It’s gone, he kept repeating to himself. They’ve smashed everything. I’m ruined.
I can’t stay here on Haven, he told himself. Umber will organize a group of citizens and boot me out. Then, with a shudder of comprehension, he realized, But I can’t go back to Earth! They’ll kill me! I owe them deliveries of Rust that I can’t make good! Dacco and his bosses will want me dead!
The hospital had quieted down. Its corridors were crowded with people on stretchers—bandaged, battered, sedated—nurses and orderlies bending over them, administering medications.
But where is Raven? Tómas wondered as he searched through the crowded hallways.
A beefy orderly loomed before him. “I’m sorry, sir, but you can’t go roaming through the corridors. We have a lot of work to do—”
“I’m looking for my fiancée,” Tómas replied. “Raven Marchesi.”
“Is she among the injured?”
“I don’t think so. I don’t know!”
The orderly fished his pocket phone from his rumpled white trousers. “Ms. Raven Marchesi. You have a visitor—”
Past the orderly’s burly shoulder, Tómas saw Raven walking up the corridor toward him, her hair disheveled, her dress spotted with blood, her face tired but still beautiful.
She saw Tómas and broke into a run. He pushed past the orderly and opened his arms to her.
They enfolded each other.
“You’re all right?” he asked. “Not hurt?”
“I’m fine,” she gasped. “Now.”
The orderly broke into a grin. “All right. Will the two of you please clear out of here and let us do our work?”
Arm in arm, Raven and Tómas walked to her quarters. The habitat’s passageways seemed strangely empty; the usual clusters of pedestrians were few and far between.
“Everybody’s gone home,” Raven said softly. “There’s been enough excitement. Too much.”
Tómas asked, “Alicia?”
Raven had to take in a breath before she could reply, “One… one of the guards smashed her head in. It was gruesome. Terrible.”
He fell silent for several paces, then asked, “But you’re all right?”
Reaching to rub her back, “I’ve got a pain back here, but otherwise I’m okay.”
“You could’ve been killed.”
“But I wasn’t.”
“Thank God.”
She blinked at him. “I thought you were an atheist.”
“I am,” he said with a boyish grin. “But every now and then I wonder if I might be wrong.”
Raven smiled and twined her arms around his neck. They kissed passionately, there in the middle of the empty passageway.
Nearly empty. A teenaged boy came skimming by on a pair of jetskates and made a 180-degree turn as he zipped past them, grinning hugely.
Tómas frowned. “Are they allowed to run on jets in the passageways?”
“Who cares?” said Raven.
QUESTIONS
Reverend Umber was sitting up on his hospital bed, one side of his face covered by a bandage from his temple to his chin.
Evan Waxman stood at the foot of the bed, his head hung low, both his hands clutching the bed’s railing as if it were a safety buoy in the midst of a churning, frothing sea.
“They destroyed the Chemlab facilities,” Waxman was saying, in a low dismal tone. “Everything’s smashed.”
Umber started to nod, winced with pain. “So I’ve been told.”
“It’s all gone,” said Waxman.
“And good riddance to it.”
Drawing himself up a little straighter, Waxman said, “There was nothing illegal about it. We have no laws against narcotics here in Haven.”
“That was my oversight,” Umber responded. “I should have had the Council outlaw narcotics.”
“I saw to it that none of it was sold here. The local population—”
“Rust was used here, Evan. Don’t try to deny it.”
Waxman’s head sank lower.
Umber said gently, “You know I can’t keep you as chief administrator.”
“I didn’t do anything illegal.”
“But immoral.”
Waxman raised his head and stared into Umber’s eyes. “You didn’t care about that as long as I was bringing in the money to keep this habitat going!”
“Yes, that’s true enough. I share the responsibility.”
“So?”
“So we’ll start over. Clean and new.”
“And be bankrupt before the year is out.”
“The Lord will provide.”
Waxman’s expression soured. “Kyle, you can’t expect people to eat hope. Haven is heading for catastrophe.”
For a long moment Umber said nothing. Then, in a whisper, “I know it.”
“What are you going to do about it?”
“I don’t know… yet.”
“You’re a dreamer! A hopeless dreamer!”
“I am a dreamer,” Umber admitted. “But I’m not without hope.”
Waxman shook his head.
“But what about you? I presume you’ll return to Earth.”
For the first time, Waxman’s face showed fear. “I… I don’t know. I don’t think so.”
“I can’t give you much of a recommendation.”
“They’ll kill me!” Waxman burst out. “I owe them a shipment of Rust that I can’t deliver now. If I return to Earth they’ll have me killed.”
Umber’s eyes went wide. “Kill you?”
“Yes.”
“What kind of people have you been dealing with, Evan?”
With a bitter smile, Waxman replied, “Not your churchgoing type.”
Gordon Abbott frowned at the image on his office wall screen. It showed Harvey Millard, executive director of the Interplanetary Council, sitting in his office in Copenhagen, on Earth.
He doesn’t think the data are conclusive, Abbott almost growled to himself.
The distance between Uranus and Earth made normal conversation impossible. It took more than two hours for light to travel one-way between the two. Abbott fidgeted with impatience as he tried to do some work on the report he was writing while he waited for Millard’s response to his message.
In the image frozen on his screen, Millard was smiling slightly. He was a smallish man. Even seated in his desk chair he looked undersized, diminutive: shoulders slim, torso slender, trim little moustache. But the expression on his face was intelligent, inquisitive, with light brown eyes alert and probing.
Abbott knew that one does not become executive director of the IC through family connections or the good will of friends. Beneath his nearly frail appearance, Harvey Millard was a veritable lion.
“Not conclusive,” Millard replied at last. “Not entirely. Very suggestive, of course, but the astronomers aren’t going to rip up their cherished theories without overwhelming evidence.”
“Gomez and Zworkyn are working night and day to provide the evidence,” Abbott said, somewhat testily. “They could use some help.”
And then the inevitable wait. Abbott had been at this “conversation” since early morning. It was maddening.
At last Millard nodded minimally. “So I understand. But your facilities out there at Uranus are rather limited, aren’t they?”
Before Abbott could frame a reply, Millard went on, “Pity.” Pursing his lips momentarily, he went on, “I suppose I should take a jaunt out to where you are and look things over for myself.”
“You’d come all the way out here?” Abbott blurted.
And then waited.
At last Millard replied, “I believe I have to. See the evidence, talk with this Gomez fellow and the engineer. They’ve stirred the pot rather vigorously, haven’t they?”