so,” Zar agreed cautiously. “According to our people on Ceres, someone broke into Fuchs’s warehouse and cleaned out everything. They murdered one of the people working there. A woman.”
“His wife?”
“No, an employee. But you can understand why Fuchs wants to reach Ceres as quickly as he can.”
“That doesn’t justify piracy,” Wilcox said sternly. “As soon as he arrives at Ceres, I want our people there to arrest him.”
Zar blinked at his boss. “They’re only flight controllers, not policemen.”
“I don’t care,” Wilcox said sternly. “I won’t have people flouting IAA regulations. This is a matter of principle!”
Diane Verwoerd had spent most of the morning combing her apartment for bugs. She found none, which worried her. She felt certain that Humphries had bugged her place; how else would he know what she was doing? Yet she could find no hidden microphones, no microcameras tucked in the ventilator grills or anywhere else.
Could Martin have been guessing about Bandung Associates? She had thought she’d covered her trail quite cleverly, but perhaps naming her dummy corporation after the city in which her mother had been born wasn’t so clever, after all.
Whatever, she decided. Martin knows that I’ve winkled him out of several choice asteroids and he’s willing to let that pass—if I carry his cloned baby for him.
She shuddered at the thought of having a foreign creature inserted into her womb. It’s like the horror vids about alien invaders we watched when we were kids, she thought. And she had heard dark, scary stories about women who carried cloned fetuses. It wasn’t like carrying a normal baby. The afterbirth bloated up so hugely that it could kill the woman during childbirth, they said.
But the rational part of her mind saw some possible advantages. Beyond the monetary rewards, this could put me in a position of some power with Martin Humphries, she told herself. The mother of his clone. That puts me in a rather special position. A very special position, actually. I might even gain a seat on his board of directors, if I play my cards well.
If I live through it, she thought, shuddering again.
Then she thought of Harbin. Beneath all that steely self-control was a boiling hot volcano, she had discovered. If I play him correctly, he’ll sit up and roll over and do any other tricks I ask him to perform. A good man to have at my side, especially if I have to deal with Martin after the baby is born.
The baby. She frowned at the thought, wondering, Should I tell Dorik about it? Eventually, I’ll have to. But not now. Not yet. He’s too possessive, too macho to accept the fact that I’ll be carrying someone else’s baby while I’m letting him make love to me. I’ll have to be very careful about the way I handle that little bit of news.
She walked idly through her apartment, thinking, planning, staring at the walls and ceilings as if she could make the electronic bugs appear just by sheer willpower. Martin’s snooping on me. She felt certain of it. He certainly got his jollies watching me do it with Dorik.
With a reluctant sigh she decided she would have to call in some expert help to sweep the apartment. The trouble is, she told herself, all the experts I know are HSS employees. Can I get them to do the job right?
Then she thought of an alternative. Doug Stavenger must know some experts among Selene’s permanent population. I’ll ask Stavenger to help me.
Both of the IAA flight controllers were waiting at the cave that served as a reception area at Ceres’s spaceport when Fuchs returned. He had left Lubbock Lights in orbit around the asteroid, turned the ship back to its captain, and ridden a shuttlecraft down to the surface. The two controllers left their posts in the cramped IAA control center and went to the reception area to meet him.
As Fuchs stepped out of the pressurized tunnel that connected the shuttlecraft to the bare rock cave, the senior controller, a thirtyish woman of red hair and considerable reputation among the men who frequented the Pub, cleared her throat nervously and said: