“You’re crazy!”
“Am I? Perhaps so. But I would rather be crazy than give in to you.”
“You’re just going to get yourself killed,” Humphries said.
“Is that a threat?”
Again Humphries looked at Verwoerd, then turned back to Fuchs. He smiled thinly. “I don’t make threats, Fuchs. I make promises.”
Fuchs got to his feet. “Then let me make a promise in return. If you want to fight, I can fight. If you want a war, I’ll give you a war. And you won’t like the way I fight, I promise you that. I’ve studied military history; it was required in school. I know how to fight.”
Humphries leaned back in his desk chair and laughed.
“Go ahead and laugh,” Fuchs said, pointing a stubby finger at him. “But consider: you have a great deal more to lose than I do.”
“You’re a dead man, Fuchs,” Humphries snapped.
Fuchs nodded agreement. “One of us is.”
With that, he turned and strode out of Humphries’s office.
For several moments, Humphries and Verwoerd sat there staring at the doorway Fuchs had gone through.
“At least he didn’t slam the door,” Humphries said with a smirk.
“You’ve made him angry enough to fight,” Verwoerd said, with a troubled frown. “You’ve backed him into a corner and now he feels he has nothing to lose by fighting.”
Humphries guffawed. “Him? That little weasel? It’s laughable. He knows how to fight! He’s studied military history!”
“Maybe he has,” she said.
“So what?” Humphries replied testily. “He’s from Switzerland, for god’s sake! Hardly a martial nation. What’s he going to do, smother me in Swiss cheese? Or maybe yodel me to death.”
“I wouldn’t take it so lightly,” said Verwoerd, still looking at the empty doorway.
CHAPTER 17
“Piracy?” Hector Wilcox’s eyebrows rose almost to his silver-gray hairline.
Erek Zar looked uncomfortable, unhappy, as the two men strolled along the lane through the park just outside the IAA office building. Spring was in the air, the trees were beginning to bud, the local St. Petersburg populace was thronging the park, glad to see the sun. Women were sunbathing on the grass, their long dark coats thrown open to reveal their lumpy, thick bodies clad only in skimpy bikinis. It’s enough to make a man take a vow of celibacy, Wilcox thought, eying them distastefully.
Zar was normally a placid, cheerful, good-natured paper shuffler whose most urgent demands were for an extra day off here and there so he could nip off to his family in Poland for a long weekend. But now the man’s ruddy, round face was dead serious, flushed with emotion.
“That’s what he’s charging,” Zar said. “Piracy.” Wilcox refused to have his postprandial constitutional destroyed by an underling suddenly gone bonkers. “Who is this person?”
“His name is Lars Fuchs. Tomasselli brought the matter to me. Fuchs is accusing Humphries Space Systems of piracy, out in the Asteroid Belt.”
“But that’s ridiculous!”
“I agree,” Zar said swiftly. “But Tomasselli’s taken it seriously and opened an official file on it.”
“Tomasselli,” said Wilcox, as if the word smelled bad. “That excitable Italian. He saw a conspiracy when Yamagata made that takeover offer to Astro Corporation.”
“The takeover was never consummated,” Zar pointed out, “mainly because Tomasselli got the GEC to go on record as opposing it.”
“And now he’s taking accusations of piracy seriously? Against Humphries Space Systems?”
Nodding unhappily, Zar said, “He claims there’s some evidence to substantiate the accusation, but as far as I can see it’s all circumstantial.”
“What on earth does he expect me to do about it?” Wilcox grumbled mildly. He was not the kind of man who lost his self-control. Not ever. You didn’t get as far up on the intricate chain of command of the International Astronautical Authority as he had by recklessly blowing off steam.
“It’s an open file now,” Zar said, apologetically.
“Yes. Well, I suppose I’ll have to look it over.” Wilcox sighed. “But, really, piracy? In the Asteroid Belt? Even if it’s true, what can we do about it? We don’t even have an administrator on Ceres, for goodness’ sake. There isn’t an IAA presence anywhere in the Belt.”
“We have two flight controllers at Ceres.”