“Nodon!” Fuchs called.
The young Asian stepped through the open hatch. He glanced nervously at the captain lying on the deck, then at the frightened crewwoman.
“See that no one enters the bridge,” Fuchs said, tossing the hand torch to him. “Use that on anyone who tries to get in here.”
Nodon gestured the woman toward the hatch as Fuchs sat in the command chair and studied the control board. Not much different from Starpower or the other vessels he’d been on.
“What about the captain?” the crewwoman asked. He was groaning softly, his legs starting to move a little.
“Leave him here,” said Fuchs. “He’ll be all right.”
She left and Nodon swung the hatch shut behind her.
“Lock it,” Fuchs ordered.
The captain sat up, rubbed at the back of his neck, then looked up blearily at Fuchs sitting at the controls.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” the captain growled.
“I’m trying to save my wife’s life,” Fuchs answered, pushing the ship’s acceleration to its maximum of one-half normal Earth gravity.
“This is piracy!” the captain snapped.
Fuchs swung around in the command chair. “Yes,” he said tightly. “Piracy. There’s a lot of it going around, these days.”
CHAPTER 38
“He’s what?” Hector Wilcox did not believe his ears.
Zar looked stunned as he repeated, “He’s taken over the Lubbock Lights. He’s accelerating at top speed to Ceres. Our flight controllers have ordered him to cease and desist, but he’s paying no attention to them.”
Wilcox sagged back in his desk chair. “By god, the man’s committed an act of piracy.”
“It would seem so,” Zar agreed cautiously. “According to our people on Ceres, someone broke into Fuchs’s warehouse and cleaned out everything. They murdered one of the people working there. A woman.”
“His wife?”
“No, an employee. But you can understand why Fuchs wants to reach Ceres as quickly as he can.”
“That doesn’t justify piracy,” Wilcox said sternly. “As soon as he arrives at Ceres, I want our people there to arrest him.”
Zar blinked at his boss. “They’re only flight controllers, not policemen.”
“I don’t care,” Wilcox said sternly. “I won’t have people flouting IAA regulations. This is a matter of principle!”
Diane Verwoerd had spent most of the morning combing her apartment for bugs. She found none, which worried her. She felt certain that Humphries had bugged her place; how else would he know what she was doing? Yet she could find no hidden microphones, no microcameras tucked in the ventilator grills or anywhere else.
Could Martin have been guessing about Bandung Associates? She had thought she’d covered her trail quite cleverly, but perhaps naming her dummy corporation after the city in which her mother had been born wasn’t so clever, after all.
Whatever, she decided. Martin knows that I’ve winkled him out of several choice asteroids and he’s willing to let that pass—if I carry his cloned baby for him.
She shuddered at the thought of having a foreign creature inserted into her womb. It’s like the horror vids about alien invaders we watched when we were kids, she thought. And she had heard dark, scary stories about women who carried cloned fetuses. It wasn’t like carrying a normal baby. The afterbirth bloated up so hugely that it could kill the woman during childbirth, they said.
But the rational part of her mind saw some possible advantages. Beyond the monetary rewards, this could put me in a position of some power with Martin Humphries, she told herself. The mother of his clone. That puts me in a rather special position. A very special position, actually. I might even gain a seat on his board of directors, if I play my cards well.
If I live through it, she thought, shuddering again.
Then she thought of Harbin. Beneath all that steely self-control was a boiling hot volcano, she had discovered. If I play him correctly, he’ll sit up and roll over and do any other tricks I ask him to perform. A good man to have at my side, especially if I have to deal with Martin after the baby is born.
The baby. She frowned at the thought, wondering, Should I tell Dorik about it? Eventually, I’ll have to. But not now. Not yet. He’s too possessive, too macho to accept the fact that I’ll be carrying someone else’s baby while I’m letting him make love to me. I’ll have to be very careful about the way I handle that little bit of news.