“Astro might. Pancho—”
“He’s on Astro’s board of directors. Sooner or later he’ll take control of Astro, too. He’ll control everything! And everybody.”
Amanda had known all along that her husband would stick on this point. She had tried to keep it out of her mind, but there it was, in the open, standing between them.
“Lars,” she said slowly, picking her words with care, “whatever feelings Martin may have once had for me are long gone, I’m certain. There is no need to view this as a competition between you and he.”
He walked away from her, paced the little room in six strides and then turned back toward her, a barrel-chested bear of a man dressed in faded dark gray coveralls, his broad heavy-featured face glowering with distrust.
“But it is a competition, Amanda. Between Humphries Space Systems and Helvetia Limited. Between him and Astro, actually. We’re caught in the middle of it, whether we like it or not.”
“But we can get out of it,” she said. “You can take me back to Earth and we’ll be rid of Humphries and Astro and the rock rats for good.”
He strode to the bed and dropped to his knees before her. “I want to take you back home, dearest. I know how much you want to be away from here, how brave you’ve been to stay here with me—”
“I love you, Lars,” she said, reaching out to tousle his dark hair. “I want to be with you wherever you are.”
He sighed heavily. “Then we must remain here. At least for a little while longer.”
“But why…?”
“Because of them. The rock rats. Our neighbors and friends here on Ceres. We can’t leave them to Humphries.”
Amanda felt her eyes misting over. “We can’t let this opportunity pass us by, Lars. Please, please accept their offer.”
He started to shake his head stubbornly, but then he noticed the tears in her eyes. He got to his feet and sat heavily beside her again on the edge of the bed.
“Amanda, dearest, I can’t turn my back on all the people here. They trust me. They need me.”
“I need you, too, Lars,” Amanda said. “We’ve been out here for five years. I haven’t complained once, have I?”
“No, you haven’t,” he admitted. “You’ve been very wonderful.”
“I’m asking you now, Lars. I’m begging you. Please accept this offer and take me back home.”
He stared into her glistening eyes for long, silent moments.
She could see that he was thinking, searching for some way to do what she wanted without feeling that he had betrayed the other rock rats in the Belt.
At last he said, “Let me talk to Pancho.”
“Pancho? Why?”
“To see if Astro will make a similar offer.”
“And if they won’t?”
With obvious, painful reluctance, Fuchs said, “Then we’ll accept Humphries’s offer.”
“You will?”
He nodded, smiling sadly. “Yes, I’ll take his money and leave the Belt and bring you home to Earth.”
DOSSIER: JOYCE TAKAMINE
The name on her birth certificate read Yoshiko Takamine, but once she started at public school everyone called her Joyce. Her parents didn’t mind; they were fourth-generation Americans, with only a vague feeling of nostalgia for the family’s roots in Japan. The first time one of her schoolmates called her a “Jap,” Joyce thought she meant “Jewish American Princess. ”
Father moved them to the hills above Sausalito, but when the greenhouse floods wiped out most of the electrical power generation plants in the Bay area, they were plunged into darkness along with everyone else. Those were desperate times, with half the county thrown out of their jobs. No electricity, no work. Joyce’s class held their senior prom by candlelight, and there was talk of bringing in drilling companies to bore wells deep enough to tap the natural gas that lay kilometers below-ground.
All the kids had to find some kind of job to help support the family. Joyce did what her great-grandmother had done more than a century earlier: migrant stoop labor in the farms down in the rich valleys of California. The floods hadn’t reached that far inland, although prolonged drought was searing the orchards and vineyards mercilessly. It was hard, bitter work, picking fruits and vegetables beneath the hot sun while grim-faced men armed with shotguns kept on patrol against wandering bands of starving looters. They expected casual sex from the workers. Joyce quickly learned that it was better to please them than to go hungry.