“Call Dr. O’Toole back from Europa,” Sam said. “Or watch the video I made of her in my quarters aboard Joker. Call Professor Fossbinder in from Zurich. Call Brandon O’Toole, for Pete’s sake; he’s right here in Selene City. He knows that his wife was engineering lichen before she shipped out to Europa. He’ll tell you all about it, if he isn’t besotted by our Beryllium Blonde here.”
And he quickly raised his fists into a boxer’s defensive posture.
The Blonde just stood there, her lovely mouth hanging open, her eyes wide and darting from Sam to the Toad and back again.
Weatherwax heaved an enormous sigh, then croaked, “I move that we adjourn this hearing for half an hour while we discuss this new … allegation, in chambers.”
The chief judge nodded, tight-lipped. We all rose and the judges swept out; the courtroom was so quiet I could hear their black robes rustling. The audience filed out, muttering, whispering; but Sam and I sat tensely at the defendants’ table, he drumming his fingers on the tabletop incessantly, his head turned toward the prosecution’s table and the Blonde. She was staring straight ahead, sitting rigid as an I-beam—a gorgeously curved I-beam. Her four cohorts sat flanking her, whispering among themselves.
After about ten minutes, a clerk came out and told us that we were wanted in the judges’ chambers. I felt surprised, but Sam grinned as if he had expected it. The clerk went over and conferred briefly with the prosecution lawyers. They all got up and filed out of the courtroom, looking defeated. Even the Blonde seemed down, tired, lost. I felt an urge to go over and try to comfort her, but Sam grabbed me by the collar of my tunic and pointed me toward the slightly open door to the judges’ chambers.
Weatherwax was sitting alone on an imitation leather couch big enough for four; the other two judges were nowhere in sight. He had taken off his judicial robe, revealing a rumpled pale green business suit that made him look more amphibious than ever.
“What do you want, Gunn?” he growled as we sat on upholstered armchairs, facing him.
“I want my ships released and my business reopened,” Sam said immediately.
Weatherwax slowly blinked his bulging eyes. “Once this case is dismissed, that will be automatic.”
Dismissed? I was startled. Was it all over?
“And,” Sam went on, “I want full disclosure about the lichenoids. I want the scientists cleared of any attempt to hoodwink the public.”
Again the Toad blinked. “We can always blame the PR people; say they got the story slightly askew.”
Sam gave a short, barking laugh. “Blame the media, right.”
“Is that all?” Weatherwax asked, his brows rising.
Sam shrugged. “I’m not out to punish anybody. Live and let live has always been my motto.”
“I see.”
“Of course,” Sam went on, grinning impishly, “once you admit publicly that the lichenoids on Europa are a genetic experiment and not native life-forms, then the embargo on commercial development in the Jupiter system ends. Right?”
This time Weatherwax kept his froggy eyes closed for several moments before he conceded, “Right.”
Sam jumped to. his feet. “Good! That oughtta do it.”
The Toad remained seated. There was no attempt on the part of either of them to shake hands. Sam scuttled toward the door and I got up and went after him.
But Sam stopped at the door and turned back to the Toad. “Oh, yeah, one other thing. Now that we’ve come to this agreement, there’s no further need for you to keep the scientists bottled up on Europa. Let Dr. O’Toole come back here.”
Weatherwax tried to glare at Sam but it was pathetically weak.
“And tell your sexy lawyer underling to take her claws off O’Toole’s husband,” Sam added, with real iron in his voice. “Give those two kids a chance to patch up their marriage.”
Without even waiting for a response from the Toad, he yanked the door open and stepped outside. With me right behind him.
By dinnertime that evening the media were running stories about how Wankle’s chief public-relations consultant, Dr. Clyde Erskine of the University of Texas at Austin, had made a slight misinterpretation about the lichenoids on Europa. Sam whooped gleefully as we watched the report in our hotel suite.
He switched to the business news, which was also about the Europa “misinterpretation,” but which included the fact that the IAA had decided to lift the embargo on commercial development of the Jupiter system.
Sam howled and yelped and danced across our dinner table.
“Weatherwax moved fast,” I said, still sitting on the hard-backed chair while Sam did a soft-shoe around our dinner plates.
We had already been notified by the IAA that Sam’s ore carriers were no longer embargoed and Asteroidal Resources, Inc. was back in business.
Sam deftly jumped down to the floor and sat on the edge of the table, facing me.
“He’s got the power to move fast, Orville. The Toad has a reputation for good-deed-doing, but he’s really a power-clutching sonofabitch who’s spent the past ninety years or so worming his way into the top levels of a dozen of the solar system’s biggest corporations.”
“And the IAA,” I added.
“And he founded DULL to serve as a cloak for his plan to grab the whole Jupiter system for himself,” Sam went on, a little more soberly. “This plot of his has been years in the making. Decades.”
“And now it’s unraveled, thanks to you.”
Sam pretended to blush. “I am quietly proud,” he said softly.
I leaned back in my chair. “To think that none of this would have happened if it hadn’t been for the Porno Twins….”
Sam’s face went quizzical. “Oh, it would have happened, one way or the other,” he said, with a puckish grin. “The Twins just provided the opportunity.”
I gaped at him. “You mean you were after Weatherwax all along? From before …” His grin told me more than any words. “Then your testimony was a fabrication?”
“No, no, no,” Sam insisted, jumping to his feet so he could loom over me. That’s hard to do, at his height, so I stayed seated and let him loom. “The Twins’ emergency was real and the only way I could save them was to make that dash out to Jupiter, just like I testified.”
“Really?”
He shrugged. “More or less.”
“You had this all scoped out from the beginning, didn’t you? You knew the whole business and …” I stopped talking, lost in stunned admiration for Sam’s long-range planning. And guts.
He was making like a Jack-o’-lantern again. “Why do you think Weatherwax got himself appointed a judge?”
“So he could make sure you were found guilty,” I said.
“Yeah, maybe, if things worked out the way he wanted them to. But he also wanted to be on the judge’s panel so that if things didn’t work out his way, he could stop the trial and cut a deal with me.”
“Which is what he did.”
“You betcha!”
“But why didn’t you take Dr. O’Toole back with you? You left her on Europa.”
“Had to,” Sam said. “Majerkurth showed up with his team and threatened to blow holes in Joker if I didn’t let her go. I tried to drop an empty oxygen bottle on him, but it missed him and hit one of the PR flacks he had brought along with him.”
I laughed. “So that was the basis of the assault charge.”
“And the attempted murder, too. I would’ve offed Majerkurth if I’d thought it would’ve helped Anitra. As it was, I was outgunned. So I had to let her go—after promising her that I’d fix everything toot sweet.”
“Well, you did that, all right. I’ll bet she’s on her way home to her husband right now.”