We turned the ship around and prepared for a "dash" to the surface. We reviewed what we knew about getting Rubyzin out of Neptune. We also reviewed what we knew about the goings on at Titan Colony. As we reviewed, we found a tantalizing tidbit. Jabe was new to Titan, we knew that when we took money from him. He'd come straight from Earth about a year ago. He was a rich kid, he'd inherited his wealth. We found him to be kind of strange when we met him for soliciting meetings, but it was just that strangeness that seemed to attract him to our project, so, up until now, it had seemed like a blessing. What we found out from further research was he liked being high profile -- we saw his picture regularly in the gossip columns sent to us from Titan Colony. The tantalizing tidbit we now saw, was seeing Jason nearby him in some of the pictures taken after our departure.
"Did those two get close in some fashion?" Jack asked.
"Given our current circumstance, it's sure worthy of finding out." I said, "Maybe that's the 'kidnapping' Jabe is referring to. He's got him on a tight leash somewhere."
"If that's the case, do we care?"
"If being on a tight leash means he can rip Jason's still-beating heart out, we do."
"So true, but... couldn't he do that to him even if he weren't kidnapped? Couldn't he do it to any of us... given the proper tools and motivation?"
"Sadly, I think you're right. That's why we have to get this Ruby into the system as quickly as possible. As long as it's something special, we are special targets. Man, being a multi-billionaire is a lot more dangerous than I thought it would be!"
We reversed course and headed back to Neptune.
On the way we heard from Langhorn. We all gathered in the mess room to hear what Langhorn had to say. The video opened with Langhorn looking serious and speaking as if he was being very careful with his words.
"Jason has had a serious accident. I've seen a video of him, and he appears to be in a coma. I don't have the details yet, but I got this from Jabe Kalanov, he's being taken care of under Jabe's supervision. I've sent flowers, but I haven't been able to visit him... not much point if he's unconscious. He's being treated in the clinic at Casa Sucrosa -- that new resort they are putting up next to Johnson methane lake.... I must say I find this odd. If he's that sick, why isn't he back here in the city? Why isn't his family taking care of him? Also, when I call Casa Sucrosa to confirm where to send flowers, the people there can't tell me where he is. I can't get any confirmation that Jason is in the clinic there.
"I'll keep looking into this, and if you have more information on this, please let me know.
"Jabe said he was in contact with you...." at this point Dr. Langhorn seemed to pick his words even more carefully, "If there is anything I can do for you that Jabe can't seem to handle, please let me know.
"Langhorn, out."
We watched the video a couple times, just to be sure we got it right.
"Well... Jabe does seem to be the problem, and Langhorn does seem to be clear of it." I said.
"It could be an act."
"It could be part of something real elaborate." I said, "But this whole situation feels more like a desperate act being committed on a low-budget. If Jabe had infinite resources, he would have hired a pirate ship, or ambushed us at the docks. There are a dozen other plans that would be more sure fire, but more expensive."
"Jabe would have gotten a ton of money if our return had simply gone smoothly. Why do this?"
"Either he has been real stupid the past few months, and he's way short of money now -- rich kids do that some times -- or this has nothing to do with money and everything to do with something else... a woman, a slight, a cause. There's an old spy acronym that might be of help here: SMICE. It stands for Sex, Money, Ideology, Compromise, Ego. These are the five common ways to corrupt a person."
"So... what do we do?"
"Well... Jabe and Jason are a Titan problem. We're headed to solving a Neptune problem. We either hand this off to Langhorn, hand it off to someone else, or sit on the Titan issues until we finish with Neptune. The Neptune issue is spooky enough that I don't want us distracted while we try to solve it."
We though for a bit.
"If this is a SMICE problem, should we get a SMICE expert... someone with a spook background?" asked Korliss.
"I don't keep a lot of spook friends or acquaintances. Does anyone here?" There was silence.
"I didn't think so. We are engineers. I'm not sure what we would end up with if we just search for 'spook' in the directory. I do know it would take a lot of time to come to trust whoever we found. That's not where I want my attention now. I vote we hand this off to Langhorn. We trusted him enough to take a lot of money from him, and now he seems like he's being a straight arrow."
There was some more discussion, but we couldn't come up with anything better. Ned prepared a video to send back to Langhorn telling him what we knew and worried about. We all got in it, and we all gave our opinions. We wanted to give Langhorn as full a picture of the problem as possible. That done, we went back to worrying about how to "double dip King Neptune", and come away with our lives, and a double King's Ransom.