Edith had dinner with the ship’s captain and one of his officers, a young Asian woman who said little but listened attentively to the ship’s passenger and her skipper.
“We’ll be vectoring out of the radiation cloud tomorrow,” the captain announced cheerfully, over his plate of soymeat and mushrooms. “Ceres is well clear of the cloud’s predicted path.”
“You don’t seem worried about it,” Edith said.
He made a small shrug. “Not worried, no. Respectful, though. Our radiation shielding is working, so we’re in no danger. And by this time tomorrow we should be out of it altogether.”
“Will the cloud reach the Belt at all?” she asked.
“Oh yes, it’s too big and intense to dissipate until it’s well past the orbit of Jupiter. Ceres is well clear of it, but a good half of the Belt is going to be bathed in lethal radiation.”
Edith smiled for him and turned her attention to her own dinner of bioengineered carp fillet.
After dinner, Edith went to her cabin, sent a laser-beamed message to her husband back at Selene, then started working on the first segment of the documentary she had planned.
Sitting on the tiny couch of her cabin with the video camera perched on its mobile tripod by the bed, she decided to forgo the usual Edie Elgin cheerleader smile. Covering a war was a serious matter.
“This is Edie Elgin, aboard the torch ship Elsinore,” she began, “riding out to the Asteroid Belt, where a deadly, vicious war is taking place between mercenary armies of giant corporations. A war that could determine how much you pay for electrical energy and all the natural resources that are mined in the Belt.”
She got to her feet and walked slowly around the little cabin, the camera automatically pivoting to keep her in focus.
“I’ll be living in this cabin for the next six days, until we arrive at Ceres. Most of the men and women who go out to the Belt to work as miners or prospectors or whatever travel in much less comfortable quarters.”
Edith went to the door and out into the passageway. The camera trundled after her automatically on its tripod as she began to show her viewers the interior of the torch ship. As she spoke, she hoped that this segment wouldn’t be too boring. If it is I can cut it down or eliminate it altogether, she thought. I don’t want to bore the viewers. That is, assuming anybody wants to watch the show once it’s finished.
Cromwell was cruising toward the Belt at a more leisurely pace, allowing the radiation cloud to engulf it. The ship’s five-person crew could not feel the radiation that surrounded the ship nor see it, except in graphs the computer drew from the ship’s sensors.
“The shielding is working fine,” the skipper kept repeating every few minutes. “Working just fine.”
His four crew members wished he’d change the subject.
Eventually, he did. “Set course thirty-eight degrees azimuth, maintain elevation.”
Embedded in the radiation cloud, Cromwell headed toward Vesta.
Suddenly panicked, Pancho stabbed at the panel of buttons in the elevator. The cab lurched to a stop and the doors slid open. The pounding, growling, roaring sounds of construction immediately blasted her ears but she paid them no attention as she walked briskly out into the unfinished expanse.
She saw that she wasn’t at the topmost level, the dome where there was an airlock that led to the rocket hoppers sitting outside. Must be a rampway that leads up, she thought hopefully. Better stay away from the elevators.
A construction worker driving an orange tractor yelled at her in Japanese. Pancho couldn’t understand his words, but she recognized the tone: What the hell are you doing here? Get back where you belong!
With a grin she hollered back to him, “That’s just what I’m trying to do, buddy. Which way is up?”
The head of base security was perspiring visibly. Nobuhiko glared at the black man and demanded, “Well, where is she? She has to be someplace!”
Yamagata had left his interrogation team in their silly green gowns and bustled off to the security chief’s office, tearing off the surgical gown they had given him and throwing it angrily to the floor as his own quartet of bodyguards hastened along behind him.