“And now he is working for you again.” 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 a microsecond’s delay the phone’s computer-synthesized voice replied, “Dorik Harbin no longer exists. Transferring your call to Dorn.”

Humphries’s gray 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.”

“What do you mean, Dorn’s not available?” Humphries shouted at the blank phone screen. “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 Apacheta. “He’s cut us off. We’re trapped in here.”

SIX YEARS EARLIER

SELENE: ASTRO CORPORATION HEADQUARTERS

Pancho Lane tilted back in her sculpted chair, fingers steepled in front of her face, hiding any display of the suspicion she felt for the man sitting before her desk.