“Forty-eight percent,” he muttered, heading for the lav.
“It’s more hard cash than we had when we started Helvetia, darling.”
He knew she was trying to cheer him. “Yes, that’s true, isn’t it?” he said as he washed his face. His hands were grimy with soot, too, he saw.
He let the dryer blow over his face, noisy and rattling, remembering the luxury of having actual cloth towels at the hotel in Selene. We could do that here, Fuchs told himself. Vacuum clean them on the surface just as they do at Selene. It would save us electrical power, if we could keep the dust from up on the surface out of the laundry.
“Any word from Starpower?” he asked as he stepped back into the main room.
“She’s on the way in,” Amanda said. “She’ll be here when the lease is up, at the end of the month.”
“Good.”
Amanda’s expression turned grave. “Lars, do you think it’s a good idea for you to take Starpower out? Can’t you hire a crew and stay here?”
“Crews cost money,” he said. “And we’d have to share whatever we find with the crew. I can handle the ship by myself.”
“But you’ll be alone….”
He knew what she meant. Ships had disappeared out in the Belt. And he was marked for murder by Humphries.
“I’ll be all right,” he said. “They won’t know where I’m going.”
Amanda shook her head. “Lars, all they have to do is tap into the IAA’s net and they’ll see your tracking beacon. They’ll know exactly where you are.”
He almost smiled. “Not if the tracking beacon is coming from a drone that I release a day or so after I’ve left Ceres.”
She looked totally surprised. “But that would be a violation of IAA regulations!”
“Yes, it would. It would also make my life much safer.”
The work of cleaning up the charred mess of his warehouse took several days. It was hard to find men or women to do the menial labor; they demanded the same level of pay they could get working someone’s computer systems or crewing one of the prospecting ships. So Fuchs hired all four of the teenagers on Ceres. They were eager to have something to do outside of their school hours, happy to be away from their lesson screens, happier still to be earning spendable money. Still, Fuchs did most of the labor himself, since the kids could only work a couple of hours each day.
After several days, though, the four youngsters failed to show up for work. Fuchs phoned each of them and got a variety of lame excuses.
“My parents don’t want me working.”
“I got too much studying to do.”
Only one of them hinted at the truth. “My father got an e-message that said he could lose his job if he let me work for you.”
Fuchs didn’t have to ask who the father worked for. He knew: Humphries Space Systems.
So he labored alone in the warehouse cave, finally clearing out the last of the charred debris. Then he started putting together new shelving out of discarded scraps of metal from the maintenance bays.
One evening, as he scuffed wearily along the dusty tunnel after a long day of putting up his new shelving, Fuchs was accosted by two men wearing HSS coveralls.
“You’re Lars Fuchs, aren’t you?” said the taller of the pair. He was young, not much more than a teenager himself: his dirty-blond hair was cropped close to his skull, and his coverall sleeves were rolled up past his elbows. Fuchs saw tattoos on both his forearms.
“I am,” Fuchs answered, without slowing down.
They fell in step with him, one on either side. The shorter of the two was still a couple of centimeters taller than Fuchs, with the chunky build of a weightlifter. His hair was long and dark, his face swarthy.
“I’ve got a piece of friendly advice for you,” said the taller one. “Take your insurance money and leave Ceres.”
Still shuffling along the tunnel, Fuchs said, “You seem to know something about my business.”
“Just get out of here, before there’s trouble,” the other one said. His accent sounded Latino.