Jade made a sympathetic smile, then asked, “Why are you running all the way out to the Kuiper Belt to meet Sam?”
“Why? Because I feel responsible for the little guy, that’s why. He went tootling off to find Planet X with that university geek and left behind, like, a ton and three-quarters of lawsuits.”
“But he’s been away so long the statute of limitations on all the suits has run out,” Jill Myers pointed out.
“Maybe not. That Beryllium Blonde that he’s tangled with has come up with the idea that since Sam claims he was in a space-time warp, time hasn’t passed for him the way it has for the rest of us and therefore the statutes of limitations should be considered suspended for all the time Sam was allegedly in the warp!”
“What?” Meyers snapped. “That’s ridiculous!”
“Is it? She’s claiming that if time hasn’t elapsed for him then it shouldn’t elapse for the lawsuits. And the courts are taking it very seriously.” “No!”
“So I’m going out there to warn the little bugger that his legal troubles aren’t over. Not by a long shot.”
“The Beryllium Blonde?” asked Jade. “Is her name Jennifer something?” “Marlow,” Wright said. “You don’t know about her?” “A little,” said Jade.
“Or about the Toad, either? Cheez, what kind of a producer are you? Didn’t you do any research before you came aboard this torch ship?
The Prudent Jurist
You might have known—said Steve Wright—that the very first person to be hauled in to trial by the spanking-new Interplanetary Tribunal would be Sam Gunn. And on trial for his life, at that.
Things might not have been too bad, even so, if it weren’t for Sam’s old nemesis, the Beryllium Blonde. She wanted Sam’s hide tacked onto her office wall. Sam, of course, wanted her body. Anyplace.
And then there was the Toad, as well.
Sam’s voice had been the loudest one in the whole solar system against letting lawyers get established off-Earth.
“When it comes to interplanetary jurisprudence,” he often said—at the top of his leathery lungs—”what we need is less juris and more prudence!”
But it was inevitable that the Interplanetary Astronautical Authority would set up a court to enforce its rulings and carry Earth-style legalities out to the edge of the frontier. After all, the Asteroid Belt was being mined by little guys like Sam and big corporations like Rockledge Industries.
And major consortiums like Diversified Universities & Laboratories, Ltd. (which Sam called DULL) were already pushing the exploration of Jupiter and its many moons.
When the scientists announced the discovery of life on the Jovian moon Europa, of course, the environmentalists and theologians and even the Right To Lifers demanded that laws—and lawyers—be established in space to protect it.
And Sam wound up on trial. Not just for murder. Genocide.
Me, I was the closest thing to a lawyer in Sam’s then-current company, Asteroidal Resources, Inc. Sam had started up and dissolved more corporations than Jupiter has moons, usually making a quick fortune on some audacious scheme and then blowing it on something even wilder. Asteroidal Resources, Inc. was devoted to mining heavy metals from the Asteroid Belt, out beyond Mars, and smelting them down to refined alloys as his factory ships sailed back to the Earth-Moon system.
The company was based on solid economics, provided needed resources to the Earth-Moon system’s manufacturers, and was turning a tidy—if not spectacular—profit. For Sam, this was decidedly unusual. Even respectable.
Sam ran a tight company. His ships were highly automated, with bare-bones skeleton crews. There were only six of us in ARI’s headquarters in Ceres, the largest of the asteroids. None of us was a real lawyer; Sam wouldn’t allow any of them into his firm. My paralegal certificate was as far as Sam was willing to go. He snarled with contempt when other companies began bringing their lawyers into the belt.
And when I said that the office was in Ceres, that’s exactly what I mean. Even though it’s the biggest chunk of rock in the belt, Ceres is only a little over nine hundred kilometers across; barely big enough to be round, instead of an irregular lump, like the other asteroids. No air, hardly any gravity. Mining outfits like Sam’s and big-bad Rockledge and others had honeycombed the rock to set up their local headquarters inside it.
My official title was Director, Human Resources. That meant that I was the guy who handled personnel problems, payroll, insurance, health claims, and lawsuits. Sam always had three or four lawsuits pending; he constantly skirted the fringes of legality—which was why he didn’t want lawyers in space, of course. He had enough trouble with the Earthbound variety.
The Beryllium Blonde, by the way, was a corporate lawyer, one of the best, with a mind as sharp and vindictive as her body was lithe and curvaceous. A deadly combination, as far as Sam was concerned.
The entire Human Resources Department in ARI consisted of me and a computer. I had very sophisticated programs to work with, you know, but there was no other human in Human Resources.
Still, I thought things were humming along smoothly enough in our underground offices until the day Sam came streaking back home on a high-g burn, raced straight from the landing pad to my office without even taking off his flight suit, and announced: “Orville, you’re gonna be my legal counsel at the trial. Start boning up on interplanetary law.”
My actual name is Steven. Steven Achernar Wright. But for some reason Sam called me Orville. Sometimes Wilbur, but mostly Orville.
“Legal counsel?” I echoed, bounding out of my chair so quickly that I sailed completely over my desk in the low gravity. “Trial? For what? What’re you charged with?”
He shook his head. “Murder, I think. Maybe worse.”
And he scooted into his office. All I really saw of the little guy was a sawed-off blur of motion topped with rusty-red hair. Huckleberry Finn at Mach 5.
I learned about the charges against Sam almost immediately. My phone screen chimed and the impressive black and silver seal of the International Astronautical Authority appeared on its screen, followed an eye-blink later by a very legal-looking summons and an arrest warrant.
The charges were attempted murder, grand larceny, violation of sixteen—count ’em, sixteen—different IAA environmental regulations and assault and battery with willful intent to cause grievous bodily harm.
Oh yes, and the aforementioned charge of genocide.
All that happened before lunch.
I tapped into the best legal programs on the sys and, after half a day’s reading, arranged to surrender Sam to the IAA authorities at Selene City, on the Moon. He yowled and complained every centimeter of the way. Even when we landed on the Moon Sam screeched loud enough to set up echoes through Selene City’s underground corridors, right up to the headquarters of the IAA.
The IAA chief administrator cheerfully released Sam on his own recognizance. He and Sam were old virtual billiards buddies, and besides Sam couldn’t get away; his name, photo, fingerprints, retinal patterns, and neutron scattering index were posted at every rocket port on the Moon. Sam was stuck on the Moon, at least until his trial.
Maybe longer. The World Government’s penal colony was at Farside, where convicts couldn’t even see Earth in their sky and spent their time trying to scrounge helium-three from the regolith, competing with nanomachines that did the job for practically nothing for the big corporations like Masterson and Wankle.
The trial started promptly enough. I begged for more time to prepare a defense, interview witnesses, check the prosecution’s published statement of the facts of the case (“And scatter a few bribes around,” Sam suggested). No go. The IAA refused any and all requests for a delay in the proceedings. Even their cheerful chief administrator gave me a doleful look and said, “No can do. The trial starts tomorrow, as scheduled.”