O’Banian realized she had been holding her breath. She let it out with a gush, surprised at how displeased she felt. She had hoped that Humphries would do the gentlemanly thing and resign from the board.
“But let me tell you this,” Humphries added, with an upraised finger. “When the costs mount up and the whole idea collapses around our heads, don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
O’Banian took another breath, then said, “Thank you, Martin, on behalf of the entire board.”
But Humphries’s clique on the board still opposed the Jupiter project. The best they would agree to was to allow Pancho to seek a partner that would share at least one quarter of the project’s costs. Failing that, the board would not allow the program to be started.
“A partner?” Pancho groused. O’Banian threw her a sharp warning look. If Pancho complained openly that no one would join Astro in such a partnership, it merely proved Humphries’s point that the idea was impractically far-fetched.
“I think you might open up a dialogue with some of the major utilities corporations,” O’Banian suggested. “After all, they have the most to gain from an assured supply of fusion fuels.”
“Yeah,” Pancho mumbled. “Right.”
As the meeting broke up and the board members made their way out of the conference room, muttering and chattering to one another, Humphries came up to O’Banian.
“Are you satisfied?” he asked, in a low, confidential voice.
“I’m sorry it had to come to this, Martin,” she replied.
“Yes, I can see how sorry you are.” He glanced across the room, to where Pancho was talking to the old red-faced man as they filed out of the room. “Clever work, using Pancho as your stalking horse.”
O’Banian was genuinely shocked. “Me? Using…?”
“It’s all right,” Humphries said, smiling thinly. “I expect sneak attacks now and then. It’s all part of the game.”
“But, Martin, I had no idea—”
“No, of course you didn’t. Well, go ahead with this Jupiter nonsense, if you can find some idiot foolish enough to go along with you. Once it flops I’ll be able to use it to get you off the board. And that damned grease monkey, too.”
WALTZING MATILDA
“What spooks me,” George was saying, “is how the fookin’ bastard knew where our antennas were.”
He and Nodon were taking off their spacesuits, dog-tired after a five-hour EVA. They had patched the laser-punched holes in the propellant tanks, but most of the hydrogen and helium had already leaked away. Their communication antennas, even the backups, were slagged and useless.
“He must have had complete specs on this ship,” Nodon said, as he lifted off the torso of his hard-shell suit and placed it carefully on its rack. “Every detail.”
“Every fookin’ detail,” George agreed. He sat on the tiny bench in front of the suit racks, filling it so completely that Nodon sat on the deck to start removing his boots. George felt too weary even to bend over and pull his boots off.
Piece by piece they finished unsuiting at last, then made their way to the galley. George mused aloud, “Y’know, somebody must’ve given him the specs for this ship.”
“Yes,” Nodon agreed, trailing along behind him. The passageway was too narrow for them to proceed side by side.
“But who? This is a piece of private property, its specs aren’t public knowledge. You can’t look ’em up in a fookin’ net site.”
Nodon scratched his lean, bristly chin, then suggested, “Could he have access to the manufacturer’s records?”
“Or to the maintenance files at Ceres, maybe,” George muttered.
“Yes, that is possible.”
“Either way,” said George, with growing conviction, “it has to be somebody in Humphries Space Systems. Their people do the maintenance on it.”
“Not Astro?”
“Naw. HSS offered me a bargain price if I signed up for the maintenance contract.”
“Then it must be someone in HSS,” Nodon agreed.
“But why? Why did the bastard attack us?”
“To invalidate the claim to the asteroid, certainly.”
George shook his head irritatedly. “There’s millions of rocks in the Belt. And Humphries is the richest shrewdie in the fookin’ solar system. What’s he need a lousy asteroid claim for?”