“Got a propellant tank,” Sam said, matter-of-factly. “Fuchs’ll close in for the kill now.”
I opened my eyes again. The stiletto was deeply gashed along its rear half, tumbling and spinning out of control. Gradually it pulled itself onto an even keel, then turned slowly and began to head away from the asteroid. I could see hot plasma streaming from one thruster nozzle; the other was dark and cold.
“He’s letting him get away,” Sam said, sounding surprised. “Fuchs is letting him limp back to Ceres or wherever he came from.”
“Maybe Fuchs is too badly damaged himself to chase him down,” I said.
“Maybe.” Sam didn’t sound at all sure of that.
We waited for another hour, huddled inside our suits in the beanbag of an asteroid. Finally Sam said, “Let’s get back to the ship and see what’s left of her.”
There wasn’t much. The hull had been punctured in half a dozen places. Propulsion was gone. Life support shot. Communications marginal.
We clumped to the cockpit. It was in tatters; the main window was shot out, a long ugly scar from a laser burn right across the control panel. The pilot’s chair was ripped, too. It was tough to sit in the bulky space suits, and we were in zero gravity to boot. Sam just hovered a few centimeters above his chair. I realized that my stomach had calmed down. I had adjusted to zero-gee. After what we had just been through, zero-gee seemed downright comfortable.
“We’ll have to live in the suits,” Sam told me.
“How long can we last?”
“There are four extra air regenerators in stores,” Sam said. “If they’re not damaged we can hold out for another forty-eight, maybe sixty hours.”
“Time enough for somebody to come and get us,” I said hopefully.
I could see his freckled face bobbing up and down inside his helmet. “Yep … provided anybody’s heard our distress call.”
The emergency radio beacon seemed to be functioning. I kept telling myself we’d be all right. Sam seemed to feel that way; he was positively cheerful.
“You really think we’ll be okay?” I asked him. “You’re not just trying to keep my hopes up?”
“We’ll be fine, Gar,” he answered. “We’ll probably smell pretty ripe by the time we can get out of these suits, but except for that I don’t see anything to worry about.”
Then he added, “Except…”
“Except?” I yelped. “Except what?”
He grinned wickedly. “Except that I’ll miss the wedding.” He made an exaggerated sigh. “Too bad.”
So we lived inside the suits for the next day and a half. It wasn’t all that bad, except we couldn’t eat any solid food. Water and fruit juices, that was all we could get through the feeder tube. I started to feel like a Hindu ascetic on a hunger strike.
We tried the comm system, but it was intermittent at best. The emergency beacon was faithfully sending out our distress call, of course, with our position. It could be heard all the way back to Ceres, I was sure. Somebody would come for us. Nothing to worry about. We’ll get out of this okay. Someday we’ll look back on this and laugh. Or maybe shudder. Good thing we had to stay in the suits; otherwise I would have gnawed all my fingernails down to the wrist.
And then the earphones in my helmet suddenly blurted to life.
“Sam! Do you read me? We can see your craft!” It was Judge Meyers. I was so overjoyed that I would have married her myself.
Her ship was close enough so that our suit radios could pick up her transmission.
“We’ll be there in less than an hour, Sam,” she said.
“Great!” he called back. “But hold your nose when we start peeling out of these suits.”
Judge Meyers laughed and she and Sam chatted away like a pair of teenagers. But then Sam looked up at me and winked.
“Jill, I’m sorry this has messed up the wedding,” he said, making his voice husky, sad. “I know you were looking forward to—”
“You haven’t messed up a thing, Sam,” she replied brightly. “After we’ve picked you up—and cleaned you up—we’re going back to The Rememberer and have the ceremony as planned.”
Sam’s forehead wrinkled. “But haven’t your guests gone back home? What about the boys’ choir? And the caterers?”
She laughed. “The guests are all still here. As for the entertainment and the caterers, so I’ll have to pay them for a few extra days. Hang the expense, Sam. This is our wedding we’re talking about! Money is no object.”
Sam groaned.
In a matter of hours we were aboard Judge Meyers’s ship, Parthia, showered, shaved, clothed and fed, heading to The Rememberer and Sam’s wedding. Sam was like Jekyll and Hyde: while he and I were alone together he was morose and mumbling, like a guy about to face a firing squad in the morning. When Judge Myers joined us for dinner, though, Sam was chipper and charming, telling jokes and spinning tall tales about old exploits. It was quite a performance; if Sam ever goes into acting he’ll win awards, I’m sure.
After dinner Sam and Judge Meyers strolled off together to her quarters. I went back to the compartment they had given me, locked the door, and took out the chip.
It was easier this time, since I remembered the keys to the encryption. In less than an hour I had Amanda’s hauntingly beautiful face on the display of my compartment’s computer. I wormed a plug into my ear, taking no chances that somebody might eavesdrop on me.
The video was focused tightly on her face. For I don’t know how long I just gazed at her, hardly breathing. Then I shook myself out of the trance and touched the key that would run her message.
“Lars,” she said softly, almost whispering, as if she were afraid somebody would overhear her, “I’m going to have a baby.”
Holy mother in heaven! It’s a good thing we didn’t deliver this message to Fuchs. He would’ve probably cut us into little pieces and roasted them on a spit.
Amanda Cunningham Humphries went on, “Martin wants another son, he already has a five-year-old boy by a previous wife.”
She hesitated, looked over her shoulder. Then, in an even lower voice, “I want you to know, Lars, that it will be your son that I bear, not his. I’ve had myself implanted with one of the embryos we froze at Selene, back before all these troubles started.”
I felt my jaw drop down to my knees.
“I love you, Lars,” Amanda said. “I’ve always loved you. I married Martin because he promised he’d stop trying to kill you if I did. I’ll have a son, and Martin will think it’s his, but it will be your son, Lars. Yours and mine. I want you to know that, dearest. Your son.”
Humphries would pay a billion for that, I figured.
And he’d have the baby Amanda was carrying aborted. Maybe he’d kill her, too.
“So what are you going to do about it, Gar?”
I whirled around in my chair. Sam was standing in the doorway.
“I thought I locked—”
“You did. I unlocked it.” He stepped into my compartment and carefully slid the door shut again. “So, Gar, what are you going to do?”
I popped the chip out of the computer and handed it to Sam.
He refused to take it. “I read her message the first night on our way to the Belt,” Sam said, sitting on the edge of my bed. “I figured you’d try to get it off me, one way or another.”
“So you gave it to me.”
Sam nodded gravely. “So now you know what her message is. The question is, what are you going to do about it?”
I offered him the chip again. “Take it, Sam. I don’t want it.”
“It’s worth a lot of money, Gar.”
“I don’t want it!” I repeated, a little stronger.
Sam reached out and took the chip from me. Then, “But you know what she’s doing. You could tell Humphries about it. He’d pay a lot to know.”