The three of them turned questioning eyes to him.
“One of you will have to change your job, get a position with Selene’s maintenance department.”
“Is that possible?” asked Amarjagal.
“It should be,” Fuchs replied. “You’re all qualified technicians. You have identity dossiers from Astro Corporation.”
“I’ll do it,” said Nodon.
“Good.”
“And after Nodon begins working for the maintenance department?” Amarjagal asked.
Fuchs eyed her dispassionately. Of the three, she was the feistiest, the most likely to ask questions. Is it because she’s a woman? Fuchs wondered.
“I’ll have to acquire an identification chip for myself, so I can get down to Selene’s lowest level.”
“How can you get one?”
“I’ll need help,” he admitted.
The three Asians looked at him questioningly.
“I’ll call Pancho. I’m sure she can get an identification tag for me that will give me access to Humphries’s grotto.”
He was grasping at a straw and he knew it. Even worse, when he called Pancho from one of the phones set along the walkways of the machinery spaces, he was told that Ms. Lane was away from her office and unavailable.
“Where is she?” Fuchs asked.
“Ms. Lane is unavailable at present,” the phone’s synthesized voice answered. “Please leave your name and someone will get back to you as soon as possible.”
Fuchs had no intention of leaving his name. “Can I reach her, wherever she is?”
“Ms. Lane is unavailable at present,” the computer replied cheerfully.
“How long will she be gone?”
“That information is unknown, sir.”
Fuchs thought swiftly. No sense trying to pry information out of a stupid machine, he thought. Besides, he didn’t want to stay on the phone long enough to draw the attention of Selene’s security monitors.
“Tell her that Karl Manstein called and will call again.”
Feeling desperate, trapped, he punched the phone’s OFF key.
It wasn’t easy to surprise Douglas Stavenger. No matter that he had been officially retired from any formal office for decades, he still kept himself informed on everything that happened in Selene. And beyond, to a considerable extent.
He knew that his wife was pressing the news media chief for more coverage of the war raging out in the Belt. He knew that the corporations were pushing in the opposite direction, to keep the story as hushed up as possible. The Starlight tragedy had forced some light into the situation, but both Astro and Humphries Space Systems exerted every gram of their enormous power to move the media off the story as quickly as possible.
But now, as he sat at the breakfast table with his wife, Stavenger was truly shocked by her revelation.
“You’re going to Ceres?”
Edith smiled prettily over her teacup. “Nobody else wants to open up this story, Doug, so I’m going to do it.”
He fought down an impulse to shake his head. For several moments he said nothing, staring at his bowl of yogurt and honey, his thoughts spinning feverishly.
Yet when he looked up at her again all he could think to say was, “I don’t like it, Edie.”
“I’m not sure that I like it myself, darling, but somebody’s got to do it and I don’t see anyone else stepping up to the task.”
“It’s dangerous out there.”
Her smile widened. “Now who’s going to harm the wife of Doug Stavenger? That would bring Selene into the war, wouldn’t it?”
“Not automatically, no.”
“No?” She arched a brow at him.
He conceded, “I imagine the corporations would fear Selene’s response.”
“If anyone harmed me,” she went on, quite seriously, “you’d see to it that Selene came into the war on the other side. Right? And that would throw the balance of power against the corporation that harmed me. Wouldn’t it?”
He nodded reluctantly.
“And that would decide the war. Wouldn’t it?”
“It could.”
“It would, and you know it. Everybody knows it, including Pancho Lane and Martin Humphries.” She took another sip of tea, then put the cup down with a tiny clink of china. “So I’ll be perfectly safe out there.”
“I still don’t like it,” he murmured.
She reached across the little table and grasped his hand. “But I’ve got to, Doug. You can see that, can’t you? It’s important: not just to me but to everybody involved, the whole solar system, for god’s sake.”