For most of the next week, Eros would be the closest asteroid to Earth. The films would be running constantly.
Suddenly Lars stopped chewing. His hand moved. The film ran back a little. Stopped.
There it was. One frame was whited out almost to the corners.
Lars moved the film to a larger scanner and began running it through, slowly, starting several frames back. Twice he used the magnifying adjustment. Finally he muttered, "Idiots."
He crossed the room and began trying to find Ceres with a maser.
The duty man picked up the earphones with his usual air of weary patience. He listened silently, knowing that the source was light-minutes away. When the message began to repeat he thumbed a button and said, "Jerry, find Eros and send the following. Recording. Thank you, Eros, your message received in full. Well get right on it, Lars. Now I've got news for you." The man's colorless voice took on a note of relish. "From Tanya. The 'doc says in seven months you'll be the father of healthy twin girls. Repeat, twin girls…"
Carefully, with a constant tapping of fingers on at-thuds jet buttons, Lit Shaeffer brought his ship into dock at Confinement's pole. A constant thirty miles below, Ceres was a pitted boulder spotted with glassy-looking bubbles of flexible transparent plastic. He rested for a little- docking was always tricky, and Confinement's rotation was unsettling even at the axis- then climbed out the lock and jumped. He landed in the net above the nearest of the ten personnel airlocks. Like a spider on a web, he climbed down to the steel door and crawled in. Ten minutes later, after passing through twelve more doors, he reached the locker room.
A mark piece rented him a locker and he stowed his suit and jet pack inside, revealing himself as a scrawny giant with dark, curly hair and a mahogany tan confined strictly to his face and hands. He bought a paper coverall from a dispenser. Lit and Marda were among the several hundred Belters who did not become nudists in a shirtsleeve environment. It marked them as kooks, which was not a bad thing in the Belt.
The last door let him out behind the heat shield, still in free fall. A spring lift took him four miles down to where he could get a tricycle motor scooter. Even Belter couldn't keep a twowheeler upright against Confinement's shifting Coriolis force. The scooter took him down a steep gradient which leveled off into plowed fields, greenhouses, toiling farm machinery, woods streams and scattered cottages. In ten minutes he was home.
No, not really home. The cottage was rented from what there was of a Belt government. A Belter's home is the interior of his suit. But with Marda waiting in-side, dark and big-boned and just beginning to show her pregnancy, it felt like homecoming.
Then Lit remembered the coming fight. He hesitated a moment, consciously relaxing, before he rang.
The door disappeared, zzzip. They stood facing each other.
"Lit," said Marda, flatly, as if there was no surprise at all. Then, "There's a call for you."
"I'll take care of that first."
In the Belt as on Earth, privacy was rare and precious. The phone booth was a transparent prism, soundproof. Lit sneaked a last look at Marda before he answered the call. She looked both worried and determined.
"Hello, Cutter. What's new?"
"Hello, Lit. That's why I'm calling," said the duty man at Ceres. Cutter's voice was colorless as always. So was his appearance. Cutter would have looked appropriate dispensing tickets or stamps from behind a barred window. "Lars Stiller just called. One of the honeymoon specials to Titan just took off without calling us. Any comments?"
"Comments? Those stupid, bubbleheaded-" The traffic problem in space was far more than a matter of colliding spacecraft. No two spacecraft had ever collided, but men had died when their ships went through the exhaust of a fusion motor. Telescopic traffic checks, radio transmissions, rescue missions, star and asteroid observations could all be thrown out of whack by a jaywalker.
"That's what I said, Lit. What'll we do, turn 'em back?"
"Oh, Cutter, why don't you go to Earth and start your own government?" Lit rubbed his temples hard with both hands, rubbing away the tension. "Sorry. I shouldn't have said that. Marda's having trouble, and it's bugging me. But how can we turn back thirty honeymooning flatlanders, each a multimillionaire? Things are tense enough now. Want to start the Last War?"
"I guess not. Sorry to hear about Marda. What's wrong?"
"She didn't get here in time. The baby's growing too fast."
"That's a damn shame."
"Yeah."
"What about the honeymooner?"
Lit turned his thoughts away from the coming storm. "Assign somebody to watch her and broadcast her course. Then write up a healthy bill for the service and send it to Titan Enterprises, Earth. If it isn't paid in two weeks we send a copy to the UN and demand action."
"Figures. 'Bye, Lit."
Conceived in free fall, gestated in free-fall for almost three months, the child was growing too fast. The question could smash a marriage: Let the 'doc abort now? Or wait, slow the child's growth with the appropriate hormone injections, and hope that it wouldn't be born a monster?
But there was no such hope.
Lit felt like he was drowning. With a terrible effort he kept his voice gentle. "There'll be other children, Marda."
"But will there? It's so risky, hoping I can get to Confinement before it's too late. Oh, Lit, let's wait until we're sure."
She'd waited three months between 'doc checks! But Lit couldn't say so now, or ever. Instead he said, "Marda, the autodoc is sure, and Dr. Siropopolous is sure. I'll tell you what I've been thinking, We could take a house right here in Confinement until you're pregnant again. It's been done before. Granted it's expensive-" The phone rang.
"Yes?" he barked. "Cutter, what's wrong now-"
"Two things. Brace yourself."
"Go ahead."
"One. The honeymooner is not going to Titan. It seems to be headed in the direction of Neptune."
"But- Better give me the rest of it."
"A military ship just took off from Topeka Base. It's chasing the honeymooner, and they didn't call us this time either!"
"That's more than peculiar. How long is the honeymooner on its way?"
"An hour and a half. No turnover yet, but of course it could be headed for any number of asteroids."
"Oh, that's just great." Lit closed his eyes for a moment. "It almost sounds like something's wrong with the honeymooner, and the other ship's trying a rescue mission. Could something have blown in the lifesupport system?"
"I'd guess not, not in the Golden Circle. Honeymooners have fail-safe on their fail-safe. But you'd better hear the punch line."
"Fire."
"The military ship took off from the field on its fusion drive."
"Then-" There was only one conceivable answer. Lit began to laugh. "Somebody stole it!"
Cutter smiled thinly. "Exactly. Once again, shall we turn either of them back?"
"Certainly not. For one thing, if we threaten to shoot we may have to do it. For another, Earth is very touchy about what rights they have in space. For a third, this is their problem, and their ships. For a fourth, I want to see what happens. Don't you get it yet, Cutter?"
"My guess is that both ships have been stolen." Cutter was still smiling.
"No, no. Too improbable. The military ship was stolen, but the honeymooner must have been sabotaged. We're about to witness the first case of space piracy!"
"O-o-oh. Fifteen couples, and all their jewels, plus, uh,
ransom you know, I believe you're right!" And Lit Shaeffer was the first man in years to hear Cutter laugh in public.