Her theme was simple: “We need some form of government here on Ceres, a set of laws that we can all live by. Otherwise we’ll simply have more and more violence until the IAA or the Peacekeepers or some other outside group comes in and takes us over.”
“More likely it’d be HSS,” said a disgruntled-looking prospector, stuck on Ceres temporarily while his damaged ship was being repaired. “They’ve been trying to take us over for years now.”
“Or Astro,” an HSS technician fired back.
George cut them both off before an argument swallowed up the meeting. “Private debates can be held on another channel,” he announced cheerfully, turning the screen over to the lean-faced, sharp-eyed Joyce Takamine, who demanded to know when the habitat was going to be finished so they could move up to it and get out of this dust-filled rathole.
Amanda nodded sympathetically. “The habitat is in what was once called a Catch-22 situation,” she replied. “Those of us who want it finished so we can occupy it, haven’t the funds to get the work done. Those who have the funds—such as Astro and HSS—have no interest in spending them on completing the habitat.”
“Well, somebody ought to do something,” Takamine said firmly.
“I agree,” said Amanda. “That’s something that we could do if we had some form of government to organize things.”
Nearly an hour later, the owner of the Pub brought up the key question. “But how’re we gonna pay for a government and a police force? Not to mention finishing the habitat. That’ll mean we all hafta pay taxes, won’t it?”
Amanda was ready for that one. In fact, she was glad the man had brought it up.
Noting that the message board strung across the bottom of her wallscreen immediately lit up from one end to the other, she said sweetly, “We will not have to pay taxes. The corporations can pay instead.”
George himself interjected the question everybody wanted to ask. “Huh?”
Amanda explained, “If we had a government in place, we could finance it with a very small tax on the sales that HSS and Astro and any other corporation makes here on Ceres.”
It took a few seconds for George to sort out all the incoming calls and flash the image of a scowling prospector onto her wall-screen.
“You put an excise tax on the corporations and they’ll just pass it on to us by raising their prices.”
Nodding, Amanda admitted, “Yes, that’s true. But it will be a very small rise. A tax of one percent would bring in ten thousand international dollars for every million dollars in sales.”
Without waiting for the next questioner, Amanda continued, “HSS alone cleared forty-seven million dollars in sales last week. That’s nearly two and a half a billion dollars per year, which means a tax of one percent would bring us more than twenty-four million in tax revenue from HSS sales alone.”
“Could we finish the habitat on that kind of income?” asked the next caller.
Amanda replied, “Yes. With that kind of assured income, we could get loans from the banks back on Earth to finish the habitat, just the same as any government secures loans to finance its programs.”
The meeting dragged on until well past one A.M., but when it was finished, Amanda thought tiredly that she had accomplished her objective. The people of Ceres were ready to vote to form some kind of a government.
As long as Martin Humphries doesn’t move to stop us, she reminded herself.
CHAPTER 44
Lars Fuchs stood spraddle-legged behind the pilot’s chair on the bridge of Nautilus, carefully studying the screen’s display of what looked like an HSS freighter.
According to the communications messages to and from the ship, she was the W. Wilson Humphries, the pride of Humphries Space Systems’ growing fleet of ore carriers, named after Martin Humphries’s late father. She was apparently loaded with ores from several asteroids, heading out of the Belt toward the Earth/Moon system.
Yet Fuchs felt uneasy about approaching her. Fourteen months of hiding in the Belt, of taking his supplies and fuel from ships he captured, of sneaking quick visits aboard friendly independent ships now and then, had taught him wariness and cunning. He was leaner now, still built like a miniature bull but without a trace of fat on him. Even his face was harder, his square jaw more solid, his thin slash of a mouth set into a downturned scowl that seemed permanent.
He turned to Nodon, who was handling the communications console on the bridge.
“What’s the traffic to and from her?” he asked, jabbing a thumb toward the visual display.
“Normal telemetry,” Nodon replied. “Nothing more at present.”
To the burly young woman in the pilot’s chair Fuchs said, “Show me the plot of her course over the past six weeks.” He spoke in her own Mongol dialect now; haltingly, but he was learning his crew’s language. He did not want them to be able to keep secrets from him.
One of the auxiliary screens lit up with thin, looping curves of yellow set against a sprinkling of green dots.
Fuchs studied the display. If it was to be believed, that yellow line represented the course that the Humphries ship had followed over the past six weeks, picking up loads of ore at five separate asteroids. Fuchs did not believe it.
“It’s a fake,” he said aloud. “If she’d really followed that plot she’d be out of propellant by now and heading for a rendezvous with a tanker.”
Nodon said, “According to their flight plan, they will increase acceleration in two hours and head inward to the Earth/Moon system.”
“Not unless they’ve refueled in the past few days,” Fuchs said.
“There is no record of that. No tankers in the vicinity. No other ships at all.”
Fuchs received brief snippets of intelligence information from the friendly ships he occasionally visited. Through those independent prospectors he arranged a precarious line of communications back to Ceres by asking them to tell Amanda what frequency he would use to make his next call to her. His calls were months apart, quick spurts of ultracompressed data that told her little more than the fact that he was alive and missed her. She sent similar messages back by tight laser beam to predesignated asteroids. Fuchs was never there to receive them; he left a receiving set on each asteroid ahead of time that relayed the message to him later. He had no intention of letting Humphries’s people trap him.
But now he felt uneasy about this supposed fat, dumb freighter. It’s a trap, he heard a voice in his mind warning him. And he remembered that Amanda’s latest abbreviated message had included a piece of information from Big George to the effect that Humphries’s people were setting up decoy ships, “Trojan horses,”
George called them, armed with laser weapons and carrying trained mercenary troops whose mission was to lure Fuchs into a fatal trap.
“George says it’s only a rumor,” Amanda had said hastily, “but it’s a rumor that you should pay attention to.”
Fuchs nodded to himself as he stared at the image of the ship on the display screen. Some rumors can save your life, he thought.
To the woman piloting the ship he commanded, “Change course. Head back deeper into the Belt.”
She wordlessly followed his order.
“We leave the ship alone?” Nodon asked.
Fuchs allowed the corners of his mouth to inch upward slightly into a sour smile, almost a sneer. “For the time being. Let’s see if the ship leaves us alone once we’ve turned away from it.”
Sitting in the command chair on the bridge of W. Wilson Humphries, Dorik Harbin was also watching the display screens. He clenched his teeth in exasperation as he saw the ship that had been following them for several hours suddenly veer away and head back into the depths of the Belt.