Ben Bova - Asteroid 2 - The Rock Rats

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THE

ROCK RATS

Book II of the Asteroid Wars

TOR®

A TOM DOHERTY ASSOCIATES BOOK NEW YORK

BEN BOVA

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this novel are either fictitious or are used fictitiously.

THE ROCK RATS: BOOK II OF THE ASTEROID WARS

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Edited by Patrick Nielsen Hayden

A Tor Book

Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC

175 Fifth Avenue

New York, NY 10010

www.tor.com

Tor* is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Bova, Ben,

The rock rats / Ben Bova.-1st ed. p. cm. -(The asteroid wars; bk. 2) "A Tom Doherty Associates book." ISBN 0-765-30227-6 (alk.

paper)

1. Mines and mineral resources-Fiction. 2. Women air pilots-Fiction. 3. Space warfare-Fiction. 4. Asteroids-Fiction. I. Title.

PS3552.O84R63 2002 813'.54-dc21

2001058464

First Edition: April 2002

Printed in the United States of America

0987654321

To Charles N. Brown and the Locus team

Yet each man kills the thing he loves,

By each let this be heard, Some do it with a bitter look,

Some with a flattering word, The coward does it with a kiss,

The brave man with a sword!

Some kill their love when they are young.

And some when they are old; Some strangle with the hands of Lust,

Some with the hands of Gold: The kindest use a knife, because

The dead so soon grow cold.

- Oscar Wilde

The Ballad of Reading Gaol

THE

ROCK RATS

PROLOGUE: SELENE

Amanda clutched at her husband's arm when Martin Humphries strode into the

wedding reception, unannounced and uninvited.

The Pelican Bar went totally silent. The crowd that had been noisily congratulating

Amanda and Lars Fuchs with lewd jokes and lunar "rocket juice" froze as if somebody

had doused the place with liquid nitrogen. Fuchs patted his wife's hand gently,

protectively, as he scowled up at Humphries. Even Pancho Lane, never at a loss for a

quip, simply stood by the bar, one hand holding her drink, the other balling into a fist.

The Pelican wasn't Humphries's kind of place. It was the workers' bar, the one joint

in Selene's underground warren of tunnels and cubicles where the people who lived and

worked on the Moon could come for relaxation and the company of their fellow Lunatics.

Suits like Humphries did their drinking in the fancy lounge up in the Grand Plaza, with

the rest of the executives and the tourists.

Humphries seemed oblivious to their enmity, totally at ease in this sea of hostile

stares, even though he looked terribly out of place, a smallish manicured man wearing

an impeccably tailored imperial blue business suit in the midst of the younger,

boisterous miners and tractor operators in their shabby, faded coveralls and their

earrings of asteroidal stones. Even the women looked stronger, more muscular than

Humphries.

But if Humphries's round, pink-cheeked face seemed soft and bland, his eyes were

something else altogether. Gray and pitiless, like chips of flint, the same color as the

rock walls and low ceiling of the underground bar itself.

He walked straight through the silent, sullen crowd to the table where Amanda and

Fuchs sat.

"I know I wasn't invited to your party," he said in a calm, strong voice. "I hope you'll

forgive me for crashing. I won't stay but a minute."

"What do you want?" Fuchs asked, scowling, not moving from his chair beside his

bride. He was a broad, dark-haired bear of a man, thick in the torso, with short arms

and legs heavily muscled. The tiny stud in his left ear was a diamond that he had

bought during his student days in Switzerland.

With a rueful smile, Humphries said, "I want your wife, but she's chosen you

instead."

Fuchs slowly got up from his chair, big thick-fingered hands clenching into fists. Every

eye in the pub was on him, every breath held.

Amanda glanced from Fuchs to Humphries and back again. She looked close to panic.

She was a strikingly beautiful woman, with a wide-eyed innocent face and lusciously

curved figure that made men fantasize and women stare with unalloyed envy. Even in a

plain white jumpsuit she looked utterly stunning.

"Lars," Amanda whispered. "Please."

Humphries raised both hands, palms out. "Perhaps I phrased myself poorly. I didn't

come here for a fight."

"Then why did you come?" Fuchs asked in a low growl.

"To give you a wedding present," Humphries replied, smiling again. "To show that

there's no hard feelings ... so to speak."

"A present?" Amanda asked.

"If you'll accept it from me," said Humphries.

"What is it?" Fuchs asked.

"Starpower 1."

Amanda's china blue eyes went so wide that white showed all around them. "The

ship?"

"It's yours, if you'll have it. I'll even pay for the refurbishment necessary to make it

spaceworthy again."

The crowd stirred, sighed, began muttering. Fuchs looked down at Amanda, saw that

she was awed by Humphries's offer.

Humphries said, "You can use it to return to the Belt and start mining asteroids.

There's plenty of rocks out there for you to claim and develop."

Despite himself, Fuchs was impressed. "That's. . . very generous of you, sir."

Humphries put on his smile again. With a careless wave of his hand, he said, "You

newlyweds need some source of income. Go out and claim a couple of rocks, bring back

their ores, and you'll be fixed for life."

"Very generous," Fuchs muttered.

Humphries put out his hand. Fuchs hesitated a moment, then gripped it in his heavy

paw; engulfed it, actually. "Thank you, Mr. Humphries," he said, pumping Humphries's

arm vigorously. "Thank you so much."

Amanda said nothing.

Humphries disengaged himself and, without another word, walked out of the bar.

The crowd stirred at last and broke into dozens of conversations. Several people

crowded around Fuchs and Amanda, congratulating them, offering to work on their

craft. The Pelican's proprietor declared drinks on the house and there was a general

rush toward the bar.

Pancho Lane, though, sidled through the crowd and out the door into the tunnel,

where Humphries was walking alone toward the power stairs that led down to his

mansion at Selene's lowest level. In a few long-legged lunar strides she caught up to

him.

"I thought they threw you out of Selene," she said.

Humphries had to look up at her. Pancho was lean and lanky, her skin a light mocha,

not much darker than a white woman would get in the burning sunshine of her native

west Texas. She kept her hair cropped close, a tight dark skullcap of ringlets.

He made a sour face. "My lawyers are working on an appeal. They can't exile me

without due process."

"And that could take years, huh?"

"At the very least."

Pancho would gladly have stuffed him into a rocket and fired him off to Pluto.

Humphries had sabotaged

Starpower 1

on its first-and, so far, only-mission to the Belt.

Dan Randolph had died because of him. It took an effort of will for her to control her

temper.

As calmly as she could manage, Pancho said, "You were pretty damn generous back

there."

"A gesture to true love," he replied, without slowing his pace.

"Yeah. Sure." Pancho easily matched his stride.

"What else?"

"For one thing, that spacecraft ain't yours to give away. It belongs to-"

"Belonged," Humphries snapped. "Past tense. We wrote it off the books."

"Wrote it off? When? How in hell can you

that?"

Humphries actually laughed. "You see, Ms. Director? There are a few tricks to being

on the board that a greasemonkey like you doesn't know about."

"I guess," Pancho admitted. "But I'll learn 'em."

"Of course you will."

Pancho was newly elected to the board of directors of Astro Manufacturing, over

Humphries's stern opposition. It had been Dan Randolph's dying wish.

"So we've written off

Starpower 1

after just one flight?"

"It's already obsolescent," said Humphries. "The ship proved the fusion drive

technology. Now we can build better spacecraft, specifically designed for asteroid

mining."

"And you get to play Santy Claus for Amanda and Lars."

Humphries shrugged.

The two of them walked along the nearly-empty tunnel until they came to the power

stairs leading downward.

Pancho grabbed Humphries by the shoulder, stopping him at the top of the moving

stairs. "I know what you're up to," she said.

"Do you?"

"You figger Lars'll go battin' out to the Belt and leave Mandy here in Selene."

"I suppose that's a possibility," Humphries said, shaking free of her grip.

"Then you can move in on her."

Humphries started to reply, then hesitated. His face grew serious. At last he said,

"Pancho, has it ever occurred to you that I really love Amanda? I do, you know."

Pancho knew Humphries's reputation as a womanizer. She had seen plenty of

evidence of it.

"You might tell yourself that you love her, Humpy, but that's just because she's the

only woman between here and Lubbock that won't flop inta bed with you."

He smiled coldly. "Does that mean that you would?"

"In your dreams!"

Humphries laughed and started down the stairs. For a few moments Pancho watched

him dwindling away, then she turned and headed back toward the Pelican Bar.

As Humphries rode down to Selene's bottommost level, he thought, Fuchs is an

academic, the kind who's never had two pennies in his hands at the same time. Let him

go out to the Belt. Let him see how much money he can make, and all the things that

money can buy. And while he's doing it, I'll be here at Amanda's side.

By the time he reached his palatial home, Humphries was almost happy.

DATA BANK: THE ASTEROID BELT

Millions of chunks of rock and metal float silently, endlessly, through the deep emptiness

of interplanetary space. The largest of them, Ceres, is barely a thousand kilometers

wide. Most of them are much smaller, ranging from irregular chunks a few kilometers

long down to the size of pebbles. They contain more metals and minerals, more natural

resources, than the entire Earth can provide.

They are the bonanza, the El Dorado, the Comstock Lode, the gold and silver and

iron and everything-else mines of the twenty-first century. There are hundreds of

millions of

billions

of tons of high grade ores in the asteroids. They hold enough real

wealth to make each man, woman, and child of the entire human race into a millionaire.

And then some.

The first asteroid was discovered shortly after midnight on January 1, 1801, by a

Sicilian monk who happened to be an astronomer. While others were celebrating the

new century, Giuseppi Piazzi was naming the tiny point of light he saw in his telescope

Ceres

after the pagan goddess of Sicily. Perhaps an unusual attitude for a pious monk,

but Piazzi was a Sicilian, after all.

By the advent of the twenty-first century, more than fifteen thousand asteroids had

been discovered by earthbound astronomers: As the human race began to expand its

habitat to the Moon and to explore Mars, millions more were found.

Technically, they are

planetoids,

little planets, chunks of rock and metal floating in

the dark void of space, leftovers from the creation of the Sun and planets some four and

a half billion years ago. Piazzi correctly referred to them as planetoids, but in 1802

William Herschel (who had earlier discovered the giant planet Uranus) called them

asteroids,

because in the telescope their pinpoints of light looked like stars rather than

the disks of planets. Piazzi was correct, but Herschel was far more famous and

influential. We call them asteroids to this day.

Several hundred of the asteroids are in orbits that near the Earth, but most of them

by far circle around the Sun in a broad swath in deep space between the orbits of Mars

and giant Jupiter. This

Asteroid Belt

is centered more than six hundred million

kilometers from Earth, four times farther from the Sun than our homeworld.

Although this region is called the Asteroid

Belt,

the asteroids are not strewn so thickly

that they represent a hazard to space navigation. Far from it. The so-called Belt is a

region of vast emptiness, dark and lonely and very far from human civilization.

Until the invention of the Duncan fusion drive the Asteroid Belt was too far from the

Earth/Moon system to be of economic value. Once fusion propulsion became practical,

however, the Belt became the region where prospectors and miners could make

fortunes for themselves, or die in the effort.

Many of them died. More than a few were killed.

THREE YEARS LATER

CHAPTER 1

I said it would be simple," Lars Fuchs repeated. "I did

not

say it would be easy."

George Ambrose-Big George to everyone who knew him -scratched absently at

his thick red beard as he gazed thoughtfully out through the window of

Starpower 1's

bridge toward the immense looming dark bulk of the asteroid Ceres. "I di'n't come out

here to get involved in daft schemes, Lars," he said. His voice was surprisingly high and

sweet for such a shaggy mastodon of a man.

For a long moment the only sound in the compartment was the eternal hum of

electrical equipment. Then Fuchs pushed between the two pilots' seats to drift toward

Big George. Stopping himself with a touch of his hand against the metal overhead, he

said in an urgent whisper, "We can do it. Given time and resources."

"It's fookin' insane," George muttered. But he kept staring out at the asteroid's rock-

strewn, pockmarked surface.

They made an odd pair: the big, bulky Aussie with his shaggy brick-red mane and

beard, hovering weightlessly beside the dark, intense, thickset Fuchs. Three years in the

Belt had changed Fuchs somewhat: he was still burly, barrel-chested, but he had let his

chestnut brown hair grow almost to his collar, and the earring he wore was now a

polished chip of asteroidal copper. A slim bracelet of copper circled his left wrist. Yet in

their individual ways, both men looked powerful, determined, even dangerous. "Living

inside Ceres is bad for our health," Fuchs said.

George countered, "Plenty of radiation protection from the rock."

"It's the microgravity," Fuchs said earnestly. "It's not good for us, physically."

"I like it."

"But the bones become so brittle. Dr. Cardenas says the rate of fractures is rising

steeply. You've seen that yourself, haven't you?"

"Maybe," George half-admitted. Then he grinned. "But th' sex is fookin' fantastic!"

Fuchs scowled at the bigger man. "Be serious, George."

Without taking his eyes off Ceres's battered face, George said, "Okay, you're right. I

know it. But buildin' a bloody O'Neill habitat?"

"It doesn't have to be that big, not like the L-5 habitats around Earth. Just big

enough to house the few hundred people here in Ceres. At first."

George shook his shaggy head. "You know how big a job you're talkin' about? Just

the life support equipment alone would cost a mint. And then some."

"No, no. That's the beauty of my scheme," Fuchs said, with a nervous laugh. "We

simply purchase spacecraft and put them together. They become the habitat. And they

already have all the life support equipment and radiation shielding built into them. We

won't need their propulsion units at all, so the price will be much lower than you think."

"Then you want to spin the whole fookin' kludge to an Earth-normal g?"

"Lunar normal," Fuchs answered. "One-sixth g is good enough. Dr. Cardenas agrees."

George scratched at his thick, unkempt beard. "I dunno, Lars. We've been livin' inside

the rock okay. Why go to all this trouble and expense?"

"Because we have to!" Fuchs insisted. "Living in microgravity is dangerous to our

health. We

must

build a better habitat for ourselves."

George looked unconvinced, but he muttered, "Lunar g, you say?"

"One-sixth normal Earth gravity. No more than that."

"How much will it cost?"

Fuchs blinked once. "We can buy the stripped-down spacecraft from Astro

Corporation. Pancho is offering a very good price."

"How much?"

"The preliminary figures work out. . ." Fuchs hesitated, took a breath, then said, "We

can do it if all the prospectors and miners put in ten percent of their income."

George grunted. "A tithe, huh?"

"Ten percent isn't much."

"A lot of us rock rats don't make any income at all, some years."

"I know," said Fuchs. "I factored that into the cost estimate. Of course, we'll have to

pay off the spacecraft over twenty- or thirty-year leases. Like a mortgage on a house,

Earthside."

"So you want everybody here in Ceres to take on a twenty-year debt?"

"We can pay it off sooner, perhaps. A few really big strikes could pay for the entire

project all by themselves."

"Yeah. Sure."

With burning intensity, Fuchs asked, "Will you do it? If you agree, most of the other

prospectors will, too."

"Whyn't you get one of the corporations t' do it?" George asked. "Astro or

Humphries. . ." He stopped when he saw the look on Fuchs's face.

"Not Humphries," Fuchs growled. "Never him or his company. Never."

"Okay. Astro, then."

Fuchs's scowl shifted into a troubled frown. "I've spoken to Pancho about it. The

Astro board would not vote for it. They will sell stripped-down spacecraft to us, but they

won't commit to building the habitat. They don't see a profit from it."

George grunted. "Lot they care if we snap our bones."

"But you care," Fuchs said eagerly. "It's

our

problem, George; we have to solve it.

And we can, if you'll help."

Running a beefy hand through his thick mop of red hair, Big George said, "You're

gonna need a techie team to do the integration job. There's more to puttin' this habitat

of yours together than just connectin' Tinkertoys, y'know. You'll need a flock of geek

boys."

"That's already in the cost estimate," Fuchs replied.

George huffed a mighty sigh, then said, "All right, Lars, I'm in. I guess it would be

pretty good to have a base out here in the Belt with some decent gravity to it."

Fuchs smiled. "You can always have sex aboard your own ship."

George grinned back at him. "Believe it, mate. Believe it."

Fuchs went with George to the ship's main airlock and helped the bigger man get

back into his hard-shell spacesuit.

"They're testin' lightweight suits back at Selene, y'know," he said as he slid into the

rigid torso and worked his arms through the stiff sleeves. "Flexible. Easy to put on."

"And the radiation protection?" Fuchs asked.

"Magnetic field surrounds the suit. They claim it's better'n this stuff." He rapped his

knuckles against the torso's cermet carapace.

Fuchs gave a little snort of disdain. "They'll need years of testing before I'd buy one."

As he wormed his hands into the gloves, George said, "Me too."

Handing the bigger man his fishbowl helmet, Fuchs said, "Thanks for agreeing,

George. It means a lot to me."

George nodded solemnly. "I know. You two want to have kids."

Fuchs's cheeks reddened. "It's not that!"

"Isn't it?"

"Well, not alone, no." Fuchs looked away from George for a moment, then slowly

admitted, "I worry about Amanda, yes. I never thought she would want to stay out here

with me. I never thought I myself would be out here this long."

"There's a lot of money to be made here in the Belt. A

lot

of money."

"Yes, yes indeed. But I worry about her. I want her to be in a safer place, with

enough gravity to keep her from deconditioning."

"And enough radiation shielding to start a family," George said, grinning. Then he

pulled on his helmet before Fuchs could think of a reply.

CHAPTER 2

Once George had cycled through

Starpower 1

's airlock and jetted back to his own

Waltzing Matilda,

Fuchs went down the ship's narrow central passageway to the

compartment where his wife was working.

She looked up from the wallscreen as Fuchs slid the compartment door open. He saw

that she was watching a fashion show beamed from somewhere on Earth: slim, slinky

models in brightly colored gowns of outrageous designs. Fuchs frowned slightly: half the

people of Earth displaced by floods and earthquakes, starvation rampant almost

everywhere, and still the rich played their games.

Amanda blanked the wallscreen as she asked, "Has George left already?"

"Yes. And he agreed to it!"

Her smile was minimal. "He did? It didn't take you terribly long to convince him, did

it?"

She still spoke with a trace of the Oxford accent she had learned years earlier in

London. She was wearing an oversized faded sweatshirt and cutoff work pants. Her

golden blonde hair was pinned up off her neck and slightly disheveled. She wore not a

trace of makeup. Still, she was much more beautiful than any of the emaciated

mannequins of the fashion show. Fuchs pulled her to him and kissed her warmly.

"In two years, maybe less, we'll have a decent base in orbit around Ceres with lunar-

level gravity."

Amanda gazed into her husband's eyes, seeking something. "Kris Cardenas will be

happy to hear it," she said.

"Yes, Dr. Cardenas will be very pleased," Fuchs agreed. "We should tell her as soon

as we arrive."

"Of course."

"But you're not even dressed yet!"

"It won't take me a minute," Amanda said. "It's not like we're going to a royal

reception." Then she added, "Or even to a party in Selene."

Fuchs realized that Amanda wasn't as happy as he'd thought she would be. "What's

the matter? Is something wrong?"

"No," she said, too quickly. "Not really."

"Amanda, my darling, I know that when you say 'not really' you really mean 'really.'"

She broke into a genuine smile. "You know me too well."

"No, not too well. Just well enough." He kissed her again, lightly this time. "Now,

what's wrong? Tell me, please."

Leaning her cheek on his shoulder, Amanda said very softly, "I thought we'd be home

by now, Lars."

"Home?"

"Earth. Or even Selene. I never dreamt we'd stay in the Belt for three years."

Suddenly Fuchs saw the worn, scuffed metal walls of this tiny coop of a cubicle, the

narrow confines of the ship's passageway and the other cramped compartments;

smelled the stale air with its acrid tinge of ozone; felt the background vibrations that

rattled through the ship every moment; consciously noticed the clatter of pumps and

wheezing of the air fans. And he heard his own voice ask inanely:

"You're not happy here?"

"Lars, I'm happy being with you. Wherever you are. You know that. But-"

"But you would rather be back on Earth. Or at Selene."

"It's better than living on a ship all the time."

"He's

still at Selene."

She pulled slightly away, looked straight into his deep-set eyes. "You mean Martin?"

"Humphries," said Fuchs. "Who else?"

"He's got nothing to do with it."

"Doesn't he?"

Now she looked truly alarmed. "Lars, you don't think that Martin Humphries means

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THEROCKRATSBookIIoftheAsteroidWarsTOR®ATOMDOHERTYASSOCIATESBOOKNEWYORKBENBOVAThisisaworkoffiction.Allthecharactersandeventsportrayedinthisnovelareeitherfictitiousorareusedfictitiously.THEROCKRATS:BOOKIIOFTHEASTEROIDWARSCopyright©2002byBenBovaAllrightsreserved,includingtherighttoreproducethisbook,orp...

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