Ben Bova - The Rock Rats

Diane awoke slowly, blinked up at him, then smiled.

“Dorik, where have you been? I’ve looked everywhere for you.”

Then she saw the murderous look on his unshaved face. She sat up and let the covers slip to her waist.

“What’s the matter? What’s wrong? You look terrible.”

He stared down at her. How many times had he caressed those breasts? How many other men had shared her body?

“Dorik, what’s happened?”

His voice, when he found it, was little more than a croak. “Are you pregnant?”

The shock on her face was all the answer he needed. “I was going to tell you—”

“With Humphries’ baby?”

“Yes, but-”

She got no farther. He seized her by the throat and pulled her off the bed, squeezing hard with both hands. She flailed her arms pitifully as he throttled her. Her eyes glazed, her tongue bulged out of her gagging mouth. Still crushing her larynx with one hand, Harbin grabbed her protruding tongue with the other, dug his nails into it and pulled it out of her lying mouth. Her shriek of pain drowned in the blood gushing from her mouth. Harbin relaxed his grip on her throat just enough to let her strangle on her own blood, gurgling, moaning, her hands sliding down his arms until her arms hung limp and dead.

Watching from his bed, Humphries felt his guts churn and heave. He lurched to his feet and staggered to the lavatory, Diane’s last bubbling moans lost in his own retching agony. By the time he had wiped his face and stumbled back into his bedroom, the wallscreen showed Harbin on his knees, sobbing inconsolably, Diane lying on the floor beside him, her face spattered with blood, her eyes staring sightlessly.

He ripped her tongue out! Humphries said to himself, gagging again. My god, he’s a monster!

Crawling back into bed, he switched off the camera view and called Grigor, who was waiting patiently in his office.

“Diane Verwoerd’s had a heart attack,” Humphries said to his security chief, struggling to keep his voice even. “A fatal one. Get a reliable crew to her apartment to clean the place up and take care of the body.”

Grigor nodded once. “And Harbin?”

“Get him tranquilized and tucked away in a safe place. Better bring a team. He won’t trank easily.”

“Wouldn’t it be better to silence him?”

Humphries laughed bitterly. “With this hanging over him? He’s silenced, believe it. And he’s still available to do whatever I need him to do.”

“Still…”

“I’ll find plenty of work for him, don’t worry,” Humphries said. “Just keep him away from me. I don’t want him in the same room with me, ever again.” He thought a moment, then added, “I don’t want him on the same planet with me.”

Lars Fuchs looked up in surprise when he heard the knock at his door. He shut down the drama he’d been watching—Sophocles’ Antigone —and called out, “Come in.” It was George again, looking grim. Fuchs rose from his chair. “To what do I owe this honor?”

“Time to go,” George said.

Even though he knew this moment was inevitable, Fuchs felt startled. His insides went hollow. “Now?”

“Now,” said George.

There were two armed men outside his door, both strangers to Fuchs. He walked stolidly beside George up the dusty tunnel, trying to suppress the irritation that rasped in his lungs and throat. He couldn’t do it, and broke into a racking cough. “Shoulda brought masks,” George mumbled. “What difference does it make?” Fuchs asked, as he tried to bring his coughing under control.

George hacked a bit, too, as they walked along the tunnel. Fuchs realized they were headed upward, toward the airlock that opened onto the surface. Maybe that’s how they’ll execute me, he thought: toss me outside without a suit.

But they stopped short of the airlock. George ushered Fuchs into a sizable chamber while the two armed guards stayed out in the dust.

Fuchs saw that his former crew were all there. They all turned toward him.

“Nodon… Sanja… you’re all right, all of you?”

The six of them nodded and even smiled. Nodon said, “We are quite all right, Captain sir.”

“They’re leavin’,” George said. “Your ship’s been refitted and fueled up. They’re headin’ out into the Belt.”

“Good,” Fuchs said. “I’m glad.”

“And you’re goin’ with them,” George added, his shaggy face deeply creased with a worried frown.

“Me? What do you mean?”

George took a heavy breath, then explained, “We’re not goin’ to execute you, Lars. You’re bein’ exiled. For life. Get out and don’t come back. Ever.”

“Exiled? I don’t understand.”

“We talked it over, me an’ the council. We decided to exile you. That’s it.”

“Exile,” Fuchs repeated, stunned, unable to believe it.

“That’s right. Some people won’t like it, but that’s what we fookin’ decided.”

“You’re saving my life, George.”

“If you call flittin’ out in the Belt like a bloody Flyin’ Dutchman savin’ your life, then, yeah, that’s what we’re doin’. Just don’t ever try to come back here, that’s all.”

For weeks Fuchs had been preparing himself mentally to be executed. He realized now that his preparations had been nothing short of a pitiful sham. An enormous wave of gratitude engulfed him. His knees felt watery; his eyes misted over.

“George … I … what can I say?”

“Say good-bye, Lars.”

“Good-bye, then. And thank you!”

George looked decidedly unhappy, like a man who had been forced to make a choice between hideous alternatives.

Fuchs went with his crew to the airlock, suited up, and climbed into the shuttlecraft that was waiting to take them to Nautilus, hanging in orbit above Ceres.

Half an hour later, as he sat in the command chair on Nautilus’s bridge, Fuchs sent a final message to Big George:

“Finish the habitat, George. Build a decent home for yourselves.”

“We will,” George answered, his red-bearded face already small and distant in the ship’s display screen. “You just keep yourself outta trouble, Lars. Be a good rock rat. Stay inside the lines.”

It was only then that Fuchs began to understand what exile meant.

It was the biggest social event in the history of Selene. Nearly two hundred wedding guests assembled in the garden outside Humphries’s mansion.

Pancho Lane wore a pale lavender mid-calf silk sheath that accented her slim, athletic figure. Sapphires sparkled at her earlobes, wrists, and her long, graceful throat. Her tightly curled hair was sprinkled with sapphire dust.

“You look like a fookin’ million dollars on the hoof,” said Big George.

Pancho grinned at the Aussie. He looked uncomfortable, almost embarrassed, in a formal suit of dead black and an old-fashioned bow tie.

“The way I figure it,” she said, “if I’ve got to play the part of a corporate bigwig, I should at least look like one.”

“Pretty damned good,” said George.

“You don’t look too bad yourself,” Pancho said.

“Come on,” George said. “We’d better find our seats.”

Every aspect of the wedding was meticulously controlled by Humphries’s people. Each white folding chair set up on the garden’s grass had a specific guest’s name stenciled on its back, and each guest had been given a specific number for the reception line after the ceremony.

Almost as soon as they sat down, Kris Cardenas joined Pancho and George, looking radiantly young in a buttercup-yellow dress that complemented her golden hair.

“Amanda’s really going through with it,” Cardenas said, as if she wished it weren’t true.