Then he pictured how happy Fatima would be when he returned to Algiers, wealthy and happy at last. He would be able to shower her with diamonds and rich gowns of silk with gold threading. Perhaps even acquire a second wife. He was so pleased that he decided to take a full meal from his meager foodstocks, instead of his usual handful of boiled couscous.
But first he would register his claim with the International Astronautical Authority. That was important. No, before that, he must make his prayer to Allah. That was more important.
He realized he was nearly babbling out loud. Taking a deep breath to calm himself, Qurrah decided, prayer first, then register with the IAA, then celebrate with a whole meal.
He kept his ship spinning all the time, counterbalancing his habitation unit with the power generator and other equipment at the end of the kilometer-long tether. Not for him the long months in microgee, with his muscles going flabby and his bones decalcifying so that he would have to spend even longer months in lunar orbit rebuilding his body cells. No! Qurrah lived in almost a full earthly gravity.
So he had no trouble unfurling his prayer rug once he had taken it from its storage cabinet. He was spreading the rug on the one uncluttered area of his compartment when his communications receiver chimed.
A message? He was startled at the thought. Who would be calling me out here, in this wilderness? Only Fatima and the IAA knows where I am—and the people back at Ceres, of course, but why would they call a lonely prospector?
Fatima! he thought. Something has happened to her. Something terrible.
His voice trembled as he answered, “This is the Star of the East. Who is calling, please?”
A bearded man’s face appeared on his main screen. He looked almost Asian to Qurrah, or perhaps Hispanic.
“This is Shanidar. You are trespassing on territory that belongs to Humphries Space Systems, Incorporated.”
“This rock?” Qurrah was instantly incensed. “No sir! There is no registered claim for this asteroid. I was just about to send in my own claim when you hailed me.”
“You haven’t registered a claim for it?”
“I am going to, right now!”
The bearded man shook his head, very slightly, just a small movement from side to side.
“No you’re not,” he said.
They were the last words Qurrah ever heard. The laser blast from Shanidar blew a fist-sized hole through the thin hull of his ship. Qurrah’s death scream quickly screeched to silence as the air rushed out and his lungs collapsed in massive hemorrhages of blood.
THE PUB
George Ambrose cradled his stone mug of beer in both his big paws. They call it beer, he grumbled inwardly. Haven’t seen a decent beer since I came out here. Fookin’ concoction these rock rats call beer tastes more like platypus piss than anything else. The real stuff was available, but the price was so high for anything imported that George gritted his teeth and sipped the local brew.
As joints went, the Pub wasn’t so bad. Reminded George of the Pelican Bar, back at Selene, except for the twins in their spray-paint bikinis. They worked behind the bar, under the protective eye of the owner/barkeep. More’n two hundred and sixty million kilometers away, the old Pelican was. Nearly a week’s flight, even in the best of the fusion ships.
He looked over the crowd. The Pub was a natural cave in Ceres’s porous, rocky crust. The floor had been smoothed down but nobody’d ever bothered to finish the walls or ceiling. Be a shame to leave this behind when we move to the habitat, George thought. He’d grown fond of the joint.
Everything in the Pub was either scavenged or made from asteroidal materials. George was sitting on an old packing crate, reinforced by nickel-iron rods and topped with a stiff plastic cushion cadged from some ship’s stores. The table on which he was leaning his beefy arms was carved rock, as was his mug. Some of the crowd were drinking from frosted aluminum steins, but George preferred the stone. The pride and joy of the The Pub was its bar, made of real wood ferried in here by the daft old doddv who owned the joint. Maybe he isn’t so daft, George mused. He’s makin’ more money than I am, that’s for sure. More money than any of these rock rats.