Free Venus by Ben Bova Page A

would? Either way, I rose to his bait and snapped at it.
    Why did he do it? Why did he set all that up, the party, the announcement, the prize? Just to get me off my butt and send me to Venus? To get me out of his way? To kill me, the same way Alex was killed?
    Why?

COMPETITION
    I was walking along the passageway toward my stateroom, cooling down from my run, sweaty and smelly in my running suit, when I saw Marguerite Duchamp coming up the passageway from the other direction.
    I had seen her exactly once since her mother performed that awkward, anger-edged introduction on the day we left Earth orbit. Marguerite had kept pretty much to her quarters and—to tell the truth—I kept pretty much to mine, except for my daily exercise runs. Come to think of it, she might have been poking around the big old ship or working on the bridge as much as her mother and I wouldn’t have known it.
    I couldn’t get over how much she resembled her mother, like a younger twin or clone. The same dark hair and eyes, the same slim supple figure. She was slightly taller than me, but then almost everybody was slightly taller than me. Father called me Runt because I am small, there’s no getting away from that fact.
    She was wearing standard dun-colored coveralls, with
flat-heeled shipboard slippers. No matter how much she looked like her mother, though, Marguerite was obviously younger, fresher, without her mother’s brittle armor of haughtiness, more—approachable.
    I saw that she had sewn a bright green armband on the left sleeve of her coveralls. And as she approached me, I noticed that her thick dark hair was tied back with a green ribbon that matched the armband.
    “You’re one of them?” I blurted.
    Her onyx eyes flashed at me. “Them?” she asked.
    “The Greens.”
    She seemed to visibly relax. “Of course,” she answered casually. “Isn’t everybody?”
    “I’m not.” I reversed my course and fell into step beside her.
    “Why aren’t you?” she asked, apparently not noticing that I was sweaty and smelly and must have looked a mess.
    Her question puzzled me for a moment. “I guess I’ve never paid that much attention to politics.”
    Marguerite shrugged. “With your money, I suppose you don’t have to.”
    “My father’s very involved,” I said. It came out sounding defensive.
    “I’m sure he is,” she said scornfully. “But he’s not a Green, is he?”
    “No,” I admitted with a little laugh. “Definitely not a Green.”
    She was headed for the galley, and I went along with her, smelly running suit and all.
    “How well do you know my father?” I asked, realizing as the words came out of my mouth that I was being just about as tactless as a class-A boor.
    She cast me a sidelong glance as we walked along the passageway. “I only met him once. With my mother.”
    “Only once?”
    “That was enough. More than enough.”
    The way she said it made me wonder what had happened.
Father can be quite suave and winning when he wants to be. He can also be demanding and vicious. From the ferocity of her mother’s reaction, Father must have hit on Marguerite very blatantly.
    Although it had been refurbished along with the rest of the ship, Truax ’s galley looked scuffed and hard-used. No amount of spit and polish could make the dispensers’ dulled, worn metal surfaces gleam like new again. Marguerite helped herself to a tall mug of fruit juice. No one was sitting at the tables, so I poured a chilled mug of the same for myself and went over to sit beside her. She didn’t seem to mind the company. And what if she does, I told myself. I’m the owner of this vessel. This is my ship. I’ll sit where I damned well want to. But I was glad she didn’t get up and move away.
    “So, what do people call you? Marjorie?”
    “Marguerite,” she said stiffly.
    “Marguerite? Nothing else?”
    “That’s the name my mother gave me.”
    I suppose she realized she was being curt, almost rude. Softening a little, she said,