The Sam Gunn Omnibus (63 page)

“I promise you that it will not
involve pain or humiliation,” Darling said.

Her heart froze inside her.
Sacre coeur,
what does he have in mind?

“Wh—what is it?” she asked timidly.

Darling folded his heavy hands over
his immense belly. His arms were barely long enough to make it.

“You have worked very hard to get
this far. Now you can listen to Sam Gunn’s disks, if you wish to. I will grant
your request. If you will grant mine. That is all I intend to tell you.”

The log of the mission that made
Sam Gunn a billionaire. In his own voice. It had been an epic, pioneering
flight, the first true expedition out beyond the orbit of Mars, the first
commercial voyage out to the rich bonanza of the Asteroid Belt.

Rick Darling had never returned to
Earth after his voyage with Sam Gunn. He lived in isolated splendor aboard the
Golden Gate.
Isolated, but not alone.
Golden Gate
was one of the huge “bridge” spacecraft that plied a long parabolic orbit that
looped from the Earth-Moon system out to the Asteroid Belt and back again.
Darling was rich enough to set himself up in magnificent style in a private
villa aboard the ten-kilometer-long spacecraft. Yet, even in the midst of never
less than four thousand human souls, Darling saw almost no one. He preferred to
be served by robots.

There were five “bridge” ships
sailing the years-long orbit out to the Belt. Way stations on the road to the
asteroids. Bridges between the worlds. Their very existence was based on ideas
that Sam Gunn had pioneered. Not that anybody gave him credit for it. Or a
share of their profits.

But that was a different matter.
Jade looked at Darling’s fleshy face, tried to peer into those fat-hidden eyes.

“Well?” he demanded.

She took a deep breath. “All right,
I’ll grant your request, whatever it is
,
”
she said, thinking that if it got too nasty she would knee him in the balls and
run the hell out of there, naked or not.

EVEN THOUGH THE
room was far from cold, she
shivered as the robot took the last item of her clothing, flowered bikini
panties, into its velvet-padded steel claw of a hand. She felt defenseless,
exposed, vulnerable.

“The earrings, please,” said the
robot with Rick Darling’s voice.

The bastard is watching me. She
unscrewed the tiny faux pearls and handed them to the patient robot. One of
those earrings was an emergency screamer that would bring the
Golden Gate’s
security team crashing in if she activated it. She was truly on her own now.

She stood totally naked before the
robot, knowing that Darling was inspecting her through its eyes.

“Turn around please.”

She pirouetted slowly, hoping that
he would not insist on an internal examination. She heard a brief buzzing
sound, barely enough to register on her consciousness.

“Thank you,” Darling’s voice said
from the speaker in the robot’s head. “The X-ray scan is finished.”

Planting her fists on her hips, she
snapped, “X-rays? What’s next, neutrinos?”

No reply. Instead the robot reached
into a slot in its torso and handed her six miniature disks, each of them
roughly the size of a walnut. She took them eagerly into her hands.

“There is a laser player built into
the table set against the far wall, beneath the video screen,” Darling’s voice
instructed. “Unfortunately, Sam chose to make an audio log only. There is no
video. I assume that you know what he looked like. If you would like, I can
project still pictures of Sam and the various others who made the voyage onto
the screen. I also have some video footage of our ship, the
Argo.
And blueprints, if you want.”

Forgetting her nudity, she
answered, “Yes, all the visual images you have. I’d like to see them.”

“I will project them in sync with
Sam’s disks, as closely as I can.” Darling’s voice sounded pleased, almost
amused.

She hurried across the room and sat
cross-legged before the low table. What looked at first like inlays and
carvings were actually the controls for a laser player. The legs of the table
held its speakers. Spreading the six tiny disks on the table top, she saw that
they were clearly numbered.

As she inserted the first one into
the slot the screen above her lit up with a view of the
Argo.
She smiled at the name. Sam certainly didn’t lack for hubris. What was the
Yiddish word for it? Chutzpa.

The ship was shaped like a fat
tubular wheel, with slender spokes running down to a large hub. She recognized
the design instantly: living quarters in the “tire” section, which was spun to
give a feeling of gravity; the hub was low-gravity, practically zero-gee at its
very center.

Sam’s voice startled her.

“Log of the
Argo
expedition to the Asteroid Belt. Date: thirty-one March.”

In the recording that Larry Karsh
had given her months earlier, Sam’s voice had been sharp, insistent, almost
irritating. Now, though, he spoke in a calm baritone, a little on the reedy
side perhaps, but a much softer and more relaxed voice than she had
anticipated. Everyone said Sam’s eye color changed with his mood: did the
timbre of his voice change, too?

“It feels kinda funny being captain of this ship, commander of this
expedition, CEO of this operation. I’ve always been under other people’s
thumbs, pretty nearly always, at least. I wonder how I’m going to like being
the guy in charge?”

THEY’RE ALREADY MAKING WISECRACKS ABOUT THIS
VOYAGE—Sam’s
voice continued. Since we break Earth orbit tomorrow we’re officially launching
the expedition on April First. Some of the media jerkoffs are already calling
us The Ship of Fools.

I
had nothing to do
with selecting the launch date. The goddamned International Astronautical
Authority picked the date, with their usual infinite wisdom. Had to wait two
weeks here in orbit because their tracking facilities were completely tied up
on the latest Mars expedition. Six scientists and three astronauts going to
spend ninety days on the Martian surface—some big-time expedition!

Anyway, the two-week delay gave
those nervous nellies down in the banks a chance to send up their so-called
experts for
another
check of all the ship’s
systems. Everything’s fine, all systems go, they couldn’t find anything wrong.
Even though we’ll be out for at least two years, they had to admit that the
ship and the crew I picked are fully up to the mission.

Wish I could say the same about my
partners.

I
had to form a
limited partnership to get this venture going. Seven limited partners. Very
limited. Three men and four women who were willing to put up ten million bucks
apiece for the privilege of being the first human beings to ride out to the
Asteroid Belt. Without their backing the banks wouldn’t have even looked at my
deal. I needed their seed money, but now I’m gonna have to put up with them for
two years or more.

What the hell! I’m the captain. If
any of them gives me a hard time I’ll make the sucker walk the plank.

JADE STOPPED THE
DISK.

“I don’t have my notes with me,”
she said to the empty room. “I want to refresh my memory of who those partners
were—besides you.”

Darling did not answer, but the
picture on the screen above her changed to show a group of eight people, four
women and four men, all dressed in snappy flight suits. Sam was front and
center, the shortest of the men and shorter than two of the women. His round,
freckled face gave him the look of an aging leprechaun. Wiry red hair cropped
close. Sly grin. The beginnings of wrinkles in the corners of his eyes.

“Which one is you?” Jade called
out.

A long moment, then a circle
appeared around the face of the man standing farthest to the left.

“My god, you were beautiful!” she
blurted.

Rick Darling, at that age, was
little less than an Adonis. Handsome face, tanned, full-lipped, framed by dark
wavy hair. Broad shoulders, muscular build that showed even through the flight
suit. Not a single piece of jewelry on him.

“Yes, I was, wasn’t I?” Darling’s
voice, even through the speakers, sounded unutterably wistful.

She leaned forward and touched the
disk player’s control button once again.

THE COMPUTER CAN
fill in the date—Sam’s voice said.
He sounded edgy, almost out of breath.

Well, we’re off, on schedule.
High-energy boost. We’ll pass the Mars expedition in a couple of weeks. Too bad
we won’t get close enough to wave to
‘
em.
Good friend of mine from back in my astronaut days is commanding the flight.
She’s the first woman to command a Mars mission. Hope that makes her happier
than I ever could.

Everything’s okay here, all systems
in the green. My partners are having a ball. Literally, some of them. I introduced
two of the women to zerogee fun and games last night. They liked it so much
that I almost had to call for help. Almost.

WOMEN ARE BLABBERMOUTHS!
Now the two that I
didn’t
take down to the hub are sore at me. And one of the men, that Darling
character, is starting to make hints.

I
hired one of the
crewmen to help keep the passengers amused. Erik Klein. He’s a blond, tanned,
beach boy type. Not too bright, but muscular enough to keep the women happy.
The other two—my
real
crew—I’ve got to keep
separated from the partners. These seven dwarf-brained numbskulls think they’re
here for fun and games. I thought they’d entertain each other, pretty much.
With Erik and me helping out a little, now and then.

Two years of this. Two years of
this?

I
HAD TO
give them a lecture. Imagine it!
Me, laying down the rules to somebody else.

But they’re going to wreck this mission
before we get halfway to where we’re going. Hell, they could even wreck the
damned ship and kill us all.

Trouble is, they think they’re here
to be entertained. I guess that’s the impression they got, somehow, from the
way I described the trip to them, way back when.

Seven partners. Seven movers and
shakers from the media, high society, the arts and sciences. Hell, even the
astronomer is acting like a freshmen away from home for the first time in his
life.

And they’re bothering the crew. I don’t
mind if they screw themselves into catatonia, among themselves. But the crew’s
gotta run this ship. They’ve got to be in top physical and mental condition
when we start prospecting among the asteroids.

It all seemed so simple, back on
Earth. Get seven prominent scatterbrains to put up the seed money for an
expedition to the asteroids. Use their credentials to impress the banks enough
to put up the real backing. Go out to the asteroids, find a nice chunk of
nickel/iron, smelt and refine it on the way back to Earth, then sell it for
enough to give everybody a nice profit.

It’s the sweetest deal I’ve ever
put together, especially since the seven dwarfs will be getting their shares
from the
net
profit we make, while I’ll
be drawing my own off the top, from the gross.

But, lord! are those seven airheads
a shipload of trouble. I may have to shove one of them out an airlock, just to
impress the others that I mean business.

Imagine it!
Me
trying to enforce discipline on
them.

I
HATE THIS
job.

Listen, this log is going to have
to be confidential. I’m going to give the computer a security code word so
nobody can break into it and hear what I’ve got to say.