“I didn’t,” Humphries said.
“Then who else would’ve done it? Who’s sittin’ fat and happy while you and me bleed ourselves to death? Who stands to take over if Astro and HSS go broke?”
“Yamagata,” Humphries breathed.
“Yamagata?” Stavenger echoed, still not believing it.
“Yamagata,” Pancho insisted.
Stavenger turned back to his wall screen. “Phone, get Nobuhiko Yamagata. Top priority.”
Leeza Chaptal was back in her space suit, but this time it was covered in slick, shining oil. Still, she was trembling inside it as the airlock hatch swung open.
The metal cladding of the circular shaft was obviously eaten away down almost to the level of her eyes. But no further, she saw. In the twelve hours since she’d last been in the shaft, the nanomachines had progressed only a meter or so down the shaft.
“I think they’ve stopped,” she said into her helmet microphone.
“How can you be sure?” came the reply in her earphones.
Leeza unhooked the hand laser from her equipment belt. “I’m going to mark a line,” she said, thumbing the laser’s switch. A thin uneven line burned into the steel coating. She realized that her hands were shaking badly.
“Okay,” she said, backing through the hatch and pushing it shut. “I’ll come back in an hour and see if they’ve chewed past my mark.”
She clumped in the ungainly suit back to the next hatch and rapped on it. “Fill the tunnel with air and open up,” she ordered. “I’ve got to pee.”
“They’re leaving,” Edith saw.
Still standing in the bridge of Elsinore with the captain and Big George, she saw the ship that had destroyed the habitat accelerate away from the area, dwindling into the eternal darkness, its rocket thrusters glowing hotly.
“Running away from the scene of the crime,” said the captain.
George said nothing, but Edith could see the fury burning in his eyes. Suddenly he shook himself like a man coming out of a trance. Or a nightmare.
He started for the hatch.
“Where are you going?” the captain asked.
“Airlock,” George replied, over his shoulder. Squeezing his bulk through the hatch, he said, “Space suits. Gotta see if anybody’s left alive in Chrysalis.”
Edith knew there couldn’t be any survivors. But George is right, she thought. We’ve got to check.
And she stirred herself, realizing that she had to record this disaster, this atrocity. I’ve got to get this all on camera so the whole human race can see what’s happened here.
SELENE: PEACE CONFERENCE
Three days after the Chrysalis atrocity, the conference took place in Doug Stavenger’s personal office, up in the tower suite that housed Selene’s governing administrators and bureaucrats. It was very small, very private, and extremely well-guarded.
Only four people sat at the circular table in the center of the office: Pancho, Humphries, Nobuhiko Yamagata and Douglas Stavenger himself. No aides, no assistants, no news reporters or anyone else. Selene security officers were stationed outside the door and patrolled the corridors. The entire area had been swept for electronic bugs.
Once the four of them were seated, Stavenger began, “This meeting will be held in strict privacy. Only the four of us will know what we say.” The others nodded.
“None of us will leave this room until we have come to an agreement to stop this war,” Stavenger added, his face totally grim. “There will be no exceptions and no excuses. There’s a lavatory through that door,” he pointed, “but the only way out of here is through the door to the corridor and no one is leaving until I’m satisfied that we’ve reached a workable understanding.”
Humphries bristled. “What gives you the right to—”
“Several thousand dead bodies scattered across the Asteroid Belt,” Stavenger snapped. “I’m representing them. You are going to stop this damned war or you are going to starve to death right here at this table. There is no third option.”
Yamagata smiled uneasily. “I came here voluntarily, at your request, Mr. Stavenger. This is no way to treat a guest.”
Gesturing in Pancho’s direction, Stavenger replied, “Ms. Lane was your guest at the Nairobi base at Shackleton crater, wasn’t she? And you damned near killed her.”
Nobuhiko’s brows knit momentarily. Then he said, “I could call for help, you know.”