Instead, the wallscreen showed Amanda’s beautiful face. Fuchs felt a rush of joy that she had called. Then he saw that she looked tired, concerned.
“Lars, darling, I’m just calling to wish you well at the hearing and to tell you that I love you. Everything here is going quite well. The prospectors are giving us more business than we can handle, and there hasn’t been a bit of trouble from any of the HSS people.”
Of course not, Fuchs thought. They don’t want to raise any suspicions while this hearing is going on.
“Good luck in the hearing, darling. I’ll be waiting for you to call and tell me how it turned out. I miss you. I love you!”
Her image winked out, the wallscreen went blank. Fuchs glanced at the clock on his bed table, then swiftly ordered the computer to reply to her message.
“The hearing begins in half an hour,” he said, knowing that by the time Amanda heard his words the meeting would almost be starting. “I’m sorry I didn’t bring you with me. I miss you, too. Terribly. I’ll call as soon as the hearing ends. And I love you, too, my precious. With all my heart.”
The phone chimed again. This time it was Pancho. “Rise and shine, Lars, ol’ buddy. Time to get this bronco out of the chutes.”
Fuchs was disappointed that Humphries did not show up for the hearing. On thinking about it, though, he was not surprised. The man is a coward who sends others to do his dirty work for him, he thought.
“Hey, look,” Pancho said as they entered the conference room. “Doug Stavenger’s here.”
Stavenger and half a dozen others were sitting in the comfortable wheeled chairs arranged along one wall of the room. The conference table had been moved to the rear wall and set out with drinks and finger foods. A smaller table was at the other side of the room, flanked by two chairs already occupied by men in business suits. One of them was overweight, ruddy, red-haired; the other looked as lean and jittery as a racing greyhound. They each held palmcomps in their laps. The wallscreen behind the table showed the black and silver logo of the International Astronautical Society. Two clusters of chairs had been arranged in front of the table. George and Nodon were already seated there. Fuchs saw that the other set was fully occupied by what he presumed to be HSS personnel.
“Good luck, buddy,” Pancho whispered, gesturing Fuchs toward the chairs up front. She went back to sit beside Stavenger.
Wondering idly who was paying for the food and drink that had been set out, Fuchs took the chair between Big George and Nodon. He had barely sat down when one of the men seated up front announced, “This hearing will come to order. Mr. Hector Wilcox, chief counsel of the International Astronautical Authority, presiding.”
Everyone got to their feet, and a gray-haired distinguished-looking gentleman in a Saville Row three-piece suit came in from the side door and took his place behind the table. He put a hand-sized computer on the table and flicked it open. Fuchs noticed that an aluminum carafe beaded with condensation and a cut crystal glass rested on a corner of the table.
“Please be seated,” said Hector Wilcox. “Let’s get this over with as efficiently as we can.”
It begins, Fuchs said to himself, his heart thudding under his ribs, his palms suddenly sweaty.
Wilcox peered in his direction. “Which of you is Lars Fuchs?”
“I am,” said Fuchs.
“You have charged Humphries Space Systems with piracy, have you not?”
“I have not.”
Wilcox’s brows shot toward his scalp. “You have not?”
Fuchs was amazed at his own cheek. He heard himself say, “I do not charge a corporation with criminal acts. I charge a person, the man who heads that corporation: Martin Humphries.”
Wilcox’s astonishment turned to obvious displeasure.
“Are you implying that the acts you call piracy—which have yet to be established as actually occurring—were deliberately ordered by Mr. Martin Humphries?”
“That is precisely what I am saying, sir.”
On the other side of the makeshift aisle, a tall, dark-haired woman rose unhurriedly to her feet.