Ben Bova - The Aftermath

Back on the Moon, Victor settled in to work on the slow but steady expansion of Selene’s underground accommodations. For more than a year he helped to design the resort complex at Hell Crater, then signed up with Astro Manufacturing when they began their new manufacturing base at the Malapert Mountains, near the lunar south pole. He’d become the father of a baby girl by then, and while still working on the Malapert designs Pauline became pregnant once more, this time with the son that he so badly wanted.

Victor was dragged into the Asteroid Wars almost by accident. Pancho Lane herself, CEO of Astro Manufacturing, asked him to head a small design team working on a space habitat that could serve as Astros military headquarters. Flattered, Victor completed the design within three months. He was aboard the unfinished habitat in its L-2 libration point site when it was attacked by ships of Humphries Space Systems. Victor was not injured, but seeing his construction project slagged into twisted structural beams and shattered living compartments angered him beyond words.

The Asteroid Wars had started as a personal feud between Martin Humphries and Lars Fuchs. An uneven battle: Humphries was the wealthiest man in the solar system, founder and master of Humphries Space Systems. Lars Fuchs was a lone individual, too proudly stubborn to bow down to Humphries. He had taken to piracy out in the dark depths of the Asteroid Belt as his only means of survival. The First Asteroid War ended in the only way it could, with Humphries triumphant and Fuchs exiled from the rock rats’ habitat at Ceres.

With peace came unemployment. Astro Corporation was not building any new facilities and Selene’s expansion had been halted for no one knew how long. Victor cashed in his modest savings, borrowed a lot more, and leased an aged ore vessel from Astro, which he dubbed Syracuse. With his young family he headed out to the Belt.

He became a rock rat, content to ply the Belt buying ores from the miners who worked the asteroids and transporting them to ships waiting at Ceres to carry the raw materials to the Earth/Moon system. While billions of international dollars changed hands, very-little profit remained for Victor Zacharias’s pockets. Yet he was contented. His children were growing, his wife was happy. Life was serene.

Until the Second Asteroid War broke out. This time there was no pretense: the war was a struggle for control of the Belt and its enormous resources, a struggle between Humphries Space Systems and Astro Corporation. Lars Fuchs was nothing more than an excuse for the two giant corporations to go to war.

Now Victor Zacharias sat hunched in Syracuse ’s control pod, sweating hard as he desperately tried to maneuver the lumbering ore ship out of range of the attacker’s fire.

The attacking ship, much more agile, was swinging clear of the jumble of rocks that Victor had released. In another few minutes, he saw, the attacker would have a clean shot at Syracuse ; then it would be merely a matter of time before the ship was utterly destroyed and everyone aboard killed. Pauline, he thought. Angela. Theo.

He couldn’t even call his attacker and surrender, Victor realized. The bastard’s knocked out my antennas. We’re mute. And deaf. He could be singing Christmas carols to me and I’d never hear him.

“The intercom link with the ship’s living quarters was down, too. He saw the sullen red lights glaring at him from the control panel.

How can I…?

A desperate idea popped into his head. Looking up at the display screen again he saw that the attacking ship was at the edge of the swirling, tumbling cluster of rocks he’d released. It was only a matter of seconds now.

His pulse hammering in his ears, Victor lifted the safety covers over the escape system’s dual butter yellow buttons.

“Goodbye, Pauline,” he murmured. Then he pressed his stubby fingers against the twin buttons.

Explosive bolts blew away the connectors holding the command pod to Syracuse ’s main body. The pod’s internal rocket engine lit automatically; Victor felt himself pressed deep into the command chair’s padding. The control panel’s lights flickered madly, then winked out.

He stared fixedly at the main screen. The camera view jerked violently, then swung its focus back on the attack vessel. Just as Victor had hoped, just as he’d prayed, the attacker swerved to follow him.

They both left Syracuse far behind, dwindling into an invisible speck against the starry black of space.

He thinks I’m carrying Fuchs with me, Victor thought gratefully. He thinks I’m trying to help Fuchs escape. He’s following me and leaving Pauline and the kids alone. I’ve saved them. I’ve saved them.

Dad’s going to be boiled at me if he ever finds out, Theo thought as he hesitated at the lip of the auxiliary air lock hatch. He was fully suited up, with his helmet visor down and sealed. Standing on the ladder leading up to the hatch set in the ceiling, his head and shoulders above the hatch’s edge, Theo saw the long tube leading from the family’s living quarters to the control pod stretching above him, a narrow dimly lit tunnel of buckyball filament, stronger than steel, lighter than plastic.

So he boils, Theo said to himself. This is an emergency. And he started climbing up the rungs set into the tube’s circular interior. It was laborious work in the cumbersome space suit. The emergency hatches were closed tight, he saw. Every hundred meters the tunnel was divided by double hatches that served as mini-airlocks. Usually they were kept open, but if a part of the tunnel was punctured, the hatches automatically sealed shut to prevent all the air from escaping into space. Now they were closed.

Not a good sign, Theo told himself. The tunnel’s been punctured somewhere.

Gravity melted away as he climbed; soon he was taking the rungs three, four, five at a time. As he approached the tunnel’s midpoint, where the g force was effectively zero, his booted feet weren’t touching the rungs at all.

Once past the ship’s center, he allowed himself to fall, slowly at first, then with increasing speed as he neared the end of the tunnel. But the closed hatches of the airlocks stopped him from dropping all the way. He had to stop and manually open each hatch, then proceed to the next one. No tunnel diving, they way he used to when he was just a kid, eight or nine years old. Just drop from the midpoint to the end of the tunnel, let yourself fall like a stone. When his father had found out, the old man had exploded with fearful anger.

“You could kill yourself falling against the rungs!” Victor had roared. “Tear your arms out of their sockets when you try to stop! Break every bone in your empty head!”

But tunnel diving was too much fun to ignore. Theo had even gotten Angie to dive with him. Of course she banged herself up, broke an arm, and loudly wailed Theo’s guilt. Dad had confined Theo to his sleeping compartment for a week, with nothing to do but watch old vids.

Now, encased in the hard-shell suit, he worked his way down the tunnel from one sealed hatch to the next. Finally he planted his boots against the last hatch, the one that opened into the command pod. Theo let out a gust of breath. The journey had been hard work instead of fun.

No time for complaints, though. At his feet was the airtight hatch that opened into the command pod. Dad’s in there, Theo said to himself. Maybe his comm system’s been shot away. Maybe he’s hurt, wounded.

He had to carefully, painfully turn himself around so he could see the hatch’s control panel. Its status light glared bright red. Vacuum on the other side of the hatch! Gripes, did Dad have enough time to get into his suit? The pod must be punctured!