The Sam Gunn Omnibus (68 page)

“But
what’s that got to do with ...”

“And
that’s Venus. There’s already a planet named Venus.”

“I
know,” Sheena said. “That’s why I thought we could use her Greek name,
Aphrodite.”

I
had never realized she knew anything at all about
anything at all. But she knew about the goddess of love’s different names. I went
behind the bar to the computer terminal and checked on the names already
registered for asteroids. There was a Juno and a Hera, a Helena and even a
Cleopatra. But no Aphrodite.

“Aphrodite
looks good,” I said.

“I
still fail to see what it has to do with a lump of rock floating around in
space,” Jean complained.

But we voted her down and sent a message
to the IAA headquarters in Geneva: a new asteroid has been discovered and its
name is Aphrodite.

A HUNDRED AND
twenty-seven tons of water. Boy,
do
I
feel
good about that! A hundred and twenty-seven million bucks safely stowed in our
inflatable tanks!

We’ve been working hard for a solid
month, chewing up Aphrodite and baking the volatiles out of her rocks. The
grinding equipment worked fine; so did the ovens. No sabotage there, thank God.

There isn’t much of old Aphrodite
left. Sheena got kind of upset when she realized we were tearing up the rock
and grinding it and baking the pieces. We left a small chunk so the name’s
still valid, although we’ve perturbed its orbit so much that Hubble claims she’ll
fall in toward the Sun and cross the orbit of Mars and maybe even Earth’s
orbit.

Thirty-one thousand, seven hundred
and fifty gallons of water, according to the volume of tankage we’ve filled.
That masses out to one hundred and twenty-seven tons. Plus an almost equal
amount of ammonia and methane. We’ve got an even dozen of our inflatable
storage tanks hanging outside the ship’s hub. I’ve already made a contract with
Moonbase Corporation to buy the whole kit and kaboodle at ten percent below
Rockledge’s price. They’ll process the ammonia and methane for the nitrogen and
carbon, then mix the leftover hydrogen with oxygen from lunar ores to make
still more water.

We’re gonna drown Rockledge!

My partners have been happy and
pretty well-behaved this past month. The news media back home have been
interviewing them almost constantly; they’re all becoming famous. This isn’t
the Ship of Fools anymore. The media’s describing us now as “the grandest
entrepreneurial venture in history.”

I
love the
publicity, because the more attention the media pays us the harder it’ll be for
Rockledge or one of those other big corporate monsters to attack us.

And Lonz has found a
bee-yoo-tiful
nickel-iron asteroid hanging out there just two weeks from where we are. Laser
measurements show she’s a little over a hundred meters by thirty by twenty or
so. Enough high-grade iron ore in her to give us a corner on the steel market
for all the Lagrange construction jobs!

We’re gonna be rich!

I
NEED THE
guidance counselor.

[Computer]: How may I help you?

I’ve got a problem.

[Computer]: Yes?

About a woman. Two women, really.

[Computer]: Go on.

It’s Grace Harcourt and Sheena
Chang. They’re snarling and spitting at each other like a pair of cats.

[Computer]: Why do you think they’re
behaving that way?

It’s over me, stupid! Why else?

[Computer]: Tell me what happened.

We’re cruising toward this
nickel-iron asteroid, going to make rendezvous in a few days. So I call the
partners together in the lounge again to decide on a name for the rock.

And Sheena pipes up, “I don’t think
it’s right for us to be destroying these asteroids.”

That surprised me. But coming from
her, I tried to explain things gently.

“Look, Sheena,” I said. “The whole
reason we’re out here, the reason you and everybody else joined this
expedition, is to get the natural resources that these asteroids contain and
bring them back home, where people need them.”

“You smashed up Aphrodite until
there’s practically nothing left of her, and now she’s going to crash into Mars
or the Earth or maybe even fall into the Sun and burn to death!”

“Sheena, it’s just a hunk of rock.”

“It’s part of nature. It’s part of
the natural environment. We shouldn’t be tampering with the environment. That’s
wrong.”

“Oh good Christ!” said Grace, with
a huff like a disgusted steam engine. She was sitting on one side of Sheena;
Hubble was sitting on the other, sucking on his smokeless pipe.

“There’s nothing alive on these
asteroids,” Hubble told her, back to his patient fatherly voice once more. “It
doesn’t hurt anyone to mine them.”

“I still think it’s wrong,” Sheena
insisted. I saw tears in her eyes.

“How long are we going to put up
with this drivel?” Grace snarled.

Sheena went almost rigid in her
chair, like somebody had wired it with a couple thousand volts.

Grace said, “I’ve spent most of my
working days listening to airheaded actors and actresses attach themselves to
causes
.’
Sheena, what the hell’s the matter
with your brain? We’re talking about a dead chunk of rock. There’s millions of
them out here. Get real!”

Sheena just sat there for a minute
or so, looking shocked. Jean Margaux was sitting right behind Grace; she had a
funny kind of eager grin on her face, like she was waiting to see the
gladiators rip each other’s guts open. And Rick Darling was right beside Jean,
with a cynical smirk on his bloated puss.

[Computer]: His cat was smirking?

Puss! Face! It’s slang, you dumb
pile of germanium.

[Computer]: You are expressing your
suppressed hostilities; good.

I’ve never suppressed a goddamned
hostility in my whole goddamned life!

[Computer]: Go on.

Where was I—oh, yeah. I was just as
surprised at Grace’s outburst as any of the others. Marj and Bo Williams were
sitting in the back of the lounge. Bo started to say something but Sheena got
there first.

“Listen, Miss High-and-Mighty
Columnist,” she said to Grace, “I had to kiss your backside when I was in the
acting business, but now I’m going to be independently wealthy, thanks to Sam,
and you can go scribble yourself!”

“You plasticized bitch,” Grace shot
back, “I’ll bet my backside is the only one in southern California you haven’t
kissed.”

“Jealous?”

“Of you? Take away the implants and
what’ve you got?”

“A dumpy broad with cellulite on
her hips, like you.”

“At least I’ve got a brain in my
head!”

“So does a rat!”

They were nose-to-nose now,
yelling, starting to get out of their chairs.

I
jumped between
them. “Hey, hey! Calm down, both of you!”

“Get this airhead out of here, Sam,”
Grace said. “There’s nothing going on above her neck anyway.”

Sheena’s eyes were blazing fury. “She’s
jealous, jealous, jealous! Look at her, she’s turning green all over!
”

Hubble got up and coaxed Sheena
back toward her quarters. I held Grace by the shoulders until they left. She
was trembling with rage.

“This meeting’s over,” I told the
others. “We’ll pick a name for the asteroid later.”

I
walked Grace
forward, toward the command center, away from the other passengers’ quarters
where Sheena and Hubble had gone.

I
kept some good
cognac in my quarters. Hardly ever touched it myself, but it looked good in its
cut crystal decanter and I thought it might help calm Grace down. Me, I prefer
beer.

“What
the hell happened in there?” I asked Grace.

She
sat in the couch, still quivering so much there were almost whitecaps on her
cognac. I pulled up the powered recliner chair to face her, with the coffee
table between us. My quarters aren’t luxurious, but there’s a little more space
to them than the passengers’ suites. Rank hath its privileges, after all.

Grace
knocked back half her cognac, then said, “I can’t take any more of her, Sam.
She’s driving me nuts.”

“Sheena?”

“Who
else? The way she flaunts herself. Makes eyes at all the men.”

“I
thought she had settled onto Hubble.”

“She’s
after you, Sam. Can’t you see that?”

“Me?
I haven’t laid a glove on her since the first month out.”

“And
she resents it.”

“That’s
crazy.”

Grace
put her snifter down on the coffee table. It was plastic, of course, but
painted to look like ebony.

“Sam,
she’s looking for a father figure. That’s you.”

“That’s
Hubble,” I corrected her.

Grace
shook her head. “It was Hubble until the food orgy. Then she saw that Lowell
was just as human and silly as the rest of us. But, you, m
on capitaine
,
were aloof and noble
and doing your duty on the bridge while the rest of us were stuffing
ourselves—in more ways than one, I might add.”

“I
don’t want to hear about it,” I said.

“You’ve
got to listen to me, Sam! You asked me to find out who the Rockledge agent
is....”

“Sheena?”

“No,
of course not. But if she’s sore at you, if she feels you’ve rejected her, she
could become a very willing tool for whoever among us is working for Rockledge.”

That
stopped me. “Sheena, helping Rockledge. Hmp. With an enemy like that, who needs
friends?”

“This
isn’t funny, Sam.”

But
it made me laugh anyway.

Suddenly
Grace got up from the couch, came around the coffee table, and plopped herself
in my lap.

“You big dummy,” she said. “I’m
trying to protect you. Can’t you see that?”

Then she said the words that strike
terror into the heart of any man.

“Sam—I think I’ve fallen in love
with you.”

Well, what could I do? I mean with
her sitting in my lap and all? One thing led to another and we wound up in bed.
Grace is very tender, very sweet, underneath that facade of the tough Hollywood
columnist that she wears most of the time.

But now she wants to hang around my
neck. And this ship isn’t big enough for me to hide! Besides, if she’s right
about Sheena I ought to be working on her, getting on her good side, so to
speak.

[Computer]: In bed, you mean?

That’s her best side, pal.

[Computer]: Is that necessary? It
will complicate the interpersonal relationships....

Everything’s already so goddamned
complicated that I feel like I’m a pretzel trapped in a spaghetti factory. What
should I do?

[Computer]: What do you want to do?

I
want to get them
both off my back!

[Computer]: And what would be the
best way to do that, do you think?

That’s what I’m asking you!

[Computer]: How do you feel about
this situation?

Oh Christ! I know this program.
Whenever you’re stuck you ask me how I feel. Get lost! Turn off!

[Computer]: Are you certain you
want to do this?

End the program, dammit! When I want
to jerk off I’ll do it in the bathroom.

WELL, THOSE SNEAKING,
slithering, slimy bastards at
Rockledge have struck again.