Three of the belters got the long white-coated drilling tube into position, aiming at a spot Ca.s.s marked.

"Go in at thirty degrees," the boy directed. "Twelve feet-no, he says ten. Ten feet."

Egan shook his head. If Pol"s radio was still working, they would all have heard him. But n.o.body else said anything, so he didn"t either. He squinted at the bright beam that began eating into the rock, vaporizing as it went. "Stop! That"s close enough," Ca.s.s said, stomping his boots onto the surface toanchor them at the edge of the circular opening. He started to remind Ca.s.s that the shaft would be too hot to enter at once, when he realized he was seeing not one but two small vacuum suits on its perimeter.

The gasps on his receiver from the others told him he wasn"t hallucinating.

"Pol?" he whispered. "Pol?"

The Marsmen looked out of place within the hollowed-out asteroid, with their tight-fitting uniforms, shiny boots, and swords of all things. Even the supremely-confident Roderick, ruler of an entire planet, had to move gingerly in the negligible gravity. The belters, by contrast, lounged easily- some might have said insolently-on both sides and even above the line of visitors, and their functional garb seemed plain and worn compared to the crispness of the military-style clothing.

But it was Roderick"s daughter, Valda, who drew the appreciation of this mostly-male bastion. Pol, perched next to Egan on the front rank, and Ca.s.s, who had arrived late from a job and ended up farther back, only just managed to keep from gaping openly. None of the few female belters they had known had prepared them for this. She was tall and slim, with long auburn hair that trailed behind her in the negligible gravity like the blazing tail of a comet. She wore garb as formal as the dozen Marsmen in the delegation, but its severity stood no chance at all against the stunning form it covered.

You were right, Ca.s.s, his brother"s thought tickled his mind. She"s beautiful!

As always, Ca.s.s had done the archival research on Martian history out of curiosity about the coming visit-studying old news accounts preserved in one of their educational modules on how Earth governments had used the original colonies to get rid of criminals and malcontents, figuring isolation would work at a time when the death penalty was in decline; how Roderick (and Ca.s.s could find no further name or additional background on him) somehow managed to form the growing number of misfits into a militaristic society, but how it was hampered by a lack of raw materials like those Earth got from the belt. Even without many basic ores, the Martians had quickly achieved limited s.p.a.ce travel, and the boys knew many who thought that a few renegade Marsmen lay behind the occasional piracies against Earth ships coming out this far. Of course, a pirate base in the form of a s.p.a.ce habitat was possible, but none had ever been located. And only parts of missing ships were ever found, giving rise to the thought that the pirates had a use for the materials that went into building them.

According to what Egan told the boys, there had likewise been little left of the Gemini. He did not suggest that Mars ships were the cause of its destruction, but Ca.s.s had reviewed enough news archives over the years to be suspicious. And so, of course, was Pol. After all, as only Egan had figured out, they thought with one mind, not two. Even now. Ca.s.s was experiencing the double vision that he once a.s.sumed was normal for everyone, seeing Valda from his distant perch among the belters and also seeing her up close through Pol"s eyes.

Severing the physical link between the twins had not severed their mind-link. Who knew what kind of radiations might have affected their genetic formation before their births, either from the awesome energies of the pirate weapons or the environment of s.p.a.ce itself? For whatever reason, Pol and Ca.s.s eventually realized that a sharing of senses was not normal for anyone else-a discovery" that they instinctively kept to themselves, until Egan guessed following the accident in which Pol was almost lost.

Ca.s.s found himself responding to the sight of Roderick"s sole heir, by a mother never publicly named. He imagined what it might be like to take her in his arms, to clasp her tightly, to touch her lips...

As was Pol. For the first time in his life, Ca.s.s actually resented sharing his brother"s thoughts, and felt the same unaccustomed wish for privacy emanating from his brother.

It took Pol a moment to realize that the man beside Valda was Roderick himself, and another moment tocare. But neither brother could resist looking more closely at this man on whom the fate of worlds might depend-and certainly the future of the belters. Egan had already told them what Roderick"s earlier emissaries were going to propose. If successful, it could change the way the belters lived forever.

Roderick had a receding hairline, a paunch, and a weak chin. But when he began to speak, both boys forgot all that. Later, when Ca.s.s transcribed the recording he had made and a.n.a.lyzed the actual words, he found them flowery but empty although they had certainly not seemed that way at the time. "Mars greets you, people of the asteroids," Roderick began. "We salute this beginning of a friendship between your people and mine."

Before he had finished talking, Roderick had convinced practically every listener in the chamber that Martian engineering was up to the task of creating an artificial planetoid out here in the belt, complete with gravity and atmosphere, where the belters could live between work shifts without suits, in habitations as open as those on Earth itself. Martian engineers would maintain this New Eden, as he called it, in return for a tiny fraction of the ores being furnished to Earth. A contingent of Marsmen would join the belters and learn the procedures to handle any extra work involved. And what the bureaucrats back on Earth didn"t know wouldn"t hurt them.

What did the belters have to lose? No ores would be launched to Mars...o...b..t until New Eden had been created, and every worker in the belt had sampled it. "The orbiting factories around Earth aren"t that far removed from such a worldlet," Roderick concluded. "Earth could have done this for you. Mars will do it."

Pol was surprised to hear spontaneous cheers from some of the entranced belters. He might have joined in, but his own reaction was muted by Ca.s.s" mental dissection of Roderick"s speech. It had been a masterpiece, building to a climax that was bound to provoke a positive reaction- especially from people who felt themselves taken for granted by Earth to start with.

But they were both surprised when Egan"s voice cut through the applause. ""And when the powers that be on Earth find out we"ve made such a decision independently?" he asked. "It won"t stay quiet forever, not with new workers replacing others going back to Earth to claim their rewards. And we"re completely dependent on Earth for life support."

There was a stir among the Martian delegation, some even putting their hands on the hilts of their swords.

"You need not be. Mars would be willing to supply your needs," Roderick said, smiling.

"And we"d be under your control instead of theirs," Egan replied, seemingly oblivious to the weapons.

"Could that be what you"re intending with all this largess?"

Murmurs echoed in the chamber from the belters, some agreeing with Egan"s suggestion and others ridiculing it. Roderick raised his hands slightly and, such was his mas-tery of the situation, the murmurs died out. "Earth could not get along without the materials you supply," he said. "They could not sever their relationship with the belt, whatever you did. But is it any of Earth"s business if we have a small contingent of scientists and engineers out here working on an artificial planetoid, which you and your successors can choose to utilize or not?"

Not unless those scientists and engineers are not those things at all, but an advance force for a military expedition into the belt, Ca.s.s thought. And then he heard his thoughts echoed aloud. Pol, he realized, had spoken them.

What had been a stir before became an uproar, with several Marsmen moving their hands to their sidearms, including a giant of a man who stood beside Valda. Several pushed the studs in the handles to activate the weapons. Ca.s.s had read about the hummers, developed on Mars when there had beenthreats of open warfare among the underground cities, before Roderick managed to unify them against a hostile environment instead of one another. But it would take a few seconds for them to be ready for use.

Ca.s.s started to call out to the other belters, to disarm the delegation before those fearsome weapons could be brought into use.

Roderick reacted more quickly, ending the crisis with a gesture. He waved his hand, and the Marsmen instantly snapped off their weapons. The humming sound stopped.

And then Roderick"s daughter spoke. "We came out of friendship," she said in a rich, clear voice. "If we wanted to take the belt militarily, we would have come in force. With all due respect, I don"t believe you could have stopped us."

"Don"t you?" Pol said with a reckless grin, directing his reply at her. "We"re in our element out here. We don"t need suction cups or whatever on our boots to get around. And while you occupied one rock, we could be b.o.o.by-trapping a dozen more."

Pol had become the focus of the entire Martian delegation, including Valda, which Ca.s.s knew was exactly what he"d had in mind. Ca.s.s found himself jealous of his brother getting the Martian girl"s attention, yet another unaccustomed emotion for him, and there was no way he could hide it from Pol. He could not understand it. Never before had there been the slightest fracture in their thoughts.

"What"s your name, boy?" asked Roderick, an amused smile on his face.

"Gemini," Pol responded. Again, Ca.s.s found himself irritated that his brother had usurped a name they had in common-especially when be saw that Valda was regarding Pol with what looked like genuine interest.

"Well, young Gemini, and you really believe you could stand up to one of my Marsmen in some type of combat?"

"Yes, sir. Not on Mars, but out here, certainly." Ca.s.s felt Pol"s relief that his voice remained firm and did not crack embarra.s.singly.

"And would you care to demonstrate? In a contest with one of my men?"

"Well..."

"Excellent! It"s good to see there are young men with sporting blood out here. Your people and mine will get along well, young Gemini." Roderick waved an arm around at the Marsmen around him. "And who in my little group would you like to try to best in a physical encounter?"

Pol nodded at the giant Marsman who stood next to Valda. "Why not him?"

"Now wait a minute..." Egan began.

Several other belters shouted him down. "Pol can take care of himself, Egan," Ca.s.s heard Nieminski say.

In fact, Ca.s.s was not worried about that part either. He and Pol might be young compared to the other belters, but n.o.body could top their experience at handling themselves in this environment.

The Marsman glared down at Pol, his nose wrinkling in obvious distaste. "Very well, Bardo," Roderick said to him. "The boy may need a lesson, but try not to damage him badly."

"This is crazy!" Egan declared.But Marsmen and belters had already cleared a s.p.a.ce around Pol and Bardo. Bardo shook his head slowly, as though in disgust, and then made a feinting movement toward Pol. He looked chagrined when Pol failed to react with any defensive gesture at all. Then he reached out to grab his younger antagonist in all seriousness.

His fingers met empty air. Pol had leaped lightly from the rock floor and flipped over Bardo"s head, just out of reach. He grabbed the arm of a belter in the audience, and used that leverage for enough impetus to land behind Bardo. Chuckles from the belters echoed within the chambers. The maneuver had been no real surprise to people used to living in relative free fall.

Bardo had spun almost in time to catch Pol coming down-but not quite. Pol landed with his back to the larger man and, without seeming to glance behind him, curled himself into a backward somersault that took him right between the giant"s barrel-like legs.

Now, that maneuver was a surprise-to everyone but Ca.s.s, who knew Pol had seen his opponent"s position through his brother"s more-distant eyes.

Instinctively, Bardo, bent over to see where his adversary had rolled. Pol had spread his hands on either side to brace himself against the rock floor. He planted one foot against the Marsman"s rump and pushed gently, sending the larger man pinwheeling into the air. He spilled, head over heels, into the ranks of those closest to the platform, as laughter rained down from the belters.

"Enough, Bardo, that will do," Roderick said as the Mars-man scrambled into a crouch, a furious expression on his face. "I believe I see what the young man means. You really are in your element out here, aren"t you?"

Ca.s.s could not help sharing Pol"s feeling of triumph, not only at deflating some of the pomposity of the visitors but also at a minuscule payback for what both boys suspected other Marsmen had done to the ship on which they were born. Pol could not help glancing at Valda to see her reaction, but she was not looking at him. She was regarding Bardo with what seemed an infinite sadness on her face.

Far from scuttling Roderick"s proposal, the friendly-seeming little contest seemed to cement it. Work would start as soon as the Martians could a.s.semble the engineering equipment and bring it out. The Martian delegation left soon after, their squat little ship gradually moving clear of the habitat asteroid and disappearing into the blackness. Fifteen minutes later, Ca.s.s and Pol saw the silent flare of its rocket as it began its return trip.

The body would never have been found without the broadcast locator. Its beeps had been picked up by a team of belters working on a rock within sight of Roderick"s departure trajectory. Pol and Ca.s.s got their first sight of it along with a couple dozen others when it was brought through the shelter air lock.

It was, or had been, a man. It was hardly recognizable as one, since it wore no pressure suit and many of its internal organs had ruptured in hard vacuum. But there was no mistaking that giant physique.

Ca.s.s felt his stomach turning but managed to hold it down. Pol didn"t, causing a general rush for hand-vacs to suck up the contents of his last meal. Egan"s only reaction was a grim tightening of his lips.

"I guess Roderick wanted us to know how he feels about failure," Egan said.

The project took nearly three Earth-years, as time was measured in the belt, but less than half of that by Martian time, as the Martian engineers and workers constantly observed. And this was Day One on New Eden, as Roderick had called it, fashioned mostly from materials in the belt itself. The Martians had proved to be as proficient at building a s.p.a.ce habitat as Roderick had boasted.In deference to the belters, the periods of light and dark were based on Earth-days on New Eden-or, rather, in the spherical habitat. Its globe was nearly three miles in diameter, with a spin that simulated Earth-like gravity along its inner equator. Its "sky" was at its center, complete with real clouds. Ca.s.s kept staring at them. He had seen reproductions on tape and in still pictures, of course, but never the real thing.

Day One also marked the first holiday in the belt since the start of mining operations. Even Roderick"s visit three years ago had not prompted a total shutdown of work shifts. But this time, the belters had lifted a phrase from Roderick"s speech: What Earth didn"t know wouldn"t hurt it.

Between five and six hundred belters-everyone in the belt, in fact, but one-had gathered on New Eden to bid farewell to the Martian workers and to spend an Earth-day walking on seemingly solid ground, lifting their unhelmeted faces to the sky, breathing in the air that was all around them.

Ca.s.s wondered what all the celebrating was about.

He felt naked, exposed, here in the open without even a pressure suit. He recognized how real the synthetic gra.s.s and trees looked, from the pictures held seen of Earth, but even they felt unnatural to him.

The excited voices around him and Egan seemed strange, unfiltered as they were by helmet receivers.

And the constant pull of gravity generated by the worldlet"s spin seemed to him more uncomfortable than his and Pol"s workouts in the centrifuge. Of course, he and Pol were the only belters who had never experienced continuous gravity before.

And here I am, three hundred miles away, came Pol"s thought, tinged with disgust. Ca.s.s also picked up the thought that this had been the first time Pol had considered defying an order from Egan. Egan had two reasons for stationing Pol on a rock where be could observe the Martian fleet leaving the belt: one, to make sure it actually left, and, two, because Egan was not sure Pol could physically handle the stress of a constant one-G, since he had not kept up his conditioning over the years as had Ca.s.s. Pol had argued that he wouldn"t have to stay at the equator; he could remain farther out from center, where the pull was weaker, and gradually work his way into stronger gravity. Besides, be had already tracked the three Martian ships past his observation post with its instruments, en route back to Mars. But Egan had been adamant, responding by radio-even though he and the boys knew he could have accomplished the same thing simply by using Ca.s.s as a human transmitter-that acclimation to gravity would require more preliminary work for Pol, and that the Mars ships were still close enough to change course and loop around for a return trip.

"Why should they do that?" Ca.s.s asked. "They"ve got what they want-a.s.surance of a supply of minerals. And they"ve done their part of the bargain."

Egan, moving beside Ca.s.s in a motorized something he called a wheelchair, couldn"t answer that one. It was sim-ply that he didn"t trust Roderick. Neither did Ca.s.s, for that matter. He still remembered being told what happened to the Gemini, and he"d seen firsthand what happened to Bardo.

Pol had some vivid thoughts about having to stay on his isolated rock, but Ca.s.s prudently decided not to relay those to Egan. Instead, he made some comment, more to Pol than to Egan, about preferring an absence of gravity to being pinned down by it.

"You"ll probably end up enjoying it like everybody else," Egan said. "After all, your bodies were shaped for Earth, not the belt..."

A mild reverberation shook the walkway beneath them. Others noticed it, too, and the surrounding hum of conversation died out. A distant, hollow boom sounded from somewhere in the "sky," actually the hub of the worldlet.Ca.s.s frowned. "Don"t tell me Roderick is simulating thunderstorms for us, too?"

"If you"d ever heard real thunder, you"d know better," Egan said. "I don"t like this. The hub controls access to and from this place. That"s where all the suits and jetpacks are."

A second, closer explosion sent them sprawling. The silence around them turned to screams. Ca.s.s found himself on the ground, and pushed himself to his hands and knees. He glimpsed flames on the nearby horizon. He had seen fire once before, when a heating system in a shelter built into an asteroid had overheated. He and the other occupants of the shelter simply suited up, and opened all the air locks to hard vacuum which quickly extinguished it. But New Eden produced a continuous air supply, feeding the flames.

"Ca.s.s, get up!" said Egan, who lay beside his overturned chair. "You"ve got to salvage one of the suits and jetpacks. It"s your only chance."

Ca.s.s was still half-stunned. "They may be burned up already..."

"You"ve got to try! Lead the way for the others. Don"t you see? All of us, in one place, for the first time in the history of the belt-that was Roderick"s plan!"

"But you can"t..."

"Never mind me. Go!" He shoved Ca.s.s away with one of his powerful hands. Ca.s.s found himself staggering, still unused to functioning in constant gravity. A third blast seemed to erupt under his feet, and he felt himself flung into the air.

The ringing was still in his ears an instant later, but all else around him was silent. The bright flames had given way to the darkness of a carved-out shelter within an asteroid. He and Pol regarded each other in amazement. And Ca.s.s realized, for the first time, that their link was able to convey more than mere thoughts between them.

Of course, the three Mars ships did come back. And so did others. Ca.s.s and Pol tracked each one as it took up its position in a different part of the belt.

The command ship made a slow pa.s.s through the area where New Eden had been constructed, its instruments making sure there was nothing left but debris. Its creators had only had to construct it to last for a single day; within an Earth-week, it would have become unstable and shaken itself to pieces, but any occupants would have had time to evacuate it before that happened. So it was made to self-destruct all at once, and take all its inhabitants with it.

All but one. Somehow, one of the belters had managed to get into a pressure suit and, through some freakish piece of luck, must have been blasted clear. The newcomers quickly zeroed in on the distress signal from his suit. Judging by its movement, its occupant was still alive. Colonel Noctis, Roderick"s handpicked commander of the occupation force, considered leaving the belter where be was until his air ran out. On reflection, he decided the man might be able to provide his officers with information about the belters" operations, so he had the survivor brought aboard.

The Marsmen from the original three ships had pinpointed the equipment, supply caches, and working areas of the belters as best they could. Now they directed the occupation forces to pick up where the belters had left off, with Earth none the wiser-at least until the next supply ship showed up. But that was almost an Earth-year away.

Meanwhile, Noctis had two guards bring the surviving belter to his stateroom. The two Marsmen securedthe man to an interrogation chair, complete with a polygraph attachment on one arm. The man floated about an inch above the seat, lacking the adhesive boots of his captors. He was secured only by the straps on his arms and around his middle.

Noctis stood over the lone belter, fixing him with the intimidating stare he"d practiced frequently in front of a mirror and used any number of times with other prisoners during Roderick"s unification war back on Mars. "If you"d prefer a quick death like that of your fellows, you will answer all my questions completely and without hesitation."

The prisoner stared back for a moment, looked at the two guards on either side of his seat, the colonel"s aide who had just handed the officer what looked like a tube of some liquid that could be water or wine, and the polygraph operator who looked only at the styluses drawing their fine lines along a piece of paper. Then he returned his gaze to Noctis and nodded.

"Wise," said Noctis, sucking delicately at the refreshment in the tube. "Were any of you able to transmit any information to Earth about what happened?"

The prisoner took a deep breath, then answered with a barely audible "No." Noctis glanced at the polygraph man, who nodded.

"Good. That means they will know nothing so long as we keep transporting the rocks on schedule-until we"re ready to strike. Then the rocks will no longer be guided to Earth"s...o...b..tal factories, but against targets on Earth itself."

"Yes, sir. Either they will become part of Roderick"s unification movement, or go the way of the dinosaurs," the aide said.

Noctis nodded, then turned back to the prisoner. "Are there caches of oxygen, food, suits, and devices for moving the asteroids in places our Marsmen would not have seen, during their time out here?"

"The belt"s full of them," murmured the man in the chair. Again, the operator nodded.

"You may have just bought yourself a reprieve, if you know where they are," said Noctis. He turned to the aide. "We can use those things, particularly the explosive materials and those fusion rockets for moving the asteroids. Although, once we occupy the key enclaves of Earth, there won"t really be anyone left to fight us."

"Or to provide ships for us to prey on, sir," said the aide.

The prisoner turned toward the aide. "It"s your people manning the pirate ships?" he asked.

"Who did you think it was?" the aide replied. "Did you really believe that tale we"ve been floating about pirates operating from some artificial habitat?"

"I"ll ask the questions, belter," Noctis said. "Did you belters transmit communications regularly between yourselves and Earth?" The prisoner nodded. Noctis pursed his lips. "This may be another way you can prolong your life. We"ll need someone who can keep those communications flow-ing seamlessly, so Earth doesn"t suspect what"s coming. Not that anyone is likely to suspect anything, as closely guarded as this operation has been."

"Only one security breach, in fact," said the aide. "But at least Roderick"s daughter can"t tell anyone, being under house arrest, as it were."

The prisoner looked up. "Valda wasn"t part of what you did?" he asked.The colonel swung the back of his hand against the prisoner"s face, with a sharp crack. "I said I would ask the questions. You, on the other hand, will not demean the name of Roderick"s daughter by mentioning it. She"ll come to realize the brilliance of her father"s program, in time- the unification of the solar system, humankind under a single directive, developing the resources of our own planets and then reaching for the stars. Another question: are you aware of any other survivors besides yourself?"

And to the surprise of everyone else in the ship"s cabin, the prisoner smiled. "Yes."

"How many?" Noctis demanded, after glancing at the polygraph operator for confirmation.

"Just one. He and I have already fitted a small asteroid with life support and fusion rockets to head it toward Mars in a higher-speed trajectory than you could conceive. Asteroids can be moved at great speeds when the amount of available propellant is no object."

"You will give us the location of that asteroid," Noctis said.