But now he felt uneasy about this supposed fat, dumb freighter. It’s a trap, he heard a voice in his mind warning him. And he remembered that Amanda’s latest abbreviated message had included a piece of information from Big George to the effect that Humphries’s people were setting up decoy ships, “Trojan horses,”
George called them, armed with laser weapons and carrying trained mercenary troops whose mission was to lure Fuchs into a fatal trap.
“George says it’s only a rumor,” Amanda had said hastily, “but it’s a rumor that you should pay attention to.”
Fuchs nodded to himself as he stared at the image of the ship on the display screen. Some rumors can save your life, he thought.
To the woman piloting the ship he commanded, “Change course. Head back deeper into the Belt.”
She wordlessly followed his order.
“We leave the ship alone?” Nodon asked.
Fuchs allowed the corners of his mouth to inch upward slightly into a sour smile, almost a sneer. “For the time being. Let’s see if the ship leaves us alone once we’ve turned away from it.”
Sitting in the command chair on the bridge of W. Wilson Humphries, Dorik Harbin was also watching the display screens. He clenched his teeth in exasperation as he saw the ship that had been following them for several hours suddenly veer away and head back into the depths of the Belt.
“He suspects something,” said his second-in-command, a whipcord-lean Scandinavian with hair so light she seemed almost to have no eyebrows. She had a knack for stating the obvious.
Wishing he were alone, instead of saddled with this useless crew of mercenaries, Harbin muttered, “Apparently.”
The crew wasn’t useless, exactly. Merely superfluous. Harbin preferred to work alone. With automated systems he had run his old ship, Shanidar, by himself perfectly well. He could go for months alone, deep in solitude, killing when the time came, finding solace in his drugged dreaming.
But now he had a dozen men and women under his command, his responsibility, night and day. Diane had told him that Humphries insisted on placing troops in his decoy ships; he wanted trained mercenaries who would be able to board Fuchs’s ship and carry back his dead body.
“I tried to talk him out of it,” Diane whispered during their last night together, “but he won’t have it any other way. He wants to see Fuchs’s dead body. I think he might have it stuffed and mounted as a trophy.”
Harbin shook his head in wonder that a man with such obsessions could direct a deadly, silent war out here among the asteroids. Well, he thought, perhaps only a man who is obsessed can direct a war. Yes, he answered himself, but what about the men who do the fighting? And the women? Are we obsessed, too?
What difference? What difference does any of it make? How did Kayyam put it?
The Worldly Hope men set their Hearts upon Turns Ashes—or it prospers; and anon, Like Snow upon the Desert’s dusty face Lighting a little Hour or two—is gone.
What difference do our own obsessions make? They turn to ashes or prosper. Then they melt like snow upon the desert. What difference? What difference?
He heard his second-in-command asking, “So what are we going to do? He’s getting away.”
He said calmly, “Obviously, he doesn’t believe that we’re carrying ores back to Earth. If we turn around and chase him we’ll simply be proving the point.”
“Then what do we do?” the Scandinavian asked. The expression on her bony, pale face plainly showed that she wanted to go after the other ship.
“We continue to behave as if we are an ore-carrier. No change in course.”
“But he’ll get away!”
“Or come after us, once we’ve convinced him that we’re what we pretend to be.”
She was clearly suspicious of his logic, but murmured, “We play cat and mouse, then?”
“Yes,” said Harbin, glad to have satisfied her. It didn’t seem to matter to her which one of the two ships was the cat and which the mouse.
In Selene, Douglas Stavenger stood by his office window, watching the kids out in the Grand Plaza soaring past on their plastic wings. It was one of the thrills that could only be had on the Moon, and only in an enclosed space as large as the Grand Plaza that was filled with breathable air at normal Earthly pressure. Thanks to the light gravity, a person could strap wings onto her arms and take off to fly like a bird on nothing more than her own muscle power. How long has it been since I’ve done that? Stavenger asked himself. The answer came to him immediately: too blasted long. He chided himself, For a retired man, you don’t seem to have much fun.