Moonwar

DAY FIVE

It was hot, unbearably hot. Georges Faure hated to wear black, but for this occasion it was necessary. The steaming tropical heal was boiling the vast crowd standing in the sunshine like patient cattle, yet inside his suit of mourning Faure felt comfortable, almost cool. He wore an astronaut’s undergarment, threaded with plastic capillaries that circulated cooling water over his body.

As he sat on the dais listening to the interminable eulogies, Faure’s only worry was that perspiration was beginning to gather on his forehead. The Sri Lankan government had put up an awning of colorful silk to shade the VIPs from the blazing sun, of course, yet even with the cooling undergarment the broiling heat was making his unprotected head perspire.

As surreptitiously as possible, he mopped his sweating brow, hoping he would not look like a sodden mess when he got up to speak.

He kept his face an impassive mask, although he could feel rivulets of sweat running down his cheeks. It will appear ridiculous if I drip perspiration from my nose while I am speaking, he told himself. Again he pulled out his capacious handkerchief and wiped his face.

At last he heard the Sri Lankan prime minister say, “I present to you the secretary-general of the United Nations, Monsieur Georges Faure.”

As he walked slowly to the teak podium, carefully hiding his limp as much as possible, Faure realized that it was the rebels at Moonbase who had inflicted this indignity on him. If not for them, he would be comfortably ensconced in his air-conditioned office in New York instead of attending the funeral services of an obscure Peacekeeper captain who was so inept that he killed himself with his own grenade.

He focused his mind on the hateful Moonbase renegades even as his eyes looked out on a sea of dark, solemn-eyed faces. The Sri Lankan government had made a media extravaganza of Captain Munasinghe’s funeral. After decades of civil war, they desperately needed a hero, a martyr, whom every citizen could admire. Jagath Munasinghe, at best a mediocre officer in life, was being built into a international hero in death.

Thousands of solemn faces stared up at Faure. He kept his own face blank, suppressing the smile that wanted to break out at the thought of having the world’s media focused on him. By his express order, this funeral service was being beamed to Moonbase, too.

Leaning on the teak podium, he began, “The cause of peace has seen many heroes, many men and women who have given their lives. Captain Jagath Munasinghe has joined their illustrious ranks…”

Before long, Faure was virtually snarling, “And why has this brilliant young officer met such an untimely death? Because a handful of renegades at Moonbase refuse to accept international law. Scientists and corporation billionaires want to live beyond the law in their secret base on the Moon. Captain Munasinghe was killed trying to enforce the law which they resist. They killed him,”

Doug watched Faure’s performance from the bunk in his quarters, where his digital clock read 6:28 a.m. Even before Faure had completed his diatribe, Doug pressed the keypad at his bedside that activated the phone.

He started to ask for Jinny Anson, but heard himself say instead, “Edith Elgin, please.”

He muted Faure’s image on the smart wall. Edith’s voice came through, but no picture.

“This is Edith Elgin,” she said, as clearly as if she were signing off on a news report. At least I didn’t wake her up, Doug thought.

“Doug Stavenger,” said Doug. “Are you watching the funeral services?”

“Sure am. Faure’s working himself to a stroke, looks like.”

“He’s blaming us for that Peacekeeper’s death.”

“What’d you expect? Munasinghe’s handed him a great public relations club and Faure’s going to beat you with it as hard as he can.”

Feeling frustrated that he couldn’t see her, Doug asked, “Well, what can we do about it?”

Edith immediately replied, “I’ve got the whole thing on a pair of chips.”

“What?”

“I’ve checked both my cameras. They show what really happened.”

Doug’s surge of hope dampened quickly. “But the media have been ignoring us. Would they play your chips?”

Edith laughed. “Does a chimp eat bananas?”

“No, really,” he said,’the media all seem to be on Faure’s side.”

Her voice grew more serious. “I’ll take care of that.”

“Can you?”

“If I can’t, nobody can.”

Despite himself, Doug had to smile at her self-confidence. Or was it just plain ego?

“Are you really a billionaire?” Edith asked.

“Me?”

“Faure said you’re a billionaire. Is that true?”

With a puzzled blink, Doug replied, “I don’t know. Maybe. I guess my mother is, certainly.”

“Say, have you heard anything from her? Your mother, I mean?”

“No.”

“Doesn’t that worry you?”

Doug leaned back against his pillows. Suddenly he felt very tired of it all. “You know,” he said to Edith, “I haven’t even had the time to worry about her. But now that you mention it, yeah, I had thought she would’ve called by now.”

For several heartbeats Edith did not reply. Then she said, her voice low, “I’m sorry I brought it up, Doug. You’ve got enough on your shoulders without me adding to it.”

He felt himself smiling at her. “That’s okay. I guess if you hang out with reporters you’ve got to expect troubles.”

She laughed. “That’s it. Blame the media.”

DAY SIX

Edith was surprised at how difficult it was to make contact with her boss at Global News in Atlanta. She had beamed the contents of her camera chips to headquarters, then spent the whole day trying to get through to the programming department to make certain they had received it okay.

Now it was past midnight, and still the smart wall display read: YOUR CALL HAS NOT BEEN ACCEPTED.

“Shee-it,” she muttered in her childhood Texas accent, sitting tensely in the spindly desk chair of the one-room apartment the Moonbase people had given her.

Doug had told her that the commsats were blacked out, but Global should be able to take a message directed straight at their rooftop antennas. Yet her call did not go through.

“Did they take my broadcast chip?” she asked herself, wondering for the first time if Global would accept anything she sent from Moonbase.

She sank back in her chair, thinking hard. It was well past midnight at Moonbase. A few stabs at the keyboard on her desk brought up the information that it was 7:23 p.m. in Atlanta.

Manny’ll be home, knocking back his first cocktail of the evening, she thought. Good!

But how to get him, if neither the commsats nor Global’s private antennas were taking calls from the Moon?

She hated to call Doug and admit she couldn’t get through on her own, especially since the guy was probably asleep at this time of night. Yet she couldn’t think of anything else to do.

Doug’s face popped up on her smart wall immediately. He was wide awake, still dressed, at his desk.

He listened to her problem, then showed her how to route calls through Kiribati. Edith thanked him, keeping her face serious, strictly business. Yet she found herself feeling glad that he wasn’t in bed with someone else.

It took a few minutes more, but the wait was worth it once she saw Manny’s look of shock when he recognized who was calling him.

“Edie! You’re in Kiribati?”

“No, I’m still at Moonbase. How come y’all aren’t taking calls from here?”

In the three seconds it took for his reply to reach her, Manny’s surprised expression knitted into a frown. “That’s not my doing, kiddo. If it were up to me I’d keep a special link open to you twenty-four hours a day.”

“Well, put your drink down and get on it, then,” Edith said sternly.

“We’re getting everything you send,” he said, looking worried, guilty. “We’re just not allowed to acknowledge receiving your transmissions.”

“Not allowed? By who?”

For three seconds she waited, and got, “Whom.”

“Don’t smart-ass me, Manny. Who’s not allowing what?”

Manny took a long pull from the old-fashioned glass he was holding before replying. “Orders from the very top,” he said.

“McGrath himself?”

“That’s right. He wants us to cooperate in every way we can with the U.N.”

“You mean he won’t run the stuff I sent? Eyewitness report of the Peacekeeper’s death?”

Manny shrugged. “I’m trying to get it past the suits upstairs, Edith. Honest I am.”

“Honestly,” she muttered.

“Honestly,” he said, three seconds later.

“This is a weird situation,” Edith said.

“Tell me about it.”

For more than twenty-four tense hours, Joanna feared that the Peacekeepers were going to keep her and Lev in Corsica. When their Clippership landed at the Peacekeeper base, the two of them were shuffled through several layers of bureaucracy, including the most thorough medical examinations they had undergone in years.

“You will need a few days to adjust to terrestrial gravity,” the chief doctor told her and her husband, from behind his metal desk.

In truth, Joanna did feel the sullen weight of Earth more than she had expected. She had spent more time on the Moon than on Earth for a quarter-century now, but she always exercised every day while in Moonbase and never considered her returns to Earth as health-threatening.

“I’ll be fully adjusted in another few hours,” Joanna said. She glanced at Lev, who seemed blithely unaffected by the six-fold increase in gravity.

The doctor shook his head good-naturedly. “No, I am afraid it will take several days, at least.”

He was a smiling, plump, golden-skinned Chinese with many chins and rolls of fat showing at the open-necked collar of his short-sleeved Peacekeeper tunic. Joanna thought he might have been the model for statues of the happy Buddha that she had seen in gift shops. He spoke with a cultivated British accent, which sounded very strange coming from his round, almond-eyed Chinese face.

Joanna smiled back at him, coldly. “Doctor, have you found anything in the examinations your people have given us to indicate a health problem?”

“No,” he said, drawing the word out. “But still the effects of increased gravity must be taken into account.”

Sweetening her smile, Joanna asked, “You’re waiting for the results of our blood tests, aren’t you? You’re stalling for time until you learn whether or not there are nanomachines in our blood streams.”

The doctor’s fat-enfolded eyes widened for just a heartbeat. Then he folded his hands across his ample belly and admitted, “Just so. We must be extremely careful about allowing nanomachines into the terrestrial environment.”

Satisfied, Joanna replied, “We’re not harboring nanomachines.”

“We are not Trojan horses,” Brudnoy chipped in.

“But you have both undergone nanotherapy on the Moon, haven’t you?” the doctor asked.

“No,” Brudnoy replied simply. “I’ve never had to, although I admit as I get older the temptation grows stronger.”

“It does?”

Scratching at his beard, the Russian explained, “Each morning brings a new ache. My eyesight isn’t what it used to be. My prostate is growing.”

“That is natural,” said the doctor.

“Yes, but my nanotech friends tell me that they could bring my eyesight back to twenty-twenty and shrink my prostate back to normal and strengthen my poor old muscles, with nanomachines.”

Joanna looked at her husband with new eyes. Lev had never complained, she had never had an inkling that he felt his years. In bed he was as vigorous as men half his age. But if he feels old and creaky on the Moon, he must be in agony now, here. Yet he won’t show it, not even to me.

She reached out and grasped his hand. He looked surprised, then grinned sheepishly at her.

The doctor was oblivious to their byplay. He said to Joanna, “But you, Mrs Brudnoy, you have used nanomachines, haven’t you?”

Joanna nodded easily. “Many times. For cosmetic reasons, mainly, although I’ve had them scrub plaque from my arteries more than once.”

“You see?” the doctor said, as if she had just confessed to a crime. “We cannot take the risk of having nanomachines infect our terrestrial environment.”

“Doctor, I’m surprised to hear such nonsense from an educated man,” Joanna said.

“Nonsense?”

“Of course it’s nonsense. To begin with, there are no nanomachines in me. I underwent therapy and then the machines were flushed out, quite naturally.”

“How can you be sure—”

“They know the number of machines they put in,” Brudnoy explained, “and they count the number that come out. It’s quite simple.”

“But they could multiply inside the body, couldn’t they?”

“Only if they’re programmed to do so,” said Brudnoy.

Before the doctor could reply, Joanna went on, “Second, and more important, is that nanomachines are machines. They are not alive. They cannot mutate and change. What if there were a few nanomachines left in my bloodstream? What harm could they do, even if they got loose into your environment?”

“That depends on what they were designed to do, I should think.”

“Yes.” Joanna’s smile returned. “If a few got into you, for example, they might remove some of the fat you’ve accumulated.”

For an instant she did not know how the doctor would respond. He stared at her as he digested her words. Then his round pudgy face opened into a hearty laughter.

“Nanomachines could make me slim!” he gasped. “I could eat whatever I like and still become thin!”

Joanna leaned back in the stiff metal chair, thinking that she had won the man over.

But his laughter died away. “All this may be very true, but suppose you are carrying nanomachines that are harmful?”

“Harmful?”

Leaning his heavy forearms on his desk, the doctor said, “You are assuming that the specialists who treated you with nanomachines are benign people. Suppose they are not? Suppose they put into you nanomachines that can…” he fished for an appropriate subject.

“Gobble up plastics?” Brudnoy suggested.

Joanna scowled at her husband.

“Destroy plastics,” the doctor agreed. “Or invade computers and eat up their memory drives. Or destroy red blood cells in humans. Or attack the human immune system. Or—”

“Aren’t you being melodramatic?” Joanna said, almost sneering at the man.

“This is what we fear,” said the doctor. “You may think it is not important, but we cannot take such a risk.”

“I told you before,” Brudnoy said, “we are not Trojan horses. Nor Frankenstein monsters.”

“How do you know?” the doctor shot back. “You may have been infected without your knowledge.”

“Nonsense!” Joanna spat.

“That is a risk we will not take,” the doctor repeated firmly.

“Do you honestly believe that anyone at Moonbase would inject us with nanobugs that would be dangerous to Earth? Why would they do something like that? What possible reason could there be?”

The doctor folded his hands over his middle again. “Mrs Brudnoy, the chances of such an event are minuscule, I admit. But the consequences of such an event—no matter how unlikely it may be—would be catastrophic.”

Joanna looked at Brudnoy, who shrugged helplessly.

“Those are my orders,” the doctor said. “You are to be held here until the results of your blood tests come in.”

“Where are the tests being done?” Joanna asked.

“There are very few facilities with the necessary equipment and personnel who are capable of performing such tests.”

“Of course,” said Brudnoy. “You’ve closed all the nano-technology facilities.”

“Where are the tests being done?” Joanna insisted.

“It is very difficult to analyze blood samples for nano-machines.”

“Where?”

The doctor hesitated, then said, “At the University of Tokyo.”

“At a lab funded by Yamagata Corporation, I imagine,” Brudnoy said.

Joanna was too furious to speak.

DAY SEVEN

“This is Edie Elgin, speaking to you from Moonbase.”

Edith smiled into the minicam being held by one of the technicians from the defunct Lunar University. Doug Stavenger stood beside the camera woman, smiling encouragement to Edith.

She looked bright and beautiful in a close-fitting sheath of cardinal red. Doug had appropriated his mother’s wardrobe, the most extensive in Moonbase, hoping that she would understand and not be too angry when she found out. Edith had to do some fast alterations, and now she prayed that the dress would hold together without popping one of her hastily-sewn seams.

“Behind me you can see Moonbase’s extensive farm,” she went on, thinking that maybe a popped seam would improve her ratings. If the shitfaced suits back in Atlanta put her report on the network at all.

“More than five hundred acres have been carved out of the lunar rock,” she said, reading the script she and Doug Stavenger had put together. The words appeared on the flat display screen attached to the minicam just above its lens.

“Here, deep underground, the agricultural specialists of Moonbase grow the food that feeds the two thousand, four hundred and seventy-six men and women who live at Moonbase. This corner of the farm,” she started walking toward a row of dwarf trees, “is the citrus arbor, where fresh oranges, grapefruit, lemon and limes are growing…”

Edith described the hydroponics trays, bending down to show how the plant roots reached down not into soil, but into liquid nutrients that were carefully matched to each plant’s needs. She walked down one of the long rows, pointing out soybeans, legumes, grains and leafy vegetables.

“Over in that enclosed area,” she pointed, “biologists are experimenting with growing plants in an atmosphere that is higher in carbon dioxide than normal. The scientists need to wear breathing masks to work in there.”

Edith explained the full-spectrum lighting strips that ran along the farm’s high ceiling. “This artificial sunlight is on twenty-four hours a day. Moonbase’s farm never knows night, and its crop yield is more than five times the yield from a similar acreage on Earth.”

She showed the flower bed that Lev Brudnoy had started years ago in lunar soil. And the pens of rabbits and chickens that provided Moonbase’s meat. She did not mention the need for nitrogen, which had been imported from Earth but now would have to be mined from asteroids orbiting near the Earth-Moon system, just as the carbon for building the diamond Clipperships was mined.

“Before the current crisis erupted,” Edith went on, walking smoothly to an area where two large titanium tanks stood empty, with holes where piping should be attached,’this area was going to be used for an experimental aquaculture section. The idea was to use some of Moonbase’s precious water to grow fish, frogs and alga. Aquaculture can yield more protein per input of energy than even Moonbase’s advanced hydroponic farming can, and the water can be recycled almost completely.”

Her smile faded, her face grew serious. “Unfortunately, the aquaculture project has been put on hold while Moonbase’s leaders and the political leadership of the United Nations discuss independence for Moonbase.”

The camera panned slowly across the farm’s rows of hydroponics tanks as Edith continued:

“Moonbase can feed itself. Even though no spacecraft has been allowed to land here for a week—except for the Peacekeeper troops who attempted to seize Moonbase—the men and women of this community on the Moon are self-sufficient. The question before the world’s leaders now is: Will Moonbase’s determination to be free be allowed to flower into true independence?”

The camera stopped on Brudnoy’s little flower bed.

“This is Edie Elgin, at Moonbase.”

“We’re out,” said the camera woman, lowering the minicam and its awkward prompter screen.

“Good work,” Doug said, reaching out to shake Edith’s hand.

“And I didn’t mention nanomachines once, did I?” Edith said, grinning back at him.

“You did a great job,” Doug said.

Edith’s grin faded. “Now I’ve got to get the suits to run the damned thing.”

Still clutching her hand, Doug started toward the airtight hatch that led out of the farm. “I’ve got an idea about that.”

“Oh?”

“You talk to Atlanta, I’m going to talk to Kiribati.”

Tamara Bonai was on the rooftop of the Tarawa Kiribati Hotel and Casino when Doug’s call came through. As chairwoman of the board of the Kiribati Corporation, her responsibilities to her people were many and weighty. She knew that the Americans and Europeans regarded her people as childish islanders and regarded her as little more than a figurehead, an attractive front for the real power behind the corporation: Masterson Aerospace and its board chairman, Ibrahim al-Rashid.

Until the Moonbase crisis rose up like a sudden typhoon, Bonai had been content to be regarded as a figurehead. Kiribati Corporation was making good profits from its ownership of Moonbase, where the diamond Clipperships were manufactured for sale all over the world, and from its hotels and casinos, scattered across a dozen islands in the broad Pacific. A strange combination, nanomanufacturing on the Moon and resort hotels on tropical islands, but no stranger than other corporations that took their profits wherever they could find them.

Her father had bequeathed the corporate responsibilities to her. The old man had spent as many years as he could stand behind a desk; finally he had declared his early retirement and gone off to fish and play with his grandchildren. Tamara, the youngest of his five daughters and the only one still unmarried, inherited his desk.

With it came gradually building pressure from the United Nations to force Kiribati to sign the nanotech treaty. Knowing that it would mean the death of Moonbase, Bonai resisted as long as she could, looking to Masterson and the other international corporations for help. They gave none. She was especially surprised, even hurt, that Rashid stayed aloof from the struggle with the U.N. There were raging arguments in the Masterson Corporation board of directors. Joanna Brudnoy fought for Moonbase’s survival. But Rashid insisted that the nanotech treaty was unavoidable; sooner or later they would have to obey it.

Now Moonbase had defied Faure and the Peacekeepers. They had declared their independence, a move that Bonai supported with all her heart.

Is it because of Doug that I want Moonbase to win? she asked herself. She had never seen Douglas Stavenger in the flesh; they had never been closer than the Moon’s distance since they’d first met. Their only contact had been through videophones or virtual reality links. Yet she felt that Doug was important to her; she could fall in love with him some day.

She sat at a table near the railing that edged the roof and looked out at the sparkling ocean and the surf breaking on the reef beyond the island’s white sand beach. One of the hotel’s small army of assistant managers brought a phone to her and placed it softly on the table.

“Mr Stavenger is calling from Moonbase,” the young man said.

Bonai thanked him and activated the phone with the touch of a manicured finger. Doug’s earnest, handsome face filled the tiny screen as she worked the receiver plug into her right ear.

“Tamara, did you look at the video we beamed down to you a couple of hours ago?” Doug asked immediately.

“Yes. The Peacekeeper officer killed himself, didn’t he?”

She glanced out at the ocean again as she waited for his response, thinking that he never called except on business. We have no personal relationship, she told herself. It’s never even entered his mind.

“Global News Network is having difficulty deciding whether they want to air it not,” Doug said.

“I understand that they are leaning over backwards to support Faure,” Bonai replied, “although I don’t see what good it will do them.”

A boy was spearfishing for octopus out in the shallows by the reef, she saw. He lunged and pulled a pulpy tangle of tentacles out of the water on the end of his spear. It writhed helplessly, no larger than his hand. He bit its head and the writhing immediately stopped. She wished she could be out there too, having fun. With Doug.

“We’re talking to the head of the network and trying to make a case for fairness, balanced reporting and all that,” Doug said. Without waiting for her to reply, he added, In the meantime, it occurred to me that Kiribati might broadcast the video in your hotels—maybe even bounce it off your commsats so the rest of the Pacific nations can see it.”

She frowned slightly. “But isn’t the video the property of Global News? Wouldn’t our airing it cause copyright problems? To say nothing of the U.N.’s reaction.”

This time she watched Doug’s face as she waited. He looked so earnest, so determined. “Yes, it probably would cause a flap. But we’ve got to show the world what really happened here!”

“Ah,” she said, understanding.

Doug was continuing, “We need air time, Tamara! We need to tell the world that we’ve declared independence and we’re serious about it and we didn’t kill that Peacekeeper captain. Especially in the United States, we need to get our side of the story to the people.”

“And this will force the issue. I see.”

For nearly three seconds she waited. Then Doug asked, “Will you do it for us, Tamara? Will you help us?”

“On one condition,” she replied.

She enjoyed watching his face turn perplexed.

“One condition? What is it?”

“That after all this is over you come here to Tarawa and go fishing with me.”

He smiled at her once he heard her words. “You’ve got a deal!” Doug said fervently.

DAY EIGHT

“This is intolerable!” Joanna was raging. “We’ve been kept in quarantine for three days now!”

The image of the U.N. flunkie on her phone screen seemed serenely unperturbed, as bland and inflexible as a wax dummy.

“I’m terribly sorry, Mrs Brudnoy,” he said in an infuriatingly soft voice, “but the quarantine is for your own safety. You have no idea how strongly public opinion feels about the killing of Captain Munasinghe. If you were allowed out without our protection, it could be quite dangerous for you.”

Joanna glanced up from the screen to her husband, stretched out on the couch across the room. Lev knows how to accept imprisonment, she thought. It must be in his Russian genes.

But to the image in the phone screen she said, “Now look. I’m perfectly capable of arranging my own security. I could have a small army of bodyguards here in Corsica in a few hours if you’d allow me to make a phone call back to my corporate headquarters in Savannah.”

“Aren’t you comfortable in your quarters?” the bureaucrat asked. “Our instructions were to see that you had the very best suite—”

“The best suite in your jail!” Joanna spat.

“Really, Mrs Brudnoy…”

“Your damned medical tests have shown we’re not infested with nanobugs. I don’t care what your so-called security risks are. I want to get out of here!”

“I’m afraid—” The bureaucrat’s vapid expression suddenly changed. He blinked several times and a small knot of anxiety appeared between his brows. “One moment, please.”

The phone screen went blank.

Joanna wanted to scream. She looked over at her husband. “Lev, how can you just lie there?”

“I am planning our escape,” he said, quite seriously. “All we need is a tunneling machine.”

Before Joanna could reply the screen chimed and Georges Faure’s face appeared, scowling like a miniature thundercloud.

The newscast from Kiribati came through while Faure was in his office discussing economic controls over international air traffic. He did not have the luxury, then, of demolishing the furniture or any other way of venting his fury.

He dismissed his underlings and watched the newscast alone, his anger and blood pressure rising with each second. There was Captain Munasinghe, screaming uselessly at his troops as they ingloriously ran away from Moonbase’s garage. There was Munasinghe, obviously in a fit of hysteria, fumbling with a grenade and charging through the wide-open airlock. And there was Munasinghe, killed by his own grenade.

Idiots! Faure fumed silently. Who allowed this to happen?

He banged a chubby fist on his phone console and demanded to be put through to Edan McGrath, owner of Global News. But even before the electronics could make the connection he cancelled the call.

It will do no good, Faure told himself. The cat has escaped the sack. Whether or not McGrath has gone back on his promise to me no longer matters. Neither of us can put the cat back inside now.

Yet he made a mental note to work more closely with the New Morality zealots in Washington who wanted to put more limits on the news media.

Breathing deeply in a vain attempt to calm himself, Faure put through a call to Corsica, instead of Atlanta.

By the time Joanna Brudnoy’s surprised face appeared on his desktop phone screen, Faure had almost regained his self-composure.

“Madame Brudnoy,” he said as pleasantly as he could manage.

“Mr Faure,” she snapped back. Obviously she was not happy at being detained in Corsica.

“It has come to my attention that you wish to return to your home,” Faure said.

Joanna cocked a brow at him. “I didn’t come back to Earth to sit in a Corsican jail cell, no matter how nicely furnished it may be.”

“I quite understand,” said Faure, “and I agree. Your detention has been a sad error on the part of certain over-anxious members of my staff. I apologize most humbly.”

Joanna looked totally unconvinced.

Faure went on, “I am giving orders this instant that you are to be released and provided transportation for whatever destination you wish.”

Warily, Joanna replied, “We’ve been given to understand that we’ll need some hefty security because of public resentment over the Peacekeeper’s death.”

Faure made himself nod reluctantly. “Alas, that may be true, Madame.”

“If you don’t mind,” said Joanna, “I’d rather provide my own security. And my own transport, too.”

“Of course! Whatever you wish.”

The woman looked suspicious. Faure made himself smile at her as he thought, With a bit of luck, some fanatic will assassinate her.

Joanna mumbled her thanks to Faure and broke the phone link. Looking up from the screen, she saw that Lev was already on his feet.

“We’re free to leave,” she said, not quite believing it.

Lev scratched at his beard. “Something’s changed Faure’s mind. I wonder what it was?”

Joanna had no answer.

“Do you think Rashid got to him, at last?”

With an angry shake of her head, Joanna replied, “No. I think Rashid was very happy to keep us bottled up here. I think he’s going to be badly shaken up when we arrive in Savannah. At least, I intend to shake the little rat as hard as I can.”

DAY TEN

He hasn’t been alone for more than five minutes, the mercenary grumbled to himself. I don’t mind taking him out in front of witnesses if I have to, but it’d be better to get him alone, make it look like an accident or something natural, like a heart attack.

He almost laughed to himself. Heart attack. The kid’s twenty-five years old and healthy as a horse. It’s going to have to be an accident.

Plenty of places for an accident to happen, he reasoned. Might have to take out a whole lot of people, though. Knock out the air pumps or rig an explosion in one of the labs.

He hasn’t gone out on the surface since this thing started. It’d be easy to get him when he’s in a spacesuit. Or maybe in the airlock. Christ, I’m starting to grasp at straws! Why’s it so fucking tough, knocking off one guy?

Because you don’t want to do it, he answered himself. Because you really admire the kid. He’s everything you could’ve been if you’d been born different.

Yeah, sure. And I could fly if I had wings. The facts of the matter are that you’ve been assigned to decapitate the leadership here and this Stavenger kid is the leadership. Sooner or later the Peacekeepers are going to come back in force and either take this base or flatten it. If you haven’t done your job by then you’re dead. Either you get killed in the battle or they drag you back to headquarters, a failure. And you know what that means. Better to get yourself killed trying to do your job.

He tried to calm himself and think his problem through. The only time Stavenger’s alone inside the base here is when he sleeps. And he hasn’t been doing much sleeping, the past ten days. Conferences all the time. He’s always got a gaggle of people around him.

Maybe tonight, though. He’s got to sleep sometime. Maybe I’ll walk him to his quarters and do him there and get it the hell over with.

“All right,” Doug said, standing on a table in The Cave. “This your meeting. Let’s hear what you have to say.”

Almost the entire population of Moonbase was jammed into The Cave. Only a skeleton crew was left on duty at the monitoring center, and they were piped into this meeting through the base intercom. The dinner shifts were finished. The other tables and chairs had been pushed against the far wall so everyone could gather into the space. From his vantage atop the table, Doug saw their faces focused squarely on him. They were standing shoulder-to-shoulder; the only empty spots on the floor of the big cafeteria were the little squares of grass.

Edith Elgin, now in a Moonbase-issue white coverall, stood off to one side, where she had set up both her minicams on tripods to record the meeting.

Jinny Anson was standing in the front row at Doug’s feet. She asked, “Well, are we independent or not?”

The acoustics in The Cave were good enough so that she didn’t need amplification.

Doug answered, There’s been no confirmation of our declaration of independence from the U.N. or any recognition by any country on Earth.”

“Great,” someone sneered.

“Physically, though,” Doug went on, “we’re showing that we can exist independently of supplies from Earth. The U.N. hasn’t allowed a flight here since the Peacekeeper mission took off. We’re under siege.”

“Big deal.’.

“Wait a minute,” one of the women asked. “You mean we can’t go back Earthside if we want to?”

“I don’t know,” Doug said. “I’m sure we could arrange with Faure for transport to take people back Earthside, if there’re enough who want to leave to make a flight necessary.”

“What about us?” asked the manager of the Canadian dance troupe.

Doug lifted his hands in a gesture of helplessness. “Until we can negotiate your return Earthside, you’ll have to remain here as our guests, I’m afraid.”

“But we have contractual obligations! Dates in a dozen cities!”

“I can let you call Faure yourself, or your government in Ottawa,” Doug suggested. “Unfortunately, no one is returning our calls.”

“I don’t want to be stuck here forever!” another voice called out.

“It won’t be forever,” Doug said, with a grin. “It’ll just seem that long.”

“My son’s birthday is next week.”

Doug made a can’t be helped shrug.

“How soon can I launch my survey satellite to the Farside?” asked Zoltan Kadar. He had pushed his way to the front row, Doug noticed.

“That’s a good question,” Doug replied, stalling for time to think. “We’ll have to work it out with the logistics program, to see if your launch will use any supplies that we might want to hold onto, in case this siege goes on for a while.”

“All I need is rocket propellant and some electricity,” Kadar shot back.

His rocket would be propelled by powdered aluminum and liquid oxygen, both extracted from the regolith and both in plentiful supply, Doug knew.

“We’ll see,” he said to Kadar.

“What’re Lev and Joanna doing?” a man’s voice asked from the crowd.

They went Earthside to negotiate face-to-face with Faure and the rest of the U.N. leadership,” Doug said.

“Have they met with Faure yet?”

“Not yet. They were detained at the Peacekeeper base in Corsica for a couple of days, but they’re back in Savannah now. She should be meeting with Faure in a few days, at most, I guess.”

“How is this thing going to be settled? Are we going to be an independent nation or will the U.N. take us over?”

“It won’t be the U.N.,” Doug said. “It’s starting to look as if Yamagata is really behind this whole business. If we lose, then it’ll be Yamagata Corporation that takes over Moonbase.”

“You mean this whole thing is a fight between corporations?”

“No,” Doug snapped. “That is not what I mean. This crisis is a fight between our right to live and work the way we want to, and a power grab by the U.N. and/or Yamagata Corporation. The question is: Do you want to keep on living and working the way you have been, or do you want to be shipped back Earthside without a job?”

Someone said, “But if Yamagata’s going to take over the base—”

“They’ll staff it with their own people,” another voice countered. “Yamagata’s not going to keep us, that’s for sure.”

“What the hell can we do?”

Jinny Anson turned her back to Doug, to face the crowd. I’ll tell you what we can do. Fuck ’em! We don’t have to ask the U.N. for independence. We are independent! We can live here indefinitely. And if we have to expand the farm or build more solar cells outside, we can do that! We don’t need those fuckers! We’re free!”

The crowd roared, but from Doug’s vantage atop the table it seemed that almost half the people in The Cave were roaring in protest against Anson’s outburst.

“Okay, okay,” Doug said, waving his hands to quiet them down. “I’ve got to admit it, Jinny, I agree with you about ninety-five percent.”

“Only ninety-five?” She planted her fists on her hips defiantly.

“Hey, I wanna get back home!” a man hollered. “I don’t intend to spend the rest of my life here.”

“Me neither.”

“Listen,” Doug said. “For the time being, nobody’s leaving. We’re in a state of siege, looks like.”

“For how long?”

“Until this thing gets settled, one way or the other,” Doug answered.

“Or until the Peacekeepers come back with more troops,” came a voice from the rear.

Doug conceded the point with a nod, thinking that if he were pushed far enough, Faure might destroy Moonbase rather than admit defeat.

“Okay,” Doug said, loud enough to bounce his voice off The Cave’s back wall. “We’re going to have to act as if we really are independent. Jinny’s right about that. As long as we’re under siege, nobody can leave, so we might as well go about our work and show Faure and the rest of those flatlanders that we can get along without them.”

“Then I can launch my rocket?” Kadar asked.

“We’ll look into it.”

“But I still wanna get home!” a voice wailed.

“Once this matter is settled,” Doug told them, “anyone who wants to leave Moonbase will be free to do so. And anyone who wants to stay here permanently and become a real Lunatic, you’ll be free to do that, too.”

They asked questions and gave opinions and griped and argued among themselves for more than another hour. As Doug watched and listened, he realized that very few of these men and women had ever thought about remaining at Moonbase indefinitely. They were all contract workers, even Jinny Anson, accustomed to working on the Moon for a fixed period of time, then returning to Earth, to home.

Of all the people here, he realized, only Zimmerman and Kris Cardenas and her husband have consciously decided to live in Moonbase permanently. Maybe Jinny, he conceded. Her marriage had broken up because she spent so much time at Moonbase while her husband stayed Earthside.

And me. If I have to go back Earthside with these nanobugs in me, some crackpot nanoluddite will kill me, sooner or later. That’s the sweet part of religion, Doug thought, you can be as fanatical as you want in the name of God.

The mercenary hung at the rear of the crowd, wondering how long these people could go around the same mulberry bush. Then Kadar climbed up on the table beside Doug and began telling them all, in elaborate detail, how wonderful the Farside astronomical observatory was going to be and how important it was to the future of the human race.

People started to drift out of The Cave, most of them still talking among themselves as Kadar droned on, unperturbed. As if talk’s going to do any good, the mercenary thought. They’ve been talking for damned near four hours with nothing to show for it but a bunch of sore throats.

He watched Doug climb down stiffly from his perch on the table. Okay, he told himself, Doug’s going to go back to his quarters now. Christ, it’s after midnight. Okay, just tail along behind him and when he gets to his quarters, invite yourself in and get the job done.

DAY ELEVEN

“It’s past midnight,” Claire Rossi said tiredly as she trudged along the corridor that led from The Cave to her quarters. Nick O’Malley, at her side, towered over her like a redheaded bodyguard.

He nodded. “I’ve got the early shift tomorrow. Gotta be up and moving by six a.m.”

She smiled up at him. “You can sleep in my place. It’s closer.”

He smiled back. “How could I refuse?”

But once they were snuggled in her bunk together, Claire whispered in the darkness, “Maybe I should get an abortion.”

She felt the shock that went through him. “Abortion? Why? You can’t! I don’t want you to.”

Feeling more miserable with each word, Claire said, “With all this going on, all this uncertainty… and if there should be any complications…”

He touched her bare shoulder tenderly. “You feel okay, don’t you? There’s nothing wrong, is there?”

“No,” she said, “I feel fine.”

“Then what’s this talk about abortion? I don’t like it.”

“It’s just…” She couldn’t put the words together.

“Just what? This siege thing? Don’t let that frighten you. Even if we have to go back Earthside we still have employment contracts. Masterson Corporation’ll have to honor our contracts. We’ll have our jobs.”

“Suppose there’s fighting?”

“How could there be?” he said. “We don’t have anything to fight with.”

“But Doug said Yamagata wants to take over the base.”

He propped himself on one elbow and looked down at her. “And what’s that got to do with it? We’d have to go back Earthside anyway, now that you’re pregnant.”

’I’d have to go back,” Claire said. “I’m the one who’s pregnant.”

“Well, I’d have to go back with you, wouldn’t I?”

“Why? We’re not married. You’re not under any obligation.”

For a moment he was silent, then Nick chuckled softly in the darkness. “So that’s it, then. You’re worried that I won’t make an honest woman of you.”

“I never tried to—”

He smothered her lips with a kiss. “Listen to me, Claire darling. I love you. I love our baby, too. I’m going to marry you… if you’ll have me.”

She wrapped her bare arms around his neck and pulled him down to her. “I love you, Nick. I’m mad about you.”

After a few moments he caught his breath and said, “So there’ll be no more talk of abortion, right?”

“Right.”

He fell silent for several heartbeats. Then he murmured, “I wonder if there’s anybody here in Moonbase who can perform a wedding?”

Doug sat on the table’s edge up at the front of the cafeteria until even Kadar ran out of steam. Only a handful of people were still in The Cave. Most had left long ago.

Edith was still by her minicams, recording every word of Kadar’s monologue. Doug walked slowly over to her as the astronomer at last climbed down from the table and headed for the double doors to the corridor.

“You’re a glutton for punishment,” Doug said as she clicked off the two cameras.

Edith grinned. “He seemed to enjoy being recorded. He played to the camera for the last half-hour or so.”

“Is any of that stuff useful to you?”

She started to dismount the minicams. “Maybe,” she answered over her shoulder. “A couple of sound bites, add a few clips of the artist’s renderings of what the Farside base will look like.”

“Artist’s renderings?”

“You do have drawings of the facility, don’t you? Architect’s sketches?”

“Computer graphics.”

“Fine,” said Edith. “Perfect.”

Doug helped her to collapse the tripods, then hefted them both in one hand.

“I borrowed those from your photo lab,” Edith said.

“Oh. I thought you smuggled them into the base beneath your Peacekeeper’s uniform.”

She gave him a searching look. “For a guy who’s staring disaster in the face, you’re pretty chipper.”

“Must be the company,” Doug said.

He walked with her, still gripping the folded tripods, toward the double doors. The Cave was empty now, except for them and Bam Gordette lingering by the doors.

“Now which way is the photo lab?” Edith asked. “I still get a little lost in these tunnels.”

“Corridors,” Doug corrected. “We call them corridors. And I’ll take these back to the photo lab. No need for you to walk all the way there; it’s ’way past your own quarters.”

“You mean that teeny little monk’s cell you gave me?”

“It’s as spacious and luxurious as any compartment in Moonbase, almost.”

I’ll bet your quarters are bigger.”

Doug felt his cheeks coloring. “Well, yeah, but I’m a permanent resident—”

“And the big cheese.”

“Your quarters are just as good as any part-timer’s. Better than most, in fact.”

“Really?”

She’s teasing me, Doug realized. And I’m enjoying it.

Gordette held one of the doors open for them and they passed out into the corridor.

“Thanks, Bam,” Doug said.

Gordette nodded without saying a word. Doug walked along the corridor with Edith, toward her room, and forgot about him and everyone else.

“Tell me about the nanobugs,” Edith said. The corridor lights were turned down to their overnight level. It made the bare stone walls seem somehow softer, less austere.

“The ones we used to scare off the Peacekeepers?”

“No. The ones in your body.”

Doug looked into her bright green eyes. She’s a news reporter, he reminded himself. Her interest is in a story, not in you as a person.

“I took a really bad radiation dose, about eight years ago. Got caught out in the open during a solar flare. My mother brought Professor Zimmerman up here, and Kris Cardenas, too. But Zimmerman was the one who pumped me full of nanobugs.”

“They saved your life.”

“More than once,” Doug said.

“And they’re still in your body?”

He nodded. “Zimmerman turned me into a walking experiment. The bugs he put in me are programmed to protect my cells against infection or any other kind of damage.”

“And they just stay inside you? Do they reproduce?”

“According to Zimmerman, they rebuild one another when they wear down or become damaged themselves.”

“Can you feel them inside you?” Edith asked, grimacing at the thought.

Doug laughed. “No more than you can feel your white blood corpuscles or your alveoli.”

“My what?”

“The air sacs in your lungs,” Doug said. “Here’s your door.”

“The Moonbase Hilton,” Edith said.

“Is it really that bad?”

She tapped out her combination on the electronic lock. “See for yourself,” she said, sliding the door back and motioning him into the room with a sweeping gesture.

Doug propped the tripods on the wall outside the door and stepped into Edith’s quarters. It was a standard compartment, roughly ten square meters, maybe a little more. A bunk with built-in dresser drawers, a desk and chair, a sling chair made of lunar plastic, a table that folded into the wall with two stools beneath it, an empty built-in bookcase.

“You’ve got your own bathroom,” Doug said, pointing to the half-open door. “You’ve got nothing to complain about.”

“The shower turns off just when I’m getting relaxed,” Edith said.

He shrugged slightly. “That’s automatic. Water’s not scarce, exactly, but we don’t play around with it.”

“And then those air blowers come on.”

“Electricity’s cheap. And the heat is recycled.”

“It ain’t the Ritz.”

“You’d feel better if you had some of your personal things with you.”

She agreed with a rueful nod. “I did come kind of light, didn’t I?”

Doug went to the wall panel at the head of the bunk and turned on the display. The far wall showed a camera view of the crater floor.

Edith gaped. “Hot spit!”

“Didn’t anybody tell you about the smart walls?”

“Well, sure, but I didn’t know you could see outside. It’s kinda like a window, isn’t it?”

Doug pulled one of the stools over to the bunk and began to show Edith how to work the electronic display.

She sat on the edge of the bunk and watched views of the bleak, harsh lunar landscape. Then he started showing videos from Moonbase’s library: educational stuff, mostly, although he rippled through a menu of entertainment vids.

“And we have all the university courses available. Some of the lectures are fascinating; they’re all illustrated of course, multi-media.”

Gradually Edith’s attention wandered from the wall screen to Doug. She saw an intense young man, so strong within himself that he didn’t even realize the aura he radiated. He’s only twenty-five, she told herself. You’re damned near ten years older. Well, seven, at least. So what’s age got to do with it? another part of her mind answered. You’ve bedded enough old farts. Maybe robbing the cradle would be fun.

But not tonight, Edith decided firmly. You’d be giving him totally the wrong impression if you flopped in the sack with him tonight.

Doug let his hand drop from the wall panel and turned to face her. “Well, there’s a couple of hundred choices available. And that’s even with Earthside communications blacked out.”

“You can’t get anything from Earth?” Edith asked.

“They’re not transmitting to us. Even the commercial commsats have gone dark.”

“That’s pretty damned rotten.”

“All’s fair in war.”

“Still… what harm would it do to let you see commercial TV?”

Doug smiled. “It might do us all some good to be without commercial TV for a while. Improve our minds maybe.”

“Thanks a lot!”

“I didn’t mean news broadcasts,” he apologized quickly.

“No, you’re right. News is just as bad, almost.”

“I’m sure you’re a top-flight serious journalist,” he said.

He was sitting inches away from her. She could touch his knee merely by moving her leg slightly. Don’t do it! she warned herself.

Doug could smell her perfume: like the flowers Lev grows in the farm. She certainly is beautiful, with those big green eyes. But she’s an important news reporter back Earthside. She probably thinks I’m just a kid. Or worse, a freak stuffed with nanobugs.

Yet Doug saw her strange half smile, as if she were waiting for him to say something, do something.

“I’m not contagious, you know,” he heard himself say, surprised at his own words.

She blinked, as if stirring from a dream. “What?”

“The nanobugs. They won’t contaminate you if we touch, or… er, kiss. You can’t catch anything from me.”

Edith laughed, softly, gently. “Shee-it, back Earthside you’ve got to be worried about catching all kinds of diseases from the guys you date.”

Doug raised both hands. “I’m disease-free, believe me.”

“You look pretty healthy.”

“And you look very lovely,” he said.

“I’m a lot older than you.”

“Does that bother you?”

She hesitated only a moment. “No, I don’t think it really does.”

Doug moved next to her on the bunk and put his arms around her. Her lips felt soft and warm on his.

That voice in Edith’s head was still warning her not to do this, but she almost giggled in the middle of a kiss as she answered, What’s the matter, you scared he won’t respect me in the morning?

What the hell, Edith said to her voice. And then she stopped thinking altogether.

Out in the corridor, almost exactly thirty meters from Edith’s door, the mercenary let his back slide down the stone wall and hunkered down on the floor.

Goddamn, he said to himself. Looks like the kid’s going to spend the night with her.

He draped his arms across his upraised knees and rested his head on his arms. Get some sleep. Maybe he’ll come out before the morning shift starts to come through the corridor.

But he felt pretty certain that Doug was the kind who would spend the whole night.

DAY TWELVE

Edan McGrath, president of Global News Network, was sometimes called Edan Me Wrath. This was one of those mornings.

Unexpected because he was on vacation, he had stormed into his Atlanta office and demanded that his vice presidents for programming, news and legal meet him in his office immediately.

He was a big man who radiated power even though his once hard and muscular body was now weighed down with the fat of overindulgence. Bald, he kept the same trim moustache he had sported when he’d been a Georgia Tech football lineman. Even though his grandfather had handed him Global News as an inheritance, McGrath told anyone and everyone that being born with a platinum spoon in your mouth wasn’t easy. “I’ve had to work to keep Global on top of the international competition,” he would say. “I earn my keep!”

For an industry that rewarded egomania, his office was comparatively modest. No bigger than a minor airfield, its decor was muted Persian carpets and quiet little marble busts and statuettes from ancient Greece and Rome. No desk, but a large round table dominated the room. The walls were display screens, naturally. One of them perpetually showed the Global News feed from its Atlanta studios. The other at present displayed a trio of sleek yachts slicing through New Zealand waters in a trial heat of the Americas Cup race.

The head of the round table was wherever McGrath chose to sit. At the moment he was standing, big hands gripping the back of one of the padded chairs, a stern overweight father figure in an white open-necked sports shirt and whipcord navy blue slacks. He was deeply tanned and obviously boiling mad.

His three (out of dozens) vice presidents dutifully arrived in his office and took chairs around the table. McGrath thought of them as Larry, Moe and Curly, although his evaluation of which was which changed constantly.

“MeWrath” did not sit down. He pointed the ringers of one hand like a pistol at the vice president for news.

“This Edie Elgin works for you, doesn’t she?”

The man swallowed obviously before answering with a timid, “Yes.” He was lean and sallow; he looked as if he hadn’t been out-of-doors since puberty.

McGrath pointed the finger-gun at programming. “How come her report from Moonbase was aired from freakin’ Kiribati instead of from Atlanta?”

Programming was made of sterner stuff. He too had been a football player and was still young enough to have retained his muscular physique.

“We agreed with the U.N. people on a blackout from Moonbase, chief. Remember? You talked to Faure yourself, weeks ago.”

“But the freakin’ broadcast aired out of Kiribati! We look like idiots! Every independent station on Earth is picking it up. Even our own subscribers are using it. They think it originated here!”

“We were just following your orders, chief,” the news VP found the strength to say. “You told us not to air anything from Moonbase until further notice.”

“Live footage of that shithead Peacekeeper blowing his own ass off and you keep it in the can?” McGrath roared.

“But you made this agreement with Faure…”

“That two-faced little frog let me think the Moonbase people had killed the Peacekeeper! He lied to me!”

“You didn’t tell us—”

“And they’ve declared independence! This is the biggest story of the year! Of the decade! Don’t you have any freaking sense?”

“You mean you’d’ve wanted us to air it?”

McGrath walked around the table to loom over the news VP Leaning over until his nose almost touched the younger man’s, McGrath pointed to the elaborate corporate logo engraved on the wall above the doorway.

“What’s our middle name?” he asked sweetly. Before the anguished vice president could open his mouth, McGrath bellowed, “NEWS, goddammit! Global NEWS Network. A colony on the Moon declares independence and chases off a regiment of Peacekeeper troops—that’s freakin’ NEWS!”

The vice president was perspiring, his face white with fear and shock.

Straightening, McGrath whirled on the head of the legal department, a distinguished-looking man with the chiselled features of a video star, carefully coiffed silver gray hair, and a tan almost as deep as McGrath’s own.

“How can Kiribati pick up a report from one of our employees and broadcast it around the world?”

The lawyer arched an eyebrow. “They can’t. Not legally. We can sue them for billions.”

McGrath stared at the man for several silent seconds. “It would make a great news story, wouldn’t it?” he asked rhetorically. “Global News Network sues the nation of Kiribati in the World Court because a bunch of half-naked islanders have the brains to broadcast news from one of Global’s own reporters while Global’s news department DECIDED NOT TO AIR THEIR OWN REPORTER’S STORY!’

“He was following your own orders,” the lawyer said mildly.

“That’s right, chief,” said programming. “You can’t blame the news department for doing what you told them to do.”

McGrath stood silently for a moment, then crossed his beefy arms across his chest.

“We look like freakin’ assholes,” he muttered.

“As I understand it,” the head of the legal department tried to explain, “Edie Elgin beamed her report here from Moonbase. We were under your orders not to reply to any messages coming from Moonbase—we expected her to return with the Peacekeepers, after all.”

“Okay, okay,” McGrath grumbled,’so I told you not to carry anything coming from Moonbase. But our own reporter, for chrissake! Shows the world that Faure’s a lying little sneak. And they’ve declared independence. Doesn’t anybody think for themselves around here?”

An uncomfortable silence greeted his question.

The lawyer resumed, placatingly, “Apparently Elgin, or the Moonbase people, repeated her report to several locations around the world. Maybe she was trying to get one of our offices to acknowledge receiving it.”

“We don’t have an office in Kiribati,” McGrath mumbled.

“That’s true. But those islands are spread out over a considerable portion of the Pacific. Somebody out there must have picked up Elgin’s report and decided to pirate it.”

“So what can we do, legally?”

“Sue them, of course.”

McGrath shook his head. “I’m not going to give the competition a chance to show the world what buffoons we’ve been.”

“We’ve got to do something,” the lawyer insisted, “even if it’s just a suit to protect our copyright.”

McGrath fumed for a few moments. I’ll talk to whoever’s in charge there. I want to keep this as quiet as possible.”

Programming piped up, “So what do we do about Moonbase now?”

“Edie Elgin’s still up there?”

The news VP nodded.

“Then we run her reports, goddammit. We’ve got the only reporter on the scene at Moonbase. We play it for all it’s worth!”

“But your agreement with Faure…?”

“Fuck him! You think the United Nations is more important than Global News Network?”

Ibrahim al-Rashid was not happy when his executive assistant—a lissome sloe-eyed Jamaican woman with a delightful lilt in her voice—informed him that another news broadcast was coming from Moonbase. Rashid watched Edie Elgin’s report from Moonbase’s farm in glum silence. His heart sank when she told the world that Moonbase could sustain itself indefinitely and did not need supplies from Earth.

Even before her report ended, Rashid’s intercom chimed softly. He glanced at the phone screen: GEORGES FAURE, UNITED NATIONS, NEW YORK.

With a sigh, Rashid muted the news report from Moonbase’s farm and activated the phone. Faure’s face, even on the small screen, looked bleak.

“You have seen this latest news broadcast from Moonbase?” Faure asked, without preamble.

“I was just watching it now.”

“The situation deteriorates with each moment,” Faure said. “Now the entire world knows that Moonbase has asked for independence.”

“I thought Global News had agreed to the blackout,” said Rashid.

“They did. But once Kiribati broke the blackout, Global and the other networks broke their agreements with me.”

Rashid sank back in his chair. Kiribati. That means Tamara Bonai has betrayed me. And Joanna’s out there whipping up the other directors against me.

“It was my belief,” Faure almost snarled,’that the Kiribati Corporation was under your control.”

“It was my belief, too. Apparently we were both wrong.”

“Then something must be done to correct them!”

“What do you have in mind?”

Faure’s image glowered out of the screen, like a little imp trying to look threatening. “I might ask of you the same question,” he retorted.

I’ll call the person responsible for this. I’ll see to it that it doesn’t happen again.”

“Too late for that,” Faure snapped. “Now that the cat is out of the sack, we will not be able to stuff it back inside again. All the news networks are besieging my public information office for permission to send reporters to Moonbase.”

“You don’t have to grant such permission,” said Rashid.

“Certainly not! But this means that the news networks will carry any propaganda that Moonbase beams to Earth!”

Rashid thought about that for a moment, and reluctantly decided that Faure was right.

“In that case,” he said to the fuming image, “all we can do is counter their propaganda with information of our own.”

“Yes, and in the meantime the World Court will meet to decide whether or not Moonbase can be considered as a nation of its own.”

“Surely you can delay the World Court.”

“Only to a certain extent.”

“Long enough to send a stronger contingent of troops to seize Moonbase?”

Faure nodded tightly. “Yes, long enough for that, I should think.”

For some time after Faure’s call, Rashid sat in his desk chair, fingers steepled before his face, swivelling back and forth slightly. He was wondering what he could do about Tamara Bonai. This broadcast from Moonbase had to be her doing. She was defying everything that Rashid had worked so patiently to achieve.

There would be a showdown with Joanna soon, he knew. She’s trying to drum up support on the board for a special meeting. Bonai will undoubtedly be on her side, unless I can prevent her from it.

The problem was that Bonai was not merely the figurehead president of the hollow-shell Kiribati Corporation. She was also the head of the Kiribati council of chiefs; technically, legally, she was a chief of state.

I will have to deal very carefully with her, Rashid thought. But she must be dealt with, one way or another.

A slow smile worked across his face. Bonai is a very beautiful woman. It could be quite enjoyable dealing with her—one way or another.

DAY FIFTEEN

Joanna’s call woke Doug. He almost told the smart wall to answer it without canceling the video, but Edith stirred drowsily beside him and mumbled, “What’s that?”

“Nothing,” he whispered, bending over her and kissing her bare shoulder. “Go back to sleep.”

Doug slipped out of bed and padded to his desk on the other side of the partitioned room. The phone kept on chiming softly, insistently.

The chair felt cool to his bare rump. He picked up the old-fashioned receiver and spoke softly, “Stavenger here.”

From the delay he realized the call was coming from Earthside. His mother’s voice asked testily, “Where are you? Why isn’t there any video?”

A smile creased Doug’s face. “Because it’s almost four a.m. here, Mother, and I’m not dressed.” He pressed a stud on the phone console and his mother’s features appeared on the wall screen opposite his desk, slightly larger than life.

“Are you all right?” he asked, and heard the same question from her, almost at the same instant.

“I’ve had a long talk with Rashid. He’s as much as admitted that he’s working toward a merger with Yamagata.”

“A merger?” The thought alarmed Doug. He had never considered that Masterson Corporation might be taken over by another company.

“It would be a buyout, really. Lord knows how much cash Yamagata’s promised him under the table.”

“What can you do about it?” Doug asked.

He knew her answer before he heard it. “I’m rallying the members of the board. If Yamagata wants us, it’s going to be a hostile takeover, and we intend to fight it every inch of the way.”

“Do you have enough votes?”

As he waited for her response, Doug realized he didn’t know the board well enough to count the votes himself.

“It’ll be close,” Joanna admitted. “Rashid’s got a solid bloc on his side. But I think I can turn some of them around. Tamara Bonai might be the swing vote.”

“Tamara?”

A slight smile turned the corners of Joanna’s lips. “It might be worthwhile for you to visit her with the VR system. She’s a year or so older than you, but a little sweet talk might help us.”

Doug stared at his mother. Despite the smile, she meant it.

“Mom,” he said, thinking of Edith sleeping in his bed, “I’m no Romeo.” He couldn’t help smiling.

But Joanna was already saying, “Faure’s been ducking me, as usual. His office has set up a meeting with two of his underlings, so I’m sending Lev to meet with them.”

“We want to send some of the people here back Earthside,” Doug said. “The dance troupe… and there’s at least a dozen others who want to get home as soon as they can.”

Joanna nodded once she heard his words. “I’ll tell Lev to see what he can work out. An evacuation flight might be good publicity for us. Faure won’t be able to turn down such a request. If he does—”

“Speaking of publicity,” Doug interjected, “are Edith Elgin’s reports doing us any good?”

Her face lit up once she heard the question. “Are they! She’s going to get a Pulitzer, you mark my words.”

“Great,” said Doug. “But are they having any effect?”

“Everybody knows you’ve declared Moonbase’s independence,” Joanna said excitedly. “All the talk shows and newsheets are full of debates about it. I’ve gotten three U.S. senators to ask the White House to request a hearing in the World Court. Faure’s turning blue over it!”

“Good,” Doug said. “Great. How soon will the World Court take up our case?”

Joanna’s reply came three seconds later. “We’re pushing for an emergency session of the court. Otherwise it’ll have to wait until November, when they convene again. At least they’ll put it at the head of their agenda, even if it’s November.”

“November? That’s more than six months away.”

“I’m trying to get to them sooner.”

Doug felt his brows knitting. “Faure could do a lot of damage in six months.”

Once she heard him, Joanna nodded. “But at least the public knows what’s going on now. Here in the States, especially, it’s the hottest thing in the media. You tell that reporter that she’s done more for Moonbase than a thousand troops could do.”

Doug looked up and saw Edith standing by the partition that screened off the bedroom, quite naked.

“Okay,” he said with a grin that he couldn’t suppress. I’ll tell her right away.”

The digital clock on Jack Killifer’s desk said 11.00 p.m. The offices of the Urban Corps’ headquarters in Atlanta were nearly deserted.

The offices took up the entire top floor of the tallest tower in the Peachtree Center. Looking out through the sweeping windows, Killifer saw a city darkened, blacked out, as if fearful of an air raid. Only far down at street level were there bright anti-crime lamps blazing through the night. Otherwise all the buildings seemed totally dark and abandoned.

The sonofabitch enjoys making me stew around, waiting for him, Killifer groused to himself. Going on eight friggin’ years I’ve been working for these people and he still treats me like some office boy.

The Urban Corps was one of the many disparate organizations loosely held together under the banner of the New Morality. They had elected presidents, won control of the House of Representatives, and had enough senators on their side to block legislation that they didn’t like. The anti-nanotechnology treaty had originated in the New Morality. Nanoluddite fanatics had gunned down pro-nanotech advocates, even women suspected of having nanotherapy instead of plastic surgery, and then proclaimed at their trials with the fervor of true belief that they were doing God’s work.

For years, though, Killifer had urged his superiors in the Urban Corps that Moonbase was a danger to them. As long as Moonbase exists it must use nanotechnology. As long as Moonbase exists it will continue to make its profits by building Clipperships out of pure diamond, using nanomachines, and selling those rocket craft to transport lines on Earth. As long as Moonbase exists, the nanotechnology treaty is a farce and everything that the Urban Corps and the New Morality has worked to achieve was in danger of crumbling away into dust.

And now it was all coming true. Moonbase was laughing at them, Stavenger and his bitch of a mother were thumbing their noses at them. The news media were all full of bull crap about Moonbase’s declaration of independence. Even some politicians were starting to say that maybe the nanotech treaty shouldn’t be interpreted so strictly.

It could all fall apart, Killifer had been warning them for years. Only now, only with the humiliating rout of the Peacekeepers from Moonbase, were they beginning to take his warnings seriously.

His desk phone beeped once. Killifer didn’t have to pick it up. He knew that he had been summoned at last into the presence of General O’Conner.

Killifer hurried past rows of empty, silent desks and down a corridor formed by flimsy shoulder-high plastic partitions. Through an open door he stepped, into a reception area that was tastefully carpeted and furnished with small consultation desks. The door at the far end was shut. He knocked once and opened it.

General O’Conner was sunk in his wheelchair, half-dozing, a shrivelled shell of the dynamic powerful savior Killifer had met when he had joined the Urban Corps nearly eight years earlier.

They had kept the news of the general’s strokes a secret, of course, known only to the innermost circle of the Corps. Not even the highest leaders of the other New Morality groups knew about it. To the outside world, General O’Conner was still the vigorous, forceful, charismatic leader of the organization that was transforming American cities from crime-ridden slums into rigidly controlled urban centers.

With the staff’s careful handling of the crisis, General O’Conner had become an inaccessible figure, too lofty to waste his time with meetings and rallies. And the more inaccessible he became, the greater the tales of his power and saintliness. The less he was seen, the more he was admired and sought after. Rumors abounded of his appearances in disguise among the poor. He was ‘seen’ all across the country, sometimes in more than one place simultaneously. Thanks to clever electronic simulations that kept his image before the public, the general was becoming a figure of mythic power.

“Well, what’re you waiting for?” General O’Conner said, in his cranky slurred croak of a voice.

“I thought you had fallen asleep,” said Killifer, going to the armchair beside him.

The general worked the toggle on his wheelchair’s control box and trundled off toward the windows. “Is the whole city blacked out, except for us?”

Killifer had to get up and follow him. “Most of the city,” he replied. “When curfew strikes, the power goes down. Electricity stays on for residences, of course.”

“Apartments, too? Condos?”

“Yeah. It wouldn’t be smart to shut off their power.”

“Then why’s everything pitch black out there?” the general demanded. “Are we the only ones showing any light?”

Killifer had explained this to the failing old man a dozen times since the blackout decision had been announced.

“That’s right, we’re the only one,” he said. “The apartment blocks and condo buildings curtain their windows as a sign of respect.”

The wizened old man glared at him. “And whose idea was that?”

“Yours, of course,” he said.

“I never made such a decision. I’d remember it if I did.”

“Well,” said Killifer, “it was mine, really. Acting in your name, of course.”

Actually, it had been the bright idea of one of the young psychologists on the staff. But Killifer had implemented it and he’d be damned if he’d let the young snot take the credit.

“Why?” O’Conner asked testily.

Killifer replied, “It gives the ordinary people the feeling that they’re making a sacrifice. It makes them feel that they’re contributing to the general welfare.”

“You’ve learned well,” rasped O’Conner. “Make them want to obey. That’s the secret!”

“You’ve taught me well,” Killifer said, feeling something almost like affection for the old man.

Wheeling his chair around to face Killifer, General O’Conner said, “Now what’s happening with the Moonbase problem?”

Killifer shook his head. “It’s getting worse instead of better.”

“I see they’re broadcasting news reports from Moonbase. I thought the media had agreed to a blackout.”

“They had. But it’s been busted wide open.”

The general’s bloodshot eyes narrowed. “How? Who did it?”

Killifer explained the series of events, tracing the break of the news blackout to Tamara Bonai in Kiribati.

“Kiribati?” General O’Conner’s ravaged face glared at him. “Where’s that?”

“In the Pacific. Micronesia.”

The general seemed to sink in on himself, thinking. Then he started cackling.

“What’s funny?” Killifer asked.

“I did missionary work out there when I was a kid.”

That surprised Killifer. “You did?”

“Tonga. Fiji. I wore the black suit and tie and went out among the heathen.” He wiped at his eyes with a frail hand.

“I never knew.”

“They were good people. They listened to me and smiled and agreed with everything I said. Helped me build a church for them. They even attended services.”

“Terrific,” Killifer muttered.

“But it didn’t do one bit of good. They went about living the way they always had. Dressed up for me, of course. But other times they went back to being as naked as sin. To them, sex was about as casual as taking a swim in the lagoon.”

He almost sounded wistful, Killifer thought. “Well, now they have office buildings and shopping malls and major tourist centers.”

“And this woman, what’s her name?”

“Tamara Bonai.”

“She broke the news blackout?”

“She sure as hell did.”

“Then she ought to be punished,” General O’Conner said. “Swiftly and obviously. People ought to know that those who oppose God’s will are struck down.”

Killifer’s insides shuddered. “You mean kill her?”

“Yes,” said the general. “See to it.”

“Me?”

“You. And nobody else.”

He started to say, “But why me? I’m no…”

O’Conner’s burning red eyes silenced him. The General had made up his mind and he had chosen Killifer for the job. That was unalterable.

One thing that Killifer had learned in his eight years with the Corps: you obey, but you ask for something in return.

“If we’re going to punish people, what about Joanna Stavenger… I mean, Brudnoy.”

“She’s back here, back from the Moon?”

“Yeah.”

O’Conner mulled it over for ten seconds. “You’re right. Strike her down, too.”

Killifer nodded, satisfied. The woman who had ruined his life was going to get what she deserved, at last.

“Too bad we can’t get her son.”

“Douglas Stavenger?”

“Yeah. He’s up at Moonbase, though. Out of reach.” General O’Conner pointed a wavering finger at Killifer.

“Don’t be so sure of that, my boy. No one’s out of reach of the angel of death.”

DAY SIXTEEN

“Hey, what’re you doing there?”

The mercenary looked up. A woman in the slate gray coveralls of the transportation division was striding down the line of spacesuits toward him. She looked to be in her thirties, a little heavyset, mousey brown hair chopped short, and an angry frown on her face.

“Doug Stavenger asked me to check out his suit,” the mercenary said.

“I maintain the suits,” she said, jabbing a thumb toward her ample chest. Her nametag said LIEBOWITZ. “Since when does Stavenger send strangers to do my job?”

She was almost the mercenary’s own height, and now that she was almost nose-to-nose with him he saw that her size was probably muscle, not fat.

He put on a smile. “Doug’s worried about sabotage,” he said. The best lies are always based on the truth, he knew.

“Sabotage? Are you kidding?”

The mercenary shook his head slowly. “No, I’m not kidding, Liebowitz. We’re at war, aren’t we? Under siege?”

“But who the frick’s gonna sabotage anything here? Everybody here’s for Moonbase. We’re all on Stavenger’s side.”

“Yeah? Were you at the meeting in The Cave last week?”

“Sure.”

“How many people there wanted to go back Earthside right away?”

Liebowitz’s expression turned thoughtful. “Well, a few, I guess.”

“And they won’t be able to go until this war is settled, right?”

“Oh, I dunno. Stavenger talked about arranging an evacuation flight for ’em.”

“You seen any evacuation flight arrive? The U.N. wants to keep us bottled up here until we cave in.”

“Yeah, maybe…”

The mercenary was enjoying sparring with her. He began to think it might be fun to share a meal with her, get to know her better. She was white, of course, but maybe…

He pushed those thoughts aside. “Well, don’t you think that maybe some disgruntled technician or administrator might figure that a little sabotage here or there will help make us surrender and end the war? Then he can go home.”

Liebowitz almost bought it. But after a few moments she said, “Naahhh. I just don’t see anybody who’s lived here for more’n ten minutes going around sabotaging anything. That could kill somebody, for chrissakes.”

“Maybe so,” the mercenary said. “But Stavenger’s worried about it and he asked me to check out his suit.”

She puffed out a breath between her teeth. “Okay. Okay. It sounds wonky to me, but if the boss wants you to check his suit, go right ahead.”

She folded her arms across her chest and stood there, solidly planted, not budging. The mercenary went through the motions of checking Doug’s hard suit, wishing she would go away, knowing she wouldn’t, and telling himself that he’d have to come back when Liebowitz was off duty and some less dedicated technician was on the job.

“When’s your shift end?” he asked as he looked over the seal ring on Doug’s helmet.

“Same’s yours.”

“I’m working directly for Stavenger. No shifts; it’s twenty-four hours a day for me.”

She h’mphed. “Well, I’m on the day shift, as you can see. I finish at four, just like everybody else.”

The mercenary returned the helmet to its rack, above the suit. “How about having dinner with me? Seven o’clock, in The Cave?”

She gave him a quizzical look. The mercenary knew exactly what was going through her mind. Would she want to be seen having dinner with a black man?

“Okay,” she said guardedly. “Seven o’clock at The Cave.”

It took him a couple of heartbeats to realize she had accepted. “See you there,” he said, with a genuine smile.

And as he walked away, down the long line of empty spacesuits hanging like medieval arrays of armor with their helmets racked above them, he thought that after dinner with her he’d return and finish the job here.

Stavenger’s going to go outside sooner or later, and when he does, a malfunction in his suit is going to kill him.

Later that day Doug was in Jinny Anson’s office, meeting with the base director and the heads of the mining, transportation and research divisions.

Anson had rearranged the furniture so that the oblong conference table now butted against the desk like the vertical leg of a letter T.

Kris Cardenas was also sitting at the table, across from Zoltan Kadar, the astronomer. No one had invited the Hungarian to this strategy meeting; he had shown up with the others and grabbed a chair before anyone could shoo him away. His precious survey satellite to Farside had been launched the day before, so Doug wondered what he wanted now.

And sitting silently on the couch along the far wall of the office was Bam Gordette, silently watching, listening. He’s become like my shadow, Doug thought. Everywhere I go, he goes. He doesn’t say anything, but he takes in everything with those dark brown eyes, like a detective looking over a crime scene. Then a new thought struck Doug: Maybe Bam thinks he’s my bodyguard. He sure acts like one. The thought made him smile to himself. I don’t need a bodyguard here, not in Moonbase. But it made him feel almost grateful to Gordette for caring enough to act as one.

Doug took the chair at the foot of the table, facing Anson, who sat behind her desk.

“I’ve asked you here—most of you, anyway,” he added, with a wry grin in Kadar’s direction,’to talk over the chances of developing defenses against the next Peacekeeper assault.”

“You think they’ll be back, then,” said Deborah Paine. Head of the research division, she had a frizzy blonde hairdo and an hourglass figure that had driven many men to distraction. She happened to be a very serious biologist, a topflight science administrator, and a cheerful lesbian.

“They’ll be back,” Doug said. “Faure’s delaying any negotiations as much as he can. He’s going to try to take us by force before agreeing to any compromise.”

“We don’t want any compromise, either,” Anson snapped. “It’s independence or bust.”

Harry Clemens, the transportation division chief, clasped both hands behind his bald head and tilted his chair so far back Doug was afraid it would fall over. “So we’ve got to be prepared to defend ourselves, then?”

“That’s right,” said Doug.

“Against what?”

“More Peacekeeper troops,” said Vince Falcone, head of the mining division.

“Worse than that,” Clemens said in his mild, soft way.

“Like what?” Falcone asked.

“One modest nuclear warhead exploded a few hundred meters above the crater floor could knock out all our solar farms.”

Doug countered, “But we’ve still got the nuclear backup. It’s buried—”

“Nuclear warhead number two will be a ground blast, to knock out our generator.”

Falcone nodded solemnly. “The second one doesn’t even have to be a nuclear warhead. Conventional warhead will do, if they’ve got the generator pinpointed.”

“Okay,” said Doug, looking at each of them in turn. “The first thing we’ve got to do is figure out what they can throw at us. Then we’ve got to look for ways to defend ourselves against each possible threat.”

“Lotsa luck,” Falcone grumbled. He was built like a fireplug, with short thick arms and a nearly perpetual scowl on his dark face. Instead of the usual coveralls he preferred to wear dark turtlenecks and comfortable, loosefitting jeans that he jammed into scuffed old cowboy boots.

“There may be a way to defend against a nuclear warhead,” said Deborah Paine.

Doug felt his eyebrows hike halfway to his scalp.

“The physicists have been using the mass driver’s magnets to power a particle accelerator,” Paine said. “If we could focus the beam on an incoming warhead, it could destroy the nuclear device’s switching and fusing mechanisms.”

“Are you sure?” Doug asked.

“It’s actually pretty old stuff,” she replied, “from the antimissile defenses that the Peacekeepers maintain in Earth orbit.”

“So it turns the nuke into a dud, huh?” Falcone asked.

“Yes. The warhead will crash onto the crater floor but the bomb won’t go off.”

“That’d still do some damage to the solar panels,” Clemens pointed out.

“Yeah, but not that many of ’em,” said Falcone.

Doug asked, “Could we actually focus the particle beam that way?”

Paine shrugged. It looked delicious to all the men around the table, even though they knew she didn’t do it for their benefit.

I’ll have to ask the physicists about it,” she said. “We should have plenty of time to aim the beam, if they fire the missile from Earthside. Days.”

“Suppose they take over L-1 and use it as a staging base. They could fire the missile from there.”

Nodding, Paine said, “That would still give us a couple of hours or so, maybe more.”

“Maybe less,” Anson said, “if they fire it at high boost.”

“Maybe.”

Doug turned to Cardenas. “Kris, what are you and Zimmerman developing? Anything useful?”

She sighed. “Willi’s got this bug in his ear about using nanomachines to make a person invisible. I was hoping something practical might come out of it, but so far as I can tell he hasn’t accomplished a thing.”

“And your own work?” Doug prompted.

“We can be a big help medically, of course. As far as weaponry is concerned, I haven’t come up with anything except the gobblers. We can program them to eat metals, if you like.”

“We can’t strew the whole crater floor with gobblers,” Doug said.

“Why not?” Anson shot back. “It’s only be for a short time.”

Doug ticked off on his fingers, “One, they’ll most likely land during daylight—”

“You can program gobblers to operate in sunlight, can’t you?” Anson asked Cardenas.

“It’s more difficult, but doable. I’d worry about deactivating them, though.”

“Two,” Doug went on, “what’s to stop the gobblers from i destroying our solar farms, the launch pads and their equipment, even the mass driver?”

Anson pursed her lips. Then she grinned. “Yeah, it would be like shooting ourselves in the foot, wouldn’t it?”

“Shooting ourselves in the head,” Clemens said, with surprising fervor. Doug realized he wanted no part of nanomachines that ate metals.

Turning in his chair to look at Gordette, Doug asked, “Bam, if you were in charge of the Peacekeepers, how would you go about taking Moonbase?”

Gordette shook his head. “I wasn’t an officer, just a dogface.”

“You’re as close to a general as we’ve got here,” Anson said.

“What do you think they’re going to do?” Doug repeated.

Slowly, reluctantly, Gordette got to his feet. All eyes focused on him. “Well, to begin with, I agree with Mr Clemens.

They’ll start with a bombardment to knock out our electrical power.”

“Nuclear warheads?”

“Most likely. But they might use a conventional warhead for our nuclear generator, if they know its location precisely enough.”

“They’ve got the same maps we use,” Falcone grumbled.

“Then what?” Doug asked.

“Most likely they’d have already landed troops outside the crater, on the Mare Nubium side. They’ll wait for the bombardment, then come over Wodjohowitcz Pass to get into the base.”

Doug saw most of the people around the table nodding agreement.

“If our electrical power is out, all they’ll have to do is knock on our door. We’ll have to surrender to them.”

“We have the fuel cells,” Anson said.

Gordette shrugged. “How long do they give us? A few days? A few hours? The Peacekeepers will be occupying the crater floor; we’ll have no chance to repair the solar farms. We’ll be forced to give up.”

“A nuclear blast probably’d screw up our radiators, too,” I Falcone pointed out. “We’d be boiling in here inside of a few hours.”

The meeting became grim, depressed. No one could offer a way to counter the scenario Gordette had drawn.

Then Kadar spoke up. “It may not be necessary for the Peacekeepers to destroy so much of our generating equipment.”

“Oh?”

“All they have to do is put some biological agents in the drinking water we bring in from the south polar ice fields.”

“Poison us?” Clemens blurted, looking shocked. Almost smiling, Kadar said, “It wouldn’t have to be fatal. A virus that causes a disabling disease. An especially nasty variation of influenza, for instance. Or viral pneumonia. Brought in through our drinking water.”

“We don’t use that much new water,” Anson pointed out. “Our recycling’s pretty efficient.”

“Perhaps so, but over a time scale of months? They could make us all deathly ill.”

“Do we have to defend the south pole, too?” Anson wondered aloud.

With a shake of his head, Doug replied, “We just don’t have the resources.”

“But we can test the water coming in,” Paine said, “and not allow it into the base supply until we’re satisfied that it’s all right.”

“Or,” Cardenas suggested, “we could run the incoming water through a nanomachine screen, program the nanos to pass only water molecules and divert everything else.”

“That would help,” Doug said.

“They won’t be that subtle,” Gordette said, still standing by the couch. “They won’t want to wait weeks or months for a biological agent to take effect. Besides, they know we’ve got nanomachines that we could use to cure any disease they cause.”

“So it’ll be a direct attack.”

That’s what I think,” Gordette replied. “They’ll land their troops, bomb out our electrical power equipment, and then march in here.”

Cardenas slumped in her chair. “Nanomachines aren’t going to be much help, then.”

“We can knock out a nuclear warhead,” Paine insisted.

“Maybe,” said Doug.

“How’ll we deal with a whole regiment of Peacekeeper troops?” Anson asked glumly.

“We’ll have to think of something,” said Doug, trying to show a cheerfulness he did not feel.

“If we can keep on generating electricity…”

Doug pushed his chair back from the table. “I want to talk to the head honcho of the physicists about this particle beam idea.”

“The new guy,” Anson said. “He came up here on the last flight before this mess started.”

“What’s his name,” Doug asked, “Wickens?”

“Wicksen,” Paine corrected. “Robert T. Wicksen.”

DAY SEVENTEEN

After the meeting Doug went straight to the office of Robert T. Wicksen. The physicist was a small, slight man, built like a sparrow, but with large, intelligent, gray eyes magnified by old-fashioned rimless glasses.

“Focus the particle beam on an incoming missile warhead?” Wicksen asked. His voice was flat and calm. He was not perturbed by Doug’s question, he merely repeated it to be certain he understood what Doug was asking. Physically he reminded Doug of a tarsier: little, cautious, big staring eyes. Yet he seemed composed, unruffled, perhaps unflappable.

Wicksen’s office was a cubbyhole crammed with electronic gear. No desk, not even any chairs; only a pair of stools that looked as if Wicksen had crafted them himself out of lunar metals. Yet everything was as neat as a picture out of a sales catalogue. Everything in its proper place. All the equipment humming reassuringly. All the screens displayed data curves that flickered and shifted as they spoke. Wicksen himself was equally neat, in a crisp open-necked white shirt and perfectly creased dark gray trousers.

“We need to know if it’s possible to convert your particle accelerator into a beam weapon,” Doug said, sitting on one of the room’s two stools.

Sitting on the other stool, facing Doug like an elfish wizard in modern clothes, Wicksen nodded somberly. “It’s possible. Anything is possible.”

“But can you do it, Dr Wicksen?”

“Wix.”

“Excuse me?”

“Wix. Everyone calls me Wix.”

“All right… Wix. Can you do it?”

Wicksen extended one arm and tapped idly on the keyboard nearest him. “Have to increase the power output, of course,” he muttered, more to himself than his visitor. “And focusing the beam isn’t a trivial problem.”

Doug asked his question again, silently, with his eyes.

Wicksen scratched his pointed chin a moment, then said, “Meet me at the mass driver tomorrow at ten. I’ll be able to answer you then.”

Doug sensed that trying to urge this man or hurry him would be a waste of breath. Wicksen understood the situation they were in. Doug had noticed him at the meeting in The Cave the previous week. Yet the physicist showed neither worry nor disappointment at being asked to break off his experiments and convert his accelerator into a weapon. He seemed more curious than upset.

“He’s a strange duck,” Doug said to Edith that night, in his quarters. She had moved in her meager possessions after their first three nights together.

“I’ve interviewed lots of scientists,” Edith said, unzipping her white coveralls. “They’re all pretty weird, one way or the other.”

“I’ve got to make a call Earthside,” Doug said, padding barefoot to his desk on the other side of the room partition. “Won’t take long,” he called to Edith.

“I’ll keep the bed warm,” she called back.

Grinning, Doug called Tamara Bonai at Tarawa. She was his one sure source of news about how things were going Earthside. His mother’s calls were tapped, both Doug and Joanna were certain, so she had to be careful about how much she told her son.

But Tamara, as head of both the Kiribati Corporation and the island nation itself, could speak much more freely.

“You owe me a fishing trip,” her image on the wall screen teased.

She was on the beach, obviously just after a swim in the lagoon. Her flowered pareo clung wetly to her graceful figure; drops of water beaded her bare shoulders; her long dark hair glistened in the high afternoon sun.

“As soon as I can get Earthside,” he promised anew. Then he asked, “How’s our publicity campaign?”

As he waited for her reply, Doug admired her long slim legs and the nipples that pushed against the pareo’s thin fabric. Since he’d started sleeping with Edith he’d been noticing a lot more about the women he saw.

“Every network is carrying your reports from Moonbase now,” Bonai said, smiling brightly as she sat cross-legged before the phone camera set on the sand before her. The camera automatically moved to keep her in focus.

“And there is considerable turmoil among the board of Masterson Corporation. Now that your mother is here on Earth, she’s demanding a special meeting to take up the question of Moonbase’s political independence.”

“How’s Rashid reacting?”

Bonai turned to look out at the lagoon as she waited for Doug’s words to reach her. Then she turned back to the phone and said, “It’s difficult to read his reaction. I’m sure he wants to push through a merger with Yamagata, but that possibility could cause a major rift on the board and he’d prefer to avoid a confrontation, if he can.”

Within a few seconds Doug forgot how enticing Bonai looked and fell deeply into a discussion with her about the politics of Masterson Corporation, the United Nations, and world public opinion.

“Faure has not said a peep about Moonbase for more than a week now,” she reported. “He’s trying to ride out the waves your broadcasts have created.”

Doug replied, “He’s planning another attack on us. I’m certain of it.”

Once she heard him, Bonai shrugged her bare shoulders. “Could be, I suppose.”

“Can you try to get closer to Rashid, Tamara? I need to know what he’s thinking, what he’s planning to do.”

When her reply came to him, it was, “Are you asking me to use my feminine wiles on him?”

“No, I—”

But Bonai hadn’t waited for his response. She continued, “He has some reputation, you know. There are rumors he keeps a harem over in North Africa somewhere.”

“I didn’t mean—”

She kept on, “It might be fun to see what he’s really like. Maybe I’ll invite him here for a private get-together.”

“Tamara, I didn’t mean you should try to seduce him,” Doug said.

She laughed. “Don’t be so uptight! He won’t be able to turn down a chance to win me over to his side.”

“But—”

“It’s nothing I won’t do for you when you come here for your fishing trip,” she added, mischievously.

Feeling perplexed, Doug didn’t know what to say.

Still smiling, Bonai said, “Don’t worry, Doug. I know what I’m doing. And I have plenty of big, strong bodyguards here to protect me—if I ask them to.”

She clicked off the connection before Doug could reply.

Frowning at the empty wall screen, Doug got to his feet. Edith was standing by the partition, wrapped in a towel, eying him.

“Should I be jealous?” she asked.

“No!” Doug blurted. “Of course not.”

“She’s awful purty.” Edith used her Texas accent.

“She’s the CEO of Kiribati Corporation,” Doug said. “She’s the person who got your first news report on the air Earthside.”

“She’s still awful purty,” said Edith, reaching for him.

Doug thought he should feel annoyed. Instead, he felt almost pleased with himself.

As Doug rode on the tractor across Alphonsus’s cracked and pockmarked floor, he realized that this was the first time he’d been outside in weeks.

He took a deep breath of canned suit air and felt his spirits rise. Strange, he thought, even sealed inside a spacesuit I feel free out here, happy. He looked up at the worn old mountains of the ringwall marching off across the horizon and recognized each rounded hump as an old friend from his childhood.

It was my childhood when I climbed those mountains and rode around the whole ringwall, he realized. I don’t have time for that anymore. I’ve got an adult’s responsibilities now.

Still, he relaxed and enjoyed the passing scenery: stark, barren, full of promise.

Driving the tractor was like second nature to him. The big lumbering machine would probably trundle out to the mass driver on its own, even if Doug let go of the controls, following the cleated ruts laid down by thousands of tractor journeys across the dusty regolith. But Doug held onto the T-stick. There were enough craterlets and rocks strewn across the ground to cause trouble if he got careless, he knew.

He realized that this was the first time he had been alone in weeks. Not even Bam Gordette was with him. Doug thought about the somber-faced black man. Gordette had been his constant companion wherever he went in Moonbase, his self-appointed protector. Bodyguard, chauffeur, military consultant: I’ve become dependent on him, Doug thought. I wonder what he thinks about all this. I’d like to think of him as a friend, but he’s so quiet and reserved it’s hard to tell what’s going on inside his head.

He said he wanted to come outside with me, but he gave up the idea pretty easily when I told him it wasn’t necessary. Is he afraid of being out here on the surface? Doug almost laughed, inside his helmet. He couldn’t imagine Gordette afraid of anything.

The mass driver came into view, a long dark finger of metal stretched across the crater floor. It had its own acreage of solar farms to provide electricity for the magnets that flung lunar ores toward the factories in orbit around the Earth. Since the U.N.’s siege had begun, the space factories had shut down their operations and the mass driver stood unused in the silence of the lunar landscape.

Unused as an ore supplier.

The physicists had been overjoyed at the shutdown. Years earlier they had built a linear particle accelerator along the three-and-a-half-kilometer length of the mass driver, using its powerful cryogenic magnets to energize subatomic particles for their experiments. But they could use the facility only when the mass driver wasn’’tbusy flinging packets of lunar ores off to the factories in Earth orbit. With the war the factories had been taken over by the U.N. The mass driver stood idle—and the physicists went into a frenzy of activity, ecstatic to use their particle accelerator twenty-four hours each day.

It was easy to spot Wicksen among the spacesuited figures milling around the hardware. His slight figure was encased in a white spacesuit that had WIX stencilled in electric blue on the front of his helmet and across his backpack.

Doug clambered down from the tractor and walked the last twenty meters to the group of people standing with Wicksen. They seemed to be huddled around him like a football team getting instructions from their quarterback.

Flicking to the suit-to-suit frequency, Doug heard the physicist saying,’… you’ll be able to finish this series of runs while I’m putting the focusing magnets together.”

“Here’s Doug now,” said one of the suited figures, pointing with a gloved hand.

Wicksen turned and stepped toward Doug. “You’re a few minutes early.”

“I made better time in the tractor than I expected,” Doug said.

“That’s all right.” The diminutive physicist clasped the sleeve of Doug’s cermet suit. “Come along here, I want to show you what’s involved in this problem.”

He walked Doug the length of the mass driver, explaining in minute detail every step that had to be accomplished in converting the accelerator to an anti-missile gun. Doug’s head was soon whirling with numbers and terms such as ‘beam collimator’ and ‘tesla limits’.

Doug found his attention wandering to the solid bulk of the mass driver itself. It was a triumph of nanotechnology, the most intricate piece of machinery yet constructed by nanomachines. The project had floundered through several false starts, but once Kris Cardenas had come to Moonbase and sunk her teeth into it, the mass driver had slowly taken shape out here on the crater floor: cryogenic aluminum magnets and all.

“Are you sufficiently confused?”

Wicksen’s question snapped Doug’s attention back to the here and now.

“What did you say?”

He could sense Wicksen smiling gently. “I’ve snowed you with a pile of details. Does any of it make sense to you?”

“Not much,” Doug admitted. “What I really need to know is, can you do it?”

“Turn the accelerator into an anti-missile weapon?”

“Yes.”

“Yes.”

“You can?”

“That’s what I’ve been telling you.”

“How soon?” Doug asked.

Wicksen hesitated a moment, then answered, “Two days.”

“Two days? That’s all?”

“Two lunar days,” Wicksen said.

“Oh. You mean two months, then,” Doug said, crestfallen.

“We might get lucky and have everything work the first time we try it. That could shave a week or so.”

Two months, Doug thought. Will that be soon enough, or will Faure strike before then?

“We’ll need a target satellite to test it against,” Wicksen added. “I was thinking that Kadar’s survey bird would make a good test target. He’s got all the data from it that he needs.”

Doug heard a strange guttural sound in his earphones. Wicksen was chuckling at the thought of zapping Kadar’s satellite.

He thanked the physicist and climbed back onto the tractor, wondering if there was some way to delay the attack that Faure was undoubtedly planning. Maybe Mom can get the World Court to hear our case before November. Or negotiate with Faure and try to settle this without another military confrontation.

His mind was filled with possibilities, alternatives, strategies as he steered the tractor back across the twenty-kilometer distance to Moonbase’s main airlock.

He had only gone a few kilometers, though, when his suit’s emergency alarm shrilled in his earphones.

“What…?”

Doug glanced down at the telltales on his wrist display. Air supply below safety minimum! Impossible, he told himself. I checked the suit out when I put it on. The air tank was full.

Must be a malfunction in the electrical circuitry, he told himself. Still, he jammed the tractor’s throttle to its highest pitch. The ponderous machine lurched forward. There was no speedometer on the control panel; the tractor’s electrical motors could not move the machine more than thirty klicks per hour, Doug knew.

Half an hour to the base, Doug thought. Better top off the backpack.

With his left hand on the T-stick, Doug fumbled for the tractor’s oxygen hose, nested between the two front seats. He located it by feel and pulled it out of its housing. But when he tried to unscrew the cap of his backpack’s emergency fill-up, it would not move.

How could it be frozen? Doug wondered, his mind racing. He could not remember if he’d tested it when he’d checked out the suit. I should have, he told himself. But he doubted that he did. Too goddamned complacent. Taking shortcuts in the checkout routine.

“Air level approaching redline for life support,” the suit’s automatic emergency system warned. “Replenish air supply or change to another suit.”

Good advice, Doug grumbled silently, out here at least fifteen klicks from the airlock.

I can’t be running out of air, he insisted to himself. But he coughed.

Desperately, he flicked to the base frequency and called, “This is Stavenger. I’m almost out of air! Need help!”

“Got your beacon, Doug,” said the technician from the control center. “Hang on, we’ll send a team out for you.”

Won’t do any good, he knew. They’ll be riding tractors, too. They can’t get to me any faster than I can get to them.

His breath caught in his throat. He felt as if he were gagging.

“No… air…”

An incredibly searing pain flamed through his chest. Christ almighty, my lungs are collapsing!

Yet he remained conscious, acutely aware of everything happening to him.

Can’t breathe! He was gasping, his right hand clawing at the collar of his helmet. Can’t breathe! The pain in his chest was excruciating, yet he did not pass out. His mind was still alert, still functioning.

This is what drowning must be like. You try to breath but there’s no air.

Deliberately, he turned off his suit radio. They’ve got the tractor’s beacon to track me. Don’t want them to hear me screaming.

But he could not scream. There was no air in his lungs, no air in his throat. Nothing but pain and pain and more pain.

And he could not collapse into oblivion. His legs, his gut, even his hands and arms were flaming with agony now, but the mercy of unconsciousness was not allowed him. Doggedly, tears blurring his vision, pain racking his body, he slumped over the tractor’s controls, too weak to sit upright. But still conscious.

Time lost all meaning. Doug knew he was in hell: endless, eternal suffering. Damned, damned, damned to torment forever. The silent, stark lunar landscape trundled past slowly, maddeningly slowly. Doug felt as if he were mired in quicksand, already sucked down into it, unable to catch a breath, impossible to breathe, to move, to do anything but suffer.

He wanted to faint, he wanted to die and get it over with. He thought deliriously that he must already be dead. Why, this is hell nor am I out of it.

He could not breathe. He could not cough or gasp or cry or beg for mercy. Yet he could not end the pain. It went on and on, endlessly, while his mind shrieked and gibbered with horrified terror.

Something banged into his helmet. He felt himself jerked back against the seat.

Slowly the pain eased away. His last touch with the world drifted away from him, leaving him floating in darkness, alone, silent, free of pain and desire and fear.

I’m dead, he thought. At last it’s over. I’m dead.

He was breathing. He opened his eyes but saw nothing but mist, a gray fog.

“…had his suit radio off.”

“Visor’s fogged over. Turn up his fans, for chrissake.”

“How the hell did he get into this fix?”

“Never mind that! Is he coming around?”

The voices were urgent, frightened; to Doug they sounded like a chorus of angels.

“Can’t tell—”

“I can hear you,” Doug said, coughing. “I can hear you.”

“He’s alive!”

“Barely.”

Their frightened, urgent voices faded and Doug sank into blessed black oblivion.

DAY EIGHTEEN

“You are awake now, yes?”

Doug opened his eyes to see Zimmerman looming over him like a rumpled mountain, his fleshy face deathly serious, his eyes burning with inner fire.

The infirmary, Doug realized. I’m in the infirmary. He could smell the antiseptic, feel the crisp sheets on his skin. The little cubicle was clean and cool, walls and ceiling pastel. Electronic monitoring equipment hummed and beeped softly somewhere behind Doug’s head.

“So,” said Zimmerman quietly, “my little machines have saved your life again.”

The old man’s face wore an expression Doug had never seen before. Not tenderness, not from Zimmerman. But he seemed—concerned. He was standing over Doug’s infirmary bed like a worried uncle or grandfather, looking faintly ridiculous in his disheveled, wrinkled, old-fashioned, three-piece gray suit.

“When are you…” Doug asked, his voice little more than a faint whisper, “When are you going to program nanobugs to keep your clothes pressed?”

“Jokes?” Zimmerman’s shaggy brows shot up. “You almost die and now you make jokes at me?”

“What happened?”

The old man ran a hand across his bald pate. “You had no oxygen for breathing. My nanomachines extracted oxygen from the cells of your body and fed it to your brain, to keep you alive.”

The pain…”

“Both your lungs collapsed, of course. My nanomachines kept your circulatory system going, however.”

“Oxygen from my cells?”

Nodding vigorously, as if glad to get onto an impersonal topic, Zimmerman launched into a minor lecture about the amount of residual oxygen stored in the body’s major organs.

“And the nanobugs extracted the residual oxygen?” Doug asked.

“Yah. And fed it into your bloodstream. That way your brain was kept alive even though your lungs collapsed.”

“How did the bugs know to do that?”

Zimmerman scowled down at him. “You think they are stupid? They sensed your lungs collapsing and acted to keep you alive.”

“You programmed them to do that? All those years ago when you put the bugs in me, you foresaw such a possibility?”

“I programmed the nanomachines,” Zimmerman emphasized the word slightly,’to maintain homeostasis and attack foreign invaders of your body. They sense any deviation from your normal condition and take immediate steps to counter it.”

“They must work pretty fast.”

They react in the millisecond range, usually.”

Doug looked into the old man’s intense eyes. “That’s the third time you’ve saved my life, Professor.”

Zimmerman shrugged as if it didn’t matter. “It gives me the chance to write a new research paper—although who will publish it is a question, with this verdammt war going on.”

“I don’t know what I can do to thank you,” Doug said.

For just an instant, the professor’s expression softened. Then he took in a breath and said sternly, “Try to stay out of mischief.”

With that he turned on his heel and headed out of the cubicle.

“Wait!” Doug called, his voice a painful croak.

Zimmerman looked back over his shoulder, one hand on the sliding partition.

“What’re you doing in your lab? I haven’t seen you in so long—”

“We discuss that later, when you are stronger.”

“But what are you working on?”

With an impatient gesture, Zimmerman said, “This and that. You will see.”

He slid the partition back and left the cubicle. Doug thought that perhaps Zimmerman didn’t want him to see that he actually cared about him. But then he realized:

He hasn’t come up with anything yet. All these weeks tinkering in his lab and he hasn’t accomplished a mother-loving thing.

Before a full minute passed, Edith rushed into the cubicle, up to Doug’s bedside, her green eyes staring at him.

“Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” he said, reaching out to her.

She leaned into his arms and kissed him hard. “You really okay?”

“A little weak, but I’ll be back to normal in a couple of hours.”

“Hours?”

“The nanomachines work fast,” he said.

Edith sat on the edge of the bed and laid her head on his chest. “Christmas bells, I was so scared! They said your suit had malfunctioned and you might die.”

Holding her tightly, Doug said, “Not yet, Edith. Not for a long time.”

Hours later, after several sessions with the medics and Kris Cardenas, Doug was sitting up in bed, surrounded by Jinny Anson, Harry Clemens and Bam Gordette.

“The cermet suit failed,” Doug said.

“We’ve gone over it,” Clemens said. He was tall and lanky; it always surprised Doug that he spoke with a Down Maine twang instead of a cowboy’s drawl. “Found a rupture along the seal between the air tank and the backpack frame. Looks like a pinhole in the insulation started it, then the pressure inside the tank broke it into a major leak.”

“How could a pinhole get into the insulation?”

“Search me.”

Anson said, “Somebody could’ve put it there.”

Doug turned his head toward her. “Somebody? You mean sabotage?”

She nodded silently.

“I can’t believe that, Jinny.”

“The suit didn’t fail,” she said. “Somebody tampered with it.”

Doug looked back at Clemens. “Harry?”

“I can’t see how it could’ve failed by itself. I even thought maybe a micrometeorite hit the air tank, but when I started figuring out the angle it would’ve had to come in, it would’ve had to come up out of the ground!”

“So it wasn’t a micrometeorite.”

“Somebody dug out a pinhole in the insulation,” Anson insisted. “Somebody who knows enough about suits to understand that the oxygen pressure inside the tank would break through the weak spot in half an hour or so after the tank was pressurized.”

“Nobody here at Moonbase would do something like that,” Doug insisted.

“Oh no?” Clemens countered. “Whoever it was covered up the pinhole with a smidge of foamgel insulation, so the leak wouldn’t start until you’d been out on the surface for a half hour or so.”

“The kind of foamgel the construction crew uses?” Doug asked.

Clemens nodded. “For stiffening temporary walls and stuff like that, right.”

“The foamgel held the pressure in your air tank until it got brittle from exposure to vacuum,” said Anson.

“If your tank had been down at a regular suit’s pressure you would’ve been okay, I think,” Clemens said. “But at fourteen-point-seven p.s.i., it blew out.”

“And what about the emergency fill valve?” Anson added.

Clemens looked almost sheepish as he said, “The threads were smeared with dust. Froze the valve shut just as effectively as if they’d soldered it.”

The realization made Doug’s insides feel hollow. “We’ve got a saboteur among us?”

“A traitor,” Anson snapped.

“But who? Why?”

“That’s what we’ve got to find out. And fast.”

Doug looked at Gordette, standing slightly behind Clemens, silent, taking in every word.

“Bam, I want you to look into this.”

His eyes went wide. “Me?”

“Jinny and Harry have plenty of responsibilities to keep them busy. I want you to devote full time to this.”

Gordette seemed startled. “But I don’t know enough about spacesuits or any of that stuff. I’m not a cop. That’s what your security department is for.”

Doug shook his head. “Security doesn’t have the personnel for this kind of investigation.”

“But I’m just a glorified plumber.”

“Jinny and Harry will give you all the help they can. You can call on anybody in Moonbase for technical assistance. And I’ll tell security to cooperate with you fully.”

Gordette’s brows knit. It was clear to Doug that the man didn’t want the job, but he couldn’t refuse it.

“Another reason for you to do it, Bam,” Doug added. “I don’t want anybody outside this cubicle to know we’re hunting for a saboteur. No sense stirring up everybody. And it might be easier to catch our traitor if he doesn’t know he’s being tracked down.”

“Or she,” Anson said.

Doug stared at her. Who did she have in mind? “Or she,” he conceded. “Now get out of here and back to work.”

“When are you going back to work?” Anson jibed.

“I’ll be out of here as soon as the medics run one more set of tests. But I can work from this bed, don’t worry.”

“Me worry?” She laughed. “What have I got to worry about?”

“Someone tried to kill you?”

Her son’s revelation shocked Joanna to her roots. She had taken his call in the comfortable little upstairs sitting room of her home outside Savannah. It was early summer beyond her windows: trees were in leaf, birds chirping in the afternoon sunlight. And there was an assassin stalking the confines of Moonbase’s underground corridors.

“That’s what Jinny and the others think,” Doug said. He seemed cheerful and healthy enough, although now Joanna realized that he was sitting up in an infirmary bed.

He assured her that he was all right. “And I’m not completely convinced this wasn’t just a freak accident, Mom.”

Joanna realized she was biting her lip. “No,” she said. “It wasn’t an accident. It’s just the kind of thing that Faure would do, the little sneak.”

Doug smiled when he heard her words. “But how could he get an assassin smuggled in here?”

“That dance troupe,” Joanna replied. “Faure timed all this so that the dance troupe would be stranded up there with you.”

This time Doug actually broke into laughter. “You think one of the ballet dancers tampered with my spacesuit? They don’t even know how to put one on.”

“What about that reporter?”

She saw his eyes go wide once he heard her words. “Edith? She—it couldn’t be her. It couldn’t be!”

“Why not?” Joanna persisted. “You didn’t have this kind of trouble before she talked her way into the base, did you?”

“It’s not her,” Doug said firmly. “It can’t be.”

Joanna did not reply, but her suspicions did not fade an iota.

“What’s happening down there?” Doug asked, changing the subject.

“Lev’s in New York, talking to Faure’s flunkies. I’ve finally gotten Rashid to convene an emergency meeting of the board in two weeks. I have an item on the agenda calling for the board to urge the White House to recognize Moonbase’s independence.”

Doug’s brows rose when he heard her. “Do you think you can carry that?”

“I’ve been counting noses. Tamara will be the swing vote, I’m certain of it.”

“She’ll vote on our side,” Doug said.

“I want you to do everything you can to make sure of that.”

She watched his face closely as he listened to her and digested her meaning.

“Mom,” said Doug,’there’s not much I can do from this distance except talk to her.”

“Use the virtual reality link,” Joanna urged. “Take her for a walk on the beach. Or a swim. She likes you, I’m certain of it.”

From his infirmary bed, Doug stared at his mother’s intense image on the little screen he had propped up on his lap. Good thing we’re not living in the days when families arranged their children’s marriages, he thought.

Then he wondered when he should tell his mother about Edith. And what do I really have to tell her? How serious is our relationship?

Do I love her? The question stunned him. Is this what love is, wanting to share your life with somebody. It’s all happened so quickly, like falling off the edge of a cliff.

Does she love me? Will she want to share her life with me after this war is finished and she can go back Earthside again?

Yet in the back of his mind he realized that there had never been any hint of a traitor in Moonbase before Edith Elgin had arrived.

He heard his mother’s voice, You didn’t have this kind of trouble before she talked her way into the base, did you?

Doug ignored the voice. Or tried to.

DAY TWENTY-FOUR

Jack Killifer found that he was enjoying his visit to Tarawa. Despite his orders.

Outwardly, he was an American tourist taking in the beaches and fishing excursions by day, the gambling casino and musical shows by night. There were plenty of women, especially in the casino, most of them Asian, although he saw a couple of terrific tall blondes that must have been from Sweden or Germany or maybe even the States. Funny that there were hardly any island women in the casino, he thought. But he preferred big broads, anyway, not the dark little wahines.

There was one particular island woman that he had to find, though: Tamara Bonai.

Killifer had balked when General O’Conner told him to take care of Bonai himself. “Why not hire a professional?” he had demanded.

The wizened old man had glared at him from his wheelchair. “God’s work has to be done by God’s people, Jack. It would be wrong to bring in an outsider. Wrong, and dangerous. The fewer people who know about this, the better off we are.”

Killifer had been forced to agree. Get a professional and you’d be blackmailed for life.

“If the woman was in the States, or Europe, or even Japan,” O’Conner had added, “we could get one of our local zealots to do her. But out there on those islands, we don’t have anybody we can depend on. That’s why it’s got to be you, Jack.”

Reluctantly, he had bowed to the general’s order.

“Besides,” the old man had said, a vicious smile on his lips,’this won’t be your first time. You murdered Foster Brennart, didn’t you?”

Sitting at the bar closest to the roulette table, nursing a rye and ginger ale, Killifer thought back to Brennart and the first expedition to the lunar south pole. He’d wanted to kill Doug Stavenger; Brennart’s death was more of an accident than anything else. He’d tried to trap the Stavenger kid up there on the mountaintop during the radiation storm. But Brennart had to be a friggin’ hero and go out there with him. So Brennart died and became a legend while Stavenger pulled through and survived.

It was Joanna Stavenger that he had really wanted to kill. Joanna Brudnoy now. The bitch blamed him for her husband’s death. Paul Stavenger had been killed by nanobugs from Killifer’s lab. So his widow exiled Killifer to Moonbase. Either go to Moonbase or face trial for murder, she had told him. He picked Moonbase. It wrecked his career, ruined his life.

And she’s still running other people’s lives, Mrs Rich Bitch, lording it over everybody else. I’ll get her. One way or the other I’ll get her.

The tall glass in his hand suddenly shattered, spraying rye and ginger ale and ice cubes across the bar. The guy next to him jumped up from his bar stool and wiped at his shirt front, his expression halfway between surprise and anger. Fuck you, Killifer told him silently.

The bartender, a burly Micronesian in a loose fitting mesh shirt, hurried up to him.

“You okay?”

“Yeah,” Killifer said, shaking his drenched hand. “I’m all right, don’t worry.”

“Man, that’s some grip you got,” said the bartender as he quickly set up another drink. “Take it easy, Iron Man, we only got a couple hundred of these glasses!”

“You didn’t cut yourself, did you?”

A delicious redhead in a strapless gown took his hand in her gentle fingers, then looked up at him with big blue innocent eyes.

“Naw,” Killifer said, smiling at her. “I’m okay.”

“You must have some kind of troubles, crushing the glass like that. Like, real tension, huh?”

He admired the curve of her cleavage. “Everybody’s got troubles,” he said.

“Boy, is that true.”

“You too?”

“Don’t even ask,” she said.

“Come on up to my room,” Killifer said, “and we can tell each other about our troubles.”

She didn’t hesitate a microsecond. “Okay. Let’s.”

“Well,” said Lev Brudnoy to his wife, “They agreed to evacuate up to sixty people from Moonbase. They’re calling it a mercy flight.”

Brudnoy had just returned to Savannah from a two-day trip to United Nations headquarters. Joanna met him at the Masterson Corporation airport. Now, in the privacy of their soundproofed limousine, he told her what he’d accomplished in New York.

“A mercy flight,” Joanna echoed.

With a ghostly smile, Brudnoy said, “They intend to get as much publicity out of it as possible: bringing back people from Moonbase who might have been held as hostages.”

“Hostages! Why, that lying little—”

Brudnoy put a lean finger to her lips. “Publicity is very important. Faure is very much aware that public opinion must remain on his side.”

Joanna nodded understanding. “That’s why they tried to make a hero out of that Peacekeeper captain.”

“And why Faure went berserk with anger when the news networks started playing the reports coming out of Moonbase.”

“I hope he bursts a blood vessel.”

“They wanted Moonbase to stop broadcasting news reports,” Brudnoy said, “in return for the evacuation flight.”

“What?”

“I refused, of course. That’s why a half-hour’s conference took two days. They were adamant, but I—” Brudnoy placed a hand on the breast of his open-collar shirt “—I out-sat them. They demanded that we stop the broadcasts; I simply told them that it was impossible. After ducking into Faure’s office fifty times or so, they gave in at last.”

Joanna grabbed him by the ears and kissed him. “Good for you, Lev!”

“It was nothing. Had I known your reaction, I would have made more demands on them.”

She studied his smiling face. Behind his grin, Lev looked tired, worried.

“Faure’s building up a new military force to take Moonbase,” he said softly.

“You’re certain?”

He nodded wearily. “All the signs point to it. The U.N. bureaucrats are merely stalling for time, nitpicking about the evacuation flight and the arrangements for a meeting between you and Faure. In the meantime, I saw plenty of Peacekeeper officers heading into Faure’s office.”

“Really.”

“And worse,” Lev said. “There were several Yamagata Corporation people there, too.”

Joanna leaned her head back against the limousine’s plush upholstery. “I’ve got to get the board of directors to support Moonbase. If they back me, we can start to put pressure on the White House.”

“And if they don’t?” Lev asked.

“They will,” Joanna said firmly. “They’ve got to.”

Ibrahim al-Rashid steepled his fingers as he gazed at Tamara Bonai’s image on the wall screen of his office. She is certainly beautiful, he thought. If only I could convince her to see things my way.

“Then you will attend the emergency board meeting in person?” he asked.

“Yes,” Bonai said. “I want to be there.”

She was apparently in her office, too, although it was difficult to tell, with all the rattan and bamboo decor and the wide windows looking out onto a delicious tropical beach.

“Perhaps you could come a day or so early,” Rashid suggested. “I would be pleased to take you to New York City or wherever else you would like to visit.”

Bonai seemed to think the matter over for a few heartbeats. “I’ve never been to Washington. I understand it’s quite lovely in the spring.”

“Washington,” Rashid said, thinking quickly. “The national capital. I know a very comfortable hotel just a short walk from the White House. Perhaps I could arrange a visit with the President.”

She smiled delightfully. “I’m afraid that would have to be arranged by my own foreign secretary. I am a chief of state, remember, and there is protocol involved.”

Rashid smiled back at her. “Of course. But perhaps I could be of some help. I know the President personally, and a little friendly persuasion always makes the wheels turn more smoothly.”

“That would be very kind of you.”

“Nothing at all,” he said. “I’d be happy to do it.”

Bonai’s face grew more serious. “You understand that I am fully in support of Moonbase’s independence, don’t you?”

“Of course. But you won’t mind if I try to convince you otherwise?”

“You can try.”

“You see, I have believed for many years that the true future of Masterson Corporation lies in the development of fusion power.”

“As Yamagata is doing in Japan?”

“Yes, exactly. If we can work together with Yamagata we can open up the market for fusion power plants in North America. The market is worth trillions of dollars!”

“As long as you can import helium-three from the Moon.”

Rashid kept the disappointment from showing on his face. She knows the whole story; there’s no way to fool her about this.

“Yes,” he admitted. “Fusion power makes economic sense only if we can use helium-three as a fuel.”

“Which is why Yamagata wants Moonbase.”

“Yamagata is producing helium-three at its own base in Copernicus.”

“But without nanomachines to do the work, their costs are prohibitively high.”

“I wouldn’t say prohibitively,” Rashid argued.

Bonai smiled brightly. “Then why do they want Moonbase, if not for our nanotechnology?”

“With nanomachines extracting helium-three from the Moon’s soil,” Rashid said, warming to his subject,’the costs of fusion power go down dramatically. We could offer the world the ultimate energy system, the energy source the stars themselves use! It would be cheap, efficient, and clean: no radioactive wastes!”

“No radioactive waste?” Bonai probed.

Rashid waved a hand in the air. “Well, some, of course. But very little, and totally manageable. Not like the old-style fission reactors, with their uranium and plutonium.”

“I see.”

“We could be the primary producer of fusion power systems for North and South America,” he said, regaining his enthusiasm. “The market will be trillions of dollars every year! Think of the profits!”

“And who would make these profits? Masterson Corporation or Yamagata?”

“Both,” Rashid answered.

She said nothing for several moments. Then, rather thoughtfully, Bonai offered, “We must talk about this in more detail.”

“Yes. When you visit Washington. Before the board meeting.”

She nodded. “Yes. Before the board meeting, certainly.”

Rashid felt delighted. I’m winning her over! he told himself.

DAY TWENTY-FIVE

“He makes a certain amount of sense, Doug,” Bonai was saying. “Fusion power could be an enormous market.”

Tamara and Doug were strolling along the beach, side by side, even though separated physically by nearly four hundred thousand kilometers.

Doug had gone to Moonbase’s virtual reality studio and donned a full-body sensor suit. Instead of the cumbersome helmets that VR systems had once required, he wore contact lenses over his eyes. Produced by nanomachines, the contacts served as miniaturized television screens that fed visual input to his retinas from a microcamera mounted just above his eyes on a headband. Equally tiny microphones were plugged into his ears.

As far as Doug could see, hear or touch, he was sloshing through the gentle surf on Bonai’s private islet, on the far side of the Tarawa lagoon, away from Bonriki and Betio, where the airport and hotels were.

It was beautiful, Doug had to admit. Gorgeous, with the sun dipping down toward the ocean horizon and the trade wind bending the palm trees. The surf broke out on the coral reef with booming roars; here in the lagoon it lapped softly at their feet as they walked along the golden beach.

Tamara was beautiful, too, in a wraparound flowered pareo of blue and gold, her bronzed shoulders bare, her lustrous black hair cascading down her back. She stumbled slightly on the wet sand and Doug reached out a hand to steady her. Even with the three-second lag between Earth and Moon, her hand was still there for him to grasp. He felt her hand clutch his, and she smiled up at him as they continued down the beach, hand in hand.

She could have stayed in her office and simply programmed the VR equipment to show us this beach scene, Doug knew. But Tamara actually was strolling on one of the small islets up at the far end of the lagoon, wearing a full-body sensor suit and a set of microminiaturized cameras that ringed her head like a diadem to provide a complete picture of the island environment for the virtual reality link.

Sweeping his gaze from her lovely face to the curving length of the beach, the graceful palms, the brilliant white clouds parading across the bright blue sky, Doug realized why he had been so reluctant to meet with Tamara in virtual reality. This was the world that was denied him. This was the world that humans were meant to live on, not the harsh lifeless Moon, but this tropical island where you could stand naked in the warm breeze and breathe free.

I could live here, he thought. I’d be safe enough here; nanoluddite fanatics wouldn’t even know I’m down here.

There was another world, though: stark, barren, dangerous -yet full of promise. We can make a paradise on the Moon, Doug told himself. We can build a world that’s fair and free, a world where people can live and work and create a better future.

But it’ll never be like this, he knew. The world I left behind me. Someday we’ll have something approaching this on the Moon. Someday. But it will never be the same.

A powered outrigger was chugging along slowly in the lagoon, heading their way, its electric motor almost completely silent as it sluiced through the marvelously clear water. Doug could see its shadow undulating across the white sandy bottom of the lagoon, hardly a meter deep.

“I thought this was your private islet,” Doug said to Tamara.

She followed his gaze. “Everybody knows the islands up on this end of the lagoon are off-limits. The boys who handle the boats tell tourists not to come this far.”

Frowning, Doug said, “Well, there’s one tourist who didn’t listen.”

Bonai watched intently as the outrigger hit the current flowing between islets and slewed badly. The man in the canoe worked the gimballed engine back and forth to straighten out again.

“He’ll get himself in trouble,” she said.

“Serves him right,” said Doug.

Still watching, she said, “But he might overturn the canoe.”

“An outrigger?”

He waited, then heard her reply. “It’s been done before.”

Doug laughed. “Then he can walk back to Bonriki. The lagoon’s not deep and the water’s warm.”

Another electric-powered outrigger came into view, bigger, more powerful, faster. KIRIBATI CORP. was painted on its prow in bright orange letters.

“Here come my bodyguards,” Bonai said.

“Bodyguards?”

She smiled at him. “The beach patrol from the hotel. They make sure none of the tourists comes up this way.”

Doug watched as the beach patrol boat pulled up even with the smaller outrigger. Three men were in the bigger canoe, he saw: young, muscular, bronzed skin. One of them had an electric bullhorn in his hand.

“I’M SORRY, SIR, BUT THIS PART OF THE LAGOON IS OFF-LIMITS TO VISITORS. PLEASE TURN AROUND AND HEAD BACK TOWARD THE HOTEL.”

For a moment Doug thought that the visitor would try to defy the patrol. But then he turned around and both canoes slowly headed back down the lagoon.

“You see?” Bonai said teasingly. “We can be alone together. I have my bodyguards to ensure our privacy.”

“You mean that if I tried to come here in the flesh, they’d stop me?”

“No, Doug. Not you,” she said, growing serious. “I would always allow you to come here whenever you wanted to.”

He realized he was still holding her hand. Tamara looked up at him. “You did promise, you know. This virtual reality visit doesn’t count.”

“I know,” he said. She gave no indication that she wanted him to release her hand, and he felt too awkward to let go.

So they walked in silence, hand in hand, for several moments.

“When do you go to Savannah?” he asked.

Again the wait. Then, “I leave Monday morning.”

“Monday? But the board meeting isn’t for another week.”

“My foreign secretary is arranging a quick visit with your President, at the White House.”

With a pang, Doug realized that the President of the United States was no longer his President.

“It’s something that Rashid suggested,” she said. “He’s going to give me a tour of the city afterward. Then I’ll go to Savannah for the board meeting.”

“Rashid suggested you see the President?”

“No, he suggested escorting me wherever I’d like to go. I picked Washington, and my foreign secretary has moved heaven and earth to get me a five-minute meeting with the President. Rashid’s been helping, of course.”

“A photo op,” Doug muttered.

Bonai agreed. “I imagine that’s about all it will be: a public relations gesture toward the Chief Executive of the Kiribati Council.”

Suddenly realizing what an opportunity her visit could be, Doug asked urgently, “Tamara, could you do us a favor?”

“Us?”

“Moonbase.”

She looked up at him from beneath long eyelashes, the expression on her lovely face almost sly. “I’d be happy to do a favor for you, Doug.”

Oblivious to her nuance, Doug went on, “When you’re talking to the President, could you ask her to consider backing our independence?”

The three seconds ticked slowly. “The American President? She’s as anti-nanotechnology as they come!”

“I know, I know. But if you tell her that Yamagata will take over Moonbase, and Japan will be using nanotechnology to take over the aerospace industry and God knows what else -maybe she’d have second thoughts about us.”

Bonai disengaged her hand from Doug’s and walked in thoughtful silence along the beach. He followed her, wondering if he was pushing her too far, but unwilling to give up the chance to make a plea to the President.

“All right,” she said at last. Then she laughed. “I was wondering what I’d have to say to her. Now I know.”

“Great!” said Doug.

“And then,” she added, “Rashid wants to show me the city of Washington. He’s already picked out the hotel we’ll stay in.”

“Hotel?” Alarm bells rang in Doug’s mind. “You’re not staying at the same hotel with him, are you?”

“Why not?” she asked innocently.

“You know his reputation. With women, that is.”

“He’s very romantic, apparently.”

Feeling nettled, Doug said, “He’ll just try to add you to his list.”

“Perhaps I’ll add him to my list,” Bonai shot back.

Doug stood there on the beach, staring at her, dumbfounded.

“All’s fair in love and war, isn’t it?” Bonai teased.

“All he really wants from you is your vote at the board meeting,” said Doug, frowning.

“And you think he’ll try to convince me in bed?”

“Yes,” he snapped.

Bonai giggled and threw her arms around Doug’s neck. “You’re jealous, aren’t you?”

“Jealous?” Doug sputtered. “How- why…”

She pressed against him. “You are jealous.” She seemed delighted.

“Rashid’s not to be trusted,” Doug mumbled.

“Would it make you feel better if I said I won’t sleep with him?”

“Yes,” he blurted.

“Good. Wonderful.” She kissed Doug swiftly on the lips, then pulled away and almost danced along the waves lapping the beach.

Doug stood in confused silence, wondering what he was getting himself into, uncertain of what he felt about Tamara, and feeling more than slightly guilty about Edith.

Jack Killifer rammed his rented outrigger up onto the sand, not caring whether he ripped off the electric motor’s propeller or not.

She was all alone out there, he thought as he trudged up the sand toward the tiki hut that sheltered the beach bar. I could have done it and gotten away with nobody seeing me. Except for that goddamned boat from the hotel. They must look out for her all the friggin’ time.

He sat in moody silence on a rickety stool at the bar, sipping mai tais and wondering how he could get Tamara Bonai alone. He also wondered if he’d actually have the guts to murder her. Yes, he decided. I’ll do it. I’ll just pretend she’s Joanna Brudnoy.

He grinned at the thought. Bonai will be a practice run for Joanna. He laughed aloud, startling the young Australian couple sitting a couple of barstools away.

DAY THIRTY-ONE

There were more news people than dignitaries or U.N. employees, Joanna saw. The meeting chamber was jammed with reporters and photographers, all focused on the little ceremony that she and Faure were prancing through.

Lev stood off to one side, in a corner where the cameras did not peer, hands clasped quietly behind his back, looking slightly uncomfortable in a dark blue business suit and a tie that refused to stay knotted tightly against his collar. Lev’s done most of the real work, Joanna knew, but he’ll get none of the credit.

Faure was at his haute couture best, wearing an impeccable dove gray suit with a vest of sky blue over a crisp white shirt: the U.N.’s colors. His cravat matched the vest. Joanna, knowing she’d have to compete with Faure’s fashion statement, wore a simple white mid-sleeved dress of classic lines, with a vee neckline cut low enough to arouse the cameras’ interest. Her earrings were gold Incan sunbursts, her choker and one bracelet also gold.

They entered the chamber from doors on opposite sides of the room, stood together before the long baize-covered table for a few moments while photographers snapped still shots of them. Neither of them looked at the other, both stared straight ahead as if an invisible wall separated them.

As the video cameras hummed, one of Faure’s aides brought a slim leather-bound document to them and laid it open on the table. Only then did Joanna and Faure sit in the high-backed chairs placed there for them.

Faure looked into the phalanx of cameras as he picked up one of the pens that had been laid on the table.

“The signing of this agreement sets in motion a mercy flight to the rebellious Moonbase, allowing the rescue of sixty-five men and women who have been trapped on the Moon by the unfortunate stubborness of the Moonbase management.”

He bent his head and wrote his name at the bottom of the document. Then, with a beaming smile, he offered the pen to Joanna.

Ignoring his gesture, Joanna picked up one of the other pens waiting on the table top. She too looked into the cameras.

“This evacuation flight has been made necessary by the unprecedented actions of the United Nations against Moon-base, a community that has declared its political independence and should be treated as an equal member nation of the U.N.”

She signed in a flowing hand, making certain that her signature was larger than Faure’s tiny, cramped letters.

The small band of dignitaries and U.N. workers standing behind them clapped perfunctorily. Faure scooped up the pens and started to hand them out to the onlookers.

“Mr Faure!” yelled several dozen news reporters. “Mrs Brudnoy!”

Faure raised both his hands, as if in surrender. But he said, “I regret that we will have no time for your questions. My schedule is much too pressing.” He started to get up from his chair.

With a smile, Joanna said, “I’ve got lots of time. Ask away.”

“What’s happening at Moonbase?”

“When do you expect the World Court to take up your case?”

“Why can’t Moonbase agree to shut down its nanotech operations?”

“How does it feel to be in rebellion against the whole world?”

“One at a time!” Joanna pleaded. “One at a time, please.”

His face darkening, Faure plopped back onto his chair.

“How long can Moonbase hold out against the Peacekeepers?”

Joanna glanced sideways at Faure, then turned her attention back to the reporters. “Moonbase is physically self-sufficient. They grow enough food to feed themselves, and generate all the electrical power they need from solar cells built out of elements from the lunar regolith—”

“By nanomachines?”

“Yes. Nanomachines are essential to Moonbase. They produce the air we breathe and purify the water we drink. We use them to expand and maintain our solar-energy farms, and—of course—nanomachines build the Clipperships that we sell to the world’s commercial aerospace lines.”

“Are you saying that Moonbase can hold out indefinitely?”

“Yes, of course. Unless the base is attacked by overwhelming military force, which would probably kill most of the people in the base.”

“Mr Faure, will the U.N. attack Moonbase with overwhelming military force?”

Obviously struggling to maintain his self-control, Faure replied, “The United Nations has a responsibility to see that international law is enforced. The nanotechnology treaty forbids all work in nanomachines, yet as you have just heard from the mouth of Mrs Brudnoy, Moonbase insists on continuing its insidious use of nanotechnology.”

“There’s nothing insidious about it,” Joanna said to him. “We’ve been quite open about it.”

“The nanotechnology treaty is quite clear!” Faure snapped. “And it applies to all the nations of the world!”

Coolly, Joanna pointed out, “Moonbase is not on Earth, and the nanomachines we use there never leave the Moon. They are no threat whatsoever to anyone on Earth.”

“The law is the law!” Faure insisted, his moustache twitching slightly.

“And the law states that any nation that does not sign the nanotech treaty is not bound by its restrictions.”

“But Kiribati has signed the treaty.”

“And Moonbase has declared its political independence.”

One of the reporters jumped in with, “Could Moonbase survive without using nanomachines?”

“No,” said Joanna flatly.

“You see?” Faure made a dismissive gesture. “They refuse to abide by the law.”

“We are no threat to anyone on Earth,” Joanna repeated.

“How do we know that for certain?” Faure demanded. “How do we know what your scientists are doing, four hundred thousand kilometers away?”

“Send inspectors to Moonbase,” said Joanna. “We’ve offered to show U.N. inspection teams everything and anything they want to see. The offer still stands.”

A reporter called out from the rear, “You mean you’d allow U.N. inspectors to look over your nanotech operations?”

“Of course,” Joanna replied. “We made that offer at the very beginning. It still stands, if Mr Faure is willing to take us up on it.”

“What about it, sir?”

Faure brushed a fingertip across his moustache before answering. “Of course we have planned to send inspectors to Moonbase. Several of them will fly there on the mercy mission we have just agreed upon. But that does not change the fundamental situation. Moonbase must accede to the law!”

Joanna quickly added, “But if—or, rather, when—the World Court agrees that Moonbase is an independent nation, then the law allows Moonbase to continue using nanotechnology.”

The reporters weren’t interested in the legal fine points anymore. They had something new to deal with.

“You’re sending inspectors to Moonbase?”

“Does this mean some sort of compromise can be worked out?”

“Who will the inspectors be?”

“What are their names? What nations do they come from?”

Faure raised his hands to silence their questions. With a little smile of satisfaction that their attention was once more focused on him, he said, “Please! Please! I cannot divulge all the details at this moment.”

Joanna said to herself, Of course you can’t divulge all the details, you lying little fart. You just made up your mind to send inspectors on the evacuation flight, right here on the spur of the moment.

But she decided not to embarrass him further. Inspectors could be a step toward gaining Moonbase’s independence and she did not want to do anything that would interfere with that.

You’ve won a small victory, Joanna told herself. Be content with that. For now.

“That’s good news,” Jinny Anson said. “Isn’t it?”

Doug had asked Anson and Kris Cardenas to meet him in The Cave to discuss the latest news from Earthside over dinner. Edith sat at Doug’s side, the two other women across the table from them.

Leaning over his dinner tray, Doug said, “It’s good from the political aspect, I suppose.”

“It’s the first break in the deadlock,” said Edith, as she spooned up some chicken soup. It was almost a stew, it was so thick. But it tasted flat and bland to her. She longed for just one little jalapeno.

“I’ll be happy to show the U.N. inspectors our entire nanotech operation,” Cardenas said eagerly. “Of course, if they want to get into Willi’s lab they’ll be on their own.”

Doug almost grinned at the thought of strangers trying to talk Zimmerman into allowing them to inspect his laboratory. Then he thought, On the other hand, Zimmerman might be pleased to have other scientists see what he’s accomplished here.

“But will they be scientists?” he wondered aloud.

“What?” Cardenas asked.

“Will the U.N. inspectors really be scientists, or will they be spies for Faure?” he said.

“Both,” Edith replied immediately.

“Then how much do we really want to show them?”

Anson said, “Everything—except whatever you guys are doing to help defend the base.”

With a rueful smile, Cardenas admitted, “We can show them everything, then. We haven’t come up with anything that’s specifically military in nature.”

“Okay,” said Doug,’then the inspectors will be no trouble.”

“Not unless they rub Willi the wrong way.”

“Does he have a right way?” Anson jabbed.

Doug looked past his table companions. The Cave was almost filled with diners selecting meals at the dispensers, carrying trays to tables, meeting friends. The big rock chamber buzzed with dozens of conversations.

He forced his attention back to the problems at hand. “Jinny, how are you deciding who goes back Earthside on the evac flight?”

Anson shifted mental gears smoothly. “The ballet troupe, of course.”

“Their manager told me he’s going to sue the U.N. for all the dates they’ve missed,” Edith said.

“Lotsa luck,” said Anson.

“That leaves thirty seats on the evacuation ship,” Doug said.

Nodding, Anson replied, “We’re going by contract dates. People whose employment contracts ended the longest time ago get first priority on the evac.”

“Sounds reasonable,” said Doug.

“Plus, we’ve got one pregnant woman,” Anson said.

“Really?” Edith’s interest was immediate. “Who is she? How far along?”

“A couple of months, from what the medical report says.”

“I’d like to interview her before she leaves.”

I’ll set it up,” Anson said.

“What about the father?” Doug asked.

Anson shook her head. “His contract’s up, but there are too many people ahead of him. He’ll have to stay here.”

“Won’t somebody give up his seat so he can go with his wife?” Edith asked.

“They’re not married. Not yet, anyway. And if somebody gave up a seat I’d have to put the next guy in line in it, not the daddy.”

“How far down on the list is he?” Doug asked.

“Eighteenth.”

“You think they’ll get married Earthside?” Cardenas asked.

“They want to get married right here and now,” Anson said, “but there’s nobody here to perform a legal ceremony.”

Doug leaned back in his chair and stared at the rough rock ceiling for a few moments. “I don’t see why we can’t get a man of the cloth from Earthside to marry them by video.”

“They’re both Catholic,” Anson said.

“How about the Pope?” Edith quipped. “Or at least a cardinal. Make a great news feature.”

Doug grinned at her. “Let’s see what we can do. At least they’ll be married, even if they have to separate for a while.”

Suddenly Anson looked uncomfortable, and Doug realized that her husband was still on Tarawa. They had separated several years earlier; Jinny was at home in Moonbase, her husband had not been. Not at all.

To get off the subject, Doug said, “I wonder just who Faure’s going to send here to check out our nanotech work.”

Anson snorted. “At least one of ’em’ll be Japanese, from Yamagata Industries, I betcha.”

DAY THIRTY-SIX

“It’s too bad you missed the cherry blossoms,” Rashid said to Tamara Bonai. “They were magnificent this year.”

The city of Washington was in bloom: Bonai saw the roses and magnolias that flowered brightly on the White House’s lawn as their limousine glided past the heavily guarded gate and out onto Pennsylvania Avenue.

Her five minutes with the President had not gone well. True to her word, Tamara had urged the President to support Moonbase’s bid for independence. True to her expectations, the President had politely but firmly answered that she could not do that as long as Moonbase used nanotechnology.

“But without nanotechnology, Moonbase will have to shut down,” Bonai had said.

The President shrugged it off. “My record is quite clear,” she said. “The potential threat from nanotechnology is so severe that it’s worth the loss of Moonbase to be safe from it.”

For a long moment the two women sat facing each other in plush armchairs set before the Oval Office’s dark and empty fireplace. Bonai wore a sleeveless sheath of pink, with pearls at her throat, ear lobes and wrist. The President was in a navy blue suit with a modest mid-calf skirt and jewelry of silver and turquoise from her native Arizona.

“Are you aware,” Bonai asked slowly,’that the United Nations intends to turn over the operation of Moonbase to Yamagata Industries, once they have taken the base?”

The President glanced at her aide, sitting quietly across the room behind Bonai’s back with a cyberbook-sized computer in the palm of one hand. The young man had a miniaturized microphone clipped to the inside of his shirt collar, so he could subvocalize information to the all-but-invisible receiver in the President’s left ear.

“Yamagata Industries?” she said, stalling for time. They already have a base on the Moon, don’t they?”

“Yes,” said Bonai. “And they intend to take over Moonbase and continue using nanomachines for many purposes—including manufacturing Clipperships.”

“Are you certain?” The President was now glaring at her aide, who had given up all pretense of secrecy and was scrolling madly through his computer files.

“That would give Yamagata—Japan, really—the world leadership in aerospace transportation,” Bonai said.

The aide shook his head and whispered. The President put on a smile and parroted, “I have had no indication from Mr Faure that the U.N. intends to turn Moonbase over to Yamagata.”

“Then may I suggest,” Bonai said, “with all respect, that you ask Mr Faure directly if he plans to do this?”

The President’s brows knit slightly. “May I ask what your interest is in all of this? After all, Moonbase is trying to break away from Kiribati’s ownership, aren’t they?”

“Kiribati supports Moonbase’s independence. It will have no effect on our business relationship with Moonbase. We intend to formally recognize Moonbase’s independence.”

“Is that so?” The President leaned slightly toward Bonai and made a motherly smile. “Let me give you a bit of friendly advice, young lady. Kiribati’s recognition of Moonbase won’t affect the political situation one iota. So don’t stick your neck out; you might regret it later on.”

Bonai smiled back, thinly. “I appreciate your frankness, Madam President. But I do think that America’s recognition of Moonbase’s independence would be in keeping with the finest traditions of your nation.”

The President sighed, her signal to her aide to end the meeting. He immediately got to his feet and walked across the Oval Office to bend over her and say:

“I’m afraid the ambassador from Uganda has been kept waiting for more than three minutes now.”

Bonai took the hint, got to her feet, and left the Oval Office.

Now she leaned back on the limousine’s fine leather seat, resting her head on the backrest as the car inched through the traffic on its way to her hotel.

Rashid was either too polite or too crafty to ask her how the meeting had gone.

“I’ve arranged for dinner in the hotel’s restaurant,” he said, rubbing his hands together. “It’s quite a lovely place, very quiet and private. The food is excellent.”

Bonai said, “That’s fine.” And she realized that Rashid hadn’t expected anything of significance to come out of her five minutes in the Oval Office. His whole attention was focused on their evening together.

Jack Killifer had just enough time to down a premixed martini on the commercial flight between Washington and Boston. He had followed Bonai to Washington and immediately given up any hope of killing her there. Too many guards, too many police, too many people on the streets and in the hotels.

I’m no professional hit man, he grumbled to himself on the brief flight home. Why’d O’Conner pick me for the job?

He knew perfectly well. Killifer had brought Bonai’s intransigence to General O’Conner’s attention. And O’Conner had always been a firm believer in the idea that the man with the problem should be the man to produce the solution.

But murder? Maybe when she’s all alone out on that little island of hers. Or even in the town on Tarawa atoll; the only real security those islanders have is guards for the casino.

As the plane lowered its landing gear and lined up for landing at Boston’s ancient Logan Aerospace Port, Killifer toyed with the idea of calling O’Conner in Atlanta and asking for a professional to do the work. Or even one of the faithful Urban Corps fanatics.

But it’d be a waste of breath, he knew. O’Conner had made it clear: he wanted Killifer to do this job personally. “The fewer people know about this,” the general had said,’the better off we are.”

Yeah, Killifer told himself as the plane’s tires screeched on the runway. And knocking off Bonai’ll give him an absolute grip on me.

Yet he was almost smiling as he got out of his seat and followed the other passengers to the plane’s exit hatch. Okay, he told himself. When Bonai goes back to Tarawa I go back too. I’ll hit her there. Now that I know the layout of the islands, it oughtta be fairly easy.

And he began to lay his plans.

DAY THIRTY-EIGHT

They watched the Clippership settle down gracefully on landing pad one from the snug confines of her quarters.

“Well,” said Nick O’Malley,’there she is.”

Claire Rossi nodded.

“Aren’t you excited?” he asked, forcing a grin.

Sitting on the edge of the bed, Claire said, “About the wedding, yes. About leaving, no.”

“Well, you’ve got to go,” Nick said. “It’s for your own good. And the baby’s.”

Claire nodded again. But she said, “It’s not an illness, you know. Pregnancy is just as normal as breathing, really.”

“The rules are the rules,” Nick insisted. “Besides, you’ll get better medical care back Earthside. And your mother’ll be there with you.”

“But you won’t.”

“I’ll come down on the next flight.”

“Nick, there might not be a next flight!”

“Now look—”

The phone chimed and Claire immediately called out, “Answer.”

Jinny Anson’s chipper face appeared on the wall. “Okay, you two, we’re down to two hours and counting.”

Claire said, “We’ll be there.”

“With bells on,” Nick added.

They forgot their argument and began dressing for the wedding. Claire had borrowed liberally from her friends and put together a beige long-skirted dress (the closest she could find at Moonbase to a wedding gown) and various accessories that almost looked right. Nick could find nothing that fit his big frame except a fresh pair of white coveralls from the medical stores.

The wedding was held in Jinny Anson’s office, with half a dozen of their friends in attendance and Claire’s arms filled with a bouquet of flowers freshly plucked from Lev Brudnoy’s little garden.

The archbishop of Kiribati, brown skin and flashing white teeth, looked out at them from the wall screen. Dressed in the full regalia of purple stole and skullcap, he appeared to be in a chapel made of stuccoed walls and a timbered roof.

Anson, Doug, and Harry Clemens stood off to one side while Edith, camera glued to one eye, panned across the office. Joanna and Lev Brudnoy watched from the wall screen on the other side of the room.

The ceremony was brief, a little awkward with the transmission delay, yet somehow touching. Doug heard Anson sniffle slightly, beside him. Looking over to the far wall, he thought that his mother looked just a bit teary-eyed, too. Why do women cry at weddings? he wondered.

When he finished, the archbishop grinned at them and said in a strong voice, “There will be no collection.”

The Catholics in the small crowd laughed.

The married couple and their friends trooped out of Anson’s office, on their way to a reception in The Cave.

“Some honeymoon they’re going to have,” Anson said, sounding a little wistful. “The Clippership lifts off tomorrow at ten hundred hours.”

“Well, at least they were able to get married,” Clemens said. “I hope that makes them happy.”

Doug had already turned his attention to his mother’s image on the wall screen.

“Any progress with Faure?” he asked.

After three seconds she shook her head gravely. “He’s making the maximum media noise about this so-called mercy flight. Otherwise, he’s stonewalling me.”

“Any indications of preparations by the Peacekeepers?”

Doug asked, standing before his mother’s larger-then-life image.

Brudnoy, standing slightly behind her, answered, “No indications at all. They seem to be doing nothing at present. Of course, they could be getting ready for another assault in secrecy.”

“That’s what I’d do, I suppose,” Doug agreed. “No sense letting your enemy see you coming.”

“The board meeting is tomorrow,” Joanna said. “I’ve got to turn Rashid around and get him to support you.”

“Tamara Bonai got no place with the President,” Doug muttered.

Once she heard his words, Joanna raised a finger. “Don’t be too sure of that. The ambassador to Japan just flew back unexpectedly to Washington on a Clippership. Something’s stirring, I think.”

Doug thought about that for a moment, then said, “Mom, this may be off the wall—but have you considered talking directly to Yamagata?”

The delay was much more than three seconds this time. “You mean the old man himself? Seigo Yamagata?”

“If he’ll see you.”

Her expression hardened. “He’ll see me. I’ll make certain of that!”

It took an effort of will for Nick to pull his gummy eyelids open. The party had been glorious, but now it was morning and the fun was over. Claire had to pack her few belongings tnd get aboard the Clippership.

She was curled next to him in the bunk, sleeping soundly with a beatific smile on her lips.

Nick struggled up on one elbow and squinted at the digital clock.

“It’s nine-twenty!” he yelped. “Good lord, Claire, you’ve gotta dash!”

She opened one eye and snaked a bare arm around his neck. “Married hardly more than eighteen hours and you’re already giving me orders.”

“But the time—”

“Relax,” Claire said dreamily. “I’m not going anyplace.”

“Not going? What do you mean not going?”

“I’m staying right here with you,” she said, opening both eyes at last.

“But you can’t do that!”

“I gave my boarding papers to Ellen Berson,” Claire said. “Last night, while the rest of you were getting blotto on rocket juice.”

“You what?”

“Ellen’s got a boyfriend in Philadelphia. My boyfriend is right here.”

“You can’t do that,” he repeated, his voice high, panicky. “They’ll stop her at the rocket port.”

“No they won’t. And even if they do, I decided I’m staying right here with you.”

“But they’ll force you—”

“Nobody’s going to force anybody,” Claire said, quite firmly. “And if they send some goons from security I’ll put up such a battle they’ll be afraid of harming the baby.”

“You’re crazy!”

“Over you, sweet-face.”

“But you can’t have the baby here. It’s not allowed.”

She smiled knowingly. “Nick, there’s a first time for everything.”

“But…” He ran out of steam and sank back on the pillow, defeated. Yet delighted.

“It was during the wedding,” Claire said. “When the archbishop said that bit about cleaving together. I made up my mind then that I’m not going Earthside until you can go with me.”

Staring up at the low ceiling, Nick said, “There’s going to be hell to pay over this.”

But he was grinning from ear to ear.

DAY THIRTY-NINE

Joanna deliberately took the seat at the end of the long conference table, where she could look directly at Rashid, up at the head. Every member of the board was present in person, even old McGruder in his powered wheelchair and its bulky life-support system. The old man was still waiting for a heart donor; he was more heavily wired up than an astronaut, Joanna thought.

Rashid and Tamara Bonai came in together, not exactly holding hands, but obviously happy to be in each other’s company. Joanna seethed. If that little tramp has gone over to Rashid’s side I’ll…

She stopped, not knowing what she’d do. Or what she could do. She had told Doug to woo Bonai and win her over. It looked as if Rashid had done it, instead, and there was nothing Joanna could do to counter that.

The conference table was buzzing with whispered conversations, board members catching up with the latest news and gossip among themselves. No one spoke to Joanna. She sat as if in an isolation ward down at the foot of the table.

The murmurs died away as Rashid sat down and smiled brightly at the board members.

“I’m delighted that all of you could manage to make it here in person to this special meeting,” Rashid said in his slightly reedy tenor voice. “Including you, Mac.”

From behind his oxygen mask McGruder rasped, “Couldn’t keep me away from this one if you tried, my boy. When all this nonsense with the U.N. is over, I’m going to Moonbase and get some of those nanomachines to fix my heart.”

He broke into a cackling laughter; the other board members joined with him, politely. All except Rashid, Joanna noticed, who sat with his original smile frozen on his face. Mac’s on our side, Joanna knew. She had been feeding him information on nanotherapy for months now.

“There’s only one item on the agenda,” Rashid said, “and we should be able to take care of it fairly quickly.”

All the heads along the table swivelled to Joanna.

“Since you called for this meeting,” Rashid said to her, “and it’s your resolution that we’re here to discuss, why don’t you give us the formal reading, for the minutes, Joanna?”

She didn’t bother even glancing at the display screen set into the table before her. Joanna said in a clear, strong voice:

“Resolved: That Masterson Corporation exert its best efforts to support the political independence of Moonbase.”

A dead silence fell upon the board room.

Finally, one of the white-haired men halfway up the table asked, “You mean we don’t support Moonbase’s independence?”

“Why should we?” a woman board member asked.

“Because if we don’t,” Joanna answered before anyone else could reply, “we stand to lose the Clippership manufacturing to Japan.”

“Japan?”

“That’s not entirely fair, Joanna,” said Rashid.

“The Clippership product line belongs to our Kiribati subsidiary, doesn’t it?”

“How’s Japan going to get it? I assume you mean Yamagata Industries, not the Japanese government.”

“They’re pretty close to being the same thing,” Joanna said.

“I don’t understand how Yamagata can take the Clippership manufacturing away from us.”

“But we don’t manufacture them; Kiribati does.”

“We get the profits, don’t we?”

“Wait, wait,” Rashid called out, motioning them to silence with both hands. “Let’s go through this calmly and logically.”

Joanna immediately said, “We set up Kiribati Corporation to get out from under the nanotechnology treaty.”

“Yes, and then the damned islanders signed the treaty anyway,” said one of the men. Suddenly he realized that Tamara Bonai was sitting across the table from him, and his face reddened. “Ah, sorry,” he mumbled. “No offense intended.”

Bonai looked directly at him as she said, “Kiribati was forced to sign the nanotech treaty by unbearable pressure from the United Nations. We never expected the U.N. to try to extend the treaty to Moonbase, however.”

“Where do you stand on Moonbase’s independence?” asked the woman sitting next to Bonai.

“We have been assured that Moonbase’s political independence will not interfere in any way with their contractual agreements with Kiribati Corporation. Therefore, we support their independence.”

Several people along the table nodded.

Bonai added, “What we fear is that the U.N. will turn over all Clippership manufacturing to Yamagata once they have thrown us out of Moonbase.”

Rashid’s face clouded. “There’s more to it than that,” he said. “Much more.”

“The core of this issue,” said Joanna, “is that the U.N.’s fervor to force the nanotech treaty on Moonbase is a sham—a coverup for turning the base and all its operations over to Yamagata.”

“And that includes manufacturing Clipperships with nano-machines?”

“Yes. Certainly.”

McGruder swivelled his wheelchair slightly toward Rashid. “You knew about this?”

“I found out about it,” Rashid answered.

“And what are you doing about it?”

Rashid took a deep breath. “I am trying to lead this corporation to a new level of profitability. And to a new product line, while we make a greater profit than ever from the Clipperships.”

He had their full attention now, Joanna saw.

Leaning forward intently, Rashid said, “I want to negotiate a partnership between us and Yamagata to produce nuclear fusion power plants—”

“We went over this ten years ago,” McGruder rasped.

“It was eight years ago and we made a mistake then,” Rashid said hotly. “Let’s not repeat the same mistake. Fusion power will be a multi-trillion dollar business. This corporation has a chance to get in on it; one chance, take it or leave it.”

Forcing her voice to remain cool, Joanna said, “So you’re offering Yamagata the Clippership product line in exchange for a partnership in their fusion program.”

“Fusion can be profitable if it can be fueled by helium-three, which can be mined on the Moon,” Rashid said.

“Then why don’t we mine it ourselves?” Joanna asked. “With nanomachines we can produce helium-three at a fraction of Yamagata’s costs.”

“Joanna, it’s time you stopped clinging to Moonbase as if it’s your personal nursery!” Rashid snapped.

She felt his words like a slap across her face. “You’ve been carrying a grudge for eight years now, Omar; ever since this board voted to back Moonbase in preference to your ideas about fusion.”

“That was a mistake and we have a chance to correct it.”

“By giving up Moonbase and allowing Yamagata to take the Clippership line away from us.”

“We own the patents,” Rashid countered. “Yamagata will pay us royalties while our costs go down to zero.”

One of the women muttered, “Yamagata will pay us royalties until they figure out how to reverse engineer the Clipperships and come up with a manufacturing system that’s different enough from ours to break our patents.”

“Which will take a year or two, at most,” another board member said.

“Not if we merge with Yamagata,” Rashid said.

Silence again. They all looked stunned, Joanna thought.

“A merger makes perfect sense,” Rashid went on, more calmly. “Our combined corporation will be the world’s leader in aerospace transportation and fusion power. Your stock will be worth ten times what it’s going for now. Even more.”

“I will never vote to merge with Yamagata Industries,” Joanna said, her voice venomously low.

“And why not?” Rashid taunted. “Are you afraid that your son will have to come back to Earth and live with the rest of us?”

“That is unforgivable,” Joanna said.

“It is out of line, Mr Chairman,” said the bald, portly man sitting at her right. Others muttered and nodded.

Rashid closed his eyes briefly, then said softly, “You’re right. I went too far. Joanna, I apologize. The heat of the moment…”

She glared directly into his eyes. The silence around the table stretched painfully.

Tamara Bonai broke the spell. “I move that we vote on the resolution presented by Mrs Brudnoy.”

“Second,” said the man across the table from her.

The resolution passed by one vote: Bonai’s. Joanna sighed with relief. She’s not in his camp, she realized. Maybe in his bed, but not in his camp.

Then she thought, But the resolution doesn’t mean much, not compared to this issue of merging with Yamagata.

Rashid was saying,’… each board member should express our support for Moonbase with his or her senators, I imagine. And I will appoint a committee to meet with the President in support of this resolution. Joanna, I suppose you should chair that committee.”

He seemed to be taking his defeat graciously enough. Why not? Joanna asked herself. He’s got every member of the board dreaming of a ten-fold increase in the worth of their stock.

“I think we should set up another committee, as well,” Joanna heard herself saying, not realizing where she was going until the words formed in her mouth,’to work with our board chairman in his negotiations with Yamagata.”

“That’s not on our agenda,” Rashid snapped.

“Call it new business,” said Joanna. “Yes, I want to be on the Yamagata committee,” said the oldest member of the board.

“And so do I,” Joanna added sweetly.

DAY FORTY

Tamara Bonai cancelled her plans to return to Kiribati and extended her stay in Savannah for twenty-four hours—at Rashid’s request.

As the board meeting had broken up, he had asked her to remain an extra day. “Now that the pressure is off, I’d like to take you sailing.”

She saw something in his eyes that surprised her: not anger or worry over Joanna Brudnoy’s intransigence, but relief, almost satisfaction. So she thought it over for a few moments, then smiled and agreed. There is something going on in his mind that he didn’t tell us at the board meeting, she thought. It could be simple lust, she realized. Alone together on a boat, it would be difficult to evade his ardor. But what she saw in his eyes was more than that. Tamara saw triumph in Rashid’s pleased expression.

He was happy, carefree, as he guided the power cruiser down the river, past Fort Pulaski and the Clippership port on Tybee Island, and out onto the deep swells of the blue-gray Atlantic.

“It’s going to be a beautiful day,” Rashid said cheerfully as he sat in the pilot’s chair, one bare leg hooked over its armrest. “And a lovely, starry night,” he added.

He was barefoot, wearing nothing but blue swim trunks and a tee-shirt with a Masterson Corporation logo on its breast. Bonai wore a sunshine yellow bikini with a gauzy, see-through, hip-length robe over it.

“Not a cloud in sight,” Rashid enthused.

Bonai was not worried about the weather. She was disappointed that Rashid hadn’t taken out a sailboat, which would have been more fun than chugging along on power. At least the boat’s electric motor was quiet and clean; no diesel fumes to assault her sense of smell.

The day passed uneventfully. By lunchtime they were out of sight of land. The sun set and the stars came out, as promised, different from the constellations she knew in Kiribati’s skies, but just as beautiful.

There was no Moon in the night sky.

All day long Rashid’s conversation had been innocuous, as if the last thing he wanted to talk about was the board meeting and Moonbase. Over dinner, though, he spoke of his long struggle to reach the top of Masterson Corporation.

“It hasn’t been easy for a Moslem to move forward in corporate America, even a Moslem born and raised in Baltimore,” he said, with growing bitterness. “But I’ve worked harder than any of the others. When they called me Omar I let it pass. And they’ve called me worse, behind my back, I know. Towel-head. Camel humper.”

Tamara offered sympathetic noises as they made their way through the prepackaged veal and salad.

Dessert was figs and dates, and champagne. Tamara knew what was coming next, and almost welcomed it. Soon enough they were together in the bunk up at the boat’s prow, heaving in rhythm to the ocean waves. Rashid was a well-versed lover, Bonai discovered; he made pleasure pleasurable for her as well as himself.

It was afterward, as they lay sweaty and spent with the curved overhead less than an arm’s length above them, that Tamara gently, slowly got Rashid to tell her more about himself. Of his rise to Masterson’s board of directors. Of his victory in the battle to be chairman. Of his ambition to bring efficient, clean, economical fusion power to an energy-hungry Earth.

“That’s what I’ll be known for, after I’m gone,” he said quietly in the darkness. “Future generations will remember that I made fusion power practical.”

For long moments Bonai said nothing. She listened to the creaking groan of the boat as it rose and fell in the endless ocean waves, thinking that it was Yamagata’s researchers who had doggedly worked to make fusion practical.

“That’s a magnificent achievement,” she said at last.

“Yes,” he agreed. “Magnificent.”

“But if Mrs Brudnoy prevents the merger with Yamagata … what then?”

He chuckled softly and turned toward her. “There’s nothing she can do to prevent it. You saw how the board members reacted when I showed them how much their stock will increase in value.”

“Mrs Brudnoy is a very determined woman. Very powerful.”

“Not for much longer. In a month or so Moonbase will belong to Yamagata Industries, and her power base will be gone.”

“In a month or so?”

Rashid ran a hand along her bare thigh. “Yes. For weeks now Yamagata’s been ferrying Peacekeeper troops up to their base at Copernicus. Together with a special team of Yamagata’s own security forces, they’ll hit Moonbase and take it over so swiftly that neither Joanna nor her pup will know what hit them.”

She realized he was aroused again. Is it me, she wondered, or the thought of beating Joanna in their corporate power struggle?

She giggled at her own question. Rashid thought it was his doing and began stroking her more fervently.

She sighed and caressed his bearded face, then whispered into his ear, “You’ve been building up an army on the Moon and the Moonbase people don’t even know it.”

“Not quite an army,” Rashid replied, pleased at her reaction. “Only a few hundred troops. But they’ll have missiles and tracked vehicles and everything they need to surround Moonbase and force it to surrender. Or demolish it.”

“When? How soon?”

But he stopped talking and pressed his body atop hers. Tamara closed her eyes and thought of Doug Stavenger.

“General O’Conner is in conference and cannot be disturbed, sir,” said the woman.

Jack Killifer stared angrily at her image on his phone screen. Typical Urban Corps flunkie, he thought: gray dress buttoned up to her goddamned chin, not a speck of makeup, hair tied up in some kind of knot on the top of her head. She could be attractive if she’d unwind a little.

“Did you tell him it’s Jack Killifer calling?” he asked, through gritted teeth. “From Savannah?”

“The general is not to be disturbed,” she repeated, like a brain-dead robot.

Killifer thought it over swiftly. The general’s probably sleeping, or maybe in another coma. He kept getting these ministrokes that knocked him out for days at a time. I can’t tell this receptionist that Tamara Bonai’s off on a friggin’ boat ride and I can’t get to her. Nobody’s supposed to know about Bonai except me and the general.

“Okay,” he said to the unblinking image. “Tell General O’Conner that I called from Savannah, will you?”

“Certainly, sir.”

“And I’m leaving tomorrow for a little vacation in Kiribati.”

“Have a pleasant vacation, sir.”

He killed the connection and the screen went dark. I’ll get her there, Killifer told himself. Back in the islands. I’ll do her there and that’ll be the end of it. All I need is a boat.

Tamara dared not call Doug Stavenger until she was safely back in Kiribati. Rashid brought the boat back to Savannah the next morning and she hurried to her hotel, where she showered for half an hour, then headed for the rocket port on Tybee Island. Her aides had packed her bags and accompanied her in the limousine that Masterson Corporation had provided.

All through the half-hour ballistic flight Bonai struggled against the temptation to call her office in Tarawa and have them patch her through to Moonbase. Too dangerous, she warned herself. Wait until you can make a tight-beam laser link to Moonbase.

The Clippership lifted off from the Savannah area at noon, local time. It was 7.42 a.m. in Kiribati when she arrived at her office. With a quick flick of her computer keyboard, she saw it was 5.42 p.m. at Moonbase. Perfect.

In less than ten minutes she was talking to Doug’s intently serious image on her display screen.

“In a month?” Doug looked startled.

Bonai nodded. “Several hundred troops. They’ve been gathering at the Yamagata base in Copernicus.”

Doug seemed to stare off into space. “Coming in on the regular LTVs,” he muttered.

She started to ask what LTVs were, then remembered: lunar transfer vehicles, the ungainly, unstreamlined carriers that plied regular schedules between the space stations orbiting Earth and the lunar outposts. All such traffic had been cut off from Moonbase by the U.N., but Yamagata’s base had not been affected at all. Trojan horses, Bonai thought, carrying soldiers to the Moon a few at a time.

Doug could see that Tamara was terribly worried, frightened. She really cares about us, he told himself. Maybe Mom’s right and she really cares about me.

“And they’re armed with missiles?” he asked.

Three seconds later Bonai replied, “He said they’ll have tractors and missiles and everything they need to surround Moonbase and force you to surrender.”

Doug muttered, “So that’s why we haven’t seen any Peacekeeper buildup. They’ve been building their forces a little at a time over at Nippon One.”

“Yes.”

“And training. Getting acclimatized to lunar conditions.”

“What are you going to do, Doug? They’ll be ready to strike in a month!”

“I don’t know,” he replied honestly. “I don’t know if there’s anything we can do in that short a time.”

Tamara’s face looked anguished once she heard his response. “Doug, don’t let them destroy you! Surrender to them. Don’t let them kill you.”

He said nothing. There was nothing he could say. Yamagata and the Peacekeepers were going to come in and overwhelm them. Doug realized that his efforts to build some sort of defense for Moonbase had been nothing but a child’s game. He’d been pretending to be a military leader when he didn’t have the knowledge, the experience, the resources—like a kid with a plastic raygun playing soldier.

“Doug?” Tamara called again. “You can surrender now, you know. I can send a Clippership up there to get you and as many others as you want. You can live here in Kiribati. You’ll be safe here.”

“Thanks,” he muttered, his mind still reeling. It’s all been for nothing, he told himself. We never had a chance, not from the very beginning.

“I’ll call you back in a little while,” he said to Tamara absently. “I have to—I need some time to think this through.”

“I’ll be here, Doug. I’ll be waiting for your call.”

He sagged back in his desk chair as the wall screen went blank, his thoughts spinning.

Edith came in from the corridor, all smiles. “Just sent another Pulitzer-quality report to the network,” she said, bending to kiss his cheek swiftly. Then she breezed past the partition into the bedroom.

Before Doug could reply to her, someone rapped at the doorframe and slid the accordion-pleat door back enough to stick her head into the room. Jinny Anson.

“I need to talk to you, boss,” she said crisply. “Got a minute?”

With that, she slid the door all the way back and stepped into the living room. Behind her, Nick O’Malley and Claire Rossi trooped in.

The little cubicle was suddenly crowded, especially with O’Malley’s bulky form. The redhead looked shamefaced, like a guilty little boy. Claire Rossi looked stubborn, defiant.

Doug struggled to his feet. “What’s this all about?”

“This mother-to-be,” Anson said sharply, “was supposed to be on the evacuation flight.”

“You’re the couple who got married,” Doug said, feeling thick-headed, stupid.

“I decided to stay here with my husband,” Claire said, clasping O’Malley’s arm.

“But you’re pregnant.”

“She’s fractured her employment contract,” Anson said. The rules are specific—”

“I don’t care about the rules,” Rossi insisted. “I want to stay with my husband.”

Doug looked up at O’Malley, whose wiry red hair almost brushed the ceiling. “Don’t you have enough sense to know what a risk she’s taking?”

Looking miserable, O’Malley replied, “I told her. I wanted her to go. But she wouldn’t listen to me.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Doug saw Edith step from behind the partition to watch the proceedings. She thinks this’ll make a good news story, Doug thought. Great human interest.

But he felt anger welling up inside him. “She wouldn’t listen to you?” Doug said to O’Malley. Turning to Rossi, he almost snarled, “And you, how idiotic can you be? Haven’t you given any thought to your baby? Don’t you care at all?”

“I care—”

“Then why aren’t you on your way back Earthside, where you can get proper medical attention?” Doug yelled at her.

O’Malley stepped between them. “Now wait just a minute here…”

“Wait for what?” Doug hollered. “Wait until the next attack on this base, so both of you can get killed? And the baby, too?”

He turned on Anson. “How in the whole dimwitted congregation of blockheads that passes for your crackerjack staff could she get away with this, Jinny? Didn’t you have anybody checking on who went aboard the evac flight? Are they all blind or stupid or just plain corrupt? What the blazes happened?”

“I don’t know,” Anson said, her voice suddenly small and hushed.

Rossi started, “I gave my paperwork to—”

Doug silenced her with a fearsome glance. “Do you think this is all a game? We’re facing a life-and-death situation here and you put your unborn child at risk! What kind of irresponsible, unfeeling people are you? I don’t need this! Haven’t I got enough on my shoulders without worrying about an idiot pregnant woman and her baby?”

Edith put a hand on Doug’s shoulder and Anson grabbed at Rossi’s arm.

“Come on, let’s get out of here,” Anson said. “Doug, I’m sorry I laid this one on you. There’s nothing any of us can do about it now.” And she tugged at Rossi, urging her toward the door.

O’Malley glared angrily at Doug and for a moment he looked as if he’d like to throw a punch or two. But he snorted and turned to follow Anson and his wife.

Doug stood in the middle of the little room, realizing how small it was, how low the ceiling pressed down on him, how many people were going to die if he kept up this charade of trying to defend Moonbase.

Edith whispered, “I was wondering when you’d blow off some steam. I’m just glad I wasn’t in your line of fire.”

DAY FORTY-ONE

It was well past midnight. Doug lay wide awake in the darkness, Edith beside him. They had not even tried to make love; Doug was too wired, too angry to either give or receive tenderness.

I’m scared, he realized. I’m really frightened. And there’s nothing I can do to help. Not a blasted thing.

“Are you sleeping?” Edith whispered so low he barely heard it.

“No.”

“Me neither.”

Doug stayed flat on his back, staring at the dark ceiling. “I shouldn’t have yelled at those kids.”

“They broke the rules, didn’t they?”

“Yelling at them didn’t help anything. I’ve just made them sore at me.”

“You’ve got to let off steam somehow,” Edith said. “If you don’t you’ll bust.”

“I still shouldn’t have done it to them.”

Edith was silent for several heartbeats. Then she whispered, “If you want to curse, go right ahead.”

“What?”

“Don’t hold it in. Sometimes a good string of cussing can be real satisfying. Go ahead, turn the air blue. I won’t mind.”

For long moments he didn’t know what to reply. Then he confessed. “I don’t know any.”

“Any what?”

“Any curses. I never learned to swear. My mother didn’t like it and I never heard it when I was a kid.”

“Nothing at all?” Edith was incredulous.

“Hell and damn. Sonofabitch bastard. Fuck, shit, asshole.”

“Lord, you make it sound like you’re reciting a list.”

He shrugged. “They don’t mean much to me. Not emotionally.”

Edith turned to face him. In the darkness she could barely make out the outline of his head against the pillow.

“What do you do when you get real mad? When you want to spit and kick your faithful ol’ hound dog?”

He knew she was trying to cheer him, trying to lighten his foul mood. “I never had a dog.”

“Didn’t you ever want to kick anybody?”

“I go outside,” he said.

“Huh?”

“When I’m really ticked off, when it gets too heavy, I suit up and go outside. That usually makes me feel better.”

“Then let’s go outside,” Edith said, propping herself up on one elbow.

“Not now,” Doug said. “It won’t help.”

“But you said—”

“Get some sleep, Edith. The problems I’m facing aren’t going to be solved by a walk outside.”

“Come on,” she urged. “You’ve never taken me outside. We could—”

“Not now,” he repeated. “Go to sleep.”

She gave up with a reluctant sigh and curled next to him. Neither of them closed their eyes.

When he tried to reach Tamara Bonai in the morning, her phone relayed a message that she had gone to her private island and was waiting for him to make VR contact with her.

Tiredly, Doug trudged down to the virtual reality studio, pulled on a full-body sensor suit and let a technician help him insert the contact TV lenses. Within minutes he was standing on the sandy beach, surprised that it was night on Tarawa atoll.

“I’m a working woman,” Bonai told him, smiling brightly in the starlit night. “I have responsibilities that keep me at my desk most of the day.”

Doug forced a grin. “Here I thought you had nothing to do but swim in the lagoon and go fishing.”

Bonai was wearing a wraparound pareo, Doug was in his usual sky-blue coveralls. The night was magnificent: a warm salt breeze blew across the beach and thousands of stars sparkled in the great dome of the heavens. Doug searched the sky for the Moon but could not find it. Of course, he realized. We’re in the nighttime part of our cycle; from Earth it’s a new moon, invisible.

“Have you thought about my offer?” Bonai asked, almost shyly.

For a moment Doug felt puzzled. “Offer?”

“Asylum here in Kiribati,” she said. “For you and as many of your people as you want to bring with you.”

Doug took a deep breath. It was one place where the VR simulation failed. Instead of soft tropical sea air he tasted the flat, canned, slightly metallic mixture of Moonbase.

“I need to know more about what the Peacekeepers are planning,” he said.

“I’ve told you as much as Rashid told me,” Bonai said. “Several hundred troops, equipped with missiles, are being assembled at the Yamagata base in Copernicus. They plan to attack Moonbase within a month.”

“Do you know anything about how they plan to attack?”

She shook her head.

Doug hesitated, then asked, “Tamara, can you find out anything more?”

In the starlit shadows he could not make out the expression on her face. But her voice sounded strained as she replied, “Doug, I don’t want to see Rashid again. Once is a fling; twice… he’ll either get suspicious or begin to think he owns me.”

“Oh,” he said, suddenly embarrassed. “I see. I understand.”

“Do you?”

“I tried to talk with the director of Nippon One,” he said, almost mumbling the words. “He won’t take my calls.”

Tamara touched his sleeve with her virtual hand. “Doug, I know it’s terribly difficult for you, but you’ve got to face the fact that Moonbase is lost. You’ve got to start thinking about your own safety.”

He nodded, feeling miserable. “I know you’re right. And yet—”

He stopped. Out in the shadows beneath the palm trees that fringed the beach he saw something move.

Killifer was delighted. About time I caught a break, he said to himself.

He had bought an inflatable boat, barely big enough for himself and the box of food and drink he had brought with him, and chugged out into the lagoon at sunset. The beach boys who watched the hotel’s rental outriggers paid him scant attention: a tourist going out for a little night fishing.

As soon as it got fully dark Killifer set out for the private little islet on the far end of the atoll where Tamara Bonai sometimes went. Alone.

It wasn’t easy, out on the lagoon all by himself in the dark. The lights from the hotel and casino soon sank below the watery horizon. His eyes grew accustomed to the starlight, but each of the flat, palm-fringed islets looked pretty much alike to him. Bonai’s private little isle was the last one in the chain, he knew. Still, he almost missed the islet and drifted out to the reef in a sudden swirl of current between islands.

Finally he got to ‘her’ islet, the farthest one from Betio and Bonriki. Sooner or later she’ll come here, he told himself as he beached the inflatable boat. Once he had pulled the boat safely out of sight, into the bushes beneath the palms, he took a quick swig of beer from the cooler and settled down to wait for her. Could be days, he knew. What the hell.

And there she was! Killifer could hardly believe his eyes. The woman steered her outrigger up onto the beach just as pretty as you please and stepped out for a walk under the stars. Alone.

Grinning to himself, Killifer thought that maybe General O’Conner’s god was looking out for him, after all.

“Somebody’s out there,” Doug said, pointing toward the palm trees and low shrubbery beneath them.

Bonai followed his gaze. There couldn’t be. Not at this time of night. The canoe rental closes at sundown.”

“He’s coming toward us,” Doug said.

“Yes. I see him.”

Doug started to wave the man off, then realized that he was on the Moon, and the approaching man couldn’t see him.

“Damn, we’ll have to put up NO TRESPASSING signs,” Bonai said, staring at the man striding toward her.

“Or guards,” Doug muttered.

She looked up at Doug. “I wanted us to be alone.”

“Me too. Why don’t you tell him he’s not allowed here.”

With a sigh, she said, “I suppose I’ll have to.”

Starting up the beach toward the intruder, Bonai called out to him, “I’m sorry, sir, but you’re not allowed onto these islets. You’ll have to go back to Bonriki.” She pointed toward the faint glow on the horizon from the high-rise hotels.

The man showed no sign of understanding. Bonai repeated her warning in German, then Japanese.

“He doesn’t look Japanese,” Doug said, squinting through the shadows at him.

“You’re not allowed here,” Tamara said, louder, in English.

The man came closer and smiled maliciously at her. With a sudden cold hand clutching his heart, Doug recognized Jack Killifer.

“Tamara, stay away from him,” he said, grabbing for her arm.

“Why…”

“I know him,” Doug said. “He almost killed me, once.”

Bonai’s eyes went wide. She turned from Doug to Killifer, close enough now almost to reach her, and back to Doug again.

“Keep away from him!” Doug urged. “Call for help!”

Bonai raised her arm to speak into her wristphone. But before she could, Killifer lunged at her.

She looked weird to Jack Killifer, covered from neck to feet in some kind of scuba suit. Then he realized that she was wearing a virtual reality full-body sensor suit. She’s out here on this empty little island making out with somebody in VR, Killifer said to himself. Hot little tramp.

He grinned at her. No helmet, though. Probably got contact lenses instead.

He grasped her by the wrist and pulled her toward him.

“Don’t give me any trouble, doll,” he said.

Doug reached for Killifer but it was useless. The man was real and solid, Doug was nothing more than an electronic ghost. He started shouting for the technicians to call the police in Kiribati.

Tamara clawed at Killifer’s face with her free hand, but he blocked it, then knocked her to the sand with a backhand slap across her face.

Doug howled and leaped at Killifer but went right through him onto the sand.

“Doug!” Tamara screamed as Killifer dropped to his knees beside her.

“Doug?” he growled. “Is that who you’re screwing with? Little Douggie, on the Moon? Getting laid in VR?” Killifer laughed and started ripping the sensor suit off Bonai.

She struggled and kicked, but he cuffed her hard enough to draw blood from her mouth and peeled the rubbery suit down off her shoulders.

“Nothing underneath,” he said, grinning down at her. “Makes it easy.”

Doug was screaming for somebody to alert the Kiribati police, but he knew there was no time to help Tamara. He pounded his fists in helpless fury on the virtual sand as Killifer stripped the suit off her struggling body. He punched her once in the midsection hard enough to double her up. Her struggles stopped.

“You killed her, you sonofabitch!” Doug raged.

Killifer did not hear him.

But Tamara wasn’t dead. Not yet. Doug watched helplessly as Killifer spread her naked legs apart and raped her, his hands squeezing her windpipe as his body covered hers.

Killifer watched the light in her eyes fade. He fucked her good, pumping years of hate and fury into her as he slowly, slowly cut off her air. Then he stopped and pulled away from her limp body.

“Come on, kid, you’re not finished yet,” he said. “And neither am I.”

He grinned as her eyelids fluttered and she coughed.

Doug was raving like a lunatic when the electronics technicians burst into the VR chamber. It took four of them to get him down on the floor and peel the sensor suit off him.

The last thing they took off were the contact lenses, so Doug was able to see Killifer sitting on Tamara’s chest, pinning her arms to the sand, slapping her to full consciousness as he came erect once again.

“She’s dead,” Jinny Anson told Doug. “The Kiribati police found her on the island. She was pretty badly beaten up. Neck broken.”

Despite the tranquilizer the medics had given him, Doug was quivering like a knife thrown into a wall.

“I couldn’t do a thing to stop him,” he chattered. “I couldn’t do anything.”

Edith was sitting on the edge of his bunk. Anson and one of the medics crowded next to them. Bam Gordette stood by the partition, watching silently with brooding eyes.

“It’s not your fault,” Edith said gently. “There’s nothing you could’ve done.”

“I should’ve killed him years ago, when he murdered Foster Brennart. When he tried to kill me. I should’ve killed him then. Executed him. Then this wouldn’t have happened. Then Tamara would still be alive.”

“It’s not your fault,” Edith repeated.

“It’s all my fault,” Doug snapped. “All of this mess is my doing. If I hadn’t… if I’d just let Faure…” His voice sank to an exhausted moan.

Looking uncomfortable, Anson said, “Speaking of Faure -just who the hell is Killifer working for?”

“What do you mean?” Edith asked.

“You don’t think he went all the way out to Kiribati and murdered their chief of state all on his own, do you? Who’s pulling his strings?”

“The police will find out when they catch him,” Edith said.

Anson shook her head. “He’s already left Kiribati. Never went back to his hotel. Chartered a plane and took off at first light.”

“Interpol will find him,” Edith said confidently.

Anson was not so certain. “Interpol works for the U.N. now, doesn’t it? Besides, what evidence do they have that he murdered Bonai?”

“An eyewitness,” Doug said from his bunk.

“In virtual reality,” Anson countered. “I wonder if Interpol or anybody else is gonna take that seriously.”

Sinking back on his pillows, Doug admitted, “You’re probably right. The Kiribati police certainly took their sweet time getting out to the islet to find her body.”

Edith looked intrigued. “An eyewitness in VR. That’s a helluva story.”

“They won’t accept my testimony,” Doug said weakly. “I won’t even be able to testify against him. It’s totally useless. I’m totally useless.”

Edith sat on the edge of the bunk. “Don’t think that for a minute, Doug. We’ll get him, you’ll see.”

Doug closed his eyes. “Let me sleep for a while. I just want… I need to sleep.”

“The tranquilizers are hitting him,” the medic said.

“About time,” said Anson.

“Come on, let him get some rest,” Edith said, shooing them out of the bedroom.

The others left, all except Gordette.

I’ll wait outside,” he said to Edith. “If you need to go someplace, I’ll stay with him.”

DAY FORTY-TWO

Edith worked through the night at the computer in Doug’s living room, splicing together a coherent story about the rape and murder of a national leader that was witnessed by a man from four hundred thousand kilometers away. She called down to Global News headquarters in Atlanta a dozen times, rousting researchers and fact-checkers until she had the whole thing pieced together.

Once she squirted the basic bits through to Atlanta she looked in on Doug, who was still asleep in his bunk. Afraid of disturbing him, she took the sling chair in the living room and leaned back to catch a few winks. Her sleep was interrupted almost immediately by the phone chime.

It was Manny, her programming chief in Atlanta, bouncing in his chair with excitement.

“Edie, cheez, this is terrific! The assassination on Tarawa was witnessed by a guy on the Moon! Absolutely fantastic!”

“And it’s our exclusive,” Edith pointed out.

Manny hadn’t stopped talking. “Legal says we can’t name the killer; can’t make any accusations until the guy’s arrested and charged. But, cheez, the story’s tremendous!’

Edith smiled at the screen, but for the first time in her career she realized that behind the story she was filing there were human beings in pain. A dead woman. Doug, sick with frustration and responsibilities that no one could take off his shoulders. And a murderer somewhere on Earth who would probably never be arrested, let alone brought to justice.

“Yeah,” she said wearily to her boss. “Tremendous is the word for it, all right.”

Manny eyed her questioningly. “You don’t look so hot, kid.”

“I’m kinda tired,” she admitted.

“Pull yourself together. We missed the evening news slot but the suits upstairs want your personal report in the system in time for our affiliates’ eleven o’clock.”

Edith had been on the Moon long enough to make a quick mental calculation. She had a little less than three hours to show up at Moonbase’s studio looking bright and perky for a live broadcast.

“Okay,” she said. “Let me get a little nap.”

“And some makeup.”

“Yeah, sure,” she said, knowing that it might be a problem. She had been borrowing makeup from the supply that Joanna Brudnoy had left behind, but she had always scrupulously asked Doug’s permission to raid his mother’s quarters. Now Doug was sleeping, tranquilized, and she didn’t want to wake him.

She stretched out again on the sling chair, this time using the desk chair to rest her feet upon. She set her wristwatch’s alarm for one hour. Maybe Doug’ll be awake by then, she thought. She fell asleep almost at once, a trick she had learned years ago. News reporters had to grab their sleep when they could, like soldiers.

The wrist alarm beeped softly. Edith woke as instantly as she had gone to sleep, alert and feeling refreshed.

She tiptoed to the partition and looked in on Doug. He was tossing restlessly, the sheet twisted around his legs. Edith went in and straightened the sheet, kissed him lightly on the forehead, then tiptoed out again.

I’ll have to go over to Mrs Brudnoy’s place without asking him, she thought. Yet she hesitated, not wanting to leave Doug alone. If he wakes up, I ought to be here. Or somebody oughtta be here, at least.

Who to call? Then she remembered that Bam Gordette had offered to watch Doug. The man acted like a bodyguard anyway, Edith told herself. She phoned him, but there was no answer at his quarters.

It’s past two in the morning, she saw, glancing at the digital clock set next to the computer screen. He couldn’t be still waiting out in the corridor, could he?

She pushed the door open, and Gordette was sitting on the floor, his back against the opposite wall, his eyes wide open and focused squarely on her.

“You’ve been out here all night?” Edith asked, incredulous.

Getting to his feet, Gordette nodded. “I can sleep anyplace,” he said, by way of explanation.

Swiftly, almost whispering, Edith told him that she had to get to the studio and do a live broadcast.

Gordette nodded solemnly. I’ll take care of Doug.”

“Wonderful,” said Edith, suppressing an urge to kiss him on the cheek. Gordette did not seem like the kind of man to play the usual media kissy-face ritual.

Gordette watched her hurry down the corridor. Silently he slid the door shut and walked to the partition that separated the two sections of Doug Stavenger’s quarters.

Doug lay on his back, his eyelids flickering, his fists clenched.

Not while he’s asleep, Gordette told himself, fingering the obsidian blade in his coverall pocket. That wouldn’t be right. You don’t slaughter a sleeping victim.

The blade had drunk many victims’ blood, centuries ago. Gordette had found it in a crumbling Mayan temple deep in the jungle during the Yucatan uprising. A ceremonial killing knife, the anthropologist attached to his unit had told him. Used for slicing open the chest and taking out the still-beating heart.

The anthropologist had been assigned to the army to help win the hearts and minds of the rebellious Yucatan villagers. Gordette had been a sniper then, sighting his victims in his telescopic sights and firing virus-soaked flechettes into their unsuspecting flesh. It felt like a mosquito bite, and the victim died of fever within two days. When all went well, the victim infected his entire village before he died.

The anthropologist never won the villagers’ hearts and minds. He was killed in a vicious ambush. By the time Gordette and the survivors among his unit were flown out of the jungle, there were almost no villagers left alive.

Gordette sat calmly next to Doug’s bunk and willed him to awake. It’s time, he said silently to his victim. Death has waited long enough.

Doug opened his eyes. He blinked once, twice.

“Bam,” he said.

Gordette nodded solemnly. “Ms Elgin had to go to the studio to do a live broadcast.”

“Oh.” Doug made a weak grin. “And you’re babysitting me.”

“If that’s what you want to call it.”

Without lifting his head from the pillow, Doug asked, “So how’s it going?”

“How’s what going?”

“Your investigation. The sabotage of my suit.”

“Oh. That.” Gordette took the obsidian blade from his pocket. Its curved side fit into the palm of his hand perfectly, as if it had been made all those centuries ago expressly for him.

“Well?” Doug asked.

That’s not important now,” said Gordette.

“What do you mean, not important?”

“You’re defeated, Doug. You know that, don’t you?”

Doug’s eyes had no fire in them, no zest. He merely stared at Gordette blankly.

“Moonbase is lost. You can’t save it. You couldn’t even help Ms Bonai. You watched her being raped and murdered and couldn’t do a thing about it.”

Doug opened his mouth but no words came out. He nodded dumbly.

“Everything you want has been taken away from you,” Gordette said, speaking slowly, sonorously, like a priest at a sacrificial altar. “Even your life.”

So swiftly that Doug could not even raise his arms, Gordette clamped his left hand over Doug’s mouth and nose, yanking his chin up, and with his right hand sliced the blade deeply across Doug’s throat, making certain to sever the carotid arteries behind each ear.

Blood spurted high up the wall, gushed over Gordette’s green coveralls and into his face, making him blink and wince. Doug’s body shivered and twitched, then went still.

His hands soaked in Doug’s blood, Gordette stalked out of the room and headed down the empty corridors of Moonbase, shadowy in their nighttime lighting, toward the garage and the main airlock.

For the first time since he’d been a boy, there were tears in his eyes.

“The last time I was on the Moon ended unpleasantly,” said Keiji Inoguchi.

“So?” replied Zimmerman, coolly.

Inoguchi was a full head taller than Zimmerman, and gracefully slim. He seemed to glide rather than walk, totally unperturbed by the low lunar gravity.

“I worked at Nippon One eight years ago,” he told Zimmerman, “but I was sent back to Japan after being injured in an accident. Several of my ribs were broken.”

Zimmerman nodded absently. Of the three U.N. inspectors sent up on the evacuation flight, Inoguchi seemed to be the only one who knew anything about nanotechnology. He claimed to be a professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Kyoto, but to Zimmerman he seemed too young for a full professorship—unless he was actually working in a new field, uncluttered by tenured old men, a field such as nanotechnology.

For four days, since the evacuation flight had touched down at Moonbase, Inoguchi and the two other U.N. inspectors had been making their methodical way through the nanolabs. Kris Cardenas had personally conducted their inspection tour, showing them everything—except Zimmerman’s lab.

Zimmerman stayed to himself behind locked doors, unwilling to allow U.N. spionin to poke through his work. From what Cardenas told him, Inoguchi was bright, inquisitive, polite and knowledgeable. The other two seemed to be out-and-out intelligence agents, ham-fisted and hard-eyed, looking for nanotech ‘weapons’ without understanding what they might be.

The inevitable happened late in the evening of their fourth day at Moonbase. Cardenas phoned Zimmerman, still barricaded in his lab, and warned him that Inoguchi was heading his way. Alone.

Zimmerman heard a polite tap at his door almost before he clicked off the phone. Muttering to himself, he went to the door, determined to tell the interfering Japanese upstart that he had no business bothering the great Professor Zimmerman and he should go away and stay away.

Inoguchi bowed deeply as soon as Zimmerman slid the door open. “I am Keiji Inoguchi of the University of Kyoto,” he said, staring at his shoes, not daring to look at Zimmerman. “I know it’s an imposition, but I am required to ask you to allow me to inspect your laboratory.”

Grudgingly, Zimmerman waved the younger man into his lab.

“It is an honor beyond my greatest expectations to actually meet you,” Inoguchi said. His English was American-accented, and Zimmerman thought the man sounded sincere enough even though he kept his face almost totally expressionless and still avoided making eye contact.

“Professor Cardenas tells me you appear quite knowledgeable,” Zimmerman said gruffly. “Are you engaged in nano-technology research at Kyoto?”

Inoguchi hesitated the merest fraction of a second, then replied, “As you know, Professor, nanotechnology research is forbidden by law.”

“Yah. Of course.”

They stood just inside the doorway, Zimmerman blocking his visitor’s further access into the lab, and spoke of many things, from the quality of students to the obtuseness of deans, without again mentioning nanotechnology. Despite their verbal sparring, or perhaps because of it, Zimmerman found that he enjoyed the younger man’s company.

“How long will you remain at Moonbase?” Zimmerman asked.

“I wish I knew,” Inoguchi replied wistfully. “Our mission to Moonbase was arranged very hastily, and with the blockade in effect—”

“Blockade?”

“No flights to Moonbase have been permitted for six weeks now. Surely you were aware of that.”

“Oh, that. Yah. I didn’t think of it as a blockade,” Zimmerman said.

With a rueful gesture, Inoguchi said, “They told us back home before we left that they would try to arrange a mission from Nippon One to pick us up here and then bring us back to Copernicus. From there we can take a flight back to Earth. But I have no idea of how long that will take to negotiate or how long I must remain here.”

“I see.”

“One thing is certain, however. Even if there were a hundred ships ready to take me back to Kyoto, I could not leave until I had looked through your laboratory.”

Zimmerman grunted. “You think I am cooking up nano-machines to wipe out Japan, maybe?”

Inoguchi actually broke into a grin. “No, sir, I don’t. But the people at the U.N. who sent me here fear that you might be brewing nanobugs that will spread deadly plagues all across Earth.”

“Nonsense!”

“You know it is nonsense, and I know it is nonsense, but they do not have enough knowledge to allay their fears.”

Zimmerman looked at the younger man with newfound respect.

“Let us be frank with one another,” Zimmerman said. “I will show you my work, but you must tell me about your own. Fair?”

Inoguchi nodded. “Quite fair.”

“Your laboratory is funded by Yamagata Industries, I trust?”

“My entire department is funded by Yamagata. Seigo Yamagata himself has taken a deep interest in my work.”

“Which is?”

“Nanotechnology, of course. You must have known that.”

Turning to lead him to the bench where the electron microscope and micromanipulators were, Zimmerman said over his shoulder, “I had my suspicions.”

Several hours later they were sitting on stools at the back end of the lab, where Zimmerman kept his dwindling supply of imported beer. He had led his visitor through his whole lab, congratulating himself on not once letting him guess that his most recent work was all aimed at helping Moonbase to defend itself against Peacekeeper attack.

Zimmerman took a long draught of beer from the plastic beaker he used as a stein. “If the verdammt blockade continues much longer,” he groused, “I will be reduced to drinking fruit juice.”

Inoguchi said nothing.

“We’ve been trying to make beer with nanomachines, you know.”

“Ah?”

Shaking his head, Zimmerman confessed, “It tastes like piss.”

“Mr Yamagata is most interested in the therapeutic uses of nanotechnology,” Inoguchi said, holding his lab beaker of beer in both hands. “He is concerned about cancer, especially.”

“So? How old is he?”

“Hardly fifty, but the family history—”

“PROFESSOR ZIMMERMAN, PLEASE REPORT TO THE INFIRMARY IMMEDIATELY,” the wall speaker blared. “PROFESSOR ZIMMERMAN TO THE INFIRMARY AT ONCE. EMERGENCY.”

DAY FORTY-TWO

Even nanomachines need a finite time to react.

The virus-sized machines teeming in Doug’s blood stream sensed the sudden drop in pressure and the desperate chemical changes that tried to activate the natural clotting factors before Doug bled to death. His windpipe was cruelly ruptured and blood was leaking into his lungs, choking him.

Unconscious, gasping for breath, bleeding to death as his heart spewed his life’s blood out through his severed arteries, Doug’s hands spasmed, his body shuddered, and then he was still.

Inside him hundreds of millions of nanomachines were working with millisecond frenzy, seizing individual atoms and locking them in place like a stubborn team of men doggedly packing sandbags onto a flood-broken levee. With mindless purposefulness other nanomachines pulled apart the droplets of blood leaking into Doug’s lungs, broke up the liquid into molecules of gas. Doug coughed and retched as nanomachines seamlessly knitted together his carotid arteries and began to close the gash across his throat.

Nearly half his blood had been splashed over the bunk, the wall, even the ceiling above the bunk before the nanomachines sealed his arteries and stopped the major bleeding. It took longer—minutes—to completely close the wound in his throat.

Still unconscious, Doug sank into a deeper coma while the nanomachines cleaned his lungs and augmented the natural chemical factors that prompted his bone marrow to start producing more red blood cells. Yet his blood supply was dangerously depleted. He needed plasma and liquids. He lay there, between life and death, unable to move, unable to open his eyes or stir himself out of the coma.

Hours later, Edith came back to the apartment, tired yet keyed up with the excitement of having pulled off a masterful broadcast. By golly, I am good, she told herself as she slid the door shut and started across the living room to see how Doug was doing.

She screamed when she saw all the blood. Her knees buckled and she felt as if she was going to faint.

No! she raged at herself. Get help! Quick!

She banged on the phone keyboard and shrieked for an emergency medical team. Then she ran back to take a closer look at Doug. Despite the blood she saw no wounds, nothing but a thin red line across his throat. It looked more like a paper cut than anything serious. Yet there was blood all over the bunk, soaking him, splattered on the wall, the ceiling. He was unconscious, totally out of it. He was breathing, though. Or is he? Fighting down her panic, Edith saw that Doug was breathing slowly, deeply, like a man innocently asleep.

The medical team barged into the apartment: the base’s resident doctor and two paramedic aides drafted from other duties.

“What the hell happened here?” Dr Montana scowled at the scene. Within minutes Doug was being wheeled to the infirmary by the aides while the deeply puzzled doctor asked Edith again and again questions that she could not answer as they ran behind the gurney.

By the time Doug opened his eyes, Zimmerman and Kris Cardenas were hovering over his infirmary bed and Jinny Anson was standing beside a pale and shaken Edith, both women peering worriedly at him through the glass partition that closed off his cubicle. A tall youngish Japanese man was out there too; Doug remembered him as one of the U.N. inspectors.

Doug looked up at Zimmerman, who was staring intently at him, as if sheer willpower could make his patient awake. The old professor looked more dishevelled than usual, straggly hair in wild disarray, both vest and jacket unbuttoned and flapping across his paunch. Yet there was a gentleness in his gaze, like a grandfather watching over a sleeping infant.

“This is getting monotonous,” Doug said, weakly. His voice was hoarse, grating.

Zimmerman’s expression immediately hardened into his usual disapproving frown. “So? Even a cat has only nine lives,” he said brusquely. “You are using up yours at a rapid rate.”

“I’m getting a lot of help,” Doug breathed. He realized there were intravenous tubes in both his arms. Monitors beeped away quietly somewhere behind his head.

“What happened?” Zimmerman asked.

Doug blinked, remembered. “Bam. Leroy Gordette. He tried to murder me.” His sandpaper voice was filled with the surprise and grief that he felt at Gordette’s betrayal.

“It was Gordette?” Cardenas asked, her clear blue eyes snapping. “The ex-soldier?”

“He slit my throat,” Doug said, fingering his throat, finding neither wound nor pain there.

Edith pushed into the narrow cubicle, Anson right behind her. Inoguchi remained on the other side of the observation window.

Flinging herself on Doug, she burst into the tears she’d been holding back for hours. “I thought you were dead!”

Doug held her close; felt the sobs racking her body. “I’m okay,” he whispered into her golden hair. “I’m okay now.”

“God, was I scared,” Edith gushed. She kissed him on the lips. The others fidgeted around the bed.

Once Doug let go of Edith and she straightened up, Anson surmised, “Gordette must’ve been the one who malfed your suit.”

“Yeah.” Doug tried to push himself up on his elbows. The room spun and he dropped back onto the pillow.

“You lost much blood,” Zimmerman said, glancing at the monitors over the bed. “You need time to build up your supply.”

“Where’s Bam now?” Doug croaked.

Anson shrugged. “I’ll get security to roust him.” She ducked out of the cubicle.

“Are you really all right?” Edith asked, wiping at her eyes.

“I’m okay,” said Doug. “Weak, though.”

“A blood transfusion would help,” Cardenas suggested.

Doug thought a moment. “How much do we have on hand? If we’re attacked, we might need a lot.”

“No transfusion,” Zimmerman said flatly. “I must see how long it takes my nanomachines to rebuild his blood supply. A transfusion would obscure the data.”

Edith started to say something, but Doug gripped her hand and stopped her.

Smiling weakly at the old man, Doug said, “I’m still your walking experiment, huh?”

Zimmerman put on his scowl again. “Except you spend more time on your back than walking.”

“It’s not my idea of fun, believe me.”

Dr Montana came in and shooed them all out of the cubicle with the authority and impatience of a minor tyrant.

“If he’s not allowed a transfusion,” the doctor grumbled, glancing sideways at Zimmerman,’then he needs rest.”

“I am kind of sleepy,” Doug admitted. “And hungry.”

“My nanomachines need energy,” Zimmerman mumbled.

“We’re pumping nutrients into you,” Montana said, touching one of the IV tubes gently.

“He can take solid food, as well,” said Zimmerman.

Montana looked skeptical, but said nothing.

Edith kissed him again and they all left, the doctor and Zimmerman in a heated, whispered conversation about who should be making the decisions about the patient. A few minutes later, an aide brought Doug a tray of food. He had to be helped up to a sitting position. He ate quickly, then fell asleep almost immediately.

When Doug awoke he saw that Edith was sitting in the little observation area on the other side of the glass partition, staring intently into the display screen of a laptop. The IV tubes had been removed. He felt strong enough to sit up on his own. A little woozy, but it passed quickly. He pressed the button that cranked up the bed, then leaned back comfortably.

One of the paramedics bustled into his cubicle, her face set somewhere between pleased and annoyed. “You’re not supposed—”

“I’m starving,” Doug said. “When do I get something to eat?”

With a swift glance at the monitors, the aide muttered, “I’ll get you another tray,” and headed out.

Edith snapped her laptop shut and pushed past the departing aide.

After a quick kiss, Doug asked, “Have they found Gordette?”

“No,” she said. “He checked out a tractor and went outside just after he tried to kill you.”

“A tractor?” Doug’s mind raced. “He can’t get all the way to Copernicus in a tractor.”

“Copernicus?”

“The Yamagata base, Nippon One.” Doug reasoned it out. “He knows as much about our situation here as any of us, Edith. He can tell the Peacekeepers exactly how weak we are, what we’re expecting from them, how to take us.”

“But he can’t get that far in a tractor, you said.”

“Maybe he’s got a pickup arranged with them. He could bounce an emergency signal to them off L-1 and they’ll come out and pick him up.”

“But L-1 is off the air, isn’t it?”

“For us, but they’re still working for Yamagata.”

The aide brought in a tray heavy with a double portion of dinner. Doug thanked her and began wolfing it down.

“Edith, call Jinny for me. Ask her if there’s any way to spot Gordette’s tractor. I need to know where he’s going.”

“Why…?”

“So I can stop him, that’s why.”

Inoguchi and Zimmerman were sitting at a small corner table in The Cave, sipping fruit juice. The big cavern was nearly empty, yet they hunched together and spoke in low tones like conspirators.

“His throat was cut?” Inoguchi’s pretense of impasivity was long gone. There was wonder in his eyes, awe in his voice. “You are certain?”

Zimmerman took a sip of juice, then frowned at the glass. “From the amount of blood in his room, at least one of his carotid arteries must have been opened.”

“But he seems hardly hurt at all.”

“The machines work on millisecond time scales.”

“So do the natural blood clotting factors, but they could not have stopped arterial bleeding in time.”

“I think maybe the machines activated muscles in his neck and used them to clamp down the wound,” Zimmerman mused.

“Not possible! Is it?”

With the wave of a pudgy hand, the older man said, “You saw the results.”

Inoguchi shook his head ruefully. “I am a child. Compared to your work, what I’m doing in Kyoto is kindergarten level.”

“The benefits of censorship and your lovely treaty,” Zimmerman said acidly. “You work in ignorance of what has already been done years ago.”

“Yes, I can see that.”

Zimmerman started to take another swig of the fruit juice, then decided against it and put the glass down firmly on their little table.

“That young man is my long-term experiment. He was dying from radiation overdose when I injected the nanomachines into him, eight years ago—”

“Eight years?” Inoguchi seemed startled. “Was he at the south pole with Brennart?”

Zimmerman blinked. “Yes. Brennart died there.”

“I was there also. Or close by, actually. I broke my ribs in a landing accident. Yamagata and the Masterson Corporation were racing to claim the ice fields discovered at the south polar region.”

“So. That was when I injected Douglas Stavenger with the nanomachines. Some were specialized, others programmed in a more general way.”

“And they have been inside him all these years?”

“They will always be inside him. They have formed a symbiotic relationship with him.”

“How can inanimate machines create a symbiosis with an organism?” Inoguchi challenged.

“You see what they have done! What else can you call it?”

“But true symbiosis…”

They argued for hours, neither of them raising his voice, both of them waxing passionate for his position and against the other’s. Zimmerman enjoyed the debate immensely; he hadn’t had this kind of intellectual stimulation since he’d left Switzerland.

“It’s a shame you must return to Kyoto,” the old man said at last.

“Perhaps I won’t,” said Inoguchi.

“You want to remain here? You want to work with me?”

“Most certainly.”

Zimmerman beamed at him. “Very good! You can ask for asylum and—”

“No, I’m afraid you don’t understand,” Inoguchi said, smiling politely.

“What don’t I understand?”

“My work at Kyoto, fumbling and childlike as it is, must be done in great secrecy because Japan has signed the nanotechnology treaty and therefore such research is technically illegal.”

“So come here to Moonbase!”

“Once Yamagata Industries has acquired Moonbase, I will certainly come here and engage in nanotechnology research without all the hinderances I experience in Kyoto. I offer you the opportunity of remaining here even after the others have been removed. You may remain here and work with me.”

Zimmerman took a moment to digest what he heard, then sputtered, “You would allow me to remain at Moonbase and work under you?”

“With me,” Inoguchi corrected.

“We would be working for Yamagata, then?”

“Yes, of course.”

Zimmerman scowled at the younger man.

“You could continue your research unhindered,” Inoguchi promised. “There is no need for you to be sent back to Earth, no need for you to stop your work.”

Coldly, Zimmerman said, “You are assuming that Yamagata will conquer Moonbase.”

With a wan smile, Inoguchi replied, “That is inevitable, Professor. Regretful, perhaps, but inevitable. There is no way that Moonbase can resist the combined strength of the Peacekeepers and Yamagata’s special forces.”

“Even if I can make the entire base invisible to you?”

“What?” Inoguchi’s brows knit with consternation. “What are you saying?”

“Never mind,” Zimmerman replied, shaking his head.

“Invisible? How?”

“I will tell you only this much, young man. Your Peacekeepers and Yamagata forces might be able to destroy Moon-base and kill everyone in it, but they will never take us over. We will not be conquered! I will see to it that every man and woman in this base dies before we surrender to you!”

“You can’t be serious! I’m offering you an opportunity to continue your work as if nothing happened.”

With an angry snort, Zimmerman said, “You think I am a fool? You think I am an amoral egomaniac like your Georges Faure? Or like some renaissance tinkerer, content to work for any prince as long as he gets paid? I’m not a von Braun, I don’t work for any regime that allows me to pursue my goal. Moonbase is my home and I will defend it to the end! Freedom or death!”

Inoguchi had never felt so stunningly surprised in his entire life. The man thinks like a samurai, he realized.

DAY FORTY-THREE

“You can’t go after him,” Edith said. “You can’t even get out of bed!”

Doug smiled at her and hiked a thumb at the monitors over his head. “Look at the screens, Edith. Everything’s in the normal range, isn’t it?”

She glanced upward, then looked back at him. “The doctor told me—”

“The doctor’s playing it by the book. Zimmerman wants to observe how his nanobugs are working. But I’ve got to find Bam and stop him.”

“Why you? Why not a security team?”

“He wouldn’t give up without a fight. I don’t want anybody hurt.”

“After he tried to murder you?”

“It’s my job, Edith,” said Doug calmly. “My responsibility.”

She started to shake her head. “I’m not going to help you risk your butt all over again.”

“I’ve got to, Edith. Go back to our place and get a fresh set of clothes for me.”

“No!”

“You can come with me,” he said, struggling to convince her. “You said you wanted to come outside.”

“Zimmerman won’t allow it.”

“He can’t stop us if nobody tells him about it.”

“Doug, you almost died!”

“But I’m okay now, really I am. What do I have to do, jump your bod to show you I’m in good condition?”

Her green eyes turned thoughtful. “Let’s see if you can get out of bed, first.”

Doug pushed the swivel table with its emptied food tray away from the bed and swung his legs out from under the sheet. He planted his bare feet on the warmed tile floor and stood up. No alarm bells went off. The monitors showed no change in his condition.

“See? No hands.”

She broke into a grin. “That gown looks pretty silly on you.”

“Go get me some clothes while I peel off these sensor patches.”

“You’ll really take me with you? Outside?”

He nodded soberly. “I promise.”

“And they’ll let you out?”

“Hey, I’m the chief administrator of this base. Rank has its privileges.”

“Uh-huh.”

With a furtive glance at the observation window beside his bed, Doug added, “But you’d better get my clothes before Doc Montana comes back for another check.”

“This is absolutely crazy,” Edith said. “I love it!”

She was sitting beside Doug in the open cockpit of a massive lunar tractor, encased in a cumbersome spacesuit, waiting inside the big metal womb of the main airlock while the pumps sucked out the air so they could go outside and track down Bam Gordette. The airlock was suffused with a dull red light, like an old-fashioned darkroom.

She had figured that if Doug was strong enough to make it down to the garage and actually get himself into a spacesuit, maybe she’d go along with him instead of blowing the whistle and getting him shipped back to the infirmary. It was she who needed help, though, when they started to pull on their spacesuits.

Edith was surprised when Doug went to the new cermet suit, standing in a locker marked DO NOT TOUCH: EXPERIMENTAL EQUIPMENT.

“You’re going to use that suit again?”

He grinned at her. “This is the best tested and inspected suit in the whole Earth-Moon system, believe me.”

She took one of the regular suits from the row of lockers, muttering, “I never know if I’m a small or a medium.” Doug was already in his leggings and boots when he saw Edith struggling with hers and clumped over to help her.

At last they got completely suited up, filled the backpack air tanks, and checked out each other’s suits from the safety list Doug called up on their wrist display screens.

Now Edith sat beside him in the tractor’s unpressurized cockpit. In the eerie light of the airlock, all she could see of Doug was this anonymous lump of reddish-tinged white, like the Pillsbury Doughboy by firelight, topped with a helmet and a gold-tinted visor that reflected her own red-tinged helmet and visor.

“Are you sure you’re strong enough to do this?” Edith asked as the noise of the pump faded down to silence.

Doug’s voice said in her earphones, “Listen to me, Edith. My body’s building up my blood supply. I’m a lot stronger now than I was an hour ago.”

“You’re sure?”

He laughed. “Yep, I’m absolutely, positively certain. I might be wrong, but I’m sure.”

Doug had talked their way past the technician on duty at the main airlock, who wondered why the Big Boss was going outside in the middle of the lunar night with the flatlander news reporter and an insulated container big enough to hold a dead body.

“Lunch,” Doug had explained about the container. It held a dozen quarts of fruit juices and soymilk that they had picked up at The Cave on their way to the garage. They had loaded four spare air cylinders onto the tractor’s bed, as well: two at normal room pressure and two at the low pressure Edith’s standard suit required.

The display light on the panel set into the scuffed metal wall of the huge airlock next to the outside hatch abruptly switched from amber to green.

“Here we go,” Doug said as the outer hatch began to slowly slide open. “Once we’re underway I’ll show you how to operate the tractor. That’ll take less than fifteen minutes.”

“Driving lessons?” Edith’s eyes were focused on the growing gap as the hatch opened wider. It was dark out there, even with her vision already dark-adapted from the red lighting inside the airlock.

“Yeah,” he replied. That way, in case anything happens to me you can drive back here.”

“Oh.” Edith realized that beneath his casual demeanor Doug was weighing the risks as carefully as he could.

The airlock hatch opened fully and Doug put the tractor in gear. Edith heard no sound at all in the dead vacuum, but she felt the electric motors’ vibrations as they turned each of the tractor’s wheels individually.

I’m out on the surface of the Moon! she exulted. Her first time, with Captain Munasinghe and the Peacekeepers, she’d been too busy recording her story to appreciate the scenery. Now she looked about and saw nothing but stark desolation. Dusty flat ground, cracked here and there. Rocks of all sizes, from pebbles to boulders. Craterlets, too, as if children had been digging into the ground with sticks and shovels.

Off to one side was the deep pit that would one day be the grand plaza of the Moonbase that Doug envisioned. Maybe, she thought. If we can keep Yamagata from taking over.

It all looked about as romantic as a slag heap to her, yet Doug loved it.

“It’s kind of dark right now,” Doug said. “Nothing up there except a crescent Earth. When it’s full, or even gibbous, it’s a lot brighter.”

“I can’t even see—what’s that?”

A big round thing was sitting on the ground off to their right, like a giant beach ball the size of their tractor. Peering at it, Edith saw that it was not solid, but built of some kind of wire mesh. And it seemed to be resting on a curved metal track laid across the ground.

Doug laughed. “That’s the laundry.”

“Laundry?”

“Sure. Dirt dries almost immediately in vacuum and detaches from fabric while the ultraviolet from the sun kills germs. We pack the dirty laundry in there when the sun’s up and roll the sphere back and forth along the track for an hour or so. Clothes come out clean and sanitized.”

“My clothes have been cleaned in there?”

“Yep.”

“How do you iron them?”

“The old-fashioned way,” Doug answered. “With automated ironing machines that use waste heat from the base’s living quarters and machinery.”

Edith shook her head inside her helmet. Her clothes seemed clean enough when she got them back from the laundry, but rolling them around out here…?

“I’m switching to the base’s standard comm frequency,” Doug told her. “First keypad on your comm set.”

It took Edith a few moments to remember which row of pads on the wrist of her suit was the comm set. In the dim lighting, little more than the glow from the tractor’s dashboard instruments, she figured it out after a few moments.

“…yes, I’m outside with Edith,” Doug was saying.

“Are you crazy?” Jinny Anson’s voice snapped. “What the blazes are you doing outside?”

“Trying to get to Gordette before he reaches Yamagata’s people,” said Doug. “Any joy with tracking his tractor?”

“Hell no.” Anson sounded thoroughly unhappy. “He was smart enough to turn off its transponder and now he’s so far over the horizon that even if he had it on we couldn’t hear it.”

“Any idea of which way he went?”

“I checked the automated radar plot,” Anson replied immediately. “Shows he was heading on a bearing of three-forty-five degrees, relative to true north.”

“Three-forty-five?”

“That’s out past the mass driver, heading almost due north.”

“So he’s not taking Wodjohowitcz Pass, then.”

“Not yet. He’s probably trying to knock out the mass driver first. The magnets, I betcha.”

Doug’s voice caught in his throat. “The magnets! So we can’t use them to drive Wicksen’s particle beam gun.”

“Which means we won’t have any chance at all of stopping an incoming nuke.”

“I’ve got to stop him.”

“Get real! He’s got a six-hour lead on you.”

“I’ve still got to try. Does Wix have any people out at the driver?”

“Not for the past ten days. His whole crew’s been inside here, working on the new hardware.”

“Do we have anything at all that we can use to spot his tractor, Jinny?”

She humphed. “Crystal ball? Tarot cards…” Suddenly her voice brightened. “Hey! What about Kadar’s survey satellite?”

“Is it still functional?”

“We can power it up and see. Lemme check on when it’ll swing over Alphonsus again.”

“Good. Call me as soon as you can.”

“Will do, boss.”

Edith asked, “Aren’t we over the horizon from Moonbase?”

“We will be in another fifteen minutes,” Doug said.

“Then how will you be able to talk with Jinny? Or anyone at the base?”

“Antennas up on top of Mount Yeager,” Doug explained. “We can reach more than half of the area within the ringwall, and a considerable amount of territory out on Mare Nubium.”

“Then why can’t they find Gordetie’s tractor?”

“The antennas are for communications, not radar tracking.”

“Oh.”

“We’ll get him.”

Edith was worried that he was right.

Doug began to show her how to run the tractor. It wasn’t much different from driving a car.

“Not a lot of traffic out here,” he said, “but you’ve got to be on the lookout for craters and rocks that can get you stuck. Stay with the flattest, clearest ground you can find.”

“Like you’re doing.”

“Right.”

“Do you know where you’re going? I mean, without knowing where his tractor is?”

Doug pointed a gloved finger over the hood of the tractor. “I’m following his trail.”

“His trail?”

“Look. The cleat tracks.”

She saw a maze of tracks running pretty much in the same direction: out to the mass driver, she supposed.

“His are the brightest,” Doug explained. “Nobody’s been out here for ten days or so, so Barn’s tractor has churned up the newest tracks. Surface dirt is darkened by solar ultraviolet. New bootprints, new tractor marks, they uncover the brighter stuff underneath.”

“Shades of the Lone Ranger and his faithful Indian companion,” Edith muttered.

“Who?”

He knows so much, Edith thought, and there’s so much he doesn’t know. She settled back to watching the landscape, trundling by at a frustratingly slow thirty kilometers per hour or so.

“Do you really find this rock pile beautiful?” she asked.

“Don’t you?”

“It’s so barren! So empty and lifeless. There’s not even air to breathe.”

It took him a few moments to reply. “It all looks a lot better when there’s a full Earth. Fifty times brighter than a full Moon, back Earthside. It’s breathtaking. Everything glows like silver out here. And you can watch the Earth, see its clouds and oceans, it never stays the same for very long.”

“It’s only a sliver now,” Edith said, glancing upward at the thin crescent hanging in the starry sky.

“Take a good look,” Doug said. “Stare at it for a few minutes.”

There’s nothing better to do out here, Edith thought. She looked at the bright crescent Earth, a scimitar-slim curve of bright blue with flecks of white.

And saw that there was a blue glow stretching beyond the points of the crescent. The Earth’s air was gleaming, catching the Sun’s light and warmth.

“Look on the dark side,” Dough told her. “Focus your eyes a little to the left of the crescent’s bulge.”

She did, and saw nothing but darkness. The night side of Earth, she realized. Dark and-

There were lights glittering there! At first Edith wasn’t certain she really saw them, but the harder she stared, the more she saw. Cities aglow with light. Thin twinkling threads of highways linking them.

“Holy cow!” she blurted.

“See the cities?”

“It’s like a connect-the-dots map,” Edith said excitedly. “I can see Florida… at least I think it’s—no! That’s Italy! And over there must be Paris! Wow!”

“And look at—” A sharp buzz interrupted Doug. “Hold it. Incoming message.”

It was Anson again. “Gotta hand it to Kadar: his bird chirped right up when we interrogated it. It’s at periluna over Alphonsus, of course, so it’ll be zipping by at its fastest when it comes over us.”

“How soon, Jinny?” Doug asked.

“Five minutes. No, four-fifty. I’ll get the data wrung out and pipe it to you in half an hour, max.”

“Good.”

It took longer. Doug let Edith drive the tractor while he dug into the food box. There was no way to eat solid food in a spacesuit, but he pumped a quart of milk and three containers of juices through the feeding nipple in his helmet.

“Milk and orange juice?” Edith asked, grimacing. “Chugging them down one right after the other?”

“The last one was beet juice,” Doug said. “Got to thank Lev for that: he likes to make borscht.”

Anson called again. “Got him! He’s ’way past the mass driver, out beyond the central peaks. Still heading north.”

Doug thought a moment. “Jinny, if he’s that far out he couldn’t have stopped for long at the mass driver, could he?”

“Prob’ly not,” she answered. “I doubt that he stopped at all. He’s been truckin’ right along, I betcha.”

“Then he hasn’t tried to sabotage the magnets.”

Anson hesitated, then replied, “Unless he left a bomb there to go off later.”

Doug started to ask where Gordette would get explosives, then realized that a man with his smarts could convert rocket propellants into a bomb easily enough.

“The satellite’ll swing by this way again in sixty-three minutes,” Anson said. I’ll update you then.”

“Okay. Thanks, Jinny.”

“Just doin’ my job, boss.”

They drove past the mass driver. It seemed intact to Doug, but he made a mental note to send a team out to look for booby traps, just to be on the safe side.

Edith rode beside him in silence. She picked a container of fortified dietary supplement and sipped at it unhappily. It tasted somewhere between chalk and sweat socks.

“I’m glad it was Bam.”

After the long silence, Edith wasn’t certain she had heard his muttered words correctly.

“Glad?” she asked.

“Well… not glad, exactly. But…” His voice faded away.

The damned spacesuits took away all the visual clues, Edith realized. All she had to go on was his voice in her earphones. She couldn’t see his face, his eyes.

“You see,” Doug said slowly, as the tractor trundled along the bleak landscape, “we didn’t have any problems with sabotage or attempted assassination until—well, until you came into Moonbase.”

That jolted her. “You thought I was a hit man?”

“No, I didn’t. But the possibility was there. And I hated it.”

“You never -I mean, we were sleeping together! How could you think…”

“I had to consider it,” he said, his voice sounding miserable. “I never really thought you were the one who tampered with my suit, but I had to consider the possibility. And the possibility that I wasn’t thinking straight because I love you.”

“You love me?”

“I had to get my throat slit to finally figure it out. My last conscious thought after Bam cut me was that I was glad it wasn’t you.”

Edith blinked several times inside her helmet. “Douglas Stavenger, that’s got to be the least romantic announcement a man’s ever made to a woman!”

For several moments she heard nothing but her own breathing, magnified inside the helmet. Then Doug burst into laughter.

“You’re right, Edith,” he said, laughing. “That was about as romantic as reading an inventory list. I’m sorry.”

She felt a smile tugging at her lips. “Nothing to be sorry about, I guess.”

“I do love you, Edith. I really do.”

“And I love you, too,” she said, surprising herself.

His laughter only increased. “We picked a great time to bare our souls, sealed up in these suits.”

She began to giggle. “Yep, guess so.”

Doug reached for her gloved hand and pressed it to the visor of his helmet. “That’s the best I can do right now. But we ought to be coming up on a tempo pretty soon.”

“Tempo?”

“One of the old temporary shelters. We keep them stocked with emergency supplies. We can go inside and get out of these damned suits for a while.”

“Uh-huh. And what about Gordette?”

She heard his sharp intake of breath. “Gordette,” Doug said, all the laughter gone. “I had almost forgotten about him.”

“Doug, if we’re going to have to surrender anyway to the Peacekeepers or Yamagata or whoever, why are we chasing after Gordette?”

It took several moments before he answered, “Because I don’t want to surrender to them, Edith. Deep inside me I’m still hoping for a miracle.”

“What kind of a miracle?”

“I wish I knew.”

DAY FORTY-THREE

Grand Cayman Island had been a haven for tax-weary investors for more than a century, the Switzerland of the Caribbean, a home away from home for money that was to be hidden, laundered, or otherwise kept out of the sight of the tax collectors of the world.

Still a Crown Colony of the British Empire, the tiny flat island—a few minutes’ flight from Cuba, less than an hour from Miami—possessed more banks than hotels, more financial offices than brothels, more citizens in business suits than beach wear.

Yet the beaches were lovely, Joanna thought as she and Lev strolled along the concrete walk from her hotel to the restaurant where she had been told the meeting would take place. It’s a shame we won’t have the time to go snorkeling or enjoy the sunshine.

The street was lined with restaurants and shops vending beach wear and souvenirs. They were dressed like tourists, as they had been instructed to be. Joanna was in white shorts and a flowered sleeveless blouse, with a big floppy straw hat; Lev wore comfortable baggy slacks, a loose-fitting mesh shirt hanging over them, and sunglasses.

“I see the string bikini is making a comeback,” Lev said, grinning. “I’ll have to buy a few for you.”

Joanna pretended to grimace. “One woman on the entire beach in a string outfit doesn’t make a fashion trend, Lev. And she’s very young, probably still in her teens.”

Her husband shrugged. “She is a bit on the emaciated side, but still she seems quite attractive.”

“Honestly.”

“You would look much better than she does.”

“I couldn’t wear a skimpy thing like that on the beach!”

“Who said you’d wear it on the beach?” Lev countered. “We have fourteen rooms in Savannah. I could spread a little sand in the sun porch and chase you through the entire house.”

“You would, too, wouldn’t you?” Joanna said, laughing. Lev was trying to lighten her mood, she realized. Ease the tension.

Arranging a meeting with Seigo Yamagata had been easier than getting to see Georges Faure. And more difficult. Yamagata was even more inaccessible than the U.N. secretary-general, but his aides had responded with swift politeness to Joanna’s call. Very indirectly they suggested that a luncheon might be of interest to both parties. Joanna refused to come to Japan; Yamagata’s aides said with deep regret that a meeting elsewhere would probably be impossible.

At Lev’s suggestion, Joanna suggested a neutral territory. Within an hour Yamagata’s twenty-year-old son Saito called back to propose meeting at Grand Cayman. Quietly. Discreetly.

“Many corporations conduct business on Grand Cayman,” the young man said, looking earnest. “It would not be out of the ordinary for a very high officer of this corporation to be present on the island at a certain time and place.”

Joanna nodded at his image on her phone screen. “Yes,” she agreed. “Masterson Corporation does business with several banking establishments there.”

The time and place were set. Now Joanna and Lev walked along the beachfront street in the brilliant late morning sunlight and brisk sea breeze, heading toward the Sunrise Hotel.

“I wonder how many of these Japanese tourists are actually Yamagata security people,” Lev murmured.

Joanna had noticed them, too, strolling innocently along the beach walk, window shopping, lolling in the sunshine. “About the same number as our own Masterson troops,” she replied.

Lev’s brows rose. “Are any of these people actually tourists?”

“A few, I suppose.”

At last they stood before the Sunrise Hotel, a quiet little modernistic construction of concrete painted pastel blue on the far end of the beach, away from the gaudier shops and restaurants. The arrangements for the meeting included the requirement that they walk to this hotel from their own corporate-owned condo; no taxi whose trip record could be traced, no ostentatious limousine.

Joanna thought that Yamagata was being melodramatic, overly cautious. It’s understandable to want to keep your movements private and avoid the media paparazzi, she thought, but the man’s acting downright paranoid.

She noticed that Lev walked up the hotel’s front steps stiffly, like a man in pain.

“Are you all right?” she asked.

He looked surprised. “Yes, of course.”

“You looked…” Joanna didn’t know how to say it without hurting her husband.

“Like an old man,” he finished for her. “My dearest one, I am an old man.”

“As soon as this mess is over,” she said, almost whispering, “we’re going back to Moonbase and you are going to start nanotherapy.”

Instead of protesting as Joanna expected he would, Brudnoy nodded. That told her worlds about how he truly felt.

Then he said, “Assuming, of course, that there is a Moonbase left standing, and nanotherapy will still be allowed there.”

Joanna murmured, “Yes, assuming all that.”

Once they stepped into the cool shade of the hotel’s lobby they saw that it was completely staffed by Japanese.

“Why do I feel like a fly walking into the spider’s web?” Lev whispered to his wife as they followed a smiling young woman in an old-fashioned kimono through the lobby and out into a small but pleasantly decorated restaurant.

It was completely empty. The minimalist decor was decidedly Japanese: polished wood and lacquered low tables with cushions on the floor. No chairs.

They took off their sandals at the door and the young woman led them to a table by a window that looked out onto a garden of raked sand and bare rocks.

“I’m glad I wore shorts instead of a skirt,” Joanna said as she sat cross-legged on one of the cushions.

Grunting, Lev slowly lowered himself into the cushion next to her. Once his long legs were settled properly, he pointed through the window. “We could have gardens like that at Moonbase,” he said.

“If Yamagata has his way,” Joanna whispered, “probably they’ll turn the entire floor of Alphonsus into a rock garden.”

“An exercise in esthetics,” Lev murmured.

The slightest of noises made Joanna turned her head. A middle-aged man in a deep blue kimono that bore the white symbol of a flying heron had entered the otherwise empty restaurant and was striding toward them.

Lev scrambled to his feet. He towered over the Japanese.

“Please, please, be seated. Make yourselves comfortable,” said Seigo Yamagata, in strong, deep voice. “I am so sorry to be late. A last-minute call from Kyoto.”

He was wiry thin, with black hair combed straight back from his receding hairline, face round and flat with deep brown eyes that sparkled with intelligence and what might even have been humor.

As he sat on his heels opposite Joanna, Yamagata shook his head and put on a rueful expression. “No matter how carefully you pick your assistants and how well you train them, they always seem to find some emergency that only you can resolve.” He laughed heartily.

“How true,” Joanna said. “I trained Ibrahim al-Rashid for many years, and now that he’s risen to the top of Masterson Corporation he’s trying to undermine everything I stand for.”

Yamagata’s brows rose a few millimeters.

Three young women in identical kimonos brought each of them individual trays of sake and, kneeling, placed them on the table.

Yamagata used the moment to consider Joanna’s words. “Yes,” he said slowly, “I can see that you do not agree with the direction Rashid has taken. I hope this little meeting can clear up the difficulty between us.”

He looked directly into Joanna’s eyes as he spoke, ignoring Lev. At least he’s not a male chauvinist, Joanna thought.

“I didn’t realize until just a short time ago,” Joanna said,’that Faure is actually being controlled by you.”

Yamagata’s eyes widened momentarily, then he threw his head back and laughed. “Controlled? By me? Whatever gave you that idea?”

“He’s using the nanotech treaty as a pretext for seizing Moonbase, yet he intends to have your people run Moonbase and continue to use nanomachines just as we are doing now.”

Instead of answering her, Yamagata lifted his tiny cup of sake. “A toast. To better understanding.”

Joanna clicked her cup against his, then Lev’s. As if it were an afterthought, Yamagata touched his cup to Lev’s also.

“Do I misunderstand the situation?” Joanna asked, after sipping the warm rice wine.

“It’s not a question of misunderstanding,” Yamagata answered,’so much as comprehending the entire picture.”

“Please enlarge my understanding, then,” she said.

“Gladly. Moonbase is the leading center of nanotechnology development, that is true. Faure is using the nanotech treaty as a means of establishing U.N. control over the nations of the Earth, that is also true. As long as Moonbase continues to defy the treaty Faure will bend every effort at his command to stop you.”

Joanna nodded. “That much I already know.”

“However,” Yamagata raised one finger, “once the U.N. has taken control of Moonbase, Faure will turn the operation of the base over to Yamagata Industries.”

“I knew that, too,” Joanna said.

“Yes, of course. Yamagata will continue to operate Moon-base just as before, but under the direction and supervision of United Nations inspectors.”

“How will that be different from the way Moonbase is being run now?”

Yamagata took another sip of sake. “The major difference,” he said, after smacking his lips, “is that Yamagata Industries will stop the manufacture of Clipperships and their export to Earth.”

“Stop building Clipperships!”

“The market will be saturated within a few years,” Yamagata said. “Your diamond craft are too good! They are so reliable and durable that the need for new ones will soon decline steeply.”

“But how will you maintain Moonbase?” Joanna asked. “Economically, I mean. Clipperships are our main source of income.”

Yamagata hesitated a moment, then said in a lower tone, “Moonbase will be maintained at a smaller size and level of activity.”

“Downsized?”

“To some extent. Yamagata Industries will support the scientific studies being done there, of course, and the research work in Moonbase’s laboratories.”

“But not Clippership manufacture.”

“Nothing that has touched nanomachines will be exported to Earth,” Yamagata said firmly. “Except helium-three, of course.”

“Fuel for fusion power generators,” Joanna realized.

“Yes.”

“So this is nothing but a power grab, after all,” she said. “You’re using Faure to take Moonbase from us, just as I thought.”

“Not at all! I am offering Masterson Corporation a share of the greatest opportunity since the discovery of fire: a share of the fusion power industry.”

“That’s Rashid’s doing,” Joanna said.

“He has tried to interest your board of directors in fusion for many years, to no avail. Now Yamagata Industries offers you a partnership in this new industry.”

“You want to take over Masterson Corporation.”

“A merger makes much sense. Cooperation is much to be preferred over competition.”

Lev spoke up. “May I interrupt?”

Yamagata turned his head toward the Russian.

“If you gain control of Moonbase, why do you want to pursue a cooperative partnership with Masterson Corporation? You will have the nanotechnology to produce fusion fuel on the Moon. Yes?”

Yamagata smiled politely. “Just so. But why not be generous to a defeated competitor? Masterson can market fusion systems in the western hemisphere while Yamagata markets them in the eastern hemisphere.”

Scratching at his beard unconsciously, Lev replied, “And when the market for Clipperships opens up again, you can resume manufacturing them despite the nanotech treaty. No?”

Yamagata shook his head vigorously. “No. Not at all. That point is clear. The forces arrayed against nanotechnology will not allow Clipperships to be brought to Earth. Not for the foreseeable future.”

Lev frowned, puzzled.

“You must realize,” Yamagata said, shifting his attention to Joanna again,’that not even I can openly flout Faure and the nanoluddites. Helium-three they will accept, diamond Clipperships are too obvious a symbol of nanotechnology for them to put up with.”

Joanna watched the man’s face as he spoke. Even though Yamagata maintained a bland mask that revealed almost nothing of his inner emotions, there was something going on inside him, she was certain. He’s not telling us his real motivations.

“You will maintain the nanotechnology laboratories at Moonbase?” she asked.

Yamagata avoided her eyes. “Yes, I think so. Although we will have to keep their work quiet, so that the fears of the nanoluddites are not aroused.”

“Including the medical research?”

“Of course.”

“But what good will the researchers’ work be, if their results can’t be used on Earth?”

He shrugged. “It is my belief that scientific research should always be encouraged.”

“Even if its results have no practical uses?”

Yamagata dipped his chin slightly.

“Or even if the results can be used only on the Moon,” Joanna guessed.

He seemed to freeze, like a small animal caught in the headlights of an onrushing car. Joanna saw something flicker in his eyes. Fear, perhaps?

At last Yamagata replied, “Yes, even if the results of the research can be used only on the Moon.”

Suddenly understanding, Joanna asked, “Mr Yamagata, do you intend to live at Moonbase someday?”

Yamagata had been sitting ramrod straight. Now he sagged back on his heels noticeably. He eyed Lev carefully, then turned his gaze back to Joanna.

“Perhaps,” he said, in a near whisper. “I may retire there, eventually.”

“So that you can have the benefits of nanotherapy without worrying about the reactions of the luddites,” Joanna said. It was not a question.

Yamagata did not reply.

“What is the problem?” Joanna asked softly. “Cancer?”

Still he did not reply. He sat rigidly on his heels, eyes staring now on infinity, looking stiffly at the wall behind Joanna and Lev.

“It is cancer, then,” Joanna said.

Yamagata’s earth-brown eyes focused on her at last. He sighed, then said tonelessly, “If you even hint to anyone on Earth—or the Moon—that I am afflicted with cancer, I will have you assassinated.”

Joanna stared at him from across the lacquered table.

“Do you understand?” Yamagata said. “I will not tolerate any insinuations or rumors about my health.”

Joanna’s mind was racing. He’s got cancer and he needs nanotherapy. He needs Zimmerman and he can’t bring him back to Earth for fear that the nanoluddites will find out and try to assassinate them both. That’s why he’s surrounded himself with all this security! He’s already tried nanotherapy. If the fanatics learn of that…

“There is no need for threats,” Lev said. “If you want Moonbase’s nanotherapy expertise and Moonbase’s nano-technology to ferret out helium-three for your fusion reactors, why not simply enter into a cooperative arrangement with us? Why the U.N. and this attempt to take Moonbase away from us?”

“The answer is obvious,” Yamagata said, looking squarely at Joanna instead of Lev. “I must be in control. Cooperation is fine—as long as I am in complete command of our cooperative efforts. That is why I must have Masterson Corporation, including Moonbase.”

“But if Moonbase wins its independence—”

With iron in his voice, Yamagata replied, That is why I am helping Faure to assemble a Peacekeeper force. Before the World Court convenes in November, Moonbase will be operated by Yamagata Industries.”

“Or destroyed,” Lev said.

“We will try to avoid that,” said Yamagata. “No one wants to see Moonbase destroyed.”

“Except the fanatics.”

“Yes,” Yamagata agreed. “They are a danger to all of us.”

“Then cooperate with us and stop this military confrontation!” Joanna urged.

Yamagata shook his head. “No. I will take Moonbase. I must take it. I cannot rest easily until Moonbase is in my hands.”

“So all your talk of cooperation is a sham,” Joanna said.

“Not so! I welcome your cooperation. And you will cooperate with me—once I have Moonbase.”

Joanna bit back the reply she wanted to make. Instead, she took a deep breath to calm herself.

Yamagata interpreted her silence exactly. “I know that very little of this pleases you. But I hope you can understand why I must act so.”

“I can understand,” Joanna replied, “without agreeing.”

Yamagata dipped his chin slightly. “Now that you understand, please tell your son that resistance is futile. If Moonbase resists the Peacekeepers again, the results will be very bad for all of us.”

“What do you mean?”

With an unhappy sigh, Yamagata answered, “If your son tries to fight the Peacekeepers, forces will be set in motion that not even I can control.”

“Forces?” Lev asked. “What forces?”

“You think that I control Faure. I thought so too, once. But he has the backing of fanatics, madmen who send out assassins and terrorists to accomplish their ends. Faure has turned into a monster,” Yamagata said bitterly, “a Frankenstein that I helped to create.”

“You’re talking about the nanoluddites,” Joanna said.

“The nanoluddites. Fanatics who are so frightened of nano-technology that they will destroy Moonbase if you try to resist the Peacekeepers.”

“How could they destroy Moonbase?” Joanna challenged.

“If your son tries to fight against the Peacekeepers, Moon-base will be wiped out,” Yamagata replied. “All its people will be killed. And there is nothing that any of us can do to stop it. It is too late to stop it. The forces are already in motion. That is why I urgently plead with you to allow us to take control of Moonbase. Cooperate with me, or Moonbase will be utterly annihilated.”

DAY FORTY-THREE

Doug’s helmet earphones chirped.

“Doug, this is Jinny.” Her voice sounded weak, faint. “Latest imagery from Kadar’s bird shows Gordette’s tractor parked outside tempo six.”

“Parked?”

“Didn’t move all through the satellite’s pass overhead,” Anson said. “That’s only five minutes or so, granted, but it sure looks like he’s either inside the tempo or out there on foot.”

Pushing the volume control on his wrist keyboard, Doug thought aloud, “Maybe his tractor broke down? Dust. Electrical malfunction.”

“Maybe,” Anson said. He could barely make out the word.

“Okay, thanks. We’re heading that way. Call you when we get there.”

“Hell you will. You’ll be over the horizon even for the antennas up on Yeager.”

They were passing the crater’s central peaks, Doug saw, where the astronomical center was located. Jinny’s transmission was already starting to break up.

“Okay, then,” he said into his helmet mike. “I’ll call you when we’re coming back.”

“I’m sending a security team out after you,” Anson said, a faint whisper being drowned in crackles and hisses.

“No!” he snapped. “No need for that.”

“Can’t hear you, boss,” Anson said through the growing interference. “You’re breaking up too much.”

Doug clicked from the long-range frequency to the suit-to-suit freak. “She’s pretty smart, Jinny is,” he said to Edith. “Knows how to use the systems.”

“I feel better knowing there’s a security team backing us up.”

“By three hours or so,” Doug said.

“What makes you think she waited until now to send them out?”

Doug felt his brows rise. “You’re pretty smart yourself, you know.”

Edith replied, “You’re just figuring that out?”

She could see Gordette’s tractor trail easily now that there were no other cleat marks chewing up the regolith. No one’s been out here in a long time, she thought.

“Tempo six was one of the original shelters my father built,” Doug explained. “Before they decided where the permanent base would be sited they dug shelters into a dozen spots on the crater floor and outside the ringwall on Mare Nubium.”

“Do you think Gordette has really stopped there?” Edith asked.

She waited for several moments before Doug replied, “I don’t know. I can’t understand why he headed this far away from the base. There aren’t any easy passes over the ringwall up in this region. If he wanted to get out of Alphonsus, Wodjo Pass around Yeager would be the easiest way.”

“Maybe he’s going to meet somebody or get picked up, something like that,” Edith said.

“Maybe.”

She went on, “That’d mean he’ll have other people with him, wouldn’t it?”

“If they’ve been waiting for him at the tempo, yeah, maybe.”

“Then we’re steering ourselves right into a trap, Doug. He’s tried to murder you twice. You’re giving him another shot at it.”

A longer silence this time. Edith stared at Doug’s space-suited figure, trying to peer through it to see the man inside. All she saw was the cermet suit, like armor, and the strange metal pistons of the muscle amplifiers on the backs of his gloves, like a skeleton’s hands, but made of metal rather than bone.

“Jinny didn’t say there are any other vehicles parked at the tempo,” he said at last. “I don’t think anybody else is there.”

Then why did he stop there?”

“That’s what we’re going to find out,” he said.

“Why don’t you wait for the security team to catch up with us?” Edith urged.

“I can’t let him get away. He can tell the Peacekeepers exactly how to knock out our electrical power and take over the base.”

“You don’t think they know that already?”

“Bam knows what we’ve been doing, what we’ve been thinking. I can’t let him tell it all to the Peacekeepers.”

“Doug, you’re full of bullshit,” she said, feeling anger rising in her. “You’re acting like some macho gunslinger who’s got to face down the bad guy all by himself.”

“It’s not that, Edith.”

“The hell it isn’t. You’re going to get yourself killed, and me too.”

“No! I—” Doug realized there was some truth in Edith’s accusation. He turned to look at her and saw only the reflection of his own blank visor in the dim Earthlight.

“At least wait for the security team,” she repeated.

“Edith… I trusted him. I thought I saw a man I could rely on. I don’t why he tried to kill me—”

“Because he’s an agent from the U.N.,” Edith snapped. “Or Yamagata, more likely.”

“Or maybe the nanoluddites,” Doug heard himself agree. “I never thought of that before, but maybe they were able to infiltrate Moonbase, after all.”

“Then why confront him?”

Yes, why? Doug asked himself. The man’s a murderer, a hired assassin, maybe a nanoluddite fanatic. So what if he can tell the Peacekeepers about the pitiful defenses we’re trying to set up? Big deal. They’re going to walk in here and take over the base no matter what you do.

Then he thought of Tamara and how he helplessly watched Killifer rape and kill her. Murderer! his conscience shrieked. You let him murder her while you stood by as impotent as a baby. He saw Killifer’s smug, hateful face, the glint in his eyes, the snarl of his voice. I’ll find him, Doug told himself. I’ll track him down wherever he is and kill him. I’ll rip his guts out. I’ll tear him apart.

But Killifer’s a half-million kilometers away, on a world you’ll never return to. Gordette’s within reach; you’ll be face-to-face with him soon. Are you going to kill Bam? Are you going to make him pay for Killifer? Why not? What difference does it make? They’re all killers, all murderers. It’s time to start paying them back. Time to even the score.

Yet another voice in his head spoke: I liked Bam. We could have become good friends, in time. He seemed so steady, so focused, like a big brother…

And then Doug remembered. “Greg tried to kill me, too.”

“What?” Edith asked.

“Maybe it’s me. Maybe there’s something wrong with me.”

“What’re you talking about, Doug?”

“My older brother, Greg—half-brother, really—he went berserk and tried to wipe out the whole base. He wanted to kill me, just like Bam does.”

“What happened to him?”

“I killed him,” Doug said, the memories choking his voice. “I didn’t want to, but there was no other way…”

It was Edith’s turn to fall silent. Doug steered the tractor automatically, following the bright cleat marks in the eons-darkened regolith, remembering, remembering.

“So you want to confront Gordette to bring your brother back, is that it?” she asked at last.

Doug shook his head inside his helmet. “No, I don’t think so.” Then he had to admit, “I don’t really know, Edith. It’s just something I’ve got to do.”

Yet he could not erase the sight of Killifer’s leering, twisted face.

Georges Faure found the three-second lag in communications with the Moon especially aggravating. How can one conduct a proper conversation when there is such a wait between words?

“One week,” the Peacekeeper colonel said at last, in reply to Faure’s question. “Ten days, at the outside.”

“Why so long, Colonel Giap?” Faure inquired. “Why not tomorrow?”

And now we wait again, the secretary-general fumed, staring at the colonel’s image on his desktop screen.

Colonel Giap’s face was a study in oriental patience: calm, expressionless; his hooded eyes showed no emotion whatsoever.

“You have your full complement of troops,” Faure blurted, not waiting for the colonel’s reply. “All the weapons have been delivered, have they not?”

Giap might have been a statue of teak, for all the response he showed. Faure fidgeted in his swivel chair, fighting the urge to pick up one of the mementos adorning his desk and fling it into the phone screen.

“The battalion is now at full strength, quite so,” the colonel said at last, “and all our logistics are in place. Also, the special force that Yamagata Industries organized has arrived.”

“Then why do you wait? Strike! Strike now!”

The colonel had not stopped talking: “…necessary to train the combined team in the precise tactics we will use to take Moonbase. Also, all of the troops must become fully acclimatized to the lower gravity here on the Moon and to working in spacesuits. It is crucial that they are able to function as easily and as well as they would on Earth, even in spacesuits.”

Faure sank back in his chair as the colonel painstakingly reviewed every step of his planned conquest of Moonbase: the deployment of the Peacekeeper troops outside Alphonsus’s ringwall mountains; the nuclear strike that will knock out Moonbase’s solar power farms; the missile with the penetrating warhead to destroy their buried nuclear generator; the routes over the ringwall and across the crater floor to the base itself, the assault on the main airlock and the penetration of the base’s corridors, the seizure of Moonbase’s key nerve centers.

“By the time we enter their corridors,” Giap was reciting from his action plan,’the people in Moonbase will have less than an hour’s worth of electrical power available to them. They must either surrender to us or die of asphyxiation.”

“What if they decide to blow themselves up?” Faure demanded. “A final grand suicidal gesture of defiance.”

When Giap finally heard the question he almost smiled. “That is most unlikely. Psychological profiles of all Moonbase personnel have been made available to us, through the Masterson Corporation. Those people are not fatalists. Suicide, even on an individual basis, would never occur to them.”

Faure nodded agreement. He had personally requested the psychological files from Ibrahim al-Rashid. Nominally, the files belonged to the Kiribati Corporation, but it was apparently a simple thing for Rashid to appropriate them through Masterson’s computers.

Giap continued, “However, the special Yamagata force is quite ready for its suicide mission, if our frontal assault is not immediately successful.”

Faure knew that Yamagata’s special force had been recruited from nanoluddite fanatics in Japan and elsewhere.

“We will bring two nuclear power generators in tractors over Wodjohowitcz Pass and offer to provide electrical power,” Colonel Giap went on, “in the event that Moonbase surrenders to us.”

“And if they refuse?”

Again the infernal wait. “We will walk in and take the base. Failing that, the special Yamagata force will destroy the air and water systems, the control center, farms and nanolabs.”

Faure signed deeply. There will be nothing left of Moonbase after that, he thought. But what of it? Yamagata wants Moonbase taken intact, but it will be better if it is wiped out of existence altogether.

Now, if only the colonel would start his troops moving at once. Why wait? Strike swiftly.

Yet he said nothing. He had ordered the Peacekeepers to strike swiftly the first time and it had turned out to be a fiasco.

But this time will be different, Faure told himself. Looking into Colonel Giap’s expressionless eyes, Faure concluded that the colonel’s plan would work, and he should not meddle in the tactical decisions. Moonbase would be brought to its knees within a week to ten days.

Or destroyed utterly.

DAY FORTY-FOUR

“Do they have toilets in the tempos?” Edith asked.

Startled out of his inner thoughts, Doug replied, “Yes. Sure.”

“Good.”

“There’s a vacuum toilet behind the seats,” he said, jerking a gloved thumb over his shoulder. “Kind of tricky using it, but the toilet hatch connects to the port in your suit.”

“How long will it be before we get to the tempo?”

Doug glanced at the electronic map on the tractor’s dashboard. “Less than an hour.”

“I’ll wait, then.”

Looking at his wrist displays, Doug saw it was after midnight. Neither of them had slept. For the past few hours Doug had been wrestling with his inner demons, wondering why he was driving himself to confront Gordette. Why not just give up? he kept asking himself. Yet something inside him refused to. He couldn’t let Killifer win without at least trying to fight back.

“You want me to drive a while?” Edith asked.

“I’m not tired.”

“You certain? Aren’t you sleepy? I sure am.”

“Crank your seat back and catch a few winks,” Doug suggested.

Edith tried; whether she fell asleep or not, Doug could not tell. Steering the tractor was fairly easy; it was built to clamber over rocks and across craterlets, like a tank. Doug followed the bright marks of Gordette’s trail, which avoided the boulders and deeper pits scattered across the crater floor.

He saw a rille snaking off to the left, like a narrow riverbed waiting for water. You’ve been waiting a while, haven’t you? Doug asked silently. Four billion years, give or take a week.

In the dark lunar night the stars were like dust strewn across the bowl of the sky. He could see them gleaming at him right down to the chopped-off horizon.

One star in particular seemed to beckon. Red, bright, hovering just over the horizon straight ahead.

Doug realized it was the beacon light atop the radio mast of tempo six.

We’ll be there in half an hour, he told himself.

Then what?

Doug took in a deep double lungful of canned air. We’ll find out when we get there.

In the airlessness of the Moon Gordette won’t hear us coming up, if he’s inside the tempo. The first warning he’ll get is when I start the airlock cycling. I’ll park the tractor and let Edith keep on sleeping. No sense getting her involved in whatever’s going to happen inside when I confront Bam. Things could get messy.

All of a sudden they were there. The dark hump of dirt that marked the site of the buried shelter loomed in front of Doug’s straining eyes. A single tractor was parked to one side of the airlock.

Doug stopped his tractor and looked over at Edith. Not a stir from her. Good, he thought, she’s sound asleep.

He climbed down slowly from the cab and walked over to the other tractor. One set of fresh boot prints in the sandy regolith led straight to the airlock. Bam’s in there. Alone.

Okay, Doug told himself. This is it.

A gentle slope led down to the airlock’s outer hatch. No wind on the Moon to cover the grade with newly-blown dust; it would remain clear for eons, except for the occasional tracks of boots. Doug slid the hatch open and stepped into the phonebooth-sized airlock. He closed the outer hatch, sealed it, then pressed a thumb against the electronic pad that activated the pumps. The telltale light above the pad immediately went from red to amber.

It seemed to take an eternity. Doug could feel the vibration of the pump working against the soles of his boots, but for several long moments he could hear nothing. Then, as the chamber filled with air, the chugging of the pumps became audible.

He knows he’s got a visitor, Doug thought, clenching his fists involuntarily. The tiny whine of the gloves’ servomotors surprised him and he unflexed his hands. It took an effort of will.

The light turned green. Doug slid the inner hatch open.

Gordette stood at the far end of the shelter, by the two tiers of bunks. He was apparently putting his spacesuit on again; torso, leggings and boots were in place. His helmet rested on one of the lower bunks. Doug could not see his gloves.

Gordette’s brows knit as he recognized the cermet suit that he had once sabotaged.

“Who the fuck are you and what’re you doing in that suit?”

Doug slid his visor up. “It’s me, Bam.”

The man shuddered visibly. He staggered back a step and leaned against the bunks for support.

“You’re dead! I killed you!”

“You tried,” Doug said, stepping further into the shelter. “Why?”

“Stay away from me!”

“Why did you try to kill me, Bam?”

Gordette’s eyes showed white all around the irises. “I cut your fuckin’ throat!”

Doug sighed. “The nanomachines inside me. They closed the wound and kept me from bleeding to death.”

“That’s not possible!”

“Of course it is. There’s nothing supernatural here, Bam. No magic. Just those little nanobugs.”

With the spacesuit on, it was impossible to see Gordette’s chest rising and falling. But his mouth hung open, panting.

“Why’d you want to kill me, Bam? What did I do to you that you wanted to murder me?”

For several heartbeats Gordette said nothing, did not move. Then he sagged down onto the lower bunk.

“It wasn’t you,” he said, sinking his head into his hands. “Had nothing to do with you.”

“It was me you tried to kill.”

“You or me, man. Life or death. I had to do it. Had to. One of us had to go. I should’ve slit my own throat; been better that way.”

“Why?” Doug asked again. “Why did you have to do it?”

“I’m a soldier. I follow orders. Or else.”

“You were sent here to kill me?”

Gordette looked up at Doug with reddened eyes. “You know that little shit Faure’s been planning this for years.”

“You work for the U.N.? The Peacekeepers?”

“Naw. I get paid by Washington. Special security forces. They pulled me out of the army. Trained me to be an assassin.”

“You’ve killed other people?”

His face looked awful. That’s my profession, man. That’s what they trained me to do. Either that or spend my life in jail.”

“Why jail?”

He laughed bitterly. “Why else? I killed somebody. It was an accident but I did it and the only way to stay out of jail was to go into the army. They always held that over me; do what they want or they send me to jail for life. No parole. No sweetheart minimum-security farm, either. Jail. In with the perverts and the maniacs.”

Doug unfastened his helmet, pulled it off over his head, then walked the length of the narrow shelter to sit on the bunk opposite Gordette. He placed the helmet on the bedsheet beside him.

“Okay, Bam. That’s all over now. You can live here. You can be free of them.”

The black man stared into Doug’s eyes. “Live at Moonbase?”

That’s right.”

“I tried to kill you and you’re offering me asylum?”

That’s what Moonbase is all about, Bam. A place to build a new life.”

Gordette said nothing, but his expression showed doubt, suspicion, scorn.

“I’m a fugitive, too,” Doug said. “On Earth I’d be a marked man waiting for some nanoluddite fanatic to assassinate me. On the Moon I can live—”

“Until some hired assassin knocks you off.”

Doug reached out his gloved hand. “Join us, Bam.”

T don’t deserve to join you,” Gordette said, recoiling. “I’m a murderer! A killer!”

“You were a murderer. Now you have the chance to change, to start a new life.”

“Doing what?”

Patiently, Doug said, “Doing whatever you do best. It’s up to you.”

“I killed my own mother!” he screamed, leaping to his feet. “I killed her!”

Doug looked up at him and saw fear, guilt, and the depths of hell in Gordette’s red-rimmed eyes.

Gordette bent over him and yanked Doug to his feet so hard that Doug’s helmet rolled off the bunk and bounced on the concrete floor.

“I killed my mother!” he roared into Doug’s face. “Don’t talk to me about starting a new life.”

He pushed Doug down onto the bunk again and went for his own helmet. Doug watched him put it on, seal the neck ring. Then Gordette started to pull on his gloves.

“Where are you going?” Doug asked.

“Out there. Anyplace. I’ll keep going until I run out of air. That’ll put an end to it.”

Doug got up from the bunk. “Bam, you can’t do that! I can’t let you do it.”

Staring grimly at him through his open helmet, Gordette muttered, “How you gonna stop me, man?”

Doug walked toward him. “Don’t kill yourself, for God’s sake. You can start a whole new life here.”

“Yeah? For how long? In a week or so the Peacekeepers are gonna come marching in here and I’ll be on my way back Earthside, heading for jail ’cause I didn’t nail you.”

“We can keep the Peacekeepers out,” Doug said, feeling almost desperate. “We can stay free.”

“Yeah. Sure.”

“Don’t kill yourself, Bam!”

Gordette looked at him with eyes suddenly grown calm and cold. “One of us has to die, Doug. I’d rather it be me. Even if I killed you, they’d just set me up for some other piece of shit. Let me end it, man. Let me put an end to the whole fucking mess.”

“No!” Doug snapped, and grabbed for Gordette.

Almost by reflex, Gordette backhanded Doug across the jaw, knocking him off balance, staggering in his spacesuit halfway down the length of the shelter.

Gordette slammed his visor down and turned for the airlock hatch. Doug charged after him. Gordette spun to face him, snapped Doug’s head back with a straight left, then levelled him with a right. Doug’s eyesight blurred as his head hit the concrete flooring, then everything went black.

Edith woke up, stiff and groaning, in the tractor’s seat. She went to rub her eyes but her hands bumped the helmet visor. Pulling herself up to a sitting position, she saw that the tractor was stopped in front of the tempo and Doug was gone.

He must be inside with Gordette, she thought, suddenly alarmed. Quickly she searched around her seat for something that might be useful as a weapon. If there was a tool kit on the tractor, it wasn’t in sight.

Empty-handed, she started to climb down to the ground. As she put one boot on the sandy regolith she saw a spacesuited figure march determinedly past her, past the other parked tractor, and away from the tempo. It wasn’t Doug’s suit, she knew.

Ignoring the distress signals her bladder was sending, Edith went to the open airlock hatch. Doug must be inside, she thought. It took an eternally long moment for her to find the instructions printed on the inner wall of the airlock, alongside the control keypad. Edith had to turn on her helmet light to read them.

It was simple enough. She slid the hatch shut and activated the pump. When the light turned green she opened the inner hatch and stepped into the shelter.

Doug was on the floor, his helmet off, pushing himself up onto his elbows.

“He wants to kill himself,” Doug said to her. She barely heard him through her sealed helmet.

Sliding her visor up, she knelt beside Doug. “What happened? Are you all right?”

“He wants to kill himself,” Doug repeated.

“Let him,” she snapped. “Better him than you.”

Slowly, Doug pushed himself to a sitting position, shook his head a few times, then started to clamber to his feet. “Where’d my helmet get to?” he mumbled.

“You’re not going out there after him!”

He looked at her. “I can’t let him die out there, Edith. He… I just can’t.”

I’ll go with you, then.”

“You stay here,” Doug said firmly, walking back to pick his helmet off the floor. “You’re a lot safer here inside the shelter.”

“And you’re going out to catch him?”

“To find him. To help him—if he’ll let me.”

“Not without me!”

“Yes, without you. You stay here. If I’m not back in an hour, get into the tractor and go back to Moonbase.”

Edith started to argue, but one look into Doug’s determined blue-gray eyes stopped her. It would be pointless, she knew.

So she waited ten minutes, by the watch on her spacesuit wrist, after Doug left the shelter. Then she went to the airlock and started after him in the tractor.

From her perch in the driver’s seat she could see two pairs of bootprints clearly etched into the dark sandy ground. I won’t need an Indian guide to help me follow their trail, Edith told herself.

DAY FORTY-FOUR

Doug followed Gordette’s boot prints, gleaming bright and new in the ancient regolith. The only sounds he heard were his own breathing and the comforting soft buzz of the suit’s air fans. He had stopped at the tractor to refill his air tank. Hunger gnawed at him but there was nothing he could do about that.

How much air does Bam have left in his suit? he wondered. How long can he roam around out here before he runs out?

Gordette’s trail seemed to meander, with no specific aim or purpose. Doug followed it around a house-sized boulder, never even thinking that Gordette could be lurking behind the rock, waiting to ambush him. He wasn’t. His boot prints skirted a worn old crater the size of a baseball diamond, and so deep that its bottom was lost in dense shadow. Meteroid must have come almost straight down to dig that one, Doug thought.

Soon, though, Gordette’s trail started to run beside a sinuous rille that snaked along the dusty ground like an arroyo in desert country. Doug remembered his first walk out on the Moon’s surface, his eighteenth birthday. With Foster Brennart. They had come across a rille that had suddenly spurted a ghostly cloud of gasses from deep within the lunar interior. Methane, ammonia, other volatiles. They had glittered in the sunlight like a billion fireflies.

Brennart thought it was a good omen, my first walk on the surface. Maybe it was, Doug thought. I could use a good omen now.

Suddenly Gordette’s boot prints ended. Disappeared. Doug stopped, puzzled. He backtracked a few steps, then saw that Gordette had climbed down into the shallow gully cut into the ground by the rille. Turning on his helmet lamp, Doug spotted faint boot marks heading along the bottom of the rille, some two meters below the surface on which he stood.

The prints still headed in the same general direction that Gordette had been following. Why’d he jump down into the rille? Doug asked himself. Was he afraid I’d follow him and he’s trying to hide his trail? The prints down inside the rille were faint, but still visible.

Staying on the surface, Doug followed the rille as it wound across the regolith. It could be dangerous down there, Doug told himself. The rilles are old fissures where gas from below ground had seeped out. The ground down there can be brittle as glass, and who knows what’s underneath it?

Edith trundled along in the tractor, trying to keep its speed down to the pace of a walking man. The trail of boot prints was easy to see, and she didn’t want Doug to know she following him. Not yet.

Once she thought she saw the curve of his helmet above the horizon, and she tromped on the tractor’s brakes. If I can’t see him, he can’t see me, she figured. And he sure can’t hear me coming after him, not out here in all this vacuum.

The nearness of the horizon bothered her. It didn’t look right. She knew, consciously, that the Moon was only a quarter of the Earth’s size and the horizon was therefore much closer than it would be on Earth. But still, at a deep, primitive level, it almost frightened her. As if there really was an edge to this barren, desolate world and she might drop off it.

Yeah, she told herself derisively, you’re right in there with Columbus’s crew. Sail on, babe. Sail on.

Doug didn’t realize he still had the suit-to-suit frequency on until he started hearing strange sounds in his earphones. Gasps? Moans? The sounds came through for a moment, then disappeared, like ghosts vanishing into thin air.

Very thin air, around here, he told himself.

The rille had been getting progressively deeper, sinking more than four meters below the crater floor, Doug guessed.

It was hard to tell, and almost impossible to see if Gordette’s boot prints were still marching along down there, even when he leaned carefully over the worn, rounded smooth edge of the rille to shine his helmet lamp on its bottom.

He came to a spot where a meteoroid had slammed into the ground just next to the rille, collapsing its side into a heap of rubble. Doug spent several minutes searching for bootprints; he found none. As far as he could see there were no prints on the other side of the narrow rille, either.

And the eerie sounds in his earphones had stopped, too.

I’ve overshot him, Doug told himself. He’s back behind me someplace. Down inside the rille. Hiding.

Slowly, bending over the edge of the rille to examine its bottom, Doug started backtracking. He couldn’t see the bottom of the arroyo, it was too deep for his helmet lamp to reach.

He stopped and listened. Nothing. Gordette had gone silent. Is he dead? Maybe what I heard was his last gasping for air.

With great reluctance, and more than a little fear, Doug carefully climbed down inside the rille, lowering himself slowly down as far as he could with his arms fully stretched, then letting himself slide the rest of the way down.

He felt the rough side wall grating against the chest of his suit. Couldn’t do this in a fabric suit, he thought. The cermet won’t tear. But he knew that grinding some dust or larger particles of grit into his suit’s joints could immobilize him as thoroughly as the Tin Woodsman caught in a monsoon rain.

Doug had never felt the panic of claustrophobia, but as he stood shakily inside the narrow rille he saw that the sky above him was nothing more now than a constricted slice of stars cut off on both sides by the steep black walls of the arroyo. Like the view from the bottom of a grave, he thought.

He took a step forward and his boot slid on the glass-smooth rock. He had to grab at both sides of the gully to keep himself from falling. Hardly any dust down here, he realized. This rille must be brand-new, maybe still active.

“New” and “active” were relative terms on the Moon, he knew. A new rille might have opened up only a few thousand years ago. Its activity might be a slight sigh of underground gas every century or so.

A cough. In his earphones Doug heard somebody cough. Couldn’t be anybody but Bam.

Slowly, moving cautiously along the slippery rock floor of the rille, both hands extended to touch its steep confining walls, Doug made his way forward.

Another cough, followed by a quick, desperate gasping.

“Bam!” he called into his helmet mike. “Bam, where are you?”

No response. Standing stock-still, Doug listened hard. Is he holding his breath? No, it’s just so faint I can hardly hear him.

Doug pushed along the slick arroyo and the sound of Gordette’s breathing grew louder. It sounded strained, labored, as if the man were in pain.

“I’m coming, Bam,” Doug called again. “I’ll be with you in a couple of minutes. Hang on.”

“Don’t…” Gordette’s voice was weak. It broke into a gasping cough.

“Save your breath. I’ll be there.”

“Careful… the ground… gives way…”

Doug scanned the ground before him in the light of his helmet lamp. It looked solid enough, glassy and slick, but solid rock. Yet he knew this volcanic vent might be no sturdier than a soap bubble.

More coughing from Gordette. He must be almost out of air, Doug realized. Got to get to him quickly.

The smooth rock floor ended abruptly, like a shattered pane of glass. Black nothingness yawned in front of Doug.

And clinging to the edge of the break like a ship-wrecked sailor desperately clutching a piece of flotsam, was the space-suited figure of Leroy Gordette.

He had one forearm hooked on the crumbling edge of the precipice, and the gloved fingers of his other hand. Doug could see the top of his helmet.

“Hold on,” he said, and immediately felt foolish. What else was Bam trying to do?

“Don’t!” the black man warned. “Fuckin’ rock breaks. It’s as thin as tissue paper. Brittle, too.”

Doug lowered himself to his knees, then got down on his belly and wormed his way toward Gordette.

“Got no purchase for my feet,” Bam said, panting. “Every time… I try to haul my ass up… fuckin’ rock crumbles more.”

“How deep is the hole?” Doug asked. “Can you see the bottom?”

Gordette coughed. “Must go… all the way down… to Chicago. No bottom…”

Inching closer to the man, Doug felt the brittle rock beneath him crack, like thin ice.

He stretched out his arm as far as he could. “Can you grab my hand?”

“I’m runnin’ out of air,” Gordette said, gasping. “Forget it. Get outta here.”

“Grab my hand!” Doug insisted.

“Can’t.”

Doug pushed himself a few centimeters closer. A chunk of the rock floor just in front of his helmet gave way and plummeted down into silent darkness.

“Grab it!”

“Leave me alone…”

With gritted teeth Doug slid closer and wrapped his fingers around Gordette’s wrist just as the edge collapsed into shards and fell away.

Through his suit Doug could feel the vibrations of the servo motors in his glove as they tightened on Gordette’s wrist. The man’s whole weight dangled from Doug’s hand. It felt as if his arm were being wrenched out of its shoulder socket.

“That’s… a helluva grip… you got,” Gordette grunted.

Doug could feel Gordette’s body swaying as it hung in the deep black emptiness. Pain burned through his arm and shoulder. The exoskeleton would keep his fingers clamped on Gordette’s wrist, he knew. Good thing we’re on the Moon, Doug thought. With his spacesuit and all he’d yank my arm right out of my shoulder on Earth.

For moments that stretched like years Doug lay there, flat on his belly, with Gordette hanging in his hand.

“Lemme go…” Gordette panted. “Lemme die…”

“If you go,” Doug said grimly, fiercely, “I go with you. We’re in this together, Bam.”

“You… crazy…”

Doug tried to worm his way back, away from the brittle, crumbling edge of the abyss. Gordette could do nothing to help, even if he wanted to.

Got to haul him out of there, Doug told himself. Got to get him on solid ground before he runs out of air.

But it was almost impossible to edge his way backward with Gordette’s dead weight dangling from his outstretched arm. Grunting, teeth gritted, eyes stinging with sweat, Doug inched back along the glassy rock. It was painfully, agonizingly slow. He felt woozy, head spinning.

“What’re y’all doing down… oh my God!” Edith’s voice.

Doug couldn’t see her, didn’t know how she had gotten there. But she sounded like an angel to him.

“Edith! Where’s the tractor?”

“Right here,” she said, her voice anxious, high. “I rode out on it.”

“Great! Get the tow cable. Quick!”

It seemed to take an eternity and a half for Edith to find the tow cable and then clamber down into the rille behind Doug and tie it to one of the attachment rings on his backpack. She used the cable to climb out again, then went up to the tractor.

“Use the winch,” Doug called to her. “Controls are on the dashboard.”

Edith stared at the dashboard but couldn’t figure out which of the toggles or keypads tan the winch. Instead, she revved up the engines and started backing away, slowly.

“Easy—easy,” Doug’s voice crackled in her earphones. “He’s in a fabric suit.”

Edith thought of all the rodeos she had seen, with cowboys guiding their tough little ponies in steer-roping competitions. Just ease on back, she said silently to the tractor. That’s it, honey, nice and slow and easy.

“Hold it,” Doug commanded. “We’re on safe ground but I think Barn’s passed out.”

Edith clambered down from the tractor and went to the edge of the gulch. Doug was connecting his emergency air hose from his backpack tank to Gordette’s. She shook her head inside her helmet. If it’d been me, I’d of let the sumbitch die down there. He tried to kill Doug!

But she heard Gordette cough and sputter and knew he was going to make it. Doug had saved him.

It took the better part of an hour to get them both out of the rille and their air tanks topped off from the tractor’s supply. Then Edith started back toward Moonbase with Doug sitting between her and Gordette.

For hours Gordette said nothing. The man just sat on Doug’s other side, wrapped in his spacesuit and total silence.

At last Doug said to him, “I’ve been pretty close to death, Bam. It changes your outlook on life.”

“Does it?” Gordette muttered.

“It did for me. I think you’re going to find it will for you, too.”

Gordette said nothing. Edith thought Doug was wasting his breath.

“When we get back to Moonbase,” Doug went on, “you’ll have the chance to start a new life. Start all over, with the past gone forever.”

“Until they throw you out of Moonbase,” Gordette said.

“They’re not going to do that, Bam. With your help, we can beat them.”

“With my help?”

“I want you with us. I want you to be part of Moonbase.”

“Do you?”

“We’ve gone through a lot together, Bam. We’re bound together. Life or death, what affects one of us affects us both.”

Gordette was silent for several moments. Then he said grudgingly, “You got some grip, all right. Once you get your hands on a man you don’t let go, do you?”

“That’s up to you,” Doug answered.

“You’re crazy, you know that?”

“Maybe,” Doug admitted.

“And what about you, lady?” Gordette asked sullenly. “You as crazy as this man here?”

Edith almost snapped out her true feelings. But she realized that Doug had risked his life to save his would-be murderer. And now it all hung on what she had to say.

She swallowed her anger. “If Doug wants you to be with us, that’s good enough for me.”

“You’d trust me?”

Edith blurted, “Not very far. Not at first, anyway.”

For a moment there was silence, then Gordette laughed: a low, ironic chuckle. “Fair enough, I guess. Fair enough.”

Edith wished she could see the man’s face. Doug’s not crazy, she thought. He’s wiser than all of us put together. But I wish I could see Gordette’s face. I’d feel better about this if I could see his eyes.