Gesturing to the sofa, he said, “Have a seat. Have you had breakfast?”
Instead of sitting down, Pancho asked, “Is that a trick question? Astro employees are up at the crack of dawn every day, boss, and twice on Sundays.”
Randolph laughed. “Coffee? Tea? Anything?”
“Can I use your computer for a minute?” she asked.
He looked puzzled, but said, “Sure, go ahead.” Louder, he called, “Computer, guest voice.”
Pancho went to the desk and leaned over the upright display screen. She gave her name and the computer came to life. Within a few seconds, she waved Randolph over to look at the screen.
He peered at the display. “What the hell’s that?”
“Martin Humphries’s personal menu of programs.”
“Humphries?” Randolph sank into his desk chair.
“Yep. I hacked into his machine last night. You can tap in anytime you want.”
Randolph looked up at Pancho, then back at his screen. “Without his knowing it?”
“Oh, he’ll figger it out sooner or later, I guess. But right now he doesn’t know it.”
“How the hell did you do this?”
Pancho smiled at him. “Magic.”
“H’mp,” Randolph grunted. “It’s a shame you couldn’t do this a few days earlier.”
“How come?”
“We’re partners now.”
“You and Humphries? Partners?”
“Humphries, Selene and Astro. We’ve formed a limited partnership: Starpower, Limited.”
“Hot spit! Where can I buy stock?”
“It’s not public. Duncan and his people will get a block of shares, but otherwise, it’s Humphries, me, and the good citizens of Selene. It should help keep Selene’s taxes down, if it works.”
Feeling a bit disappointed, Pancho grumbled, “Oh, just the big boys, huh?”
Randolph gave her a sly grin. “I suppose,” he said, running a finger across his chin, “that we’ll award a few shares here and there, for exceptional performances.”
“Like piloting a bird to the Belt and back.”
Randolph nodded.
“Okay,” Pancho said, with enthusiasm. “Meanwhile, you can poke into Humphries’s files anytime you want to.”
Randolph cleared the screen with a single, sharp, “Exit.” To Pancho, he said, “You’re wasting your time jockeying spacecraft. You make a mighty fine spy, kid.”
“I’d rather fly than spy,” she said.
Randolph looked at her. He’s got really neat eyes, she thought. Gray, but not cold. Deep. Flecked with gold. Nice eyes.
“I’m not sure that I want to poke into Humphries’s files,” he said.
“No?”
“A man named Stimson was the U. S. Secretary of State back a century or more ago,” Randolph said. “When he found out that the State Department was routinely intercepting the mail from the foreign embassies in Washington he stopped the practice. He said, ‘Gentlemen do not read each other’s mail. ‘ Or something like that.”
Pancho snorted. “Maybe you’re a gentleman, but Humphries sure ain’t.”
“I think you’re half right.”
“Which half?”
Instead of answering, Randolph tapped a button on the phone console. The big Australian came through the door from the outer office almost instantly.
“You two know each other?” Randolph asked. Without waiting for a reply from either of them, he said, “George Ambrose, Pancho Lane.”
“Pleased,” said Big George. Pancho made a quick smile.
“George, who do we have who can download a complete hard drive without letting the hard drive’s owner know it?”
Big George glanced at Pancho, then asked, “You want this done as quiet as possible, right?”
“Absolutely right.”
“Then I’ll do it meself.”
“You?”
“Don’t look so surprised,” George said. “I used to be an engineer, before I hooked up with you.”
“You were a fugitive from justice before you hooked up with me,” Randolph countered.
“Yeah, yeah, but before that. I came to the Moon to teleoperate tractors up on the surface. My bloody degree’s in software architecture, for chrissakes.”
“I didn’t know that,” Randolph said.
“Well now you do. So what needs doing here?”
“I’d like you to work with Pancho here. She’ll explain the problem.”
George looked at her. “Okay. When do we start?”
“Now,” said Randolph. Then, to Pancho, he added, “You can tell George anything you’d tell me.”
“Sure,” Pancho agreed. But in her mind she added, Maybe.
factory #4
“This is more like it,” said Dan.
He heard Kris Cardenas’s nervous laughter in his helmet earphones.