STARPOWER 1

Fuchs met them at the spaceport, wondering why the four of them were going to the ship a bare hour before it was due to leave orbit and head out to the Belt. “There’s been a change in plans, Lars,” Dan told him. “We’re going along, too.” The young man’s dark brows lifted halfway to his scalp. “The IAA has approved this?”

“That doesn’t make any difference,” Dan said as Amanda and Pancho clambered into the tractor waiting to take them to the jumper out on the launch pad. “We’re going.”

Fuchs hesitated, standing in the open airlock hatch of the tractor.

“We’re going,” Dan repeated. “With you or without you.” A slow smile spread across Fuchs’s broad face. “With me,” he said, and hopped up into the tractor, clearing its six steps with ease.

Dan grinned and resisted the urge to imitate the younger man’s athleticism.

Amanda and Pancho had taken the two rear seats, Fuchs the one next to the hatch. Dan sat behind the driver’s seat as the driver herself closed the airtight hatch and then checked out the cab’s pressurization. She got behind the wheel and slipped on her headset.

She’s waiting for authorization from the controller to go out, Dan knew. If they’re going to stop us, this’d be the easiest time for them to do it. But after a few moments’ wait, she put the tractor in gear and rolled to the garage’s airlock. A few minutes later they were at the jumper, connecting the flexible access tube from the tractor’s hatch to the airlock hatch on the jumper’s crew module. In their flight coveralls, the four of them stepped carefully along the springy plastic of the narrow tube, hands touching the walls, heads bent slightly to keep from brushing the low ceiling.

Small as it was, the jumper’s lab module was better than the claustrophobic tube. It was little more than a few square meters of metal deck enclosed in a glassteel bubble. A control console stood up front on a waist-high pedestal. Pancho went to the control console and pulled on one of the headsets hanging there; Amanda took up her post on Pancho’s right.

“Better use the foot loops,” Dan said to Fuchs. “We’ll be in zero-g for a few minutes.”

Fuchs nodded. He looked tense, expectant, his thin lips tightly closed. They can stop us at any time, Dan told himself. But as each second ticked by, he felt better and better.

“Five seconds and counting,” Pancho told them. She hadn’t bothered to turn on the speaker built into the console.

Just as Dan reached out to clasp one of the handgrips along the curving inner surface of the bubble, the jumper leaped off the ground with a single short, sharp bang of its ascent rocket. Dan’s knees flexed, but Fuchs nearly buckled. Dan grabbed his arm to steady him.

“I… I’m sorry,” Fuchs apologized. “I didn’t expect it.”

“It’s okay,” said Dan, impressed by the hard muscle he felt. “This is only your second launch, isn’t it?”

Fuchs looked pale. “My second from the Moon’s surface. I also rode the shuttle from the Zurich aerospace port.”

Dan saw that zero-g was making Fuchs queasy. “Are you going to be okay?” he asked. Nothing worse than having the guy next to you upchucking all the way to rendezvous.

With a weak smile, Fuchs pointed to his well-muscled biceps. “I took the precaution of wearing a medicinal patch.”

“Good,” Dan said.

“And also these.” He pulled a thick wad of retch bags from the thigh pocket of his coveralls.

“Smart man,” Dan said, hoping that Fuchs wouldn’t have to use them. Under control from the ground, the jumper made rendezvous with Starpower 1 and docked with the fusion ship’s main airlock hatch. Dan felt the slightest of thumps as the jumper’s adapter section locked onto the ship’s hatch. “Confirm docking,” Pancho said into her pin-mike. “You guys did a good job. I didn’t have to touch the controls once.”

Whatever the controller said back to her made Pancho laugh. “Yeah, I know; that’s why you drag down the big bucks. Okay, we’re goin’ aboard now.” Turning to Dan, Pancho said, “I’ll set her up for automatic separation and return to Selene.”

“Right,” said Dan, lifting free of his foot restraints and floating to the hatch. As far as the controllers back at Armstrong spaceport were concerned, the four of them were to be aboard Starpower 1 only for a final checkout before the ship was launched out of orbit. They were expected to return to Selene on the jumper. “They’re gonna be kinda surprised when this li’l buggy lands and nobody’s in it,” Pancho said with a mischievous grin.

Dan went through the jumper’s hatch and into the coffin-sized adapter section. He tapped out the entry code to open the fusion ship’s airlock hatch. “Okay,” he said, once the hatch had swung open. “Let’s get aboard the Beltline express.”

“You first, boss,” said Pancho. “You’re the owner.”

He grunted. “One-third owner. I imagine at least one of the other two is going to be mighty slammed once he figures out what we’re doing,”

“But he must have figured that out already,” Amanda said. “Right,” Pancho agreed. “Why else would he send those goons after Mandy?” Dan felt his brow furrow. “Then why isn’t he raising a howl? Why isn’t he trying to stop us?”

Fuchs looked back and forth from Amanda to Pancho to Dan, clearly baffled by their conversation.

“Well, let’s get aboard before he does start hollerin’,” Poncho said, making a shooing motion toward Dan with both her hands.

Feeling suddenly uneasy, Dan sailed through the hatch and entered Starpower 1. He hovered at the airlock’s inner hatch as Pancho came through and pushed off straight toward the bridge. Amanda started through the hatch, but stumbled slightly. Fuchs grasped her by the shoulders, steadying her. “Thank you, Lars,” Amanda said.

Dan thought the kid’s face turned red for a moment. He let her go and Amanda sailed through both hatches without needing to use her hands or feet. Fuchs, still a newcomer to zero-g, gripped the edges of the hatch with both his meaty hands and cannonballed through. He thumped painfully against the far bulkhead. Dan said nothing, suppressing his laughter at the young man’s attempted display of athletic prowess. But as he sealed the hatches Dan’s mood darkened. I warned Amanda about coming on to a guy. He realized that she was wearing ordinary coveralls, but still — I’ll have to play chaperon between her and Fuchs, Dan told himself. He headed up to the bridge, “swimming” in zero gravity by flicking his fingertips against the passageway bulkheads to propel himself weightlessly forward. Pancho had strapped herself into the command pilot’s chair, busily working both hands across the control board. Through the wide glassteel ports above the board, Dan could see the dead gray curve of the Moon’s limb and, beyond it, the beckoning bright crescent of the glowing Earth.

“I just disconnected ground control,” she said. “They oughtta start squawkin’ about it just about… now.”

“Put them on the speaker,” said Dan.

Amanda glided into the co-pilot’s chair and buckled the safety harness. Fuchs came up behind her and slid his feet into the restraint loops on the floor. “We have a disconnect signal, S-l,” came a man’s voice from the speaker. He sounded more bored than annoyed.

Pancho looked over her shoulder toward Dan, who placed a finger before his lips.

“Run silent, run deep,” he whispered.

Cupping her pin-mike with one hand, Pancho said, “I’m ready to separate the jumper.”

“Do it,” Dan replied.

“Jumper separation sequence initiated,” Pancho said into her mike. “Are you aboard the jumper?” asked the controller. “We can’t launch S-l as long as that disconnect is in effect. We’ve lost command of the vehicle.” A red light flashed on the control panel, then winked off.

“Jumper separated,” Pancho said.

“Repeat, are you aboard that jumper?” the controller asked, his voice rising with irritation.