Asteroid Wars - The Precipice Part 36

STARPOWER 1.

Lars Fuchs was scowling as he peered at the display screen. "Well?" Dan prompted.

The two men stood in the cramped sensor bay, where Fuchs had rigged a makes.h.i.+ft laboratory by yanking one of the s.h.i.+p's ma.s.s spectrometers from its mounting and putting it on the repair bench where he was using it to examine the sample of dull gray wire that Pancho had brought in. A thin sky-blue coolant tube lay alongside the wire. Dan knew the wire had originally run through the tube, like an arm in a sleeve.

"There is no leak in the coolant line," Fuchs said. "I drove pressurized nitrogen through it and it didn't leak."

Dan felt puzzled. "Then what's causing the hot spot?"

Pointing to the tangle of curves displayed on the screen, Fuchs said, "The composition of the wire seems to match the specifications quite closely: yttrium, barium, copper, oxygen-all the elements are in their proper proportions."

"That doesn't tell us diddley-squat," Dan groused.

Fuchs's frown deepened as he studied the display. "The copper level seems slightly low."

"Low?"

"That might be a manufacturing defect. Perhaps that's the reason for the problem."

"But there's no leak?"

Fuchs rubbed his broad, square chin. "None that I can detect with this equipment. Really, we don't have the proper equipment for diagnosing this. We would need a much more powerful microscope and-"

"Dan, we're receiving a call for you," Amanda's voice came through the speaker in the sensor bay's overhead. "It's from George Ambrose, marked urgent and confidential."

"I'd better get back up to the bridge," Dan said. "Do the best you can, Lars, with what you've got."

Fuchs nodded unhappily. How can a man accomplish anything without the proper tools? he asked himself. With a heavy sigh, he turned back to the display screen while Randolph ducked through the hatch and headed forward.

What other sensors can I take from the set we have to examine this bit of wire? Everything we have here has been designed to measure gross chemical composition of asteroids, not fine details of a snippet of superconducting wire.

With nothing better that he could think of, Fuchs fired up the ma.s.s spectrometer again and took another sampling of the wire's composition. When the curves took shape on the display screen his eyes went wide with surprised disbelief.

George held one meaty hand over the earphone clamped to the side of his head, listening intently to Dan Randolph's tense, urgent voice. There was no video transmission; Dan had sent audio only.

"... you go with Blyleven to Stavenger himself and tell him what's happened. Stavenger can bypa.s.s a lot of red tape and get Selene's security people to turn the place upside down. You can't hide much in a closed community like Selene. A really thorough search will find Dr. Cardenas... or her body."

George nodded unconsciously as he listened. Once, ten years earlier, he had lived as a fugitive on the fringes of Selene, an outcast among other outcasts who called themselves the Lunar Underground. But they had survived princ.i.p.ally on the sufferance of Selene's "straight" community. They could exist on the fringes because n.o.body cared about them, as long as they didn't make nuisances of themselves.

George agreed with Dan, up to a point. If Selene's security cops wanted to find a person, there wasn't much chance of hiding. But a dead body could be toted outside, concealed in a tractor, and dumped in the barren wilderness of the Moon's airless surface.

"Okay, Dan," he half-whispered into the pin-mike at his lips. "I'll get to Stavenger and we'll find Dr. Cardenas, unless she's already dead."

Frank Blyleven was head of Astro corporate security. A round, florid-faced, jovial-looking man with thinning straw-colored hair that he wore down to his collar, Blyleven seemed to have a grandfatherly smile etched permanently on his face. It unnerved George to see the security director smiling as he explained about Dr. Cardenas's disappearance.

"This is way out of our league," he said, without the slightest change in expression. "I mean, I only have half-a-dozen people in my group. We chase down industrial espionage and petty theft, for the lord's sweet sake, not kidnappings."

George knew how well Astro's security team chased down petty theft. The Lunar Underground lived on small "borrowings" from corporate storerooms.

"Dan said we should go to Stavenger," said George.

Nodding cheerfully, Blyleven turned to his desktop phone and asked for Douglas Stavenger.

When George and Blyleven were ushered into Stavenger's office, up in the Grand Plaza, a fourth man was sitting in front of Stavenger's broad, glistening desk. Stavenger introduced him as Ulrick Maas, director of security for Selene. Maas looked like a real cop to George: muscular build, dark, suspicious eyes, scalp shaved bald.

"You realize that this may be nothing to get alarmed about," Stavenger said once all four men were seated. "But Kris Cardenas isn't the kind of woman who suddenly goes into hiding, so I think we ought to try to find her."

"She's in Humphries's place, down at the bottom level," George said flatly.

Stavenger leaned back in his desk chair. Maas stared at George through narrowed eyes; Blyleven looked as if he were thinking about much more pleasant things. Through the office windows George could see the broad expanse of the Grand Plaza. A couple of kids were flying above the greens.p.a.ce like a pair of birds, flapping their brightly-colored rented plastic wings.

Grimacing, Stavenger asked, "You're certain of that?"

"It's Humphries she was scared of," George replied. "Where else would he stash her?"

"That area down there is the property of the Humphries Trust," Maas pointed out. "Selene doesn't have legal authority to go in and search it."

"Not even if her life's on the line?" George asked.

Stavenger said to Maas, "Rick, I think you'll have to initiate a search."

"Of Humphries's place?" George asked.

"Of all of Selene proper," Stavenger said. "Humphries's place is a different matter." He turned to the phone and asked it to connect him with Martin Humphries.

"Dr. Cardenas?" Martin Humphries said to Stavenger's image on his patio wallscreen. "You mean the scientist?"

"Yes," said Stavenger, looking strained. "She's missing."

Humphries got up from the chaise longue on which he'd been reclining while he reviewed his father's holdings in Libya.

"I don't understand," he said to Stavenger's image, trying to look puzzled. "Why are you telling me about this?"

"The security office has initiated a search for her throughout Selene. I'd appreciate it if you allowed them to search your premises, as well."

"My home?"

"It's just a formality, Mr. Humphries," Stavenger said, with an obviously false smile. "You know security types: they want to dot every eye and cross every tee."

"Yes, I suppose they do," Humphries replied, smiling back. "I suppose someone could hide out in the gardens, couldn't they?"

"Or inside the house. It's rather large."

"H'mm, yes, I suppose it is-by Selene standards." He took a breath, then said reluctantly, "Very well, let them send a team down here. I have no objections."

"Thank you, sir."

"You're welcome," said Humphries. He snapped his fingers to shut down the connection. Then he went into the house, walking swiftly to his office.

He snapped his fingers as he entered the office. The phone screen lit up. "Get Blyleven down here on the double. I've got a job for him."

MARE NUBIUM.

The tractor plodded slowly along the bleak, empty expanse of Mare Nubium, of Mare Nubium, heading away from the ringwall mountains that marked Alphonsus and the site of Selene. heading away from the ringwall mountains that marked Alphonsus and the site of Selene.

Kris Cardenas fought to keep the terror from overcoming her. She could feel it, trembling deep inside her, crawling up into her throat, making her heart race so hard she could hear its pulse thundering in her ears.

"Where are you taking me?" she asked, her voice m.u.f.fled by the helmet of the s.p.a.cesuit they had put her into.

No response from the driver. Of course, Cardenas thought. They've disabled my suit's radio. A neat, high-tech way of gagging me.

The two goons who had picked her up the night before had brought her down to Humphries's extravagant place in Selene's lowest level. Martin Humphries had not deigned to meet her, but she knew whose place it was. The servants had been very polite, offering her food and drink and showing her to a comfortable guest suite where she'd spent the night. The door to the corridor had been locked, of course. She was a prisoner and she knew it, no matter how sumptuous her cell. extravagant place in Selene's lowest level. Martin Humphries had not deigned to meet her, but she knew whose place it was. The servants had been very polite, offering her food and drink and showing her to a comfortable guest suite where she'd spent the night. The door to the corridor had been locked, of course. She was a prisoner and she knew it, no matter how sumptuous her cell.

Strangely, she slept well. But thinking over the situation the next morning, after a maid had brought a breakfast tray into her sitting room, Cardenas reasoned that Humphries was going to murder her. He'll have to, she thought. He can't let me go and let me tell everyone that he's killed Dan Randolph.

With my help, she added silently. I'm an accomplice to murder. A blind, stupid, stubborn fool who didn't see what she didn't want to see. Not until it was too late.

And now I'm going to be murdered, too. Why else would they be taking me all the way out into the G.o.dforsaken wilderness?

The thought of being killed frightened her, intellectually, in the front lobe of her brain. But being outside on the surface of the Moon, out in the deadly vacuum with all the radiation sleeting in from deep s.p.a.ce, out here where humans were never meant to be-that terrified her deep in her guts. This tired little tractor had no pressurized cabin, no crew module; you had to be in a s.p.a.cesuit to survive for a minute out here.

This is a dead world, she thought as she looked through her helmet visor. The gray ground was absolutely dead, except for the cleated trails of other tractors that had come this way. No wind or weather would disturb those prints; they would remain in place until the Moon crumbled. Behind them, a lazy rooster tail of dust floated in the soft lunar gravity.

And beyond that, nothing but the gently undulating plain of barren rock, pockmarked with craters, some the size of finger-pokes, some big enough to swallow the tractor. Rocks strewn everywhere, like the playroom toys of careless children.

The horizon was too close. It made Cardenas feel even jumpier. It felt wrong, dangerous. In the airless vacuum there was no haze, no softening with distance. That abrupt horizon slashed across her field of view like the edge of a cliff.

She saw that the ringwall mountains of Alphonsus were almost below the horizon behind them.

"Where are we going?" she asked again, knowing it was useless.

Beside her, Frank Blyleven was no longer smiling. He sweated inside his s.p.a.cesuit as he drove the tractor. When he'd made his deal with Martin Humphries, it had been for nothing more serious than allowing Humphries to tap into Astro Corporation's communications net. A good chunk of money for practically no risk. Now he was ferrying a kidnapped woman, a n.o.bel scientist, for the lord's sweet sake! Humphries was going to have to pay extra for this.

Blyleven had to admit, though, that Humphries had smarts. Stavenger wants to search for Dr. Cardenas? Okay. Who better to spirit her out of Selene for a while than the head of Astro's security department? n.o.body asked any questions when he showed up at the garage already suited up, with another s.p.a.cesuited person alongside him.

"Got to inspect the communications antennas out on Nubium," he told the guard checking out the tractors. "We'll be out about six hours." Sure enough, three hours into his aimless wandering across the desolate mare, mare, he got a radio signal from Humphries's people. "Okay, bring her back." he got a radio signal from Humphries's people. "Okay, bring her back."

Smiling again, he leaned his helmet against Cardenas's so she could hear him through sound conduction.

"We're going back now," he said. "They'll have a team to meet you. You behave yourself when we get to the garage."

Kris Cardenas felt a huge surge of grat.i.tude well up inside her. We're going back. We'll be safe once we're back inside.

Then she realized that she was still Humphries's prisoner, and she wasn't really safe at all.

Dan felt simmering anger as he watched George's report on the wall-screen of the s.h.i.+p's wardroom.

"I was in on th' search of Humphries's place. It's big enough to hide a dozen people. We din't find Dr. Cardenas or any trace of her," George ended morosely.

"She must still be alive, then," Dan said. Then he blew out an impatient huff of breath as he realized that George wouldn't hear his words for another twenty minutes or so.

Pancho was sitting beside him in the wardroom, looking more puzzled than worried as George's image faded from the wallscreen.

"If they haven't found her body," Dan said to her, "it means she's probably still alive."

"Or they've stashed the corpse outside," Pancho suggested.

Dan nodded glumly.

"Why would Humphries want to kill Dr. Cardenas?" Pancho asked.

"Because she found out something that she wanted to tell me; something that Humphries doesn't want me to know."

"What?"

"How should I know?" Dan snapped.

Pancho grinned lamely. "Yeah, I guess that was a pretty dumb question."

Dan rubbed his chin, muttering, "Humphries knew the security people were coming to search his place so he just moved her somewhere else until the search was over. I'll bet a ton of diamonds she's back inside his house now. He'll want to keep her close."

"Prob'ly," Pancho agreed.

"I wish there was a way we could get somebody into Humphries's place without him knowing it," Dan mused.

Pancho sat up straighter "There is," she said, with a sly smile.

George counted it as a sign of Doug Stavenger's respect for Dr. Cardenas that he agreed to a private meeting.