George said nothing, but I could see the wheels turning behind that wild red mane of his.
“It could mean an influx of money for your people,” Sam went on, in his best snake-oil spiel. “A hotel here in orbit around Ceres, rich tourists flooding in. Lots of money.”
George unbent his arms, but he still remained standing. “What’s all this got to do with Fuchs?”
“Shiploads full of rich tourists might make a tempting target for a pirate.”
“Bullshit”
“You don’t think he’d attack tour ships?”
“Lars wouldn’t do that. He’s not a fookin’ pirate. Not in that sense, anyway.”
“I’d rather hear that from him,” Sam said. “In fact, I’ve got to have his personal assurance before my backers will invest in the scheme.”
George stared at Sam for a long moment, deep suspicion written clearly on his face. “Nobody knows where Lars is,” he said at last. “You might as well go back home. Nobody here’s gonna give you any help.”
We left the bar with Big George glowering at our backs so hard I could feel the heat. Following the maps on the wall screens in the passageways, we found the adjoining rooms that I had booked for us.
“Now what?” I asked Sam as I unpacked my travel bag.
“Now we wait.”
Sam had simply tossed his bag on the bed of his room and barged through the connecting door into mine. We had packed for only a three-day stay at Ceres, although we had more gear stowed in Achernar. Something had to happen pretty quick, I thought.
“Wait for what?” I asked.
“Developments.”
I put my carefully folded clothes in a drawer, hung my extra pair of wrinkle-proof slacks in the closet, and set up my toiletries in the lavatory. Sam made himself comfortable in the room’s only chair, a recliner designed to look like an astronaut’s couch. He cranked it down so far I thought he was going to take a nap.
Sitting on the bed, I told him, “Sam I’ve got to call Judge Meyers.”
“Go right ahead,” he said.
“What should I tell her?”
“Tell her we’ll be back in time for the wedding.”
I doubted that.
Two days passed without a word from anyone. Sam even tried to date Belinda, he was getting so desperate, but she wouldn’t have anything to do with him.
“They all know Fuchs,” Sam said to me. “They like him and they’re protecting him.”
It was common knowledge that Humphries had sworn to kill Fuchs, but Amanda had married Humphries on the condition that he left Fuchs alone. Everybody in Ceres, from Belinda the barmaid to the last rock rat, thought that we were working for Humphries, trying to find Fuchs and murder him. Or at least locate him, so one of Humphries’s hired killers could knock him off. Fuchs was out there in the Belt somewhere, cruising through that dark emptiness like some Flying Dutchman, alone, taking a strangely measured kind of vengeance on unmanned Humphries ships.
I had other fish to fry, though. I wanted to find out what was on the chip that Amanda had given Sam. Her message to her ex-husband. What did she want to tell him? Fuchs was a thorn in Humphries’s side; maybe only a small thorn, but he drew blood, nonetheless. Humphries would pay a fortune for that message, and I intended to sell it to him.
But I had to get it away from Sam first.
Judge meyers was not happy with my equivocating reports to her. Definitely not happy.
There’s no way to have a conversation in real time between Ceres and Earth; the distance makes it impossible. It takes nearly half an hour for a message to cross one way, even when the two bodies are at their closest. So I sent reports to Judge Meyers and—usually within an hour—I’d get a response from her.
After my first report she had a wry grin on her face when she called back. “Garrison, I know it’s about as easy to keep Sam in line as nailing tapioca to a wall in zero-gee. But all the plans for the wedding are set; it’s going to be the biggest social event of the year. You’ve got to make sure that he’s here. I’m depending on you, Garrison.”
A day later, her smile had disappeared. “The wedding’s only a week from now, Garrison,” she said after my second call to her. “I want that little scoundrel at the altar!”
Third call, the next day: “I don’t care what he’s doing! Get him back here! Now!”
That’s when Sam came up with his bright idea.
“Pack up your duds, Gar,” he announced brightly. “We’re going to take a little spin around the Belt.”
I was too surprised to ask questions. In less than an hour we were back in Achernar and heading out from Ceres. Sam had already filed a flight plan with the IAA controllers. As far as they were concerned, Sam was going to visit three specific asteroids, which might be used as tourist stops, if and when he started his operation in the Belt. Of course, I knew that once we cleared Ceres there was no one and nothing that could hold him to that plan.
“What are we doing?” I asked, sitting in the right-hand seat of the cockpit. “Where are we going?”
“To meet Fuchs,” said Sam.
“You’ve made contact with him?”
“Nope,” Sam replied, grinning as if he knew something nobody else knew. “But I’m willing to bet somebody has. Maybe Big George. Fuchs saved his life once, did you know that?”
“But how—?”
“It’s simple,” Sam answered before I could finish the question. “We let it be known that we want to see Fuchs. Everybody says they don’t know where he is. We go out into the Belt, away from everything, including snoops who might rat out Fuchs to Martin Humphries. Somebody from Chrysalis calls Fuchs and tells him about us. Fuchs intercepts our ship to see what I want. I give him Amanda’s message chip. QED.”
It made a certain amount of sense. But I had my doubts.
“What if Fuchs just blasts us?”
“Not his style. He’s only attacked unmanned ships.”
“He wiped out an HSS base on Vesta, didn’t he? Killed dozens.”
“That was during the war between him and Humphries. Ancient history. He hasn’t attacked a crewed ship since he’s been exiled.”
“But suppose—”
The communications console pinged.
“Hah!” Sam gloated. “There he is now.”
But the image that took form on the comm screen wasn’t Lars Fuchs’s face. It was Jill Meyers’s.
She was beaming a smile that could’ve lit up Selene City for a month. “Sam, I’ve got a marvelous idea. I know you’re wrapped up in some kind of mysterious mission out there in the Belt, and the wedding’s only a few days off so …”
She hesitated, like somebody about to spring a big surprise. “So instead of you coming back Earthside for the wedding, I’m bringing the wedding out to you! All the guests and everything. In fact, I’m on the torch ship Statendaam right now! We break Earth orbit in about an hour. I’ll see you in five days, Sam, and we can be married just as we planned!”
To say Sam was surprised would be like saying Napoleon was disturbed by Waterloo. Or McKenzie was inconvenienced when his spacecraft crashed into the Lunar Apennines. Or—well, you get the idea.
Sam looked stunned, as if he’d been poleaxed between the eyes. He just slumped in the pilot’s chair, dazed, his eyes unfocused for several minutes.
“She can’t come out here,” he muttered at last.
“She’s already on her way,” I said.
“But she’ll ruin everything. If she comes barging out here Fuchs’ll never come within a light-year and a half of us.”
“How’re you going to stop her?”
Sam thought about that for all of a half-second. “I can’t stop her. But I don’t have to make it easy for her to find me.”