“Do you know who this Dorn creature is?”
Elverda answered, “Only what he has told us.”
“I’ve checked him out. My staff in the ship has a complete file on him. He’s the butcher who led the Chrysalis massacre, fourteen years ago.”
“He . . .”
“Eleven hundred men, women, and children. Slaughtered. He was the man who commanded the attack.”
“He said he had been a soldier.”
“A mercenary. A cold-blooded murderer. He was working for Toyama then. The Chrysalis was their habitat. When its population voted for independence, Toyama put him in charge of a squad to bring them back into line. He killed them all; turned off their air and let them all die.”
Elverda felt shakily for the nearest chair and sank into it. Her legs seemed to have lost all their strength.
“His name was Harbin then. Dorik Harbin.”
“Wasn’t he brought to trial?”
“No. He ran away. Disappeared. I always thought Toyama helped to hide him. They take care of their own, they do. He must have changed his name afterward. Nobody would hire the butcher, not even Toyama.”
“His face . . . half his body . . .” Elverda felt terribly weak, almost faint. “When . . .?”
“Must have been after he ran away. Maybe it was an attempt to disguise himself.”
“And now he is working for you.” She wanted to laugh at the irony of it, but did not have the strength.
“He’s got us trapped on this chunk of rock! There’s nobody else here except the three of us.”
“You have your staff in your ship. Surely they would come if you summoned them.”
“His security squad’s been ordered to keep everybody except you and me off the asteroid. He gave those orders.”
“You can countermand them, can’t you?”
For the first time since she had met Martin Humphries, he looked unsure of himself. “I wonder,” he said.
“Why?” Elverda asked. “Why is he doing this?”
“That’s what I intend to find out.” Humphries strode to the phone console. “Harbin!” he called. “Dorik Harbin. Come to my quarters at once.”
Without even an eye blink’s delay the phone’s computer-synthesized voice replied, “Dorik Harbin no longer exists. Transferring your call to Dorn.”
Humphries’s blue eyes snapped at the phone’s blank screen.
“Dorn is not available at present,” the phone’s voice said. “He will call for you in eleven hours and thirty-two minutes.”
“God-damn it!” Humphries smacked a fist into the open palm of his other hand. “Get me the officer on watch aboard the Humphries Eagle.”
“All exterior communications are inoperable at the present time,” replied the phone.
“That’s impossible!”
“All exterior communications are inoperable at the present time,” the phone repeated, unperturbed.
Humphries stared at the empty screen, then turned slowly toward Elverda. “He’s cut us off. We’re really trapped here.”
Elverda felt the chill of cold metal clutching at her. Perhaps Dorn is a madman, she thought. Perhaps he is my death, personified.
“We’ve got to do something!” Humphries nearly shouted.
Elverda rose shakily to her feet. “There is nothing that we can do, for the moment. I am going to my quarters and take a nap. I believe that Dorn, or Harbin or whatever his identity is, will call on us when he is ready to.”
“And do what?”
“Show us the artifact,” she replied, silently adding, I hope.
Legally, the artifact and the entire asteroid belonged to Humphries Space Systems. It had been discovered by a family—husband, wife, and two sons, ages five and three—that made a living from searching out iron-nickel asteroids and selling the mining rights to the big corporations. They filed their claim to this unnamed asteroid, together with a preliminary description of its ten-kilometer-wide shape, its orbit within the Asteroid Belt, and a sample analysis of its surface composition.
Six hours after their original transmission reached the commodities market computer network on Earth—while a fairly spirited bidding was going on among four major corporations for the asteroid’s mineral rights—a new message arrived at the headquarters of the International Astronautical Authority, in Geneva. The message was garbled, fragmentary, obviously made in great haste and at fever excitement. There was an artifact of some sort in a cavern deep inside the asteroid.
One of the faceless bureaucrats buried deep within the IAA’s multilayered organization sent an immediate message to an employee of Humphries Space Systems. The bureaucrat retired hours later, richer than he had any right to expect, while Martin Humphries personally contacted the prospectors and bought the asteroid outright for enough money to end their prospecting days forever. By the time the decision makers in the IAA realized that an alien artifact had been discovered they were faced with a fait accompli: The artifact, and the asteroid in which it resided, were the personal property of the richest man in the solar system.
Martin Humphries was not totally an egomaniac. Nor was he a fool. Graciously he allowed the IAA to organize a team of scientists who would inspect this first specimen of alien existence. Even more graciously, Humphries offered to ferry the scientific investigators all the long way to the asteroid at his own expense. He made only one demand, and the IAA could hardly refuse him. He insisted that he see this artifact himself before the scientists were allowed to view it.
And he brought along the solar system’s most honored and famous artist. To appraise the artifact’s worth as an art object, he claimed. To determine how much he could deduct from his corporate taxes by donating the thing to the IAA, said his enemies. But during their voyage to the asteroid, Elverda came to the conclusion that buried deep beneath his ruthless business persona was an eager little boy who was tremendously excited at having found a new toy. A toy he intended to possess for himself. An art object, created by alien hands.
For an art object was what the artifact seemed to be. The family of prospectors continued to send back vague, almost irrational reports of what the artifact looked like. The reports were worthless. No two descriptions matched. If the man and woman were to be believed, the artifact did nothing but sit in the middle of a rough-hewn cavern. But they described it differently with every report they sent. It glowed with light. It was darker than deep space. It was a statue of some sort. It was formless. It overwhelmed the senses. It was small enough almost to pick up in one hand. It made the children laugh happily. It frightened their parents. When they tried to photograph it, their transmissions showed nothing but blank screens. Totally blank.
