As it was, the Belt was so huge that even if George stuck close to the ecliptic, he could be halfway to hell by now. A few days at high thrust could push a ship all the way back to Earth. Or out past Jupiter.
Still, there was nothing more that Fuchs could do but fly his expanding spiral, and sweep with his radar at high angles above and below his position while he moved away from the asteroid.
He set the course, then got into his spacesuit to slither down the long buckyball cable that connected Starpower’s habitation unit with the equipment module. The hollow cable was big enough for a person to squeeze through, but it was not pressurized. You had to wear a suit, and that made crawling along the kilometer-long cable a long, arduous chore. Still, Fuchs had nothing else to do, and he wanted to see the laser that George had left behind.
Dorik Harbin was searching, too.
He had picked up Starpower’s telemetry signals within hours of Fuchs’s leaving Ceres and tracked the departing ship from a safe distance.
Before the day was out, however, the telemetry signal had abruptly cut off. Harbin debated moving close enough to the ship to sight it visually, but before he could make up his mind to do that, the telemetry came back on and showed that Starpower was moving again, cutting diagonally across the Belt at high thrust.
Where could he be going? Harbin asked himself. He must have a specific destination in mind, going at that velocity.
He matched Starpower’s course and speed, staying far enough behind the departing spacecraft that he wouldn’t be spotted. Even if Fuchs was cautious enough to probe behind him with radar, the beam would be so scattered by his own engine’s exhaust that he’d never see me, Harbin knew. He stayed within the shadow of Fuchs’s exhaust cloud and trailed Starpower—he thought. Actually he was following Fuchs’s escape pod.
Again he thought of Grigor’s comment: destroy Starpower and all this hunting and killing might be finished. I’ll get my money and a considerable bonus, Harbin thought. I can go back to Earth and find a safe area and live like an emir for the rest of my life.
Where would the best place be, on Earth? I want a warm climate, safe from the rising sea levels, no earthquakes, stable government. A wealthy country, not one where half the population is starving and the other half plotting revolution. Canada, perhaps. Or Australia. They have very tight restrictions of immigration, but with enough money a man can go wherever he wants. Maybe Spain, he thought. Barcelona is still livable, and Madrid hasn’t had a food riot in years.
CHAPTER 26
Hiring reliable people was Amanda’s biggest headache. She worried about her husband sailing all alone out into the Belt, trying like so many others to strike it rich. Or was he? Her greatest fear was that Lars was out seeking revenge on Humphries by attacking HSS ships. Even if he didn’t get killed he’d become an outlaw, a pariah. She tried to force such thoughts out of her mind as she worked at restarting their supply business on the insurance money from the fire.
Labor was at a premium on Ceres. Most of the people who came out to the Belt went prospecting, intent on finding a rich asteroid and becoming wealthy from its ores. Even the experienced hands who had learned from bitter experience that most prospectors barely broke even, while the big corporations raked in the profits from selling ores, still went out time and again, always seeking the “big one” that would make their fortunes. Or they worked as miners, taking the ores from asteroids either as corporate employees or under contract to one of the big corporations. Miners didn’t get rich, but they didn’t starve, either.
Amanda had taken courses in economics at college. She understood that the more asteroids were mined, the more plentiful their metals and minerals, the lower their value. A corporation like Astro or HSS could afford to work on a slim profit margin, because they handled such an enormous volume of ores. A lone prospector had to sell at market prices, and the price was always far below their starry-eyed dreams.