Humphries disengaged himself and, without another word, walked out of the bar. The crowd stirred at last and broke into dozens of conversations. Several people crowded around Fuchs and Amanda, congratulating them, offering to work on their craft. The Pelican’s proprietor declared drinks on the house and there was a general rush toward the bar.
Pancho Lane, though, sidled through the crowd and out the door into the tunnel, where Humphries was walking alone toward the power stairs that led down to his mansion at Selene’s lowest level. In a few long-legged lunar strides she caught up to him.
“I thought they threw you out of Selene,” she said.
Humphries had to look up at her. Pancho was lean and lanky, her skin a light mocha, not much darker than a white woman would get in the burning sunshine of her native west Texas. She kept her hair cropped close, a tight dark skullcap of ringlets.
He made a sour face. “My lawyers are working on an appeal. They can’t exile me without due process.”
“And that could take years, huh?”
“At the very least.”
Pancho would gladly have stuffed him into a rocket and fired him off to Pluto. Humphries had sabotaged Starpower 1 on its first—and, so far, only—mission to the Belt. Dan Randolph had died because of him. It took an effort of will for her to control her temper.
As calmly as she could manage, Pancho said, “You were pretty damn generous back there.”
“A gesture to true love,” he replied, without slowing his pace.
“Yeah. Sure.” Pancho easily matched his stride.
“What else?”
“For one thing, that spacecraft ain’t yours to give away. It belongs to—”
“Belonged,” Humphries snapped. “Past tense. We wrote it off the books.”
“Wrote it off? When? How in hell can you do that?”
Humphries actually laughed. “You see, Ms. Director? There are a few tricks to being on the board that a greasemonkey like you doesn’t know about.”
“I guess,” Pancho admitted. “But I’ll learn ’em.”
“Of course you will.”
Pancho was newly elected to the board of directors of Astro Manufacturing, over Humphries’s stern opposition. It had been Dan Randolph’s dying wish.
“So we’ve written off Starpower 1 after just one flight?”
“It’s already obsolescent,” said Humphries. “The ship proved the fusion drive technology. Now we can build better spacecraft, specifically designed for asteroid mining.”
“And you get to play Santy Claus for Amanda and Lars.”
Humphries shrugged.
The two of them walked along the nearly-empty tunnel until they came to the power stairs leading downward.
Pancho grabbed Humphries by the shoulder, stopping him at the top of the moving stairs. “I know what you’re up to,” she said.
“Do you?”
“You figger Lars’ll go battin’ out to the Belt and leave Mandy here in Selene.”
“I suppose that’s a possibility,” Humphries said, shaking free of her grip.
“Then you can move in on her.”
Humphries started to reply, then hesitated. His face grew serious. At last he said, “Pancho, has it ever occurred to you that I really love Amanda? I do, you know.”
Pancho knew Humphries’s reputation as a womanizer. She had seen plenty of evidence of it.
“You might tell yourself that you love her, Humpy, but that’s just because she’s the only woman between here and Lubbock that won’t flop inta bed with you.”
He smiled coldly. “Does that mean that you would?”
“In your dreams!”
Humphries laughed and started down the stairs. For a few moments Pancho watched him dwindling away, then she turned and headed back toward the Pelican Bar.
As Humphries rode down to Selene’s bottommost level, he thought, Fuchs is an academic, the kind who’s never had two pennies in his hands at the same time. Let him go out to the Belt. Let him see how much money he can make, and all the things that money can buy. And while he’s doing it, I’ll be here at Amanda’s side.
By the time he reached his palatial home, Humphries was almost happy.
DATA BANK: THE ASTEROID BELT
Millions of chunks of rock and metal float silently, endlessly, through the deep emptiness of interplanetary space. The largest of them, Ceres, is barely a thousand kilometers wide. Most of them are much smaller, ranging from irregular chunks a few kilometers long down to the size of pebbles. They contain more metals and minerals, more natural resources, than the entire Earth can provide.