Test of Fire

Chapter 8

Alec stood at the observation dome’s main window and gazed across the tumbled, broken wingwall floor to the bleak horizon.

Hanging above the weary, slumped mountains of Alphonsus, floating softly in the blackness, shone the blue, beckoning crescent of Earth. It glowed, catching the light of the now-quiet Sun on bands of glistening white, casting vivid shadows across the pitted gray lunar floor.

From slightly behind him he heard a soft voice:

“All of beauty’s there, And all of truth. Let me leave this land of mirthless men And return to the home of my youth.”

Turning, Alec saw Dr. Lord, the astronomer. The old man was smiling faintly; the Earthlight coming through the window caught the wispy remains of his dead-white hair and produced a halo for him against the darkness of the room’s dim interior lighting.

“I didn’t realize you were a poet,” Alec said.

Dr. Lord’s voice was the whisper of a dying man.

“Oh, yes. Back before the sky burned, when there were still girls for me to impress, I spent hours memorizing poetry. Between the poetry and the observation work, I made out rather well. You know, working all night at the observatory… you asked a girl to keep you company.” He chuckled faintly at his memories.

“Has the Council meeting started?” Alec asked.

“Yes, about ten minutes ago. Your mother said the vote won’t come until after considerable debate, and it would be impolite for you to be present while they re trying to decide.”

Alec nodded. “I wouldn’t want to offend any of the Council members.”

“No, that wouldn’t do,” Dr. Lord agreed.

Turning back to the window, Alec thought, All of beauty’s there, and all of truth… and much, much more.

Dr. Lord moved up to stand beside him at the window, and Alec could see their faint reflections despite the deliberately low lighting of the observation dome. Lord was ancient, frail, his chalky skin stretched over the bones of his face like crumbling antique parchment. He breathed through his mouth, so that his lips were drawn back to reveal big, rodent-like teeth, surprisingly strong and healthy in his deathlike face.

Alec studied his own face and wondered what it would be like if he ever reached Dr. Lord’s age. He was taller than the old man, but not by much. Not as big as his father or most of the men he knew.

His features were too delicate, almost feminine, and his hair curled in golden ringlets no matter how short he cropped it. But he had his mother’s dark, smoldering eyes. And he saw that there were tight, angry lines around his mouth. Tension lines.

Hate lines.

“I was there when it happened,” Dr. Lord muttered, more to himself than to Alec.

Alec said nothing and hoped that the old man wouldn’t go through his entire litany. For a few moments the only sound in the dome was the faint electrical hum of the air fans.

“We had no idea…” Dr. Lord looked as if he was still dazed by it, even now, more than twenty-five years later. “Oh, I had proposed that perhaps the Sun emits a truly large flare every ten millennia or so… Tommy Gold had suggested it earlier, of course, and I was following his lead.”

He paused, and Alec tensed himself to beg the old man’s permission to leave. But, “When it happened, I was at the observatory in Maine… it was summer, but the nights were cool up on the mountaintop.”

Alec had missed his chance, he knew, and he could not risk being called impolite. So while the old astronomer rambled away, Alec stared out at the luminous crescent of Earth, narrowing his thoughts to the debate going on in the Council. He knew that the choice was between Kobol and himself.

Kobol had the advantages of age, experience, and no personal involvement. As a Council member, he was physically present at the debate.

No risk of impoliteness for him. Alec’s only advantages were his mother, and the urgings that burned inside his guts.

“…the sky just lit up. For a moment we thought it was dawn, but it was too early. And too bright. The sky burned. It got so bright you couldn’t look at it. The air became too hot to breathe. We ran down to the film vault, down in the basement, behind the safety doors where the airconditioning was always on. But they all died. Peterson, Harding, Sternbach… that lovely Robertson girl. They all died. All of them…”

Alec put a hand on the old man’s frail, bony shoulder. “It’s all right… you made it. You survived.”

“Yes. I saw you here. I saw this dome.” Lord’s soft voice was agitated, shaking. “I think I must have gone a little mad, back then. You have no idea… no conception… everyone dying…”

“But we found you,” Alec soothed. “You’re all right now.”

“It all burned. The sky burned. There was no place to turn to. Nowhere to go.”

Very gently, Alec led the old man away from the window. “Come on, let’s get you down to your quarters. You’re tired.”

Dr. Lord let Alec lead him to the powerlift.

Usually it stayed unpowered and people clambered up and down using their own muscles.

But for the old man, Alec touched the ON switch.

A strong whiff of machine oil puffed up from the recess beside the ladder, and a motor whined to life, complainingly. The ladder rungs began creaking past them. Alec helped the aged astronomer onto one of the steps and hopped onto it beside him. Wordlessly they descended five levels, to the living quarters.

He left the old man at his door, then followed the rough-hewn corridor toward the settlement’s central plaza, where the Council’s meeting room was. The rock walls of the corridor were lined with pipes carrying water, electricity and heat: the settlement’s three necessities. Light tubes shone overhead, not so much for the aid of the pedestrians as for the benefit of the grass that carpeted the corridor floor.

As he padded on slippered feet through the meager, oxygen-producing growth, Alec wondered what it would be like on Earth. To be outside without a suit. Would he be frightened? There were stories about men going crazy, out in the open with nothing to protect them. And the gravity…

With a shake of his head, he dismissed all fears and strode doggedly toward the central plaza and the Council meeting room.

Chapter 9

There was a crowd in the central plaza. Alec knew there would be, but still it shocked him to see so many people in one place, milling around, not working, almost touching each other at random. The big high-domed cavern was buzzing with a hundred muted conversations.

The elaborately carved doors of the Council chamber were still closed. No one was allowed in or out while the Council was in debate. The doors had been lovingly designed and produced by one of the original members of the Council, after he had retired from active duty. He had died not long ago, and willed his remains to the food reprocessors.

Alec drifted through the crowd aimlessly, careful not to touch or be touched by any stranger. He was too nervous to wait in his quarters for word of the Council’s decision. But this crowd was making him even jumpier. He could see that everyone was reacting the same way: the more people who poured into the plaza, the more excited everyone became. The noise level was growing steadily.

“You look like a man in need of refreshment.”

The voice startled Alec. He turned to see Bill Lawrence, one of the settlement’s bright young engineers and one of his lifelong friends. Thick dark hair cropped short, beard neatly trimmed, Lawrence approached the world with a kind of stiff formality that melted into playfulness with his friends.

“Do I look that uptight?” Alec asked him, forcing a grin.

“Everybody’s that uptight,” Lawrence answered.

“Why do you think they’re clustering here?”

Lawrence took him by the arm—a privilege granted only to friends—and guided Alec through the shuffling, chattering crowd back toward the stone benches that circled the dwarf trees at the far end of the plaza. Several more of Alec’s closest friends were there, sipping from plastic cups.

Alec sat in their midst, wishing that Lawrence’s brittle bones hadn’t ruled him out of the Earth mission.

Handing him a cup, Lawrence explained, “Deitz brewed this stuff in his chem lab, in between experiments on rat poison and rocket fuel. It’s strictly illegal, but sells for twenty-five units a liter.”

Alec took a cautious sip. The liquid burned his tongue and almost gagged him. “Yugh… who would buy a liter of that?”

“Nobody.”

They all laughed.

Zeke, a roundish golden-haired young man who was called “the Bumblebee” because of his constant air of busy-ness, said, “We’re going to turn Deitz in to the Council… as soon as we’ve finished drinking up the evidence.”

Alec shook his head. “You’ll be dead long before then.” He placed his cup down on the bench beside him.

“It’s sort of scary seeing everybody hovering around here,” Joanna said in her throaty voice.

She was tall, dark, leggy.

Alec nodded agreement. “Isn’t anybody at work today?”

Lawrence, still standing, eyed the crowd. “Only those with really essential duties. Everyone else just walked off and came here.”

“I don’t understand it,” Alec said. It was frightening.

“Kobol’s people had a little parade just before you arrived,” said Zeke the Bumblebee. All the miners and techs… they said it was a spontaneous demonstration.”

“A parade! Without permission?”

Lawrence nodded grimly.

“ First they leave their jobs and then they parade without the Council’s permission.” Alec’s voice sounded shocked, even to himself.

“Kobol wants to head the Earth mission,”

Joanna said.

“It’s not just the Earth mission,” Lawrence corrected.

“It’s control of the Council. If Kobol can get his way, he’ll head the mission and then return to take over the Council. Your mother’s fighting for her Chairmanship in there.”

“Kobol can’t defeat her,” Alec snapped.

“If he comes back from Earth with the fissionables,”

Lawrence said, “he’ll demand an election and Lisa will be forced to step down.”

“Which is why it’s important that you head up the mission,” Zeke took over. “I sure as hell don’t want to see the miners and techs taking over. We’ll be overpopulated and run into the ground inside of a few years. Kobol’s followers never seem to understand that you can grow people a lot faster than you can carve out new farmlands.”

“Kobol won’t head the mission,” Alec said tightly. “And he won’t take over the Council.”

“Says who?” a new voice shouted at him.

A man in his mid-thirties was standing between the bench on which Alec sat and the next one. He was big, shaggy-haired, and wore the fire-red coverall of a miner.

“It’s impolite to break into a private conversation,”

Alec replied carefully, noticing that several other miners and techs stood behind the speaker.

“Oohhh.” The miner pursed his lips. “Now we mustn’t be impolite, must we? Wouldn’t want to make the frail little scientists’ darlings break into a rash.”

Lawrence put a hand on Alec’s shoulder. “Pay no attention to them.”

Alec forced himself to turn back to his friends.

“Kobol’s gonna set things straight around here,” the miner continued loudly. “Put you brittle-boned sweethearts in your place. The settlement’s gotta be ruled by the strong! You eggshells push buttons all day while we break our asses for you. Gonna be a lot of changes.”

Struggling to control himself, Alec got to his feet. “Let’s get out of here,” he said quietly to his friends. “There are limits even to politeness.”

But the miner stepped lithely around the bench and planted himself squarely in front of Alec.

Grinning, he rested his fists on his hips. He was a head taller than Alec, and bulged with strength and self-confidence.

“Hey, don’t get upset. I didn’t mean to make you cry!”

Alec stood glaring at him.

“In fact,” the miner continued, laughing, “I really oughtta wish you good luck on your vote in the Council. You’re gonna need it!”

He leaned his head back and guffawed; the miners and techs roared with him.

Alec could feel Lawrence’s hand on his arm, tugging at him. “Come on, Alec; you’re only embarrassing yourself by listening to him.”

“Hey wait,” the miner went on. “Listen, kid, I’d vote for you myself if I was on the Council.”

Alec said nothing.

“Sure! I really would. Providing I got the same goodies that the rest of the Councilmen are getting!”

Alec could feel the heat of his anger giving way to something far colder than lunar ice. He pulled his arm free of Lawrence’s grasp.

“What do you mean?” he asked in a voice so low that he could hardly hear it himself.

“Go ask your Momma, little boy.” The miners and techs were all grinning hugely now. Most of the crowd in the plaza had swarmed up to surround them.

Alec took a step toward him.

“What’s the matter, kid? She’s already fucked half the Council for you, why not a couple of real men?”

Alec aimed for the throat. The miner put his hands up to protect himself and Alec slammed into him. They toppled over the stone bench together and landed on the grassy ground with a thudding grunt. Someone screamed, voices shouted, but that was all far away. Alec felt the solid strength of the miner’s muscular arms grabbing at him.

The miner was big and catlike, hard-handed and strong. But he hadn’t spent hours each day in the Earth-gravity centrifuge, as Alec had for months.

Alec scrambled to his feet and turned, saw the miner still in a crouch, knees bent, one hand touching the ground like an ape’s.

Looking up at him, the miner smiled. “I heard you got a temper, kid. Now you’re gonna see what it costs you.”

He got to his feet slowly. Alec stood still, realizing that they were standing between benches now, little room to maneuver. Every nerve in him, every muscle was screaming with rage and anticipation.

But he held himself in check, waiting, waiting.

The miner towered over Alec, big as his father.

He made a feinting move to his right. Alec ignored it. Another left, and again Alec did not respond.

Then he launched a straightarm blow to Alec’s head.

Alec slipped under it, kicked the man’s knee out, chopped hard at his kidney and brought a cupped hand up into his face. It caught his nose. Blood spurted and he fell heavily against the stone bench.

He looked surprised now, with blood splashed over his face. The grin was gone. He got to all fours, tried to rise to his feet again, but the damaged knee would not support him. He went down again on his face.

Alec looked around at the circle of spectators.

“Anyone else have something to say?”

Lawrence came to his side. “Come on, it’s over. Let’s get out of here.”

Alec let his companions lead him through the hushed crowd while the miner’s friends bent over him.

They made their way to Alec’s quarters, which he shared with his mother. Gradually, one by one, his friends drifted away until only Joanna remained.

They were drinking legitimate liquor now, part of the precious supply that was synthesized each year from the unusable waste products of the hydroponics farms.

Joanna was sitting on the padded sofa, feet tucked up beneath her. Alec sat beside her. The furniture was all made of lunar stone, their most plentiful material, and padded with foam cushions. The room was spacious by lunar standards, big enough for a large viewscreen on one wall, two chairs and a low stone table in front of the sofa. Paintings hung on the other walls, and the ceiling panels glowed with a soft fluorescence.

“You know,” Joanna was saying, “I think Deitz’s rat poison extract tastes better than this stuff.”

Alec grunted. “How can you taste anything? It burns the taste buds off your tongue.”

“It’s strong, all right.” Joanna stared down at her cup for a moment, then smiled up at Alec. “I had no idea you were so strong. You handled that miner as if he were a toy.”

With a shrug, Alec answered, “Spend as many hours in the centrifuge as I do and you’ll get strong, too.”

“You really are dedicated,” she said softly.

He didn’t know what to answer to that one.

Joanna was watching him, her large almond-shaped eyes almost as dark as his mother’s.

“Doesn’t anything interest you,” she asked, a smile toying at her lips, “except the mission to Earth?”

“A lot of things interest me. But the mission comes first.”

“Oh. I see.”

“The life of the whole community depends on this mission,” he said gravely. “If we don’t get those fissionables, and soon, we’ll be in irreversible trouble.”

She nodded thoughtfully. “And that’s why you’ve been so… inaccessible?”

The games they play, Alec thought to himself.

Think of me before anyone or anything else. But he knew that he played the same game himself.

“I’m in training, Joanna. Facing a full Earth gravity is like carrying six times your normal weight. Half the people here can’t stand it, their bones have become too brittle. And then there’ve been the classes in military tactics, logistics, all the planning…”

“You’ve been involved in those classes since we all were children,” Joanna said.

“Yes,” he said, “and it’s paid off. Did you know that the Council’s adopted my plan for the mission? I worked it out with old Colonel Dunn, all the details, the men and equipment, the timing — everything. They accepted it over Kobol’s plan.”

“No, I didn’t know. That’s wonderful.” But her voice was flat, plainly uninterested.

“I’ve even studied the old tapes of Earth’s weather… rainfall and temperature changes, things like that.”

“But what about you?” Joanna asked. “What do you want out of all this?”

“Me?” Suddenly he was puzzled. “I want to lead the mission.” There was more to it, of course, but he had no intention of discussing that with anyone.

“But why? What’s the reason… your own personal reason?”

Alec did not answer. He couldn’t.

Joanna made an impatient huffing sound. She turned squarely to him, kneeling, sitting on her heels. “Alec, what do you want? Why is the Earth mission so, so… all-encompassing for you? Is it because of your father/ what he did? Or is it to keep your mother secure as Chairwoman of the Council, or what?”

He edged away from her. “It’s not for my mother, and it’s certainly not for my father. It’s for me. I’m going because I want to go. It’s my life.”

“You enjoy risking your life.”

“Don’t get so personal,” he said. “It’s not polite.”

Her mouth was a determined thin line. “Alec, don’t give me any of that politeness crap. We’ve known each other since we were toddlers and I want to know why you’re so anxious to throw your life away. It frightens me!”

“I’m the man best qualified for the job. Nobody in the community, from Kobol on down, has scored as high as I have in all the physical and mental tests. I enjoy doing what I’ve been trained to do…”

“And she trained you,” Joanna said. “She’s brainwashed you.”

Alec jumped to his feet. “I think you’d better leave, Joanna. Either you don’t understand or you don’t want to.”

“No, Alec. It’s not either of those. I do understand… better than you do. I want to see you living your own life, not hers. Why should you throw yourself away for her career, her revenge?”

“Get out!” Alec shouted.

Defeated, Joanna got to her feet and went to the door. She opened it, turned her head toward Alec briefly and smiled sadly at him. “You poor fool.”

He was almost asleep when his mother finally returned home. For hours he had lain on the air mattress in his own cubicle, the lights off, staring at the hand-woven tapestry that concealed the water tank and fuel cell, listening to the mattress sigh every time he moved, trying to turn off his mind, become a blank, a cipher, a nothing. But every time he shut his eyes, he saw that miner’s leering face. It shifted and melted into the pictures of his father that he had seen. His father, who had left the Moon the day he had been born.

“You’re sleeping?”

Alec’s eyes snapped open. His mother was standing in the doorway, framed by the light from the main room.

“No.” He reached up and flicked on the overhead lights. She looked very tired.

Watching her as she stepped into his cubicle and took the chair next to his bed, Alec could see why every man in the settlement desired her. Lisa Ducharme Morgan was an enchantress, a dark beautiful sorceress. Compared to her, Joanna and the other girls his own age were pale and insubstantial.

But Lisa was a cool beauty, a distant Diana or Artemis, perfectly attuned to the task of governing this tiny hothouse of transplanted humanity.

“I heard about your roughnecking,” she said quietly. “What were you trying to prove?”

“That you’re not a whore,” he answered, and immediately regretted it.

But she didn’t even blink. “Oh, that again? Another little benefit we have to thank your father for.”

“Has the Council voted?” he asked.

“No.” She shook her head wearily. “The debate drags on. Kobol’s people are trying every trick they can play—even claiming that you’re too emotionally unstable to lead the mission. I wouldn’t be surprised if that fight wasn’t arranged deliberately.”

Alec thought it over briefly. “It could have been,” he admitted.

She leaned toward him, suddenly blazing with intensity. “Then can’t you understand how important it is for you to hold your temper? You broke every social rule we have today; how do you think the Council members will react to that? Save your anger for the real enemy, or you’ll ruin everything for both of us!”

With an effort, Alec kept his voice level. “All I want to know is when the Council will vote, and whether or not I will win.”

She stared at her son for a long moment. Alec looked back steadily into those endlessly deep, infinitely dark eyes. His own eyes.

“The vote will be tomorrow morning. I think we will win.”

“Then I’m going to Earth.”

“Yes. Just as your father did,” she replied bitterly.

Chapter 10

Alec snapped awake the next morning like the sudden step from darkness into full sunlight up on the Moon’s surface. He dry-bathed quickly and pulled a black jumpsuit over his trim frame. His mother was already dressed and waiting for him in the apartment’s main room. She handed him a cup of hot soybrew.

“I’ve decided to bring you with me to the Council meeting,” Lisa said.

He took a burning sip of the brew. “Kobol’s going to be there?”

“Of course.”

Alec watched her primp her thick, wavy hair in front of the room’s only mirror. The blue-gray suit she wore was simple, even severe, from its high Chinese collar to the loose-fitting slacks that ended in foot slippers. Still, when she raised her hands over her head that way… when she walked and her hips swayed rhythmically… Alec heard all the whispered gossip again, all the taunting shouts from childhood. He could feel his face burning. He clamped his teeth tightly together.

Lisa turned to him. “You needn’t look so grim. I told you that we’ll win the vote, and we will. Now come along.”

The Council chamber was purposely kept austere.

The rock walls were unfinished, bare, as rough as the day the chamber had been blasted out of the virgin lunar stone. There were no decorations at all, nothing in the room except the big circular table and chairs, and a single viewscreen hung in the corner opposite the chamber’s only door.

Most of the Council members were already seated around the circular table. Lisa swept in regally, extending her hand to the men nearest her chair, smiling her hello to the others. She allowed Alec to hold her chair for her, then directed him to a chair almost exactly across the table, which had been set up for him beforehand.

“I thank you for the courtesy of allowing me to invite Alec to join us this morning.” Lisa smiled sweetly to the Council.

Alec kept his face blank as he took his chair. It was not polite to use your position for a point of personal privilege, but it would have been even more impolite for a Council member to object to Lisa’s request. But how will this affect their voting? he wondered to himself.

Several Council members nodded to Alec. He knew them all, of course. Nine men, six women.

But three of them were still missing: Kobol and his two closest allies.

“That’s the chair your father used to sit in,” said the fat old fool next to Alec.

“We saved it for you. Perhaps in a few years you will grace the Council with your membership.”

Alec nodded curtly. He did not trust himself to say anything.

Kobol arrived at last and all conversations stopped. Flanked by his two henchmen, he stood for a moment at the door and looked straight at Lisa. She returned his gaze without wavering.

Then his eyes flicked away and he went to his chair.

Alec watched him, and knew that Kobol wanted the Council chairmanship, wanted to rule the lunar settlement, and especially wanted Lisa. And Alec felt a special brand of hate for Kobol. The man was his mother’s age. Tall and spare, his bony face looked cadaverous to Alec. Deepset eyes that were almost impossible to see under their graying, shaggy brows. His teeth were large, too prominent, horsy. He had worn a bushy mustache as long as Alec had known him. At first, Alec had thought it was to show that he wasted no extra water or power on shaving. More recently, though, Alec had come to the conclusion that Kobol’s mustache was there to divert attention from the fact that he was going bald.

As he sat at the Council table, at Lisa’s right, he said in his reedy, nasal voice, “Sorry to keep you waiting. Let’s get on with it.”

Lisa allowed a slight smile to flicker across her lips. “We resume the adjourned session of yesterday,” he said for the microphone link to the central computer file. “The question before the Council is, who will command the upcoming expedition to Earth. The nominees are Councilman Martin Kobol and Citizen Alexander Morgan. Arguments have been heard and a motion for a vote was tabled at the conclusion of yesterday’s meeting.”

She glanced around the table. “Are there any questions before we vote on the motion?”

“I have a question,” said Councilman LaStrande. He looked like a wizened old gnome to Alec, diminutive, a scraggly beard sprouting from his chin, his eyes huge behind thick glasses.

Lisa acknowledged him with a nod.

LaStrande pushed his chair back and stood up.

Jabbing a gnarled finger at Alec, he said, “Citizen Morgan is a very talented and capable young man. Everyone agrees on that. But he is young. Too young, I fear, to lead an expedition of such critical importance…”

“But the Benford expedition of…”

LaStrande cut him down with an imperious gesture.

“Let’s not waste our time by arguing about previous expeditions!” His voice filled the room.

“Some have been successful, some have not. I might point out that Morgan’s own father is responsible for the most disastrous expedition of them all, which is the direct cause of the crisis in which we now find ourselves.”

Alec seethed in silent fury. So LaStrande has gone over to Kobol’s side. Did my mother count this in her calculations about the vote?

Lisa fixed LaStrande with a cold gaze. “Surely you’re not suggesting that my former husband’s actions should bar my son from assuming his rightful duties as a citizen?” Her voice was razoredged.

“Of course not,” LaStrande replied smoothly, “but the Council must consider that every action has a cause. We are critically short of fissionable fuels. Why? Because twenty years ago Douglas Morgan led an expedition Earthside and refused to return here. Refused!”

“But he sent the nuclear fuels we needed,” said the fat man next to Alec, his voice a placating whine.

LaStrande nodded. “Of course he did,” he replied, dripping sarcasm. “And five years later, he was pleased to allow us to have a little more of the fissionables we need to remain alive. And then a third time, five years after that, he doled out a bit of nuclear fuel to us. But nothing since then. He has refused to send us any further shipments of fissionables, despite all our efforts and entreaties. For the past five years he has held us hostage to his renegade ego. And for the past five twitching years we have sat here politely discussing what we should do, while our fuel reserves dwindle toward zero.”

The Council members mumbled to each other and shifted nervously in their seats.

“Morgan is still down there Earthside, turning himself into some sort of barbarian emperor and thumbing his nose at us!” LaStrande’s powerful voice rang against the rock walls of the chamber.

“He knows how desperately we need those fissionables. He knows we will all die without them. But does he care?”

“No!” several Councilmen shouted.

“And now we’re expected to follow the lead of his wife, and send his whelp down there? To help us obtain the lifeblood we need? Or to help further Douglas Morgan’s schemes for setting up an empire on Earth that will eventually kill us all?”

Several Council members pounded the table and roared their approval of LaStrande’s attack.

Kobol sat back, idly tugging at his ear, saying nothing and looking inscrutable behind his mustache and thick eyebrows.

Alec burned with anger. He clenched the arms of his chair, coiled inwardly and was ready to leap to his feet to shout them down. But then he looked at his mother.

She sat there silent and unmoving, an ice-queen, waiting for the fools to shout themselves out. Only her eyes were alive, and they blazed with cold fury.

The Councilors’ shouting raggedly tapered off to a few scattered mumbles, then went dead. The chamber became absolutely silent.

Then, in a voice that Alec had to strain to hear, Lisa said, “Councilman LaStrande, your concern for our future and well-being has led you beyond the bounds of politeness and common sense. Surely you don’t believe that the offenses of the father taint the son—and the wife, as well.”

LaStrande blinked his watery frog’s eyes at her.

“I, eh… I merely wanted the Council to, em, to consider all the facts of this matter.”

“Including,” she countered, steel-hard, “the fact that I have lost a husband. Renounced him, years ago. Including the fact that my son, my only child, has been raised without a father, and feels all the taunts and sick little innuendos that you have so rashly brought into this debate. Including the fact that my son has volunteered to head this dangerous expedition so that he may prove to all the foul-mouthed and petty-minded fools in this community that he is his own man, not a duplicate of his traitorous father! Include those facts in your considerations, Councilors. Include them all!”

They all sank back in their chairs, as if pushed by the force of Lisa’s words. LaStrande sat down and studied the table top before him. Kobol smiled wanly and crossed his legs.

“Madam Chairwoman,” called white-haired Catherine Demain, sitting two seats to Lisa’s left.

Lisa nodded to her.

“I’m sorry that this debate is reaching such an unfortunate level of incivility,” she said, without getting up from her chair. “But a critical point has been raised by this outburst. Douglas Morgan has committed treason against us. There’s no other word for his actions, even though I counted Doug among my closest friends on the day he left for Earthside. The question is, why did he do such a horrible thing? Why did he turn against us? Is there some factor in his psychological makeup that—forgive me—might have been inherited by his son? Or is it…”

Alec shot to his feet without thinking about what he was doing. Barely controlling his voice, he said, “I will not sit here and listen to my mother and myself being discussed like two specimens in a biology lab.”

The Councilor at his right reached for his arm, but Alec pulled away and started walking around the table toward Catherine Demain.

“Since I volunteered for this expedition I have been subjected to every possible physical and mental test that the medical staff could devise. My record is available to all of you for the most intense study.”

He stopped at the Councilwoman’s chair. She had to turn and look up to see him. Clutching the chair’s high back and looming over her, Alec asked, “Have you studied my record?”

“Yes, of course I have.”

“Is there any indication of any imbalance whatsoever?”

Alec found that deep inside him his anger was being supplanted by another emotion: not joy, exactly, but a thrill, an excitement, the tingle of power.

“No,” Catherine Demain replied softly. “All of your tests were… well, you got excellent ratings.”

“You yourself ran many of those tests,” he said, looking down at her.

She nodded and turned away from him.

Alec swept the room with his eyes. “I know that I’m young. I know that my father failed us all — but he failed no one so badly as my mother and myself. And I also know that I’ve scored higher in every test, from word-association to heavy gunnery, than any citizen in this community. If my name were Kobol, or LaStrande, or Nickerson, you wouldn’t have had the slightest hesitation in approving me to head the expedition. That is the truth and we all know it.”

“You are out of order,” Lisa said firmly. “Apologize to the Council and return to your seat.” But her eyes sparkled.

He grinned at his mother. “Sorry. I beg the Council’s indulgence.”

As he went back to his seat, one of the younger women Councilors called for the floor.

“Councilor Dortman,” Lisa acknowledged.

Sylvia Dortman had been a strong supporter of Alec’s nomination, one of Lisa’s most dependable allies.

But now she looked troubled. “There’s no sense trying to ignore the problem that’s bothering all of us,” she said. “And that problem, quite simply, is trust. We trusted Douglas Morgan and he failed us. Deliberately. Can we trust his son?” Before anyone could reply, she quickly added, “I’m not questioning Alec’s loyalty or strength of purpose. I’m not questioning his physical or mental abilities. I’m not even questioning his intentions. But the basic fear remains. His father was just as capable and well-liked and respected—more so, from what I’ve been told. And Douglas turned traitor. We don’t know why. Equally, we don’t know what Alec will do when he reaches Earth.”

For long moments no one said a word. All the Councilors turned to Lisa, waiting for her reaction.

Alec sat rigid with tension, staring at his mother like the rest of them.

At last, Lisa said very softly, “We are beginning to hear repetitions of previous discussions. A motion has been made to put the question to a vote. Who will second the motion?”

“One moment, please.” LaStrande again. “I suggest that we change from our usual voice vote to a secret ballot. To assure complete freedom of choice.”

“Very well,” Lisa said. Her eyes closed and her voice sounded infinitely weary. “If there are no other objections…”

Why? Alec raged silently at her. Why vote now, before these stupid arguments have been laid to rest? Then he saw the withering look Lisa was firing at Sylvia Dortman and he suddenly understood.

She wants to get the vote in while she still has the majority. She’s afraid that our support is crumbling away.

The Councilors voted by pressing the appropriate button on the tiny panels set into the table at each of their places. Their votes were registered by the computer and displayed on the viewscreen on the wall. Fifteen Council members, eight votes needed to carry the election.

The screen flickered and showed: COUNCIL VOTE. SIX VOTES FOR MORGAN. FOUR VOTES FOR KOBOL. FIVE ABSTENTIONS.

Twisted around in his chair to read the screen, Alec felt fear for the first time. Five abstentions!

They could swing the vote to Kobol. Just four of them could!

“We’ll have to take another ballot,” Lisa said.

“Madam Chairwoman.”

It was Kobol. He had stayed silent through the debate so far, as propriety demanded. But now he rose to his feet, a lanky unfolding of knees and elbows.

“There’s been enough debate,” he said slowly, nasally, “to convince me that further discussion could split the Council into antagonistic factions and cause divisions among us that might not be healed for years. I think the time has come for a compromise, in the interests of peace and unity.”

“What do you have in mind?” Lisa asked.

With a humorless smile, Kobol replied, “If we look only at the various physical and mental tests that we’ve all been subjected to, there’s no question that Alec is the best qualified man to head the expedition Earthside. What we’re arguing about here is a question of trust—or guilt, really.”

Alec could not take his eyes off Kobol’s face.

Something was going on behind the mask he wore.

“No one wants to head this expedition more than I do,” Kobol continued. “I think I’d do a good job of it, despite my limp. I’ve been Earthside before, I know what to expect. I’d be prepared to fight off any opposition we might meet—even if it was Doug Morgan and his barbarian army.”

A sigh of understanding went around the table.

“But I also know that for me to insist on heading the expedition could cause irreparable damage here: friend against friend, jealousy and hatred instead of harmony and cooperation.”

What’s he driving at? Alec ached to know.

“So I would like to withdraw my name from consideration as the expedition’s commander…”

The Councilors gave a collective gasp.

“…providing I can be named deputy commander, serving under Alec.”

Alec felt as if he’d been led up to a mountaintop and then pushed off. The whole Council seemed stunned, but soon enough they recovered and began to murmur, nod heads, look back and forth at one another. Kobol sat down while they chattered.

Lisa called for order.

LaStrande asked to be recognized. “I’ve never seen such a generous, unselfish move in this chamber. I suggest that we name Alexander Morgan commander of the expedition and Martin Kobol deputy commander—by unanimous voice vote!”

Everyone cheered. The actual vote was a formality.

Smiling, relieved, happy that the impasse had been broken, the Councilors filed out of the chamber. Each one of them shook Alec’s hand— and Kobol’s. Alec stood by his chair, still in turmoil inside, until no one was left in the room except himself, his mother, and Kobol.

Lisa stood behind her chair. It struck Alec that she was using it like a shield, keeping it between herself and Kobol.

“Is that what you wanted?” she asked him, in a low voice.

Kobol grinned at her. “Not entirely. But it’s a step in the right direction.”

Alec started around the table for his mother.

She said to Kobol, “Martin, I want to… thank you. It took a considerable amount of sense and courage to suggest this compromise.”

“I’m always willing to settle for half a loaf, when it looks sure that I won’t get any if I don’t compromise.”

Alec reached her side, but she was still focused on Kobol, who had also come closer. Now he was only a pace or two away from Lisa, within arm’s reach.

“You’re still determined to rule the Council, aren’t you, Martin?”

“The Council—and everyone on it.”

She smiled at that. “And you believe you can use this expedition to enhance your position? Even as deputy commander?” Lisa put a subtle emphasis on the word deputy.

“Of course,” he answered. “Why do you want Alec to head the expedition so badly? He’ll be a Council candidate, won’t he, when he comes back? Someday you’ll try to maneuver him into the chairmanship, after you decide to step down.”

“Why not?” Lisa said.

“Because I’ll be chairman by then,” Kobol said, with iron certainty in his voice.

She laughed. “You’re dreaming, Martin.”

“Some dreams come true,” he replied, shrugging. “You’ve dreamed big dreams, god knows. And now one of them’s coming true. Your son’s going to avenge your husband’s treason. Clear the family name. Preserve your power on the Council.”

Lisa reached an arm out toward Alec. He took her outstretched hand, and she pulled him close to her.

“That’s right,” she whispered back to Kobol, in a low, breathless hiss. “Alec is going to achieve greatness. And you can’t stop him.”

“Stop him?” Kobol chuckled. “I’m going to help him. I’ve voluntarily placed myself under his command, remember?”

“Yes,” she said. “Of course you have.”

For a nerve-stretching moment the three of them stood there: Alec by his mother’s side, Kobol facing them both. Alec saw that his mother had locked her gaze on Kobol, whose eyes were hidden, unfathomable. But the fire in Lisa’s eyes was something Alec had never seen before, something beyond fear, beyond malice, much stronger even than hatred.

At last Kobol took a step backward. With a muttered, “If you’ll excuse me…” he headed for the door.

After the door slid shut behind him, Lisa turned to her son. “He’ll try to ruin you, subvert your authority, perhaps even wreck the expedition.”

“I know,” Alec said. “He’ll try to kill me.”

She shuddered and grasped his arm tightly. Alec pulled her to him and let her lean her head against his shoulder.

“No, no, he wouldn’t… Martin wouldn’t go that far.” But she looked up at him with real fear in her eyes. “I shouldn’t have pushed you so hard. I shouldn’t have forced you…”

“You didn’t force me to do anything.”

Her eyes closed wearily for a moment. “Alec, you’re still a child. You don’t understand any of this. I can manipulate you, the Councilors, everyone…” She looked away, toward the closed door.

“Almost everyone.”

“I can take care of Kobol,” he insisted.

“Can you? Will you know what to do, when the time comes?”

“Yes.” He was dead calm inside now. “When the time comes, I’ll kill him.”

“No! It mustn’t come to that! I don’t want you even to think that way. If it comes to violence, he’ll kill you. He’ll strike when you least expect it. He could be a thousand kilometers away and he’ll still be able to reach you. It mustn’t come to violence, Alec, or you’ll end up the dead one.”

Alec pulled away from her. “I can take care of myself. And him. And you, too.”

She gazed at him, the expression on her face slowly changing, shifting, as she appraised her son.

“And your father?” she asked. “What about him?”

The old sickening wave of hatred rose inside Alec again. “I can take care of him, as well.”

“He’ll come looking for you, as soon as he learns that we’ve landed an expedition on Earth.”

“Let him,” Alec said. “If he doesn’t, then I’ll go looking for him.”

“And when you two find each other…?”

Alec’s fists were clenched so tightly that his fingernails were cutting into his palms. “When I find him, I’ll kill him.”

Lisa Ducharme Morgan smiled. “Tell me again,” she said softly.

“I’m going to kill him,” Alec repeated. “For all he’s done to you, Mother. I’m going to find him and kill him.”

Chapter 11

He was born in a ditch alongside the road that twisted through the hilly wooded territory between bombed-out Knoxville and abandoned Oak Ridge. His mother left him half-immersed in rain water that had accumulated in the muddy bottom of the ditch. Her only act of mercy toward him was to bite off the umbilical cord and knot it.

He never saw her.

If a pair of scavengers had not passed by a few hours later he would have died. If the woman of the pair — girl, actually, she was barely past fourteen — had not lost her own week-old baby a few days before they would have left the infant squalling there in the mud. As it was, the man scowled and grumbled when his woman took up the redfaced, naked baby.

“Leave ’im fer the varmints,” he told her.

But her eyes welled up and she started sputtering and he relented.

They had been following in the wake of a larger band of raiders, a few dozen ragged men and women who scoured the countryside, picking it clean of everything edible, wearable, or tradable.

The band had a few guns, a clever hard-faced leader who knew how to set up an ambush, and the desperation of hunger. The two scavengers had tried to join the band, but had been rebuffed angrily and threatened with death if they got close enough to be seen again.

So the two of them hung well behind the band, gleaning what they could from their leavings. It was not much. When the band attacked a farm or village they usually burned what they could not carry.

“Yer maw must’ve been one o’ them raiders,” the girl told her foundling child, once he was grown up enough to halfway understand her.

“Prob’ly her man din’t want t’ be saddled with a newborn baby and made her leave yew fer us t’ find.”

Her man would nod and mutter to himself when she crooned the story to the youngster. Feeding an extra mouth was not to his liking. Besides, the baby’s crying meant they had to stay even farther behind the raiders than they had before. He wandered off one day, less than a year later, as the autumn rains began to strip the trees of their leaves. Two weeks later she found him nailed to a tree, his gut sliced open to make a nest for teeming maggots. From the look on his face he had still been alive when they did it.

She stopped wandering then and built a crude hut of sticks and mud for herself and her baby.

They nearly starved that winter; only her forays into the shattered, haunted remains of suburban Knoxville saved them. It was pure desperation; everyone new that the buildings and streets were poison. Lingering agonizing death lurked in them, invisibly. But she slunk through the shadows night after night to take the cans of food from the abandoned store shelves that others were too frightened to touch.

By the time he was six, she was obviously dying of cancer. She hung on for four years of pain and terrifying strange growths that twisted her body horribly. He buried her and faced the world alone, a skinny pinch-faced ten-year-old who knew how to run and hide in the woods, but little else.

After months of living alone, trapping small game and avoiding all human contact, he was snared by a wandering gang of teenaged boys.

They had split off from a larger, older band of roamers and were on the prowl for food, fun, and women when they found him with a brace of rabbits tucked into his ragged shorts. Their first thought was to take the rabbits and roast him along with them over a hot fire. But their leader, wise beyond his years, asked the emaciated youngster how he caught the rabbits.

Once they realized how much he knew about hunting and surviving in the woods they adopted him into the band. He was officially named Ferret, partly because of his looks, partly because of his quick furtive movements, but mainly because he killed small game by biting through their throats.

Ferret he was, and by the time he was twenty years old he had risen to second-in-command of the band, which now numbered more than fifty men and their women. It was the most feared band of raiders throughout the rolling, wooded hills around Oak Ridge.

The satellite station revolved at a steady one g.

Alec had spent at least one hour a day over the past five years in the lunar settlement’s big centrifuge, feeling six times his normal weight. His Earth-gened muscles had always responded to the full one-gravity load without complaint.

But here on the space station, after nearly a solid month of six lunar gravities, he was worried.

He woke in the mornings tired and aching. His back felt sore, the sullen kind of pain that never quite goes away. His pulse drummed in his ears after the simplest exertions, such as climbing a ladder from the sleeping deck to an observation blister.

At least the blister was in the zero-gravity hub of the satellite station. Alec warned himself against spending too much time there; it would be too easy to allow his complaining body to subvert the purpose of his will.

Kobol was already there when Alec poked his head up through the hatch in the blister’s floor.

The older man was sitting at one of the observation ports, safety belt latched loosely across his lap, peering intently through one of the stubby telescopes built into the bulkhead.

The observation blister had four such ports, spaced around its circular perimeter, and a fifth station dangling from the center of its domed ceiling. Taking up most of the floor space was a horseshoe set of consoles and viewscreens, where an observer crew of three monitored all the automated sensors that kept watch on the Earth.

Alec floated weightlessly up through the hatch.

Touching his slippered feet to the bare metal floor, he bent over slowly and pushed the hatch shut. The action made him drift toward the horseshoe console. Reaching for the console’s edge, he pushed off and glided toward an empty port.

The sight of Earth so close still made him gasp.

A huge curving blue immensity streaked with dazzling white, constantly changing as it drifted past the observation port, colors shifting, different textures revealing themselves as it slid past his widened eyes. It’s so huge, Alec thought. And so… alive.

“That’s the east coast of North America,”

Kobol’s voice drifted to him, like an ancient woodwind playing in its upper register, too refined to be impolite, but condescending, bored by the need to explain everything to inferiors.

“I know,” Alec snapped. “And our prime target area…”

“Look through your number three ’scope,” Kobol said. “I’ve got it slaved to mine.”

Alec sat lightly on the swivel chair and leaned toward the little telescope on his right.

“Clouds…” Kobol muttered.

Through a break in the white, Alec glimpsed brown and green ripples like old lava flows along the edge of a ringwall. But there were no craters in view. These ripples were razorback ridges, hundreds of meters high. Or so he had been told.

“There… in the clearing…”

Alec caught a glimpse of gray, a slightly lighter form that looked like a lopsided letter X.

“That’s the airport,” Kobol explained as clouds covered the scene again. Alec pulled away from the telescope and turned toward Kobol, who was still talking. “The Oak Ridge complex is only a few kilometers from the airport. If it’s still intact, that’s where we’ll find both processed and raw fissionables—enough for half a century, at least.”

Nodding, Alec pushed away from his seat and glided to the monitoring consoles.

“Any activity in that area?” he asked the youth sitting in the center chair.

He turned to face Alec. “Nothing much… at least, nothing we can detect. No vehicles, of course. No fires or signs of life that the infrareds can pick up. The area’s heavily forested; I don’t think we’d be able to detect small numbers of people moving around in there.”

Alec glanced at the fifty-odd screens that blinked and glowed across the curving bank of consoles. The other two technicians were steadily watching the screens, touching dials, making notations.

“We’ve got the strength to handle small numbers of raiders,” Alec said. “You keep your sensors alert for larger bands.”

The youth smiled. “Yessir. We’ll do that.”

The smile irritated Alec. He’s only a year or so younger than I am, but I’m in command, by order of the Council, so he has to call me “sir.” He wouldn’t grin like that at Kobol.

Then he noticed Kobol watching him, face impassive behind his brows and mustache.

Abruptly, Alec went back to the hatch and made his way down to the living and working area of the station.

Speed. Speed and firepower. Those were the keys. Alec lay on his bunk and watched the tapes play out on his viewscreen. His compartment was no bigger or better than anyone else’s: a bare little cell with a bunk, a desk, a chair, and a viewscreen.

We’ve got to get in and out before anyone realizes we’ve landed, Alec told himself. He knew that his fifty men, armed with automatic rifles and lasers, could deal with any ragtag band of barbarians that might stumble across them. But the observers had occasionally seen larger groups, more organized, marching along the crumbling old highways. Some on horses. Even a few mechanical vehicles now and then.

Suppose they have Oak Ridge defended?

Douglas knows the value of those fissionables. He might attempt to keep them from us.

Why?

Alec stirred uneasily on the narrow bunk. The fabric beneath him was wrinkled and cut into his bare skin annoyingly.

Why is he doing this? Why didn’t he return to us? Why is he trying to kill us all?

Then a new thought struck him. What if he doesn’t show up? That had not occurred to him before. What if I have to choose between returning to the Moon and finding him?

He lay there in the bunk, eyes watching the scenes of Tennessee’s rugged hill country unfolding on the viewscreen. “Speed and firepower,” he said aloud, trying to force his mind to focus on the mission. “Terrain is the key to speed. Get in and out before they know you’ve arrived.”

Do that and you’ll never find him, he knew.

Angrily, Alec reached out and punched the viewscreen’s OFF button. He turned over on the lumpy, wrinkled bed and tried to force himself to sleep.

Briefings. Exercises. Examinations. Training. The days in the satellite station blurred into a continuous round of automatic routine. Morning briefings on tactics. Physical therapy, mainly running along the central corridor of the satellite for an hour. Then medical exams. After lunch, training: weapons, communications, hand-to-hand combat.

“You’re losing weight.”

The medic was a woman, a handsome woman.

Alec had watched several of the men make fools of themselves, trying to impress her. She was big, with a broad Slavic face and strong, big-boned body that she kept in perfect shape. Her white coverall strained across her bosom and hips.

“It goes with the job,” Alec answered. “Soon I’ll start turning gray.”

They were sitting in the tiny alcove off to one side of the medical compartment. The main section of the compartment was filled with the automated examination booth and its sensors and computer terminal. Sitting across the flimsy desk from her, Alec realized why the men chased her.

But she was looking at him with coolly professional concern.

“What’s bothering you?” she asked.

You are, he started to say. But instead, “I’m responsible for the lives of fifty men who’ll be going Earthside with me. And for the life of the entire settlement, if we don’t bring back those fissionables.”

“But you sought out this responsibility.”

“That doesn’t make it any easier.”

She eyed him for a long moment, tapping her finger lightly on the tiny desktop, then turned slightly to study the data screen on the wall at her side.

“I think,” she said calmly, “that you are full of shit. Either you’re trying to con me, or you’re conning yourself.”

Alec broke into laughter.

“You find that funny?”

“Sure, why not?”

She pursed her lips in obvious annoyance.

“Look,” Alec said, “Dr. Sinton… um, what is your first name, anyway?”

“Lenore.”

“Lenore?”

“As in Poe.”

“What?”

“Never mind. Am I to assume I may call you Alexander, instead of Commander Morgan?”

“Alec.”

She still had not smiled. “Very well, Alec. You are losing weight, even though you’re not turning gray. To what do you attribute this medical phenomenon?”

“Are you a psychiatrist as well as a medic?”

“No. Please answer my question.”

Alec leaned back in the flimsy chair. “The answer is—I don’t know.”

“I think you do.”

Without raising his voice, Alec said, “I really don’t give a damn what you think.”

Now she smiled. But it wasn’t sweetness. “You had better. Because you’re not going Earthside until I’m satisfied that your physical condition is up to it.”

Alec glared at her, feeling the heat rising inside him. “The tyranny of the medics.”

She shrugged. Despite himself, he found the movement delicious.

For a strained, silent moment they sat there trying to stare each other down. Finally she said, “Shall I tell you what my opinion is?”

“You’re the doctor.” Alec tried to make it sound casual, but his fists were clenched in his lap.

“You’re not sleeping well. You’re not eating properly. You’re edgy, moody, irritable.”

“That’s your opinion?”

“No,” she said easily. “Those are my observations.

Now the opinion comes. The reason for your condition is that you’re,” she hesitated a barest half-heartbeat, “scared.”

Alec fought down an urge to get out of the chair and walk away. He could feel the color flaming in his face.

“Not in the sense of physical cowardice,”

Lenore added quickly. “You’ve been dragging around here under a steady full-Earth g and feeling lousy. All of us have. But you’re worrying about how you’ll perform on Earth. You know about the heavy atmosphere, the heat, the terrific humidity, and it’s got you worried. Too much imagination. Like Lord Jim.”

“Who’s he?”

“God! Don’t you read anything?”

“Sure—military history, meteorology, geography…”

Shaking her head, Lenore said, “Your problem is that you don’t know how to unwind.”

“That’s your diagnosis?”

“It is. And I’ve got a prescription for you.” She pushed away from the desk and stood up. Alec realized again how desirable she was.

“Prescription?” he asked as he got to his feet.

“Yes,” she said, and now she was really smiling.

“Tonight I’m going to fix a special dinner for you. In my compartment. Twenty-hundred hours. Be there. Doctor’s orders.”

Alec grinned at her. “The tyranny of the medics.”

She did fix a special meal. Somehow, out of two standard dinner trays from the galley she managed to add spices, some sort of delicious sauce for the soymeat, and even a golden concoction that tasted almost like lunar brandy.

“I raided the galley and the medical stores,”

Lenore admitted.

She was sitting on the bunk. Alec had the compartment’s only chair. Lenore was wearing shorts and a pull-over top, standard off-duty clothes. She filled them magnificently.

“I like your prescription,” Alec said. He spoke slowly and carefully, the brandy was that strong.

“I haven’t felt this relaxed in months.”

“The treatment’s just starting,” she said, patting the bunk beside her.

Alec took his glass to the bunk.

“You do feel good?” she asked.

Nodding, “Maybe too good.”

“What do you mean?”

“I want to go to bed with you,” he said.

“Well,” she said, “why not?”

“I don’t know. I’m not sure that I ought to.”

“Are you afraid that I deliberately ensnared you? Manipulated you into this?” She was smiling.

“No, not…”

“Well I did,” Lenore said. “I’ve been planning this for several days.”

“Really?” Something in the back of Alec’s mind told him that he should be upset about that, but it was a distant warning. He ignored it.

She went on, “Ever since I noticed how uptight you were starting to look.”

“I see. I brought out your maternal instincts.”

“Not exa… why did you say that?”

He shrugged. “Dunno. What?” Alec drained his glass and reached for the bottle on the desk.

But she asked, “How many women have you made love to?”

He grabbed the bottle. “Thousands. I used to keep a list in my desk back home but it got too long. Had to put it on the computer.”

“Come on, really.” She held her glass out and he started to refill it. The liquid flowed so fast under one-g that the tiny plastic cup overflowed and brandy splashed down onto her bare leg.

“Hey!”

“Hell! I’m sorry…” Alec put the bottle down and took one of the napkins from the desk. He dabbed at the wetness on her leg.

“That’s nice,” Lenore said softly.

He kissed her, but that warning note still sounded faintly off in the back of his head.

“Why did you want to know how many girls I’ve been to bed with?”

“H’mmm?” she murmured. Then, pulling slightly away from him, “Oh… just professional curiosity.”

“Professional?”

“Medical,” she said. “Psychological.”

“I thought you said you weren’t a psychologist.”

“I’m not. But still, it’s interesting how people are sexually attracted to those who remind them of their parents.”

He backed off completely. “You don’t look anything like my mother.”

Lenore smiled. “And you don’t look anything like my father, either. But you have that same coiled-up animal power in you. Just like he did. And I tend to be aggressive, just like…”

“That’s bullshit!”

“Such strong language! Really getting to you?”

She seemed amused. “Would you have invited me to your place for dinner? Would it even have crossed your mind?”

“I thought about it,” Alec said. “But you seemed busy enough.”

“I haven’t gone to bed with anyone since we arrived here at the station. Do you believe that? Six women and eighty men, and I get to fondle each man at least twice a week… and I waited for you.”

Alec didn’t know what to say.

“I even turned Martin down. Twice.”

The warning alarm rang in his head. “Kobol?”

She nodded. “Twice.”

“Why did you say even?” Alec demanded.

“I don’t know. I guess because he’s sexy. Dark and mysterious. Deadly earnest. He warned me about you…” She looked as if she would giggle.

“Me?”

“Yes. He said you wouldn’t be interested.”

“Did he?” Alec felt the tide of rage building up in him. “What else did he say?”

Lenore looked at him quizzically. “Nothing,” she replied quietly. “He didn’t say anything else…”

“No?” Alec gripped her arm. “He didn’t say that I’m a classic Oedipal? He didn’t tell you that I’d like to screw my mother?”

“No… Alec…” Her eyes were wide and frightened now.

Alec threw his cup down on the floor and stood up. “I don’t know what your game is, but you can tell Kobol or anyone else that I’m not afraid of anything. I’m not weak and I’m not scared! Of anything!”

He turned and reached for the door. She sat huddled in the corner of the bunk. “Alec… what did I…”

With one hand on the door handle, he said to her, “For all I know, Kobol put you up to this — to see if I have any balls at all!”

“Do you?”

Suddenly he wanted to hit her, smash her face, throttle her. Instead he grabbed her, pulled her off the bunk, tore the clothes from her body. She gasped and swung at him. But it was clumsy, hampered by the torn clothing that hung on her arms. They struggled against each other. She was a big woman but he was furious with a murderous rage. He ripped the rest of her clothes off, pushed her onto the bunk. When she tried to get up he cuffed her, hard, with the back of his hand.

She recoiled back onto the bunk, then reached for the bottle on the desk. By that time Alec had his jumpsuit unzipped. He knocked the bottle away, turned her on her back and fell on top of her. She snarled at him, teeth bared, “I’ll bite your prick off!”

“Try it.”

She struggled briefly, then stopped trying to push him off. “Wait… wait… at least…”

But he exploded inside her, then pulled away and got to his feet.

“Tell Kobol I’m not dead yet,” he said.

And he left her there.

Chapter 12

“And I say we go now!”

They were sitting in the satellite station’s tiny mess hall, which also served as a conference room.

There were only four tables in the cramped metal-walled room. At this time of night, the other three were empty.

Sitting around the table with Alec were Kobol, Ron Jameson, and Bernard Harvey. Jameson was one of the few real military men of the settlement, an expert in weapons and tactics who had been a twenty-year-old soldier on duty at the lunar settlement when the sky burned. He had gone Earthside on every expedition since then, and now served as the commander’s chief aide, the man who translated strategy into order to the men. He was tall, utterly calm, flat-stomached, with unflinching gray eyes set in a hawk-nosed, hunter’s lean face.

A hard man to panic. Harvey was a round, soft-faced, balding Councilor who would return to the settlement as soon as the expedition touched Earthside.

“But the schedule,” Harvey objected, “calls for your leaving three weeks from now.”

Kobol steepled his fingers in front of his face, hiding his mouth. “That’s when the spring rains will be over and the ground dried out,” he said.

“Travel across country will be a lot easier then.”

Alec said, “If we land at the airport we’ll only have to travel a couple of kilometers, over paved roadway. We can be in and out overnight.”

“But your own battle plan…”

“Ron, what do the pilots say?” Alec asked Jameson.

“They’d prefer the airport,” he said in his easy drawl. “We’ve put the high-mag ’scopes on the airfield every time since you suggested it. Runways are in a sorry state, but there’s plenty room for both shuttles. It’d be a lot better than trying to land in open country.”

“The shuttles will be sitting ducks at the airfield,”

Kobol said. “That’s how we lost the last one, at an airfield.”

“Any sign of barbarian bands around the airfield?”

Jameson shook his head.

Tapping the table with a forefinger to make his points, Alec said, “The spring rainstorms keep the natives holed up, prevent them from travelling. In another three weeks those forests down there will be teeming with them and we’ll have to fight our way into Oak Ridge and back out again. Right now the only natives who could be there are the locals, who aren’t much of a threat. And no matter where we land the shuttles, they’re going to be vulnerable.”

Kobol looked impassive; Harvey upset.

“If we go now,” Alec insisted, “land at the airport, we can have the entire mission accomplished in two days, max. Before any barbarian hordes have had time to mass and reach us.”

“But that’s not the way the mission was planned,” Harvey pleaded. “It’s your own plan! The Council…”

“The Council gave me command. My decision is that we go now. Tomorrow, if possible. The next day at the latest.”

“It’s a mistake,” Kobol said flatly.

“Maybe,” Alec countered. “But it’s my mistake.”

They sat there under the bluish fluorescent light panels of the ceiling for a silent few moments.

“All right,” Alec said. “That’s it. Ron, please get the men ready for boarding as soon as possible. Inform the pilots and maintenance crews.”

Jameson nodded.

Turning to Harvey, Alec said, “You can report this back to the Council, if you want to.”

Visibly sweating, the Councilor said, “I guess I’ll have to.”

Alec got up from his chair, nodded to them, and walked out of the mess hall. The station’s main corridor was dimmed down for night. As he walked through the shadows to his own compartment, Alec told himself, At least I won’t have to see her anymore.

It took two days.

Two days of checking out the weapons, the communications gear, the food and clothing they would need. Two days of carefully observing the weather patterns across North America and predicting that the Oak Ridge area would be dry and clear. Two days of frenetic calls back and forth from the satellite station to the lunar settlement.

Men who thought they had three weeks suddenly telescoping their homeward conversations into forty-eight hours. Questions from the Council.

Technical data from the settlement’s main computers to the station’s.

Two days of innoculations and medical checks.

Alec put off his final medical exam until the last possible moment. Lenore was all business with him, impersonal, clinical. Except as he got up to leave, she said calmly, “Good luck, Alec.”

He mumbled a thank you and hurried out of the infirmary.

They filed into the two shuttles, fifty men and four pilots glide-walking through the narrow access tunnels that connected the station’s hub to the waiting shuttles’ hatches. The pilots went in first, in their usual blue coveralls. Then came the troops, looking weirdly out of place in olive drab uniforms and metal helmets, with bulky packs on their backs and slung weapons poking awkwardly.

They shuffled uncertainly through the tunnels, hands outstretched so that their fingertips could touch the fabric-covered walls for balance.

Alec hovered at the station’s main hatch and watched his men as they passed him, silent and grim-faced. The only sound was the occasional clink of metal or plastic, the shuffling of booted feet. When the last of them had disappeared into the tunnel, Alec pushed himself in, made his way through and stepped into the shuttle.

Two dozen men were strapping themselves into their seats. Packs and weapons were unslung and stowed in the special compartments overhead.

Alec stood at the hatch for a moment. He had inspected the shuttles a dozen times over the previous weeks, but this was the first time he’d seen one occupied since they had arrived at the satellite station. The usual odors of lubricants and plastic and ozone were overwhelmed now by the smell of human sweat and gun oil. As he made his way up to the empty double seat at the front of the passenger compartment, Alec realized with a pang just how old the shuttles were. The plastic flooring was worn thin, the metal walls so scratched that they were starting to look almost polished. The shuttles had been built long before the sky burned, and kept in repair by the lunar engineers with a tenderness that approached blind religious faith.

Our link with Earth, Alec knew. And our only link back home again.

As he stopped in the aisle beside the seat and slipped off his own bulky pack, Alec wondered if he should say anything to his men. Many of them would have preferred Kobol’s leadership to his own, he knew. Many of them resented, even questioned, his speed-up of the mission schedule.

“With any luck at all,” he said, loudly enough to make them jerk with surprise, halt their whispered conversations, and look up at him.

“With any luck at all,” Alec repeated, “we’ll all be back aboard this bucket in thirty-six hours or less. That’s why I speeded up the schedule… so we could all make it back, quick and safe.”

They grinned, they nodded. They returned to their buzzing conversations, but it was brighter now, looser. Alec sat down and strapped in.

“Separation in five minutes,” said the pilot’s voice over the intercom. “Ignition in seven minutes.”

Despite himself, Alec tensed. And if we do get in and out so quickly, what chance do I have of finding my father? But somewhere deep in his guts Alec knew that he and his father were going to meet down there on the surface of Earth. One way or another, they would meet. And one of them would die.

The separation and ignition were so gentle that if the pilot had not told them about it on the intercom Alec would have questioned their occurrence.

There were no windows in the passenger compartment, and he felt only the slightest pressure and vibration of the retrorocket firing.

“We’re on our way, on trajectory, and all systems are on the mark,” the pilot reported happily.

Alec unstrapped and stood up gingerly. With one hand on the grip set into the bulkhead in front of him, he tapped on the hatch that separated the passenger compartment from the cockpit.

The copilot opened the hatch and Alec squeezed into the cramped world of green-glowing panel lights and data displays, two stripped-down control chairs, and dials and switches that literally surrounded the two pilots, spreading in front of them, to their sides, across the console between their chairs, even overhead. Through the narrow windshield windows Alec could see the vast brilliant bulk of Earth sweeping past them.

“ Everything on the mark,” the copilot said cheerfully. “We’ll be buttoning up for re-entry in about ten minutes.”

Nodding, Alec asked, “What about Kobol’s ship?”

“Just got a buzz from them; all okay.”

“Can we see them?”

“Not visually.” The copilot pointed to a circular screen in the panel between the seats. A luminous yellow arm swept around it; a single fat dot hovered in the lower right quadrant. Other dots, smaller and fainter, stood out toward the edge of the screen.

“That’s them, right behind us,” the copilot said.

“The other blips are the station and smaller satellites passing this area.”

I see.

“Sorry we don’t have room for you up here,” the pilot said, without taking his eyes off his instruments.

Alec got the hint. Commander or not, the pilot was in charge here and Alec was in his way.

Grinning, he answered, “I’ll be too busy to say thanks once we land, so I’ll say it now. Good flight!”

“Thank you,” the copilot replied, with a big smile.

Sitting back in his seat in the passenger section, Alec repeated to himself: Speed. Speed and surprise.

If there is an enemy out there, don’t give him time to think. Don’t give yourself time to have second thoughts.

But he had his doubts, just the same. What if I freeze up? What if I get to the hatch and I can’t step through?

He glanced at Jameson, sitting across the aisle, so relaxed that he seemed almost to be sleeping.

Abruptly, Alec pushed himself out of the seat and unlatched the overhead bin. Guiding his weightless equipment before him he glided down the aisle to the seat nearest the hatch.

“Would you please take the first seat, up forward?” he asked the startled youngster sitting on the aisle seat. “Take your gear with you.”

Clearly puzzled, the young man did as he was told. Alec stowed his own gear and strapped in next to an equally-surprised-looking kid. He said nothing.

“Re-entry commencing in one minute. Strap down tight,” said the intercom voice.

It got rough enough to drive other fears from his mind. Alec felt the shuttle biting into Earth’s heavy, turbulent atmosphere; felt the g forces that made the straps cut into his suddenly-heavy body.

His hands were too massive to lift off the armrests.

His neck and shoulder muscles cramped under the strain of holding his head up. His palms started to sweat. It began to feel stiflingly hot inside the shuttle.

Nonsense! Alec told himself. It’s your imagination.

But every man there knew that the outer skin of the shuttle was bathed in fiery air, heated to incandescence by the speed of their re-entry.

Makes a perfect radar target, he thought. Do they have radars working?

The shuttle lurched, staggered. Alec felt himself driven deeply into his seat, then suddenly dropping, his stomach nearly heaving.

“Sorry,” the copilot’s voice came over the intercom, no longer cheerful. “Kinda bumpy out there. We’re through re-entry and flying in the lower portion of the atmosphere. Not too smooth, but nothing to worry about.”

Swaying, bouncing, shuddering, they sat in suffering, frightened silence for an eternity of about five minutes.

“There’s the airfield! Touchdown in two-three more minutes. Might be rough.”

With a terrifying roar the landing wheel hatches opened beneath them. Despite their training, most of the men were clearly startled.

“Get ready for the landing,” Alec shouted over the din of the rushing wind. “As soon as the pilot gives the word we pop the hatch and start moving.”

The impact of hitting the ground was unmistakable.

The shuttle bounced once, hit again, then rolled onward with a wild screeching of brakes and roar of retrorockets. Alec leaned against his shoulder straps, felt his head pushing forward.

Then abruptly the noise and motion ceased.

“Okay. We’re down,” the pilot reported tersely.

Behind him, Alec heard the main hatch crack open. He took one fast breath, then grabbed at his harness buckle. Standing up and reaching for his helmet, pack, and machine pistol, he commanded the others, “All right—let’s move.” The man from the other side of the aisle swung the hatch open. Alec gestured him back as he hefted his light gun over his shoulder.

“The steps are jammed,” the man grumbled.

Alec nodded once, then without even thinking about it he jumped from the lip of the hatch. He barely had time to realize how fast he was falling when he hit the ground with a solid thump that buckled his knees. He put his hands out to brace himself and managed to keep from toppling over.

Unslinging his gun, he stepped away from the shuttle quickly. The other men were jumping behind him with a steady succession of thumps and oofs.

“All right, you know your positions,” he waved his free arm at them. “Spread out and form a perimeter.”

They hustled outward, a few limping noticeably.

The steps finally creaked out of their slot below the hatch and dropped into place. The final ten men scrambled down them and got to work on the equipment bay hatches. Jameson was the last man out, looking as unruffled as if he were coming out of chapel after attending a friend’s wedding. Except that his heavy automatic rifle was resting on his right hip, muzzle pointed outward, ready to fire.

Alec strode to the nose of the shuttle to watch the other men swing open the cargo hatches. Abstractedly, he noticed that the ship’s nose and underside were charred slightly and streaked from its burning journey through the atmosphere.

And then it hit him. I’m on Earth! I’m standing, moving, breathing on Earth!

He spun around. The sky was gray, not blue, and the Sun was hidden behind the clouds. It was nowhere as bright as Alec had expected, so he kept his glare visor up inside his helmet. It wasn’t even particularly hot, about the same temperature as the living quarters at the settlement. But there was something else, something strange: air moving across his body, like standing in front of one of the circulation fans. Except that this was gentler, softer, and nowhere near as steady. It stopped and started again, playfully.

The shuttle had landed not on the cracked concrete runway, Alec saw, but on the green grass alongside the runway. The concrete was broken and pocked with holes while the grass was reasonably flat, though bumpy. The shuttle’s many-wheeled bogeys looked undamaged; they could get out again.

The whole area around the airport was open and unobstructed. The land seemed to go on forever; the horizon was much further away than it should be. Off in the distance were dark undulating hills, farther away than Alec had ever seen any landscape features before.

“Alec.”

It was Jameson, who had come up beside him.

“Perimeter’s established, and the heavy stuff’s been rolled out of the cargo bay.”

“Good.” Alec glanced at his wristwatch; five minutes since touchdown. “Very good. Get the laser trucks up along the perimeter. A couple dozen men can’t keep this field secure with nothing but hand weapons.”

Jameson grinned tightly. “Sound observation.”

He turned and started shouting orders.

A shriek split the sky and Alec looked up to see the second shuttle coming in, trailing a plume of vapor behind it. It circled the field once, then came down on the opposite side of the broken runway, screeching and roaring, blowing out tongues of bluish gas from its retrorockets, tossing clumps of sod and chunks of rock and concrete before it.

Alec hurried to the shuttle as soon as it ground to a halt. Before he could reach it, the ladder came down and men were pouring out to take their assigned positions. Last to emerge was the lanky figure of Martin Kobol, his limp much worse in Earth’s heavy gravity.

“Welcome to Earth,” Alec called to him.

A burst of machine gun fire punctuated his greeting.

Chapter 13

Ferret was checking his traps when the sky seemed to crack open with a terrifying screaming sound. He dropped the dead rabbit he had been holding and instinctively dived into the bushes.

Too frightened even to open his eyes, he clawed as deeply as he could into the brush and then froze.

He held his breath and tried to stop trembling.

Minutes later, the same roaring, screaming sky shook the world. Birds went silent. The whole forest froze with fright. Ferret pushed his face deeper into the damp earth and tried to become totally blank, nonexistent, so that whatever monster was shaking the woods would not find him.

He stayed there for a long, long time. Or so it seemed to him. Gradually the woods returned to normal. Birds took up their songs again. The breeze made the leafy trees sigh. Something slithered past his bare leg. Slowly, very cautiously, Ferret looked up. He saw nothing unusual, nothing to be afraid of. The monster had apparently gone away.

Still, it might not be far off. On his belly, Ferret slithered through the brush toward the edge of the woods, where the old cement buildings and long empty cement paths lay. If a giant monster was thrashing around through the woods, maybe he could spot the thing from there.

He risked getting up on all fours and scampering the few yards from where he was safely hidden by the brush to the bole of a large tree at the edge of the clearing. When he finally worked up the courage to peer out from behind the tree, he was startled by what he saw. Two weird silvery things, huge, shaped something like bullets, were sitting out on the cement runways that had been empty earlier that morning. They didn’t look like monsters.

Then his eyes went even wider. There were men standing around the silver things! Men just like himself. They were dressed better and they had strange metal pots on their heads, but they were men, sure enough. And they carried guns. And there were wagons, too, that the men climbed onto and drove around on fat, soft-looking wheels.

An invading band of raiders here in our territory, Ferret thought. Billy-Joe’s got to be told about this. But he’ll want to know how many men, and what kind of weapons they have.

Every fiber of Ferret’s wiry little body wanted to get up and run deep into the woods, away from these fearsome strangers. But he could see the expression on Billy-Joe’s face when he reported incompletely.

And when Billy-Joe started heating his knife over the camp fire, all other fears fled from Ferret’s mind, even though he had never felt that punishment himself.

Swallowing so hard he nearly choked, Ferret sneaked out from behind the protective tree, crawling slowly, ever so carefully, toward the shelter of one of the big cement buildings, closer to the invaders. It seemed like hours, but the shadows thrown by the Sun had hardly moved at all by the time he reached the corner of the nearest building.

Members of the invading band were spreading out, forming a screen around their strange silvery things. The wagons were trundling here and there.

They had incomprehensibly weird contraptions atop them. The men on foot carried guns, heavy, big-bore, long-barrelled guns. Ferret ached to have one for himself. Maybe Billy-Joe would let him take one as a reward for ambushing these strangers.

Ferret licked his lips and remembered that the only weapon he carried was a hunting knife—with a loose, wobbly handle, at that. He had seen enough. Time to get back and make his report.

As he turned and started creeping away from the building, a burst of gunfire crackled behind him. Concrete chips flew off the corner of the building and Ferret flattened himself against the grassy ground.

Kobol looked just as startled as Alec felt. All the men seemed to freeze in place.

“What was that?” Kobol asked, unconsciously taking a step back toward the shuttle.

Alec swung the microphone down from his helmet. “This is Morgan. Who fired and why?”

In his earphone he heard a tinny reply. “Kurowski. I saw something moving beside the buildings here on the west flank.”

“A man? Did you hit him?”

“I don’t know. It was something—I can’t see it now.”

Kobol had one hand up on his helmet, listening to the radio report. “It could have been an animal,” he told Alec. “There are all sorts just wandering around loose, you know.”

Alec grimaced. “Kurowski, what’s your position?”

“As assigned. A hundred meters from the shuttle, on the west flank. Not much cover here, I’m on my belly in some sort of cement-lined rille.”

“That’s a culvert,” Kobol said. “For carrying rainwater.”

“All right,” Alec commanded. “Hold your position. The others will be out there in a few minutes with heavier equipment. If you see anything else, don’t fire unless it looks hostile. Conserve ammunition. But call me immediately.”

“Yessir.”

“I want those buildings searched,” Alec told Kobol.

“It’d take every man we have to search them.”

“We can spare half the heavy weapons men, once we have the trucks spotted around the perimeter.”

“That’s only six men.”

“That’s all we can spare. I’ll lead the search as soon as the weapons are set up on the perimeter.”

Alec headed off toward Kurowski’s position, leaving Kobol to supervise the weapons set-up. He could see the buildings, .gray and low, with holes in them for windows. A tower surmounted the central building, but its top was broken and charred. Someone could hide a hundred men in there. And a thousand more in those hills, he thought.

Kurowski was lying in the culvert, whiteknuckled hands gripping his gun. Alec crawled down beside him.

“See anything else?”

“I’m not sure. Something was moving out there for a while. But it was heading away from us, and it didn’t walk like a man.”

Nodding, Alec said, “All right. We’re going to get a search party together. Let’s both watch the area until then.”

It was actually pleasant. Lying there wasn’t too uncomfortable, and Alec started to get a feel of this huge world called Earth. The breeze made noises, strange sighings and whisperings.

Memories of old poems from his childhood school days started to make sense to him for the first time. And there were other sounds too. Alec had been told what bird songs and insect buzzings sounded like, but he had never heard them before.

“Look at that!”

Kurowski pointed six centimeters in front of his nose. In the stubby grass an insect was scurrying busily.

“I think that’s what you call an ant,” Alec said.

“Or maybe a bee.”

“Bees can fly, can’t they?”

“Only the queens.”

The heavy weapons carriers finally trundled into position. They were six balloon-tired armored trucks, driven by smooth-humming electric engines, mounting high-powered lasers. Some of the men hustled up on foot, laden with heavy rocket launchers and machine guns. They began clicking the sections of their weapons together, quickly surrounding themselves with a bristling arsenal of gunbelts and finned rockets.

Alec led six men on a cursory, fruitless search through the gutted buildings. They found nothing but burned-out walls, crumbling floors, shattered roofs. And a few startled raccoons and other small animals that had claimed parts of the abandoned buildings for themselves. One of the troopers fired a burst from his automatic rifle at a brown furry something that simply blew apart when the bullets hit it.

“Glad it wasn’t a skunk,” muttered Beardon, who had made a special study of troublesome Earth animals as part of his preparation for the mission.

By mid-afternoon Alec gave the word to extend their perimeter. Most of the rocket launchers and heavy machine guns were repositioned on the roofs of the buildings, together with infrared sensors for night vision. One laser truck was parked in front of the central building. The others prowled the farther limits of the airfield, while troopers patrolled on foot alongside them, cradling their automatic rifles in their arms.

Back inside the first shuttle, Alec reviewed the situation with Kobol. The older man sat heavily in a padded seat, looking tired and wary. Alec leaned against the chair’s armrest.

“We’ve got to assume we’ve been spotted,”

Kobol said.

“Right. It’s the safe assumption to make,” Alec agreed, thinking to himself, I never realized the shuttles made so much noise! The entire countryside must know we’re here.

“The shuttles would have been a lot easier to hide if we had landed in one of the valleys nearby,” Kobol went on.

With a shake of his head, Alec countered, “They’re safe enough here. None of the barbarians has weapons that can reach us from the edge of the airfield.”

“Really?”

“And there’s still no report from the satellite of a large number of barbarians moving our way. So we’re safe from a mass attack. For a day or two, at least.”

Kobol looked skeptical, but said nothing.

“All right,” Alec said. “We move out tonight. I…”

“Tonight? In darkness?”

“Right. We have infrared sensors. The barbarians don’t. We can move in darkness. They can’t and they won’t expect us to. I want a dozen men and one of the laser trucks. We have aerial maps of the region, the road between here and the Oak Ridge complex is clearly marked. We can be there before dawn and surprise any possible defenders.”

Kobol shook his head. “The men won’t want to move at night. And those who’re left here will be scared even worse, knowing that one-quarter of their strength is off in the dark.”

“Martin, I’m not in here to engage in debates,”

Alec snapped, getting to his feet. “The men will follow my orders. By this time tomorrow we’ll be on our way back home.”

Shrugging, Kobol acquiesced. “You’re in charge. I presume you’ll want to lead the trek to Oak Ridge yourself.”

“That’s right. And I’ll want you along too.”

Kobol’s shaggy eyebrows rose a centimeter.

“You don’t want to leave me here with the shuttles?”

“Jameson can hold the airfield,” Alec said, almost smiling at him. “I want you with me—to identify the fissionables.”

“Oh. I see.” Getting up slowly from his seat, Kobol said, “You know, if you’re not careful out in the dark, you could get shot by one of your own men.”

“You’re right,” Alec replied, keeping his voice even. “I’ve already thought about that. If it happens to me, though, there’s a chance that the same thing could happen to someone else. A better than fair chance, in fact.”

Kobol broke into a toothy grin. “That’s about what I would expect.”

“As long as we understand each other,” Alec said, unsmiling.

The night was different.

It wasn’t merely a turning down of the lights. It was dark. And alive.

Alec rode perched on the front fender of the laser truck, which trundled along quietly carrying the dozen men, including Kobol and himself. The driver, burrowed in the armored cockpit between the fenders, was groping along the winding road using the infrared lights and sensors. Up here in the open night air, all the ancient tales of ghosts and werewolves seemed only too real.

It’s absolute nonsense, Alec told himself.

But still, there were things out there in the dark.

Things that croaked and groaned, things that sighed, sudden cries and strange ghostly hootings.

“Bet that’s what they call an owl,” said a voice behind Alec.

The clouds had started to lift just before sundown, giving Alec and his men the most heart-catching sight they had ever seen: an earthly sunset, vibrant with reds and flame-orange that slowly paled to blue, then softest violet, and finally to star-strewn darkness.

The sky was clear now, and except for their disturbing twinkling, the stars seemed very normal.

Where the highway swung close to the trees, though, even the stars were blotted out. All that Alec could see were the twisted black branches rustling in the moaning wind, swaying across the faint brightness of the sky. He shuddered, and not merely from the growing chill.

The truck braked to a stop so suddenly that Alec almost lurched off the fender.

“What is it?” he whispered urgently into his helmet mike.

From inside the armored cockpit the driver replied, “Something moved out there.”

“Something? What?”

“Don’t know. It threw off enough heat to register on the scope. Big as a man. Maybe more than one.”

Alec swiftly considered the alternatives. “All right. We’re not going to stop. All you troopers get off the truck and walk alongside. If you see movement, tell me on the intercom. Don’t fire unless fired upon. Joe, keep the truck apace with us on foot. Let me know what you see on that ’scope.”

“Right.”

The ride down the broken, abandoned highway slowed to a walk, a crawl. Alec hefted his machine pistol and snapped its wire stock into place, so he could rest the base against his hip. He walked a few paces out in front of the truck, well off to the right shoulder of the highway. The road was broad enough for several trucks to pass side by side. But the brush and trees came right up to the edge of the cement and even invaded the cracks in the paving. An army could hide in here, Alec knew.

But he saw nothing.

“Something up ahead!” the driver’s voice sounded shrilly in his earphones.

“I saw something!” a trooper agreed excitedly.

“It went across the road from left to right. Fast.”

Alec said, “Gunner—spray the right shoulder of the highway… how far up ahead, Joe?”

“About fifty meters, I’d say.”

“Fifty meters, gunner.”

The truck stopped. The low hum of its electric motors was replaced by the high-pitched whine of the special generator that drove the laser. In the darkness Alec could barely make out the oval metal mirror of the laser as it turned slightly in his direction, catching a glint of starlight on its polished copper surface.

Then the whine rose to a harsh crescendo and the woods some fifty meters ahead burst into sudden flame. It sounded like a dull whooshing explosion, then a roaring crackle, as the invisible laser beam poured infrared energy into the brush.

In the lurid light of the flames two large animals leaped onto the highway and bounded across it and into the brush on the other side. They were four-footed, with graceful slim legs.

“Deer,” someone said disgustedly.

“Deers have horns on ’em.”

“Not all the time!”

“Cease firing,” Alec commanded.

The flames disappeared as abruptly as they had sprung up, leaving a patch of dull red embers at the side of the road. Alec smelled an oddly pleasing odor. It made him want to cough, yet it touched a cord so deep inside him that he had never known it was there. Burning wood? Why should it smell so good?

With a shake of his head, he ordered, “All right, everybody back on the truck. If there were any people there, they’ve taken off by now.”

Kobol climbed back up on the left front fender with a grunt, then said loudly enough for everyone to hear, “Well, there’s your ambush—two scared deer.”

They all laughed as the truck started up again.

But Alec couldn’t help thinking, He’s out there.

Somewhere he’s out there waiting for us. And he’s not alone.

He checked with Ron Jameson back at the airport twice over the next few hours. No activity there; a quiet night with no movement. The men were sleeping in relays.

Alec found that his own men were dozing off as they rode, clinging to various parts of the truck, sprawling wherever they could find enough flat surface. He took over the driving himself, after his second call to Jameson, and let the driver catch a nap on the fender. Even Kobol seemed to be drowsing, chin on chest, head bobbing gently as they drove.

In the infrared scope before him, the highway showed clearly as a band of orange stretching out ahead, crisscrossed by cracks and breaks. The foliage to either side was pink, except for a small scurrying animal here and there, which showed a bright red.

“Who’s on the gun?” Alec asked softly into his helmet mike.

“Gianelli.”

“You wide awake?”

“Depend on it. Got my IR goggles on—they’re so damned heavy they’re giving me a headache. I couldn’t fall asleep if I wanted to.”

“Good.”

“Glad to hear you’re worrying about me, chief.”

Alec grinned to himself. “You just keep a sharp eye out, especially to our rear. I’m watching up front.”

“Right. I’ve been doing that. Nothing moving except a few more deer.”

“You’re sure they’re deer?”

Gianelli laughed softly. “Unless men bounce across the road on all fours.”

“All right.”

Alec was still driving when they topped a rise and the heat-radiating buildings of the Oak Ridge complex came into view on his scope. Almost automatically he slowed the truck to a gradual, gentle stop. Then he glanced at his wristwatch. The Sun will be up in another hour and a half.

For a moment he debated waking the sleeping men. Instead, he fished in the pouch at his belt for a stimulant capsule and swallowed it dry, with a hard gulp. Then he swung the overhead cockpit hatch open.

Climbing out into the breeze-murmuring night, he stood on the top deck of the truck and stretched his cramped arms and legs. Sleeping bodies sprawled everywhere, barely visible in the darkness.

Another weird hooting sound floated out from the woods, sending a shiver along Alec’s spine.

Stepping over one of the dozing men, he reached the laser gun mount. “Gianelli?” he whispered.

“Yeah.”

“Take a nap. I’ll stand watch.”

Gianelli did not argue. Alec climbed into the gunner’s jumpseat and silently took the infrared goggles from his hand. The laser was humming softly, set on wide-beam scan, acting as a searchlight instead of a weapon.

The goggles were heavy. Alec had to make a conscious effort to keep his head erect as he slowly swung the gun mount around in a complete circle. The faint whine of the drive motors sounded almost comforting against the strange night noises from beyond the truck.

The trees appeared ghostly white in the goggles, the concrete buildings of the complex down in the valley below were a hotter shade of orange. The buildings were set out in an open area, with the closest trees many meters away. The land around the buildings looked dark, lifeless. Maybe some grass, but not much else.

As Alec swung the laser around slowly, scanning in a complete circle around the truck, he began to get the uncanny feeling that someone was watching him. At first it was nothing more than a vague uneasiness. But gradually the feeling grew, became a prickling along his spine, a cold fear pressing into the back of his neck.

Maybe I should wake a few of the men, he thought. Then he answered himself, No! You’re just nervous. Scared to be out here alone.

Clenching his teeth, he continued to turn the gun mount slowly, feeling colder every minute.

Straight ahead was the road and down on the valley floor, the buildings. Turn and the trees came up, closer, closer, mysterious white branches reaching out toward you, grasping, lifting themselves up into the sky. Keep turning, the road again, the trail back to the airport, the shuttles, safety. Then the trees again, and finally the buildings.

What if he’s out there? Does he have IR detectors?

Goggles? If he does, then we’re sitting here like a beacon, a big fat bright target.

Abruptly, Alec kicked on the foot pedals to reverse the mount’s rotation. The electric motors shrilled for an instant, the mount jerked, then swung in the opposite direction.

There! In the trees!

It was gone before he could be sure of what it was. Hot spots, several of them in among the trees.

They vanished from his field of view just as the laser beam exposed them.

Animals, he told himself. But are animals sensitive to infrared illumination?

He glanced at his wristwatch. Still an hour before sunrise, but already the sky beyond the Oak Ridge buildings was beginning to pale. Could our sunrise times be wrong? Then, remembering the lingering beauty of the previous night’s sunset, and the briefings he had received from Dr. Lord on terrestrial atmospheric effects, Alec realized that the daylight actually started before the Sun itself appeared above the horizon.

For a tense fifteen minutes he continued to scan around the truck, moving the beam back and forth randomly, trying to avoid a predictable pattern.

He saw nothing. Then it was light enough to snap off the laser and remove the heavy goggles.

A couple of men stirred as the light grew brighter. Alec didn’t know which made him feel better, the fact that he was no longer alone, or the end of the dark, threatening night.

They made their way toward the buildings in good order, Alec walking up front on the right point, Kobol taking the three-man rear guard position, the truck in the middle of the spread-out formation of armed, wary men.

The ground around the buildings was barren.

Scrub grass straggled here and there in thin patches. Large stretches of ground immediately outside the buildings were bare, broken cement and blacktop. There were some areas of gravel, as well, Alec saw.

As they approached the buildings, Alec beg&n to understand why Kobol had volunteered for the rear guard. He was the only man who had been here before, the only one who knew the area. Alec wanted to ask Kobol if the buildings looked the same, but to do that he would have to bring Kobol up to the point position with him. In front of the men, he would have to show that Kobol was the man who knew what’s what.

Screw that! Alec paced steadily toward the lifeless, gaping buildings, gripping his machine pistol in his right hand, feeling the welcome pressure of its strap riding firmly on his shoulder.

It was a longer walk than he had anticipated.

The morning was deathly quiet. No breeze. No bird songs reached them from the distant trees.

The Sun was barely over the crest of the hills, yet already it was much hotter than the previous day had been. Does the heat come from the buildings?

Alec wondered. Fears about radioactivity sifted through his thoughts. But he kept marching steadily, glancing back at his men and the trundling laser truck only occasionally.

When they reached the edge of the cement walkways that surrounded the buildings he called a halt. Faint dark streaks and strains mottled the walls.

“Stop the truck here, where it can cover the whole area. Form up in front of the truck.”

Kobol limped up to him, thin chest and underarms of his coveralls dark with sweat. He looked slightly foolish with the heavy helmet clamped bulbously over his head.

“What do you think?” Alec asked, gesturing toward the buildings with his pistol.

Kobol hiked his shaggy brows enough to make them disappear inside the helmet. “It’s been a long time since I was here. But everything looks pretty much the same.”

“That’s the main entrance, isn’t it?”

Kobol nodded.

“All right. Gianelli, take two men and follow us. The rest of you stay here and stay alert. Keep a sharp watch all around.”

The five of them walked slowly toward the building, tension mounting with each step. Alec could see that the windows gaped emptily, they had been shattered long ago. The doors were gone too, and the walls were streaked with the sooty reminders of old fires. The interior of the building was completely in shadow.

He could feel his heart hammering as they climbed the steps to the open, dark doorway. His hand felt slippery on the gun’s handle, but inside himself Alec felt cold, not hot.

The interior of the building was littered with broken shards of cement, plaster, dried leaves and debris. The room was large and bare, stripped of everything except the litter on the floor.

“Reception area,” Kobol said. “Everything in here was looted or burned long ago.”

A sudden fear struck Alec. “The fissionables?”

Kobol laughed bitterly. “Don’t worry. They’re too hard to get at, even if the barbarians knew what they were and wanted them. Which they don’t. There are all sorts of legends and taboos about radioactive material. They’re scared to death of the stuff.”

They walked through an empty, desolate building. The rooms were huge, but blackened, charred. Most of the roofs were gone, and the still climbing Sun lit their way through the moldering shambles. Nothing stood except a few sagging partitions.

No sign that human beings had ever occupied the area. Everything caked thick with grime; here and there the tracks of small animals.

Kobol pointed to some dried grass wedged into a crack high up on a cement wall.

“Bird’s nest,” he said.

“Creepy,” said Gianelli in a low, awed voice.

“The barbarians took everything they could from this building,” Kobol explained needlessly, “and burned the rest.”

They reached a metal door that opened onto a long tunnel ribbed with I-beams.

“This is the connector tunnel between the main administrative building, here, and one of the processing plants. That’s where they produced the fissionables from low-grade natural ores.”

Kobol’s lecturing voice twanged irritatingly off the metal walls of the tunnel as they walked through it. “You’ll see plenty of heavy equipment in the next building, and beyond that are the storage vaults.”

They opened the door at the end of the tunnel.

The room was huge, vaster than any enclosure Alec had ever seen. Sunlight filtered down slantingly through the shattered roof. It was eerie and still.

And empty.

The giant processing building had been looted even more thoroughly than the administration area. Nothing remained except the bare walls and a few dust motes drifting through the shafts of sunlight.

Kobol’s jaw fell open.

“There’s nothing here!” Alec said.

“It’s been cleaned out.” Kobol’s voice was strained, shocked.

“The fissionables!”

They ran, the five of them. Kobol in the lead, they raced across the huge empty room, boots clumping dully on the cement floor. To Alec it was like a nightmare, running endlessly across the barren, torn-up expanse, this giant cement box they were trapped in. He ran as hard as he could but seemed to be getting no closer to the far end of the one-room building and the metal door that they had to reach. Almost subliminaly, Alec noticed that the floor was studded with metal fixtures where equipment had once been bolted down to the solid cement. The fixtures looked bright and clean; the equipment had been removed only recently.

They dashed, gasping, up to the heavy metal door. It was slightly ajar.

“The vaults…” Kobol puffed, wide-eyed, as he strained to swing the door open. Alec and Gianelli leaned into it, helping him.

The room on the other side was small, barely big enough to allow the five of them to squeeze in. It was lined with dull gray metal. Three walls were filled with box-sized compartments, like metal bookshelves, but with many thick separations along each shelf.

“Empty!”

Kobol was panting hard, his face white. “No… barbarians… did this.”

Alec turned to face him.

“Only one man… knew what… the fissionables were worth,” Kobol said. “Your father.”

Chapter 14

Alec forced himself to breathe deeply several times before answering.

“You think he deliberately cleared out this place?”

Kobol’s eyes were glaring. “Who else? Barbarians couldn’t organize the men and machines you’d need for this. They wouldn’t even know what all this was. They’re scared as hell of this place.”

Gianelli kicked at the wall. “Chrissake! We came all this way for nothing.”

“Your father,” Kobol made it sound as if he were accusing Alec, “knew we need the fissionables. So he’s taken them away. He’s trying to kill the whole settlement.”

Alec asked levelly, “How long can we go on what’s left in the settlement?”

“A year. Maybe eighteen months. What difference does it make?”

“By that time we’ll have the fissionables. If I have to tear this planet apart, I’ll find them.”

Kobol didn’t reply. He merely made a derisive, snorting sound.

They trudged slowly back out of the vaults and through the empty processing building, heading for the entrance they had come through. The tired march of defeated men, Alec said to himself. But somehow he did not feel defeated. He was excited, almost happy. Father’s forcing me to seek him out.

His first mistake.

They were halfway through the connector tunnel when Alec’s earphone crackled: “There’s somebody… toward us…” The radio voice was weak and masked by heavy sizzling interference.

“What?”

“… lone person… walk… us here on the truck…”

Alec hurried through the tunnel and got out of the metal-walled area in time to hear, “Hey, it’s a girl!”

They quickened their pace. Once outside, Alec could see a lone, slim figure heading for the truck, walking slowly but deliberately from the distant woods toward them. By the time he and his men reached the truck, she was almost in hailing distance.

“She’s unarmed,” Kobol observed.

“And good to look at,” said Gianelli.

Small and slim, wearing a stained white blouse and long slacks that fitted the curve of her hips snugly. Longish, serious, big-eyed face. Long blonde hair wisping in the breeze. She shrugged it back away from her face as she came up to the truck.

Alec said, “Looks like she’s got a definite reason for coming here.”

“Maybe she’s lonesome,” Gianelli snickered.

“Not for you, big nose,” one of the other men said.

“Can’t see anyone else around,” Kobol said, scanning the woods with binoculars. “But there could be an army out there among those trees.”

Like Hannibal’s army at Lake Trasimene, Alec thought.

He watched the girl as she calmly approached them. A stubborn face, frowning slightly in the sun. Strong jaw, prominent cheekbones, thin patrician nose. Mouth set in a determined line.

But the eyes were searching, a bit uncertain, perhaps a bit frightened.

He could feel the tension among the men as she walked closer. Ridiculous! A dozen men armed to the teeth, staring nervously at a lone unarmed girl.

The firing bolt of a rifle snicked mechanically.

Scared to death of one girl! Alec almost smiled.

“Gianelli,” he said softly, “keep an eye on the buildings. She might be a decoy.”

“Watch the flanks, too,” Kobol said to no one in particular.

“I’d rather watch her flanks,” Gianelli muttered.

The girl raised her right hand, palm open, and stopped some twenty paces from the truck. Alec walked out toward her. He knew without looking over his shoulder that Kobol was right behind him.

“My name is Angela,” she said. No smile. Her voice was unemotional, matter-of-fact.

“I’m Alec, and this is…”

“Alexander Morgan and Martin Kobol,” she said.

“You know my father.” Alec wasn’t surprised.

“He sent me here. To warn you.”

For an instant Alec felt as if the entire world hung suspended in time. He could feel the sun on his shoulders and neck, see the bright sky and the new green woods in the distance, hear the girl’s soft, wary voice. But it was all as if he were really somewhere else, far more distant than the Moon, watching the scene remotely.

“We’re not frightened by warnings,” Kobol said.

“Wait,” Alec snapped. To the girl, “Warn us about what?”

She pushed a strand of hair from her face.

“There’s a raider band heading for the airport. They saw your ships land…”

“Why would they head for us? Aren’t they frightened…?”

A smile toyed at Angela’s lips. “Scared of a few dozen men? You know how many men the raiders can put together?”

“We have enough firepower…”

“I know,” she interrupted. “They know, too. It’s your weapons they’re after.”

Kobol stepped up to her. “You’re lying. We would have detected a large group of men moving through this territory. We have sensors…”

“No shit?” She turned back to Alec. “Look, your father told me all about the platform you’ve got up in the sky. They can’t see the raiders—not down under the trees. There’s at least a couple hundred of them linking up together a few klicks from the airport. We’re trying to keep them off balance…”

“It’s a trick,” Kobol insisted.

She scowled at him.

“Where is my father?” Alec asked her.

Angela waved a hand. “Up north… seven, eight hundred klicks from here.”

“And the fissionables?”

“The what?”

So he hasn’t told her everything. “The machines and things that were in these buildings. My father has them up north with him?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. These buildings have been empty for years.”

I’ll bet. “Come on,” Alec said to Kobol, “we’ve got to get back to the airport. If there really are several hundred…”

“There can’t be,” Kobol said.

“I don’t like being called a liar,” Angela snapped. “Especially by a fughead who doesn’t know a tree from a turd.”

Alec bit his lip to keep from laughing. Kobol staggered a step backward; a lanky, helmeted, booted, armed man retreating from this tiny girl.

“Come on,” Alec said, forcing his voice to remain serious. “We can’t afford to ignore her warning. And there’s nothing left here for us. Let’s move out.” He reached for Angela’s wrist. “You can come with us.”

She pulled back slightly. “I can make it on my own.”

Holding onto her wrist, Alec said, “We’ve got the truck here. It’s faster than walking.”

She stopped arguing.

Once they piled aboard the truck and got rolling, Alec radioed Jameson. “Everything’s peaceful here,” his calm voice replied. No sign of movement except for a few birds.”

“Check with the satellite,” Alec ordered. “Have them make the most intensive scan of this area that they can.”

“They’re halfway on the other side of the globe now,” Jameson answered. “Won’t be back over here for another four hours.”

“Damn,” Alec muttered. “Well, keep a sharp watch. Protect those ships.”

“You betcha,” Jameson said.

Ferret quivered with a mixture of excitement and fear as they crouched in the brush, watching the strange ships sitting on the airfield runway and the handful of men guarding them.

“Now remember,” Billy-Joe whispered, fingering the scar across his chin the way he always did just before a fight started, “once we knock off all them guys, we got to grab their weapons fast. There’s a dozen other gangs spread around this-here airport and they’re all lickin’ their chops over them fancy guns.”

Ferret nodded and bared his teeth in what passed for a smile. But inwardly he was sick with fear. It was one thing to overrun the men standing around those weird flying machines. But the real battle would be among the rival gangs once the strangers had been wiped out.

Grab a gun as quick as you can, he told himself, and then hide in the woods. Stay hidden until Billy-Joe gives the word to get back to camp.

The first sounds of battle came to Alec’s ears while they were still several kilometers from the airfield.

“What’s that?”

It was an odd, muffled sound coming from beyond the ridge ahead of them. Soft thumps, almost like an airlock hatch slamming in a distant corridor.

Alec was sitting up on the laser mount, his legs dangling over the edge of the turntable platform.

Angela sat beside him.

She tensed at the sound. “Mortars. Will must’ve made contact…”

Alec yelled down at the driver, “Top speed! Get this truck back to the ships!”

The electric motors whined and strained, but the overloaded vehicle did not seem to move any faster as it labored up the grade to the crest of the ridge.

Angela said over the rushing wind and another trio of distant explosions, “Will Russo… he’s one of your father’s friends. He’s got a small group of us here, trying to tie up the raiders long enough to give you a chance to take off.”

“William Russo,” Kobol snapped. He’d been squatting cross-legged behind them. “So he didn’t die after all; he turned traitor along with Doug.”

Alec twisted around and squinted up into the noon sun to see Kobol. “We ought to put out flankers,” he said. “These woods could be swarming with barbarians.”

“No, not on this side of the airfield,” Angela said.

It was a tense ride. The truck was agonizingly slow, and it seemed to take forever to get through the spots where the tangled trees and undergrowth crowded up to the very edge of the highway.

The men kept their weapons in their grips, straining their eyes on the foliage. Alec saw that they were sweating despite the cool shadows of the trees and the wind blowing against them.

He kept watching Angela. She seemed concerned, but not frightened. She’s not expecting trouble here, he reasoned, so neither should we.

But his palms still felt cold and slippery.

Kobol stayed in constant touch with the ships by radio. Alec had taken his helmet off and hung it by its chin strap on the platform railing.

“Do you know my father well?” he asked Angela.

She nodded. “He’s my father, too.”

Alec felt as if she had kicked him in the stomach.

There was no air left in his lungs. He could not speak.

“Stepfather,” she added, oblivious to his plight.

“He and my mother, before she died…” Her voice trailed off and she looked away, into the distance.

With a struggle, Alec sucked air into his lungs.

He realized that his teeth were clenched together so hard the pain shot to the top of his head.

Angela turned back to face him. “He loved my mother very much,” she said. “It wasn’t just a man taking a woman. They were like man and wife. And he’s taken good care of me ever since I was a little girl.”

Alec said nothing. The knot inside him tightened with every heartbeat.

“You really live on the Moon?” she asked.

“Yes.” His voice sounded like a dying croak, even to himself.

“Did I say something wrong?”

“No. Nothing.” He shook his head. “I… it’s just that… I didn’t expect to meet a stepsister. My mother will be very interested.”

“Oh. Yeah, I guess so. I see.”

“Do you?”

“Yes, I do.” Her chin went up a notch.

Alec shook his head. “I think not.”

“There’s the airfield,” Gianelli’s voice rang out.

“Hot damn, those ships look beautiful!”

Alec scrambled to his feet just as an explosion erupted in the trees on the far side of the airfield, billowing black, flame-streaked smoke into the sky. The thundering roar reached his ears a splitsecond later. It felt almost like a physical blow.

“They’re getting closer,” Angela said. For the first time her voice sounded tinged with fear.

“Will won’t be able to hold them back much longer.”

The truck was plummeting down the highway now, descending from the ridge crest and racing full tilt for the ships. They were still parked together, gleaming silvery in the glaring sunlight, looking strangely out of place in this land of soft greens and gray-brown concrete.

The other laser trucks were gathered in a semicircle on the far side of the shuttles. But as far as Alec could see, no weapons were being fired.

Alec turned to follow a trooper’s outstretched arm and saw three men who had just emerged from the woods off to the right side of the ships.

Even without binoculars he could make out the angular shapes of guns slung over their shoulders.

They stopped and waved their arms over their heads.

“Wait!” Angela yelled as the men on the truck swung their weapons toward the trio. “That’s Will! Don’t shoot!”

Before anyone could stop her she jumped off the truck and ran toward the three men.

“Hold your fire,” Alec snapped. He pushed up to the driver’s cab and rapped on its roof. “Get over there, where those men are.” Turning to the troopers, he commanded, “All of you except Kobol, off the truck and get to the ships. Now!”

Their faces showed they didn’t like what was going on, especially trotting a kilometer or two in the open, with those dark woods nearby. But they obeyed Alec’s order.

The truck pulled up alongside Angela. She stopped running and the three men walked easily toward her. They wore nondescript, ragtag clothes: cut-off shorts, ancient gray shirts, one wore a vest, only one had boots. But their weapons were clean and each of them was laden with bulging cases of ammunition slung on straps across their shoulders.

Alec clambered down from the truck to meet them. Kobol stayed up on the laser mount, with the heavy copper mirror of the weapon pointing its shining face at Alec’s back. He could fry us all in half a second, Alec knew.

Angela was smiling like a child. She reached for Alec’s arm, as if to drag him an extra step or two toward the advancing men.

One of them had already stepped ahead of the other two. Angela said, “Alec, this is Will Russo… Will, Alec Morgan.”

“Oh-ho! So you’re Doug’s boy!”

There had never been a dog or a puppy in the lunar settlement. Alec had seen tapes of children’s shows, though, years before. Suddenly the image of a huge, friendly St. Bernard puppy flashed into his mind: he remembered how it had overpowered everyone else in the story with well-meaning enthusiasm that knocked down grown men and destroyed furniture. Will Russo was a big, shambling, grinning, happy St. Bernard pup. Like many truly big men, he was slightly stooped at the shoulders, from leaning over to deal with men smaller than himself. His face was round, with slightly protruding eyes, ruddy cheeks, reddish curly hair that was matted down with perspiration, an easy soft chuckling grin.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you,” he said. His voice was the velvet tenor of a balladeer. But he grabbed Alec’s hand in a massive paw and pumped it heartily. “Sorry we have to be so brief, but there’s a lot more of them than there are of us. We can hold them off for you for maybe another half-hour…”

Another explosion punctuated his words.

“The woods are swarming with them. Those weapons of yours are really a prize they want.”

“Casualties?” Angela asked.

Russo frowned. “Some. It’s been mostly hit and run until just now. Just starting to get serious.”

Another explosion. Closer. Alec’s ears rang.

“Wait a minute,” Alec said to Russo. “I’ve got to know a lot more about what’s going on here…”

“Good Lord, this is no time for explanations. You’ve only got…”

Alec planted his fists on his hips. “I’m not budging until I find out…”

A high, sighing noise like the rushing of air through a punctured bulkhead.

“Incoming!” one of the men yelled.

Russo dove into Alec, knocking him down.

Before Alec could say or do anything a series of explosions blasted the universe into flame and unbearable noise and shock. The ground heaved beneath him. Clods of earth pattered down. Alec could taste acrid smoke.

He was on his belly, face down in the damp grass. Head buzzing, he slowly looked up. Angela was on her knees, a trickle of blood wending a thin red line down her arm. Russo was squatting on his heels alongside her.

“Looks like you’re right,” he said, without the slightest sign of fear or anger. “You’re not leaving.”

He pointed, and Alec saw that one of the shuttles was in flames.

Chapter 15

It had turned into a bloody mess. Ferret scrambled up the steep side of the ridge, trying to get away from the screams of the dying.

Billy-Joe was down there, along with most of the rest of the band, blown into bleeding twisted blobs of blackened flesh by the explosions. Ferret himself was almost untouched; just a few scratches here and there, and a long painful gash down his left leg.

Something had gone very wrong. Instead of the usual rush, where all the gangs attacked the strangers, fighting had broken out among the gangs themselves. First. Right at the beginning. It had never happened that way before. He didn’t understand it.

Now Billy-Joe and the others were all dead.

Somebody had blown them into little pieces. The noise of the explosions still rang in Ferret’s ears.

But he was still alive. That was the important thing. Still alive. Bleeding, but still alive. He could stand the pain. That didn’t matter. The thing he had to do was to get away. Hide as far away from the fighting as he could. If one of the other gangs found him alone, they’d spend the whole night making him die. Slow. Not like Billy-Joe. Not like the others.

Choking, his eyes blurred with tears, the ringing blast of the explosions still echoing inside his head, his bleeding leg going numb, Ferret clawed at the foliage along the steep slope of the ridge, dragging himself away from the fighting, anyplace, anyplace except where the others could find him alone and helpless.

He reached the top of the ridge, gasping and too weak to move further. He rolled over onto his back, panting and blinking into the bright blue sky.

“Well lookey what we got here,” a voice said from somewhere behind him.

“Looks like dead meat t’ me,” another voice said.

“Not yet. But he will be. He will be.”

Ferret closed his eyes and waited for the agony to begin.

Alec stared at the burning shuttle. A huge gash was torn in its side and flames flickered in the dark smoke that was pouring out of it.

“We’ve got to silence that mortar,” Will Russo said urgently, “or the other shuttle will get it, too.”

Alec leaped to his feet and sprinted for the truck. Kobol was already screaming into his helmet microphone, “Get the shuttle the hell out of that area! When the fire gets to the propellant tanks it’ll blow both of them sky-high!”

Scrambling up onto the laser mount, Alec motioned Kobol to silence. He grabbed his helmet and jammed it on his head, speaking into the mike.

“This is Alec Morgan. Get every possible man into the undamaged shuttle and take off at once. Do you understand me? At once!”

Kobol argued, “One shuttle can only hold…”

Alec brandished a fist under his nose, and Kobol lapsed into silence. “Acknowledge that order!” he snapped. “Who’s in charge down there?”

His earphone hummed meaninglessly for a moment. Then, “This is Jameson. One shuttle can’t take more than thirty-some men, even if they’re lovers.”

“Pack them in. No time for arguing. Leave the trucks and equipment.”

Staring down at the airfield, Alec saw the intact shuttle start to taxi away from the burning one.

Jameson’s voice came on again. “We’ve got three wounded men here. Both the shuttle pilots were killed when the ship was hit.”

“Get the wounded aboard the good shuttle. I want a dozen volunteers to stay here with me. The rest can squeeze into the bird any way they can. Use the cargo space. The trucks stay here.”

Russo and his people, including Angela, came up to the truck. The big redheaded man looked up at Alec, squinting into the brightness of the sky, grinning.

“Say, would you let us use some of these weapons to drive off the raiders?”

“Come on aboard,” Alec said. He ducked under the laser mount’s guard rail and kicked at the driver’s roof. “Get us moving. Fast!”

Hanging onto the rail as the truck lurched into motion, Kobol leaned his worried-hound’s face to within a few centimeters of Alec’s. “I’m going out with them, on the shuttle. I’m not staying.”

“Fine,” Alec snapped. “Just make sure you keep in touch. I’ll tell you when to come back and pick up the rest of us.”

“Right,” Kobol said.

They stared at each other for a long moment. He has no intention of coming back for me, Alec thought. And he knows that I know it.

The truck bounced crazily across the grassy field. Two more shells landed near the runway, but too far from either shuttle to do anything more than churn fresh craters in the ground. The smoke from the damaged shuttle seemed to have almost died away, it was only a thin gray haze now.

“Maybe the fire’s gone out,” Angela yelled over the noise of the rushing wind and the occasional explosions and gunfire coming from the woods.

Russo shook his head. “Doubt it.”

Alec stood behind the driver’s cab and watched his men streaming toward the good shuttle, now stopped at the farthest corner of the field, its nose turned into the wind. The laser trucks made a thin wall between the shuttle and the woods where the fighting was going on. But they were not firing.

The troopers from the Moon milled around them, peering toward the woods, gawking like spectators, trying to decipher the strange goings-on.

Alec’s truck pulled up alongside the shuttle. He started shouting orders and the men began clambering into the rocketplane. Kobol was nowhere in sight. Probably already aboard, Alec thought, and waiting for the takeoff.

The silvery finish of the shuttle’s fuselage looked pitted and stained now, dirty, soiled by the base elements of Earth. Jameson was standing at the bottom of the ladder that ran up to the hatch.

“They’re just about loaded,” he reported. “Fifteen men volunteered to stay with you; I’ve got them with the trucks. The pilot’s checking the ship’s systems to see if there’s any damage that’ll prevent takeoff.”

Russo grasped Alec’s shoulder and half-turned him around. “Lookit, I don’t want to butt into your affairs,” he said, pawing with his free hand at his nose, “but if you don’t start using your lasers to clear out the woods at the far end of the runway you’re not going to be able to get this shuttle out of here.”

“All right,” Alec agreed. He called to Jameson, “I want a driver and two gunners with each truck.”

Jameson said, “I’ll get them moving.”

“You’re staying?”

“Yep.”

Alec grinned at him. “Good. Thanks.”

Kobol appeared at the shuttle’s hatch. “You still insist on staying here?” he shouted.

“Yes. Somebody’s got to.”

“No,” Kobol called. “Listen. There’s enough room in the cargo bay for the rest of the men, if the trucks are left behind. The bay’s pressurized.”

“I’m staying,” Alec shouted up to him.

“To find your father.”

“To keep those raiders off your back, so that you can get away. And to get my hands on the fissionables that we came for.”

“I don’t see any raiders,” Kobol yelled. “Only mortar fire. It could be his mortar.”

Will Russo shot Kobol a disgusted look and turned away. Alec started to say, “Listen, Martin…”

“No, you listen. We both know why you’re staying. I hate to see you killing good men for your own personal reasons.”

Alec wanted to run up the ladder and seize him by the throat. Instead, he hollered, “Then why don’t you volunteer to stay With us, and let one of those good men get away safely?”

Kobol grinned his toothy mirthless grin. “If you want to be a fool, don’t expect me to join you. I’m going back to the satellite station. From there I’ll make a full report on your activities. I’m sure the Council will be interested. So will your mother.”

The hatch started to slide shut. The last sight Alec had of Kobol, he was still grinning. The smile of a man who had just outmaneuvered his enemy.

“Alec,” Ron Jameson called to him from the other side of the truck. “We’re ready to roll.”

It took Alec a moment to refocus his thoughts.

He turned and saw that Will Russo was sitting on the front fender of his truck. With a deep breath of exasperation, he banged on the roof of the driver’s cockpit and yelled, “Let’s get moving!”

“I’ve spotted my other men on two of your trucks,” Russo told him. “They know the territory pretty well.”

The truck lurched forward as Alec tightened his chin strap. “All right. You can call the shots.” As they rolled out past the shuttle’s stubby wing, he asked, “What happened to the girl? Where is she?”

“Angela?” Russo blinked his big watery eyes. “I sent her on ahead. She’ll tell our people to fall back, so they won’t get caught in your fire.”

The truck was picking up speed now, jouncing across the broken runway. Alec noticed that the firing seemed to have died down. No more explosions or gunfire came from the shadowy woods.

Could Kobol have been right? Is this all some elaborate trap my father’s laid out?

“Better steer wide of that damaged bird,” Russo was saying. “No telling…”

The shuttle exploded with a violence that nearly tore Alec off the truck. The vehicle itself bounced and slewed as a huge ball of white-hot flame burst out and reached for them. Alec could feel its heat searing his face.

The driver swung the truck around viciously, away from the fireball. Hanging onto the laser itself for support, Alec watched the fireball transform itself into a dark tower of uprushing smoke that ballooned into a mushroom shape, far overhead.

“By golly, she really blew,” Russo said, in an awed voice.

Within a few moments they were again racing as fast as the truck’s electric motors would push them toward the woods. For the first time, Alec could see figures scurrying in the distant foliage, through his binoculars.

They looked ragged, furtive, no two of them wearing the same kind of clothes. Mostly bare-armed and bare-legged. But they each had weapons, and they were forming a skirmish line at the edge of the woods.

Alec passed the binoculars to Russo. “Are those your people?”

He glanced quickly. “Nope. They’re raiders. And they’ve got grenade launchers, looks like, so I’d start squirting them with the lasers at the longest range possible.”

As Alec started giving the necessary orders over his helmet radio, three quick, dull popping sounds came from the woods.

“Mortar fire,” Russo said calmly.

He wore no helmet, he had no body armor. He simply sat there in the jumpseat, ludicrously big for it, hanging over the edge of the laser mount with the ground rushing past less than a meter below his moccasined feet. He looked completely at ease, smiling happily.

Three mortar shells burst up ahead of them.

Alec winced at the explosions.

“Aren’t you scared?” he yelled at Russo.

Will shrugged. “Guess so. But I learned a long time ago that it doesn’t help. So I ignore it.”

Alec stared at him.

“Say.” Russo’s expression changed to purposefulness.

“If we swing this one truck up that way and head into the woods,” he pointed to the far left, “we could probably sneak up on those mortars and get ’em.”

Alec heard Kobol’s voice in his head once more.

You trust these people?

“All right,” he said slowly. He reached for his helmet mike.

Russo wagged a finger at him. “Better not use the radio anymore. They might be listening to us now.”

Another set of mortar shells exploded, one of them close enough to make the truck bounce. Alec crouched involuntarily and heard shrapnel ping against the side of the truck. A roar of flame geysered up ahead of them. The other trucks started to fire their lasers. He heard distant screams as the woods burst into flame.

Leaning down toward the driver’s cab, Alec gave instructions to swing off to the left.

Ten minutes later they were climbing slowly through a narrow lane in the foliage, edging up a steep grade toward the top of a ridge.

“How do you…”

“Shh!” Russo put a finger in front of his lips.

Alec inched closer to him. “How do you know,” he whispered, “where the mortars are?”

“I’m guessing,” Russo whispered back. “But they don’t have much range, so they must be up here somewhere.”

The truck’s motors were almost completely silent at this crawling speed. The foliage was thick enough to brush against Alec’s legs as he squatted on the laser mount platform. The back of his neck burned; it hurt when he tried to move his head. A tree branch dipped close, caught momentarily in the laser’s cooling fins, then sprang loose as they inched past.

It was impossible to see farther than a few meters ahead in this brush, and not even that far along the flanks. We could get ambushed anywhere along the line, and there are only the three of us. Far behind them, Alec could hear the crackling of flames and the staccato of gunfire.

The trees over their heads blotted out most of the sky, but to Alec it seemed to have turned gray.

Smoke?

Then there was a roar like far-off thunder. But instead of grumbling into silence, it grew, it increased, louder and louder until the truck itself began to vibrate.

“The shuttle’s taking off!”

Alec stood up full height and strained for a glimpse of it through the heavy foliage. A flash of silver roared by overhead, and then the thunder diminished, dimmed, grew fainter and fainter until…

The monstrous crack of a sonic boom split the air. Alec had never heard it before, but he smiled despite the shock and pain. “They’ve made it. They’re on their way.”

“Good.” Russo bobbed his head happily.

Kobol’s going back to the satellite. He could return to the settlement and be with my mother in another few days. Even sooner, if he pushes it.

Russo put a big arm on Alec’s shoulder.

“Listen!” he whispered urgently.

The soft .popping sound of a mortar firing.

“Stop the truck.”

It stopped. The mortar sounds came again, off to their right. Somewhere in the thick foliage. The trail they were following curved in the opposite direction.

“We have to leave the truck,” Russo whispered.

He checked the action of his rifle. It moved smoothly, with a deadly-sounding click-click.

Alec bent down over the driver’s rearview slit.

“Stay here and stay buttoned up. If anybody bothers you, fire the laser by remote control.”

“Right,” came the muffled reply from inside the armored cab.

Alec swung his machine pistol off his shoulder.

It was an ugly, short-muzzled weapon with a long magazine built into the handgrip and a wire brace that could be rested against shoulder or hip.

Russo was already on the ground, poking at the bushes alongside the truck. Alec jumped down beside him.

“Got your safety off?” Will asked.

Looking down at the gun, Alec saw that it wasn’t. Red-faced, he flicked the catch with his thumb.

Russo grinned at his embarrassment. “Don’t want to run into some strangers without being able to say hello right away.”

They started into the brush, walking crouched over, Russo in the lead. The foliage was thick and scratched at Alec’s face, arms, legs. The mottled sunlight made his neck burn even more now that he was bent over. Insects droned everywhere, and within a minute Alec felt itches and stings he’d never known before. It didn’t seem to bother Russo at all, so Alec fought down the urge to swat and scratch.

The popping sounds were getting louder, more frequent.

“They’ve got a lot of ammo,” Russo whispered over his shoulder. “Using up their whole winter’s production in hopes of getting your stuff.”

“I hope they haven’t hit any of the trucks,” Alec answered.

“It’s the trucks they’re after,” Russo said. “If one of those gangs can grab off a truck or two, they’ll run merry hell through the countryside — until the laser runs out of fuel or the truck breaks down. Those trucks of yours are like Christmas presents for them.”

Alec nodded with new understanding.

“And your other weapons, of course. Everybody likes to get nice new guns.”

Barbarians, Alec told himself. They’re all nothing more than barbarians.

They flattened out onto their bellies and crawled under some tangled low-lying vines.

Suddenly Russo hissed, “Freeze!”

Alec stayed absolutely still. He could feel his heart pounding, feel the ground slightly moist and yielding underneath him, feel the damp heat soaking into his body. He was sweating, beads of stinging salt dripping into his eyes.

Russo slid back alongside him, whispering, “Up in that big tree, at the top of the ridge…”

Alec lifted his head, making his burned neck hurt anew. In the tallest tree, standing out against the sky, its enormous arms spread widely, newly leafed and bright green, a man was crouching on one of the lower branches. He held a pair of binoculars to his eyes.

“Spotter,” Russo whispered. “The mortars must be within shouting distance of him.”

“Let’s get him!”

Russo put a hand on Alec’s shoulder. “If we pot him before we know exactly where the mortars are, all we’ll be doing is warning the mortar crew. Come on, follow me.”

Slowly, quietly, slithering like snakes, Russo led Alec down away from that spot. They started to make a wide circle of the area. After several minutes, Alec realized what he was doing. He’s swinging around behind the spotter. Behind the mortars.

It took at least a quarter-hour, Alec judged. He didn’t get a chance to look at his wristwatch, they were too busy moving. Finally Russo got cautiously to his knees, looked around, then rose to his feet. They were on the reverse slope of the ridge now, standing in waist-high brush. The big tree that the spotter was using was barely visible; only its crown poked above the ridge line.

“Are you sure that’s the same tree?” Alec asked.

“They all look alike.”

Russo said, “Not after you’ve been here a while.”

“All right. Now what?”

“Now we take a couple of deep breaths, then run like hell for that tree. Shoot the spotter as soon as we see him and spray the mortar crew when they come into sight.”

“You’re sure they’re there?”

Nodding, Russo said, “Yep. Although I haven’t heard any firing for the last few minutes. They might be packing up to move out.”

Alec looked down to check his gun.

“Ready?” Russo asked.

“Yes.”

“Okay…” The redhead sucked in a deep breath. “Now!”

They dashed up the remaining few meters of waist-high brush, Russo in the lead. At the top of the ridge Alec saw him bring his rifle up to armpit level and squeeze off a three-round burst. The i sudden noise of the gun made him jump, despite himself.

Something fell from the tree, a blur that Alec noticed out of the corner of his eye because now he was at the top of the ridge and there were eight men frozen in mid-motion, dismantling the mortars. The tubes and bipod supporters and a half-dozen remaining shells lay scattered around them as they looked up, some crouching, some standing, one of them ridiculously mopping under his chin with a red cloth.

For a split instant Alec saw it all displayed in front of him. Then the men dived for their weapons. Alec felt himself firing his machine pistol. It kicked and clattered in his hands. Sprays of dirt sprouted in the midst of the startled men.

Four of them jerked backward immediately, arms flung crazily and mouths open. Two others seemed to stagger, reach for the guns that were resting on the ground, then fall over. Another pair dived for the brush and started scrambling downslope, away from Alec and Russo.

Alec realized he’d been firing from the hip, spraying the area with bullets. He straightened and brought the gun to his shoulder, sighting carefully at the nearest of the fleeing men.

Russo tapped him on the shoulder. “That’s enough, let them go.”

“But they…”

“Good God, man, what do you want? We’ve killed seven men and got their mortars and personal weapons. What else?”

For the first time, Russo seemed annoyed. Not angry, but annoyed the way a parent gets upset with a naughty child.

Alec put his pistol down. “How do you know they’re dead?”

Looking at the bodies sprawled below them, Russo answered, “If they’re not now, they will be soon.”

Slowly he walked down to the scene. Under the big tree the spotter Jay unmoving, blotches of red welling over his body, his legs crumpled beneath him, his face contorted. Alec turned and looked at the six men near the disassembled mortars. His stomach heaved.

They were broken apart. Huge gaping wounds ripped through their grotesquely flung bodies.

One of them had no face, only an oozing mass of red and gray. Flies buzzed over them.

One of them was groaning. Alec turned his back and tottered away from the sight and smell. Everything was going blurry. Still, he could hear.

“Please… please…”

“I’m sorry son, there’s nothing I can do for you.”

A single shot.

Alec leaned against the tree and threw up.

After what seemed like hours, Russo came up beside him. “First time you’ve seen men killed.” It was not a question.

Alec mumbled, “First time… I’ve been responsible.”

“Okay… You take their weapons back to the truck. Take it slow and easy. You’ll need to make a half-dozen trips. I’ll bury them.”

“You’ll… what?”

With an almost bashful shrug, Russo said, “Someday somebody’s going to kill me, and I wouldn’t want to be left above ground to feed the maggotts.”

“But you killed them. I mean, we did.”

“Yep. And now they need burying.” He paused a moment, then explained, “You kill your enemies when they’re in a position to kill you. If they’re running and weaponless, you let them run. If they’re dead, you bury them. And you don’t take prisoners unless you’ve got a good reason to.”

“Those are the rules of war here?”

“The rules of survival.”

Alec nodded to show that he understood, even though he could not agree. He began to gather together the rifles and carbines that the dead men had left scattered on the ground. Russo took one of the corpses off along the tree line, carrying it in his arms almost tenderly.

“Hey!” he suddenly called. “Come here!”

Alec was running toward him instantly, slamming a fresh ammunition clip into his pistol as he moved.

Russo had dropped the corpse at his feet. Hanging from the outstretched limb of a tree, dangling by his thumbs, was a ragged scarecrow of a kid, wide-eyed with pain and terror. His thumbs were swollen and blue. A filthy rag had been stuffed into his mouth. A long gash was oozing blood down one bare leg.

Russo whipped a knife from his belt and cut the boy down, then pulled the gag from his mouth. He collapsed into the big redhead’s arms.

“Must’ve been a prisoner of the mortar crew’s,”

Russo said, “or one of the other gangs nearby.”

The kid’s emaciated face was hollow-cheeked, his chin stubbly with the beginnings of a beard. He stared at the rifle slung over Russo’s shoulder, then at Alec and his drawn pistol.

“No, no…” he whimpered.

Russo loosened the ropes knotted over his thumbs as the kid winced with pain.

“What do we do with him?” Alec asked. “What are your rules for this?”

Holding the skinny youngster by his shoulders, Russo asked, “Can you stand?”

The kid nodded and hobbled a few steps away from the big redhead. Russo shook his head and looked back at Alec. “He’ll never make it by himself.”

“Please,” the youngster whined. “Okay. Okay.”

“Can you talk?” Alec asked sharply. “What’s your name? Why are you here?”

“Ferret. Live here. In woods. They… caught me. Gonna kill me. Later. Slow.”

“No guns on him,” Russo said. “Not even a knife.”

Studying the painfully thin youngster, Alec realized that they might both be the same age. This kid is just a runt, Alec thought. He must have gone through his whole life half-starved.

Alec heard his own voice say, “We’ve got medical supplies in the trucks.”

Russo started to reply, but Ferret sank to his knees with a barely-suppressed groan.

Frowning, Russo said to Alec, “You remember what I said about prisoners?”

“I’ve got a good reason. He knows the territory around here. He could be useful to me.”

“Don’t expect him to be grateful,” Russo warned. “Don’t trust him at all.”

But Alec stepped over to the emaciated young man and helped him to his feet. “Come on,” he said. “We’ll have that leg fixed in no time.”

When they got back to the airfield, the battle had long been over. Russo left Alec at the edge of the woods, saying he had to check his own men, and he would be back before sundown. Alec rode the truck back to the runway, with Ferret lying silent but wide-eyed at his side.

Jameson eyed the wounded prisoner with obvious disdain, but gave orders to have his leg attended to. Then he gave Alec an account of the battle. “They kept melting back into the trees. We couldn’t follow them in there with the trucks, so we just kept patrolling around the edge of the woods, squirting at them to keep them from getting any closer. They lobbed a lot of mortar rounds at us, but didn’t do much damage with them.”

Two of the trucks had been clawed by shrapnel, but were still running. Several of the men were hurt, none seriously.

Jameson peered into the woods, his face the image of a hunting hawk. “This man Russo is with your father, is he? Are they on our side, or what?”

Shrugging tiredly, Alec replied, “Today they were on our side. I’m not sure of what happens next. Keep everyone on the alert. Post guards.”

“And your prisoner?”

“Keep a guard on him at all times.”

“When does the shuttle come back for us?”

“When I call it.”

Alec could see that Jameson was skeptical about that. But after a moment’s hesitation, the big man simply said, “I’ll set out the guards.” He strode away, leaving Alec standing alone.

He leaned back against the cab of the truck and surveyed the landscape. Out in the middle of the airfield lay the blackened smoking skeleton of the destroyed shuttle. The forest was silent now.

Shadows were creeping across the open ground as the sun settled toward the west.

Alec realized that they were completely alone on an alien, dangerous world.

Chapter 16

The sun had already sunk behind the trees when Will Russo appeared again. He walked alone out of the forest and toward the semicircle of trucks parked at the edge of the runway.

Despite himself, Alec was glad to see the man.

When Jameson told him that Russo was coming, Alec almost ran out to the guard perimeter to meet him.

“You’re not bedded down for the night yet, are you?” Will asked, right off.

“No, not yet.”

“Good, good.” He looked genuinely pleased.

“We’ve made camp up on top of the first ridge,” he waved vaguely in the general direction, “and I think it’d be a good idea for you to camp there with us.”

Alec said nothing.

“What’s left of those raiders are still skulking around here somewhere,” Will explained, “and with our two forces camping together we’ll be strong enough to discourage them from trying anything during the night. We’ll both be able to sleep easier.”

My trucks and lasers and your experienced woods fighters, Alec thought. Nodding, he asked, “Can the trucks get up there?”

“Oh, sure, I’ll show you the trail.”

“All right.” Alec turned and called for Jameson.

Will grinned boyishly. “Fine. Wonderful. In union there is strength.”

The trail up to the top of the ridge was narrow and tricky. One of the trucks slipped in a rain-sliced gully alongside the barely-visible trail and it took nearly an hour to pull it out again. The men had to use primitive muscle power to lift the truck’s rear wheels out of the foliage-choked gully. The other trucks’ electric motors began to overheat when they tried to winch the stuck truck free.

For Ferret, the ride was wonderful. He lay on the back of a trucks behind the laser mount. His leg no longer hurt. These strangers had given him hot food and wrapped his wound with clean strips of something that looked like cloth, yet felt oddly slick and slippery. They were treating him like a king, and watched him carefully every minute.

It was full night when Alec’s force finally reached the top of the ridge. Riding perched on the cab of the lead truck, Alec saw a meager handful of men and women sitting quietly around an open fire. One of them was Angela.

“Is this your whole group?” he wondered aloud to Will, who sat on the fender alongside the cab.

“Oh no! We’ve got twice this many set out as guards. Didn’t you see them as we came up the trail?”

Alec shook his head, a gesture that was lost in the darkness.

The trees thinned out at the top of the ridge; there was ample room to park the trucks in a circle around the perimeter of the camp. Alec told Jameson to have the men sleep on the trucks, and to have one man awake per truck at all times.

“Are you sure one man per truck is enough?”

Jameson asked quietly.

They were standing far enough from the campfire so that none of Russo’s men was in earshot.

“What do you mean?” Alec asked.

“I don’t want to be an impolite guest,” Jameson replied softly, hitching his thumbs in the ammo belt he had buckled across his hips, “but—well, why should these people be so helpful to us? Especially if they’re the same guys who stole the fissionables. Why did they stick their necks out to help us drive the barbarians away, and why are they offering to share their camp and their food with us? It doesn’t add up.”

Alec was forced to agree. “At least it’s better than sitting down there in the open, alone. We don’t have enough rations for more than another day or two.”

Jameson’s hawk-eyed faced scanned the men sitting around the campfire. “Suppose what they’re really interested in is getting these nice, shiny new trucks for themselves? It wouldn’t be too difficult for them to slit our throats while we sleep.”

Somehow the picture of Will Russo murdering men in their sleep did not match in Alec’s mind with what he had already seen of the man. Still…

“All right. Tell the men to sleep in the cabs of the trucks. Button them up and open them for no one except a recognized member of our group.”

Jameson was silent for a moment. In the flickering light cast by the distant campfire it was impossible to read the expression on his face. At last he said, “Okay… but I still don’t like this.”

“Things could be a lot better,” Alec admitted.

“But they could be a lot worse, too.”

“I suppose.”

“Keep somebody on the radio. The satellite ought to be in range sometime tonight.”

“Right.”

Alec walked slowly toward the campfire. Angela was sitting there. He saw her long hair gleaming like hammered gold in the firelight.

The fire itself was strangely fascinating. Twisting, dancing, flickering hypnotically, the flames formed shapes and memories before his eyes. He stared at it, then realized that he was staring into the fire, deep inside the dancing flames, watching the logs glowing bright red and the flames licking up from them, orange and yellow and bluish and…

“Hello. Had any dinner yet?”

Alec pulled himself away from the hypnotic flames.

“What?” He saw that Angela was looking up at him. “Dinner? No, not yet.”

“What’s the matter? Are you okay?”

“I’m all right.” He hunkered down on the ground beside her. “It’s just… I’ve never seen an open fire before. It’s fascinating.”

“Oh. Yeah, I guess so.”

Alec saw that there was a blackened metal container rigged on a set of poles, hanging over the flames. Angela called it a pot, but it looked to Alec as if it had started life as a gasoline tank. Now it was cut down, its corner battered and dented.

“Grab some stew and make yourself to home,” she invited.

Alec got up and bent over the pot. Hot fragrant steam bathed his face; the smell was enticing. A simmering liquid bubbled in there, lumpy dark shapes poking out of the seething surface.

Thinking of all the injections and pills he had taken before leaving the satellite station, Alec stirred the concoction with his knife, then jabbed at one of the shapes. He held it at arm’s length, dripping and smoking, as he squatted awkwardly on the ground beside Angela once more.

“It won’t hurt you,” she laughed at him. “It was only a rabbit even when it was alive.”

“A rabbit?” It was the first time he had seen her laughing.

With a nod, Angela asked, “Don’t you have anything you can use for a plate? The stew’s got plenty of good things in it: carrots and leeks and all sorts of herbs.”

“Um… this is fine. I’ve got a messkit back at the truck, but just let me taste…” He bit into the rabbit. Pain! Alec had never felt anything so hot inside his mouth. Coughing, gagging, burning, he finally swallowed the chunk whole.

Angela was pounding him on the back, looking worried and shouting at him, “You want water? Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” he croaked, eyes tearing. “My mouth is a mass of second-degree burns and there’s a lump of dead rabbit stuck sideways in my guts, but otherwise I’m fine.”

The dozen people—mostly men—around the campfire were staring at him. But they quickly looked away and went back to their own conversations.

Alec managed to down a few bites of the meat without further trouble, once Angela showed him how to blow on the chunks to cool them. He found that it was good. Good enough to make him want more.

“I’ll go find my mess kit.” He started to get to his feet.

“Don’t bother,” Angela said. “Here, use my plate. I’ll wash it off, okay? Then you won’t have to go all the way back to the trucks.”

She leaned forward to reach a small canteen of water that was resting on the ground near the fire.

As she washed off the metal plate and spoon, Alec wondered, Why does she want to keep me away from the trucks?

He ate in wary silence, thinking vaguely about how long the immunizations shots they had given him on the satellite would protect him from local microbes. The stew was hot and strong, spicier than anything he had ever tasted in his life. Angela offered him water in a metal cup.

When he finished the meal he washed off the utensils himself and handed them back to her.

“Is your mouth okay?” she asked, grinning.

“I’ll survive.” In fact, with the hot meal inside him, Alec felt fine and strong. Except for the sunburn glowering on the back of his neck. And then, with a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach, he remembered everything else: the stolen fissionables, the attack, the loss of the shuttle, the fact that he and his remaining men were stranded a quarter-million miles from home.

He closed his eyes and took a deep, shuddering breath. “I’d better be getting back to my men,” he said to Angela, while a voice inside his head taunted, Failure! Failure!

She got up with him and walked alongside. Alec realized that the only weapon he was carrying was his knife. Angela was completely unarmed.

“Look.” She pointed. The Moon was rising above the tree-fringed horizon. It was nearly full, bright and serene and glorious.

Alec stared at it. The lights of the settlement’s surface domes could not be seen against its whiteness.

“What’s it like?” Angela asked.

“What?”

“Living there… on the Moon.”

“We don’t live on it,” he said. “We live in it, underground. You can’t walk around in the open like this, you need a pressure suit and a helmet.”

“Why?”

“There’s no air.”

Her eyes widened for a split-second, then went crafty. “Now wait… if there’s no air, how can you live there?”

So they sat on a convenient rock, watching the Moon climb higher into the night sky, playing tag with occasional drifting silvered clouds, and Alec explained about lunar life to her. She really doesn’t know, he realized as he told her what a dazzling sight the Earth is. Before long he found himself watching her, instead of the Moon. In the soft light from his home her face seemed to float pale and beautiful against the darkness. Lord, she’s beautiful!

“This is the first time anyone’s told me about these things,” she said, her voice excited. “Dad — I mean, your father, never wants to talk about living there.”

Alec felt his heart turn to ice.

“Strange,” she said, still smiling but with puzzlement in her voice now. “It’s kind of hard for me to call him Dad now… knowing he’s your father.”

“He never told you about the settlement?” Alec asked, his voice sounding cold and distant, even to himself.

Angela shook her head. “He’d always change the subject when I’d ask about that. After a while, I guess I just stopped asking.”

Alec got to his feet. “I’ve got to check my men now. Good-night, Angela.”

“Oh.” She sat there in surprised silence for a moment, then stood up beside him. “Well, goodnight, Alec.” She turned and walked swiftly back toward the campfire.

He didn’t trust himself to say anything more, to call after her. So he tramped in the opposite direction, to the trucks. Disregarding his own orders, he slept out in the open on a stretch of mossy ground near the trucks. He wrapped himself in a plastic tarpaulin and laid his machine pistol by his side. It seemed to take hours for his eyes to close, and when he finally did sleep, he dreamed of his mother.

Ferret slid off the back of the truck and tested his injured leg. It was all right. He could stand on it and walk. The food they had given him had made him strong again, and the leg would heal soon enough.

He limped around the truck and saw Alec stretched out on the ground, the shiny pistol at his side. Ferret crouched so that the guard inside the next truck could not see him, and stared at the pistol. He could snatch it and be off into the woods. They would never find him, and he’d have a wonderful gun for himself.

Dimly he remembered Billy-Joe and the others of the band who had been killed. And his mother, feeding him, crooning him to sleep when he was a baby. They coulda killed me, Ferret said to himself. He coulda killed me. But he didn’t.

The gun was an enormous temptation. But so was the food and medical care and wary but kind treatment these people had given him. I’ll stay with them for a while, Ferret decided. This looks like a good gang to stay with. For now.

Stealthily he climbed back onto the truck and went back to sleep.

The Sun awoke Alec after what seemed like a mere few minutes of dozing. After checking with Jameson to see that everything was all right with the men, Alec walked stiff-jointed and aching to the embers of the campfire. It was smoldering low, but one of the women was putting fresh logs onto it.

“Well, you’re up at last,” Will Russo called to him jovially. He was standing a short distance from the fire, holding a steaming cup in one big hand. Walking around the fire to confront Alec, he said, “Here, have some herb tea. It isn’t terribly good, but it’ll help to start your engines running. If you’d like to shave…”

Alec shook his head blearily. He got the cup almost to his lips, then remembered the searing pain of the previous night’s stew. His mouth still felt raw.

“Um… thanks.” He handed the cup back to Will. “I’ll just take some water.”

Will shrugged. “Have you made contact with the satellite yet? Are they coming to pick you up?”

“Not yet,” Alec said, going for the water canteen by the fire. “We’ve got someone on the radio now, but no luck so far.”

He drank from the canteen, and again worried about catching some local disease.

“Well,” Russo said, “I’d hate to leave you out here in the woods by yourselves, but we can’t hang around here much longer.”

“1 understand,” Alec said.

He left Will by the campfire and strode quickly back to the trucks. Going to the cab of the first one he came to, Alec pulled the medical kit from its niche behind the driver’s seat. The pills were all in neatly labelled vials, but the labels were not very specific. More than half the pills were already missing, besides. Trying to remember his medical briefings, Alec took three different pills and swallowed them dry.

“Oh, there you are.” It was Ron Jameson.

Alec swung down from the cab. “What is it?”

“Radio contact.”

Alec followed Jameson to the third truck.

Gianelli was in the cab, a huge pair of earphones clamped around his head, squinting with concentration.

“Yeah… yeah… still coming through weak but clear. Okay, here he is now. Hold on…”

He took off the earphones and held them out for Alec. “The satellite’s relaying a call from home. Kobol’s back at the settlement already.”

Fitting the earphones over his head and adjusting the lip mike that swung out from the right ’phone, Alec thought rapidly, Kobol! He’d pushed straight on to the settlement on the highest-gee boost he could get. Must have burned every gram of propellant between the satellite and the Imbrium mines.

The big, cumbersome earphones blotted out all sounds except for the hissing, crackling static of the radio. Alec could see that Gianelli was saying something to Jameson, but he could not hear their voices.

“Hello… hello… Alec Morgan?” The communications tech was a girl, that much Alec could tell. But her voice was faint and streaked with interference.

“Yes. Go ahead.”

A pause, then, “Alec, this is Martin Kobol. Can you hear me?”

“Yes.”

It took about two and a half seconds for Alec’s words to get to the Moon and Kobol’s response to reach back to Earth. A discernable pause.

“Good. Now listen. I’ve just arrived back at the settlement. The Council’s going to meet in an hour. Everything’s completely upset here—all our plans, everything. There’s a threat of real panic through the entire settlement if we don’t act carefully and reassure the people. They were all depending on getting those fissionables.”

“I know that.” Spare the political speeches!

Pause. Then, “We’ve got to work out another plan. Can you hold out down there on the surface for a few more days?”

Or a few weeks? Or months? “Yes, I think so.”

“Good. Now listen. Stay where you are. Hold tight while we figure out the next move.”

“No.”

A long pause. Not merely because of the distance this time.

“What was that?”

“I said no,” Alec repeated. “I know where the fissionables are. We’re going to get them.”

“You can’t… I mean…”

“I can and I’m going to. We’ll keep in touch with the satellite,” Alec said. He counted, waiting for the response: one, one-thousand, two, one-thousand, th…

“This is psychotic! You’re going to force us to pull another shuttle out of mothballs, track your movements…”

“Stow it, Martin. We came here for the fissionables and we’re going to get them. Everything else is a detail.”

Kobol’s voice, when it came, was almost a woman’s screech. “You can’t travel across the continent and find him, you fool! You’ll kill yourself and your men with you!”

“You’d hate that, wouldn’t you?” Alec shot back. “Listen to me, Martin. We can travel across country. And we can live off the country, too. There’s plenty of food here.”

But Kobol was already saying, “I don’t care what you do to yourself, your personal grudges are your business, not mine. But to risk the rest of those men without even giving them a chance…”

“Save your speeches for the Council, Martin. Tell them I’m following their prime directive: I’m going to get the fissionables.”

The time lag between their statements was turning the conversation into two separate monologues. “And there’s medicine,” Kobol was saying, but more calmly now. He was more in charge of himself, obviously thinking fast while he spoke, “You’ll be exposing those men to all the diseases of Earth…”

“I want to talk to my mother now,” Alec said.

“Please put her on.”

“Your inoculations won’t keep you protected…” Kobol stopped, then answered, “Your mother’s busy preparing for the Council meeting. By the time we could get her here to the communications center the satellite would be below your horizon and out of range.”

“Very well. Arrange for her to call me tomorrow.”

The pause again. Alec could sense Kobol’s mind churning furiously during the hiatus. “I’ll tell her. In the meantime, I must warn you again that you should not endanger your men foolishly. The Council won’t look favorably on any rash action. You should stay where you are until we’ve decided on the next step.”

“Too dangerous,” Alec countered. “We’ve already been trapped here once. I don’t want to allow that to happen again.”

Kobol’s voice was starting to fade. “Your orders are to stay where you are.”

Smiling tightly, “No good, Martin. We’re in much greater danger here than we will be on the move. I’ll expect a call tomorrow. From my mother. Now I’m going to put Gianelli back on. Give him the ephemerides for the satellite, so we’ll know when you’re in contact range.”

Alec pulled the earphones off his head and handed them to Gianelli. “Quick, before the satellite gets out of range.”

Gianelli took the earphones with a slight, quizzical grin. “Gonna make heroes out of us,” he muttered.

Jameson said nothing. Alec left the truck and went searching for Will Russo. Halfway back to the campfire he spotted the big redhead striding toward him.

“Looking for you,” Will said.

There was something about the man, his big gangling gait, the way his arms swung loosely at his sides, the innocent grin on his face—Alec found it impossible to distrust him.

“I’ve been looking for you, too,” Alec said.

“Have you been in touch with your people?”

Will hiked a thumb skyward.

“Yes. If you don’t mind, I’d like to travel north with you. I want to find my father.”

Will’s grin broadened. “Good. Good. I just got a message from him. He’s only a few klicks—eh, kilometers—from here, in a town named Coalfield.”

“Here?” Alec suddenly felt weightless, all the breath knocked out of him.

“Yep.” Will nodded happily. “We can be there in a couple of hours.”

Chapter 17

Alec scarcely noticed the countryside rolling past as he sat on the fender of the lead truck, heading for the town where his father waited for him.

They came down out of the ridges and woods, all of his own men and all Russo’s people riding on the trucks. They bumped onto a paved road; not a wide concrete highway like the one between Oak Ridge and the airport, but a narrow, twisting blacktopped road, cracked and potted beyond description.

Weeds and grass sprouted in every crevice.

Behind him Alec could hear Gianelli talking with Angela. “You mean you walk all the time?” he was asking. “Carrying all your food and guns and all?”

She sounded almost amused. “Sure. We ride when we can find something to ride on. There aren’t many cars or trucks still running—just a few electrics that run on solar batteries. Not much fuel left for gas-burners.”

“So you walk?” There was amazement in Gianelli’s voice. “And you carry everything on your backs.”

“Unless we can find horses or other pack animals. I covered five hundred klicks on a cow last year, when I hurt my leg.”

“Which one?”

“The right.”

“Looks pretty good now.” Gianelli’s voice had a leer in it.

“It’s fine. And you can keep your hands off!”

Alec turned and said evenly. “There could be five hundred raiders in those trees. Play some other time.”

Gianelli’s face reddened and his mouth squeezed down into a hard line. But he moved away from the girl. Angela looked at Alec for a wordless moment. Then he turned away.

Up ahead he could see the first buildings of the town. His hands suddenly felt clammy, shaky. He tightened his grip on the edge of the fender with one hand, shifted the machine pistol’s belt across his shoulder with the other. He’s here. Somewhere among these buildings… Every sense in him peaked, brightened. Alec could hear his pulse throbbing in his ears, feel his breath quicken. He’s here! But deep within him, something was telling him to run, to get away, anything but this one place. Journey across the whole face of the planet, travel back to the Moon, get away, anywhere, anyplace.

Yet he was impatient to meet the man he had come to find.

Alec knew from his history tapes that this was a small town. Yet it still dwarfed the lunar community. All these buildings, aboveground, out in the open! And their variety: one floor, three ^floors, brick fronts, wooden slats, something that looked like stone blocks. Windows staring down at him, empty, mysterious, dark. Street after street after street, branching and intersecting every hundred meters or so.

But empty. Dead. No one lived here. No one was on the streets. No vehicles. Nothing in sight except the silent buildings and wind-blown dust billowing through the empty streets.

He looked across to Will, perched on the opposite fender.

“Town’s been deserted since the sky burned,”

Will said. “People come by once in a while, but nobody lives here permanently. Too tough to grow food here; too hard to defend the town against raiders.”

“How do you know which building my father’s in?”

Will grinned hugely. “Oh, Douglas’ll be in his usual place.”

It turned out to be a one-story red-brick building with a sign spanning its width: U.S. POST OFFICE — COALFIELD, TENN.—33719.

Will suggested that the trucks be spread around the building in a defensive perimeter. Alec passed the order on to Jameson, then the truck he was on trundled into the parking lot behind the Post Office building. Nestled under a protective overhang sat a squarish, squat, open-topped vehicle.

Alec recognized it from his teaching tapes as a jeep.

As he climbed down from the truck, Alec wondered where his father found the fuel to propel a jeep. If he can cover long distances in it, then he must have fuel depots spotted along the way. Then Will Russo came around, grabbed Alec by the arm and ushered him through a doorway that had long ago lost its door.

It was dark inside. They walked down a narrow corridor, turned a corner.

And there he was.

He was standing in the center of a big room, surrounded by empty shelves and broken, shattered wooden desks and tables. The roof was partially gone, so the sunlight streamed in, dust motes drifting lazily in the still air. The room was large and open, but Douglas Morgan seemed to fill it. He was big, hulking, broad-shouldered and thick-bodied.

Will Russo was almost as big, Alec realized.

But where Will was a grinning, happy oversized puppy, Douglas Morgan was a towering, lumbering gray bear.

His face was square-jawed and strong, with iron-gray hair rising in a bristling shock from his broad forehead and framing his powerful jaw with an iron-gray spade-shaped beard. His blue eyes were like gunmetal. They stared straight at Alec now, unblinking, pinning him where he stood.

I don’t look anything like him, Alec heard his own inner voice saying. No wonder he hates me.

“You’re Alec, eh?” His voice was strong, demanding, even in normal conversational tone.

“You have your mother’s genes, all right.”

And not yours? Alec wondered. “I’m Alec,” he said.

“Well, come over here and let me see you. I’m not going to bite you.”

Alec walked slowly toward his father. The man was a giant, a mountainous man, with a powerful commanding voice to match.

They stood confronting each other. Neither offered a hand. Neither smiled. Despite the sunlight beaming down through the broken roof, Alec felt cold, numbed to his core.

“He’s a good fighter,” Will’s voice broke the staring match between them. “Helped me take a nasty mortar nest. Handled himself very well.”

Douglas nodded. “That’s something.”

“I vomited afterward,” Alec snapped.

Douglas’s heavy eyebrows went up. “Did you? A sensitive soul, eh? Well… killing a man’s no joke. But be glad you were the one who was still alive to get sick, not the one somebody else got sick over.”

Will said, “Why don’t we sit down and have something to drink? It’s been a dusty ride up here, and I sort of feel like celebrating.”

“Celebrating what?” Douglas asked.

“Family reunion!”

“Oh. That.” He smiled sardonically. “Sure. Obviously you’ve found some liquid lightning along the way. So uncork it and we’ll have a little party. Just the three of us.”

“It’s in my pack.” Will bounded back toward the door.

“Sorry we haven’t had the place dusted and decorated for the big occasion,” Douglas said to Alec. “Eh… the furniture’s a bit nonexistent. Care to sit over here?”

He gestured elaborately toward the floor next to a scarred, battered wooden counter that ran across the front of the room. Alec shrugged and dropped down onto his heels. He watched as Douglas stiffly, slowly sank down into a sitting position. He leaned his back against the sagging partitions under the counter-top with an audible sigh.

“Caught a cold in my back during the spring rains,” he said, without turning to look at his son.

“Makes it merry hell to bend.”

Will came back, holding a metal flask in his big freckled hand. He sat on the floor facing Alec and Douglas. Grinning, he unscrewed the cap of the flask and sniffed at its contents.

“Wow! Shouldn’t keep this in the hot sun.”

Douglas reached for it and took a cautious whiff. “I’ll bet I could get fifty klicks to the gallon on my jeep with this stuff.” He passed the flask to Alec. “Here. You’re the guest of honor. You get the first shot. If you survive, maybe we’ll try it.”

“It’s not that bad,” Will said, trying to look aggrieved.

“The farmer who sold it to me swore he brewed it last summer.”

Alec took the flask and brought it to his lips. The fumes seemed to crawl right up inside his eyeballs, making them water. He took a sip. It stung and tasted sour. Don’t cough! he commanded himself.

“Not bad,” he said, his voice-only partly choked.

Douglas took the flask from him. “Well, if you can stand it, I suppose I can too.”

Alec watched his father take a long swallow of the liquor, while his own sip burned its way down toward his stomach. They passed the flask among themselves for another round before Douglas said:

“We have a lot to talk about.”

“Yes, we do,” Alec agreed.

Will said, “Maybe I ought to tiptoe out…”

“No, stay right here,” Douglas commanded.

That eliminates talking about mother, Alec thought. Aloud, he said, “The fissionables are gone.”

“Right. We took them north… er, for safekeeping.”

“We need them.”

“I know you do. I knew it before you were born.”

“Then why did you take them away? Why didn’t you bring them back yourself? Why did you turn your back on us and stay here in this mudhole?”

All in a rush.

Douglas held the flask in his hand. He looked at it, then shook his head once, abruptly, as if he’d made a firm decision. “That is a long story. But it all boils down to one unavoidable fact. The lunar settlement cannot survive by itself. It needs Earth. Otherwise, it’s going to die.”

“Of course! We need those fissionables.”

“It’s not the fissionables.” Douglas leaned an elbow on the sagging wooden shelf behind him.

The wood creaked. “There’s more than the fissionables involved… far more. The life of the settlement itself.”

“I don’t follow.”

“Look—the settlement was never intended to be entirely self-sufficient. Right? When the Sun flared up they were suddenly thrust on their own. No more support from Earth.”

Alec said, “And we’ve been on our own for more than twenty-five years now. Doing fine.”

“Bull-hinkey! You think you’re doing fine.”

Douglas’s voice rose slightly. “But take a good, unbiased look at the settlement. You’re still operating with the machinery that was there before the flare, right? No one’s built new reactors, new processing plants, new solar panels, new shuttles, eh? No one’s even tried to rectify the processing plants so they can run on the voltages that the solar arrays produce, have they? No! Instead you keep coming back to Earth to grab fissionables for the reactors.”

“So?”

“So what happens when you’ve used up all the fissionable fuel you can find? What then?”

Douglas demanded.

“That won’t happen for centuries!”

“Centuries, millennia… what difference? The point is,” Douglas insisted, “that it’s going to happen one day, and unless you people have the knowledge and the guts to work out new devices — like fusion generators, for example—then you’re going to die. All of you.”

Alec said, “But that’s so far in the future…”

“Then what about medicines?”

“We synthesize all the medicines we need.”

“Oh sure you do. Certainly,” Douglas sneered.

“But how many people in the settlement are too brittle-boned to make the trip to Earth? How many of your own men are going to suffer sunstroke because they don’t have enough melanin pigmentation in their skin? That’s a beautiful burn you’ve got on the back of your neck, by the way.”

Alec was starting to feel confused. “But those are hereditary traits. Medicine can’t…”

“Exactly!” Douglas pounced. “What about the four or five people each year who die of cancer in the settlement? Huh?”

Bewildered, Alec replied, “Cancer’s unavoidable… everybody knows that.”

“Oh it is, is it?” Douglas glanced over at Will, then turned back to Alec. “It happens that cancer arresting drugs were being manufactured on Earth before the sky burned.”

“They were?”

Douglas nodded. “And the incidence of cancer in the settlement is rising at a rate of five percent a year. In another generation or two… pfft!” He snapped his fingers.

“No!”

“I calculated it out myself. Cancer, birth defects, other genetic diseases—they’re all on the rise in the settlement. Because of inbreeding. Before the sky burned, the inbreeding effect was masked because there was a constant flow of people coming and going from Earthside. But among the people who had lived on the Moon for years and intermarried, the hereditary effects were already starting to show up. Now that you’ve cut yourselves off from Earth, the genetic pool of the lunar community just isn’t big enough to be viable.”

“That can’t be true.”

“Can’t it be? Do you think the computers tell lies? They don’t. They have no pity. They don’t care what you want the answer to be, they simply chug away at the problem and tell you what the answer is.”

“I can’t believe that,” Alec said. “The answer you get depends on the data you put in…”

Douglas shrugged ponderously. “The data I put in was the medical records of the long-term lunar residents. The settlement is dying. It’s too small and inbred to survive. Oh sure, maybe you’ll get along for another generation or so… say, about fifty years. But I doubt it. There were already a lot of visible strains when I left. I’ll bet there’s a lot more tension in the air now. Nobody knows how to build new equipment; you’ve got some smart engineers and technicians, but no scientists to speak of. A few astronomers. And the genetic diseases are being quietly brushed under the rug because nobody knows how to handle them or what to do to get rid of them.”

“He’s right,” Will said gently. “I was a physician up there, you know. What Douglas is saying is absolutely right.”

Alec glared at the two of them. “So you decided to let the settlement die. You left with no intention of coming back.”

“That’s just about one hundred percent wrong,”

Douglas said. “The settlement will certainly die — if it stays alone. I’m trying to save it by forcing you people to reconnect with the rest of the human race, with Mother Earth. And to do that, I’ve got to build a viable civilization here On Earth. Right?”

A boiling tide of rage was rising in Alec’s guts.

“That’s a fancy way of saying that you’re carving out a nice little empire for yourself down here, and you want to force the settlement to become part of it.”

Smiling sadly, Douglas replied, “I can see that your mother’s been educating you.” He spread his big, thick-fingered hands. “Call it an empire, a renaissance, an attempt to hold back the complete annihilation of the human race as a species—call it any goddamned thing you want to! But I’m going to bring the threads of civilization back together again, one way or the other. And I want you to work with me. You’re my son and…”

“And someday I’ll inherit all this?” Alec shouted at him. “The heir-apparent? The crown prince?”

“Something like that,” Douglas muttered.

“Then you’re a fool! Don’t you know that crown princes spend their lives planning the king’s murder?”

Douglas said nothing. He simply sat there on the dusty floor and stared at his son. Then, slowly, he struggled to his feet and walked out of the room.

Alec watched him, unmoving.

Will Russo shook his head. “I shouldn’t stick my nose into this damned thing… father and son, after all. But, by golly, that was a lousy thing you just did to him. He’s been waiting twenty years to see you.”

“So he saw me,” Alec said, suddenly weary of the whole thing. “What was he expecting? Congratulations for running out on us? A hero’s medal for turning his back on the whole lunar settlement so he could play emperor down here?”

“There’s a lot to this that you don’t understand.”

“No,” Alec said, getting to his feet. “I under* stand him perfectly. He can rationalize all he wants to, but the simple fact is that he’s a king down here instead of a responsible citizen of the settlement. And he’s trying to make us submit to him by holding the fissionables. He knows we can’t survive without them.”

“You won’t survive even with them,” Will said gently. “That’s the point he’s trying to make.”

The afternoon seemed infinitely long. Alec paced alone through the dead streets of the town, kicking up dust, watching the weeds and a few straggling flowers tossing in the warm wind.

Trees grew tall and dark in all directions around the town, but for some reason the trees planted along the streets were nothing but dead bare skeletons.

It took him several hours to calm down, to regain enough self-control so that he could face his own men without being afraid that his hands would tremble or his voice would crack. My father’s convinced himself that he’s right, Alec thought. And he’s convinced Will and the others, too. Everything mother told me about him is true.

He’s able to rationalize anything, everything: leaving us, not caring if we live or die. And he claims it’s for our own good. The bastard!

The flaming beauty of sunset went unnoticed.

Only when it started getting dark enough to worry him did Alec return to the trucks. He lost his way several times among the empty diverging streets, but finally he found the Post Office and his men.

They were eating with Will’s people, gathered around an open fire in front of the Post Office building.

“There you are,” Jameson said as Alec stepped out of the shadows cast by one of the trucks. “I was starting to think I ought to send a couple of scouts out to find you.”

“No need,” Alec said.

His own men and Will’s people were intermingling freely. The girls were laughing and charming the men. Angela was not in sight, though. Alec sat on the ground by the fire and shared their communal dinner. He didn’t bother asking what was in the pot. It was tasteless—at least, he tasted nothing.

Angela showed up as he finished eating.

“Dad wants to see you,” she said tightly.

He rose and started walking off with her.

Despite her small size she kept pace with him.

She’s tough, Alec couldn’t help thinking. Battle-hardened.

“Hey, chief, where you going?” Gianelli’s voice called through the flickering shadows cast by the campfire. “Don’t do anything we wouldn’t do!”

The laughter of several men followed them.

“He’s not your father,” Alec said grimly as they walked around toward the rear of the Post Office.

Her eyes flashed and she snapped, “More than…” Then she seemed to catch herself, think better of it. “That’s right. He’s not really my father.”

“And you’re not my sister.”

“So?”

“So just remember that.”

Her voice was brittle. “I’ll keep it in mind.”

Douglas was sitting in the jeep; it was still parked behind the building. The only light was from the stars; the Moon had not risen yet.

“Thank you, Angela,” Douglas said softly. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to talk to Alec alone.”

“I don’t mind… Dad.” She put special emphasis on the last word, Alec thought.

“Well?” Alec asked, standing beside the jeep. He could barely make out the expression on his father’s face, in the darkness.

“What are your plans?” Douglas asked.

Alec hesitated, then lied. “I’m not sure yet. I have to talk to mother and the Council.”

“She’s still on the Council?”

“She chairs It.”

Douglas grunted. “I might have guessed. Matriarchal societies need a queen bee.”

Alec clenched his fists but said nothing.

“Listen to me,” Douglas commanded. “In the next few days you and your men are going to come down with dysentery. It’s not fatal…”

“We have pills for that.”

“Bull-hickey! The pills won’t do a damned thing for you, take my word for it. Once you start eating the local flora and fauna your gut bugs change and you get dysentery. It’s inevitable. And although it won’t kill you, it’ll make you wish you were dead. You’ll be in no condition to defend yourselves. Unless you’re safely in the shuttles, you’ll be helpless here. And I can’t afford to have my people sitting around here for days on end, protecting you.”

“So take off,” Alec snapped. “We don’t need your protection.”

“You could come with us.”

“And help you to build your empire?”

“Help save your mother and everyone else in the settlement!”

“I’ll save them—by getting those fissionables.”

Douglas shook his head, a ponderous negative motion. “No. That’s something you can’t do. They’re too far from here, and too well protected. You’d be dead long before you got to within a hundred kilometers.”

“I came here for the fissionables.”

“You’ll get yourself killed.”

“You’re going to kill me?”

“I won’t have to lift a finger!” Douglas was starting to sound exasperated. “There are a thousand ways of getting yourself killed here: raider bands, injuries… hell, you could even starve to death, if you know as little about survival as I think you do.”

“I’m going to get those fissionables, one way or the other.”

Douglas suddenly turned sarcastic. “Oh are you? Well, you’re going to find that that’s just a leetle tough to accomplish. In the first place, when you talk to your mother, she’s going to order you back home. I know her, and she won’t have her precious son running around here in the open where he might stub his toe.”

“You might have known her,” Alec flashed, white-hot, “but you don’t know me.”

“That’s true. Arid it’s a shame I never will. Because you’re either returning to the settlement or you’re going to be killed inside of a week.”

“We’ll see.”

“Indeed we will. It’s a shame your education is going to prove fatal. You might have eventually turned out to be somebody worth knowing. You’re stubborn enough to be my son, I’ll give you that much.”

With that, Douglas reached for the jeep’s dashboard and twisted the ignition key. The motor purred to life. An electric motor! Alec realized, taken aback with surprise. Without another word Douglas put the jeep in reverse, backed smoothly out of the parking lot, and disappeared silently into the night.

Alec stood there for some moments, fingering the pistol at his side, before he realized that he might have killed Douglas then and there.

Chapter 18

Alec expected an argument from his mother the next morning, but he got none.

He sat buttoned into the armored cab of his truck, alone and isolated from the others. He reported everything that had happened so far, ending with his decision to head north and find the fissionables. His mother’s voice sounded strangely faraway, much colder and more distant than the quarter-million miles between them.

“You must do what needs to be done,” she said, metalically, icily, amid the cracklings and hisses of Sun-static.

“When I locate the fissionables you can send reinforcements to me.”

He could sense other pressures, other emotions working in her mind. “Very well, Alec. The Council will accept your plan. I’ll see to that.”

“And Kobol?”

The hesitation in her voice was more than the lag of lightspeed. “There are ways of handling Kobol. He won’t stop you.”

“You’ll need to bring out the other shuttles and make supply drops for us. We’re going to need medicine and ammunition, fuel for the truck generators…”

She said, “That will take time. Several days, at least. Probably longer.”

“All right. I’ll keep in touch through the satellite. It might be a good idea to activate one of the automatic relay satellites in synchronous orbit, if you can. Then we can keep a communications line open all the time.”

Her voice was fading, the satellite was passing out of range. “I’ll try, Alec. I’ll try.”

“Take care, Mother. Be careful.”

“And you, Alec. Do what needs to be done. Find him and do what needs…” her voice dimmed to an inaudible hiss.

Alec sat alone in the truck’s cab for several minutes, feeling flushed and weak. Got to get a grip on myself, he thought. I’m responsible for fifteen lives. He reached for the door handle and a sudden stab of pain seared through his middle.

His head swam.

Dizzily, he stumbled out of the truck. It was cooler in the morning air. He took several deep racking breaths and forced the pain down.

“You,” he called to the nearest man, who was poking into the truck’s fuel cell, behind the cab and under the laser mounting. He looked up. Alec recognized him but couldn’t recall his name.

“Find the medical tapes and read out the information on dysentery. Remind Gianelli to get all the available data on the subject when the satellite’s in range again.”

The man looked blankly at him. “The satellite won’t be in range again for twelve hours, will it?”

Alec nodded, bringing up the dizziness again.

“Right. Do it.”

“Yeah, okay. Dysentery?” He started to look scared, rather than puzzled.

Slowly, fighting against the nausea that was gripping him, Alec made his way along the line of trucks, looking for Ron Jameson. He found him calmly sitting on the ground with his back against a truck’s wheel, cleaning his automatic rifle. The weapon was spread on a plastic sheet in front of him, broken down into its many glittering metallic parts. Jameson was deftly oiling the firing mechanism.

Ferret stood about ten meters away, watching Jameson with gleaming eyes.

“I don’t trust him,” Jameson said, as Alec’s shadow fell over the rifle parts. Then he looked up and saw Alec’s face. “You’ve got it too.”

“And you?” Alec sagged to a sitting position against the balloon tire.

Jameson nodded, keeping one eye on Ferret.

“Had a siege last night. Not much fun.”

“We’re all going to come down with it. And Douglas is pulling his people out.”

“I know. Will Russo was around here looking for you. He was pretty shame-faced about it, but they’re all leaving before noon.”

Leaning his head against the truck’s cool metal fender, Alec closed his eyes. “That means we’ll be on our own.”

“With diarrhea and vomiting as our constant companions.” Jameson said it flatly, with neither humor nor malice.

“What can we do?”

“They’re not sending a shuttle for us?”

“No…”

Another cramp made Alec gasp and fight for self-control. “We’re going north to find the fissionables. As soon as we’re able.”

Jameson was silent for a long while. Through pain-blurred eyes, Alec watched him. He was scanning the streets around them, his hawk’s eyes registering every detail of the buildings and intersections, his mind obviously working at top speed.

“Well then,” he said at last, “I guess we’d better get these trucks inside of some of the buildings, where they won’t be spotted so easily. And we’d better pick buildings that are set so that the trucks can support each other with crossfire, in case we are attacked. We’ve got to defend ourselves with a troop of sick pups.”

He glanced at Ferret again. “And I wouldn’t trust him further than I can spit.”

“We’ve got the advantage of firepower,” Alec said.

Jameson gave him a pitying look. “Won’t do much good if the gunners are crapping their guts out when it comes time to pull the triggers.”

Alec couldn’t stand any more. He lurched to his feet and staggered off to find some privacy where he could be thoroughly sick.

The Sun was almost straight overhead when he forced himself back to the street where the Post Office stood. He was drenched with sweat, yet shivering. He stank. His knees were trembling with the mere effort of keeping himself on his feet.

A pair of strong arms grabbed him from behind.

“My God, you really do have it, don’t you?” Will Russo said. His usually carefree face was dead serious now.

“I’ll be… all right,” Alec managed.

Will led him in to the Post Office and sat him down on the floor. Squatting on his heels next to Alec, he said, “Look, we’ve got to leave. There’s a lot of going on further north that needs our attention…”

“Then go.” Alec fluttered a weak hand at him.

“Let me finish, doggone it! I know you feel like you’re going to die, but you won’t. You’ll be okay in a few days. The thing to avoid is fever… it weakens you to other infectious diseases. Now, do you have any anti-fever medicines—aspirin, anything like that?”

“Yes… but nothing much more.”

“You don’t need it. Gobble aspirin and use water baths to keep your temperature down. Same for everybody.”

“All right.” Far back in his mind Alec shrank from the idea of using water for bathing. Water’s too precious.

“Okay,” Russo said. “Now, I see that some of your men are still strong enough to start moving your trucks inside garages and store fronts and such. That’s good. Keep out of sight and maybe nobody will bother you.”

Alec said nothing.

“Now, the raider bands we tangled with have apparently scattered across the countryside. But they haven’t left the territory, you can be sure. I’ve asked a couple of the local farmers to sort of watch out for you, warn you if any packs come into the area. The locals don’t like the raiders and they’ve always worked with us pretty fairly. So they’ll at least try to warn you, if they can.”

“Good.”

“But don’t depend on them too much,” Will warned. “They’re not going to risk their own necks to help strangers. Stay alert. Especially at night.”

Sure, Alec thought, stay alert. We’ll be lucky if we can stay conscious.

“Well…” Russo clambered to his feet. Towering over the prostrate Alec he said, “Good luck. I hope you get through this okay and we can meet again under happier circumstances.”

When we do, we’ll be pointing guns at each other, Alec realized.

The first night wasn’t so bad. Before the Moon rose one of the men thought he saw someone prowling along the street and fired a burst of automatic rifle fire at him. Everyone roused, the sick and the well, but the alarm was over just that quickly. Once the Moon came up and it was fairly bright, the town became absolutely still.

At least, as far as Alec and his men could tell.

The next day it clouded over and by mid-morning began to rain. Alec lay in absolute misery on the floor of the Post Office next to the two trucks that had been trundled inside there. The rain dripped through the broken roof, adding rivulets of soaking water and a chilling, soggy air to the agonies that they all felt.

Ron Jameson was the strong one among them.

He was on his feet, moving from building to building, truck to truck, man to man, carrying medicine and discipline and—most important of all—morale.

He kept a constant eye on Ferret, as well, but the pinch-faced youth never tried to run out on them, never strayed far from the trucks and the other men. He watched them, eyes darting everywhere, in their miseries.

Hunched over Alec’s makeshift pallet as the rain drummed on the sagging roof and dripped through its shattered sections, Jameson said matter-of-factly:

“I wouldn’t depend on any farmers to warn us of raider bands. From what Russo’s people told me, most of them won’t bother to help us as long as the raiders leave them alone.”

Alec nodded weakly. “I guess that’s so.”

“And the way it’s raining, the raiders could march in here with a brass band and we wouldn’t see or hear a thing until they were right on top of us.”

“How many…” Alec had to take a breath, “…how many men are on their feet?”

“They’re starting to recover. We’ve got seven or eight who’re as good as new, almost.”

“Out of fifteen.”

“The worst is over. I think you got the biggest dose of all.”

Alec smiled wanly. “Good. I wouldn’t want anybody else… to go through this…” He had been vomiting aspirin and antibiotics all day. The cramps and diarrhea were not so bad now, but he was cold and utterly weak. Nothing stayed inside him.

“We’ll make it,” Jameson said, with a grim smile. “Once the Sun comes out again we’ll be okay.”

Alec translated, If we get through tonight we might have a chance.

Alec drifted to sleep. When he awoke, it was dark. Rain pelted the roof of the cab he lay in, but it seemed lighter now, diminishing. Cramps again.

He pushed himself up to a sitting position and the nausea washed over him in waves. Dizzy, he grabbed for the truck door handle and half-fell, half-slid to the floor of the Post Office room.

It was wet. The drizzling rain coming through the roof felt almost good on his head and shoulders.

Clutching at his midsection, Alec staggered out toward the back door. If any of the men noticed him, they gave no indication of it. He saw no one stir.

He was fumbling with the belt of his pants when the first explosion came.

It lifted him off his feet and slammed him into the muddy ground ten meters from where he’d been standing. The back wall of the Post Office was a sheet of flame and it collapsed in surrealistic slow motion, crumbling in on itself.

Sparks and flaming debris soared upward.

Alec rolled over on his back in the ice-cold mud.

Gunfire. Men yelling. The high-pitched whine of an electric generator revving up to top speed.

He rolled over onto his stomach, fumbling for his pistol, but couldn’t find it. Four men were running toward him. In the dancing light of the flames he saw that they were armed. Then a truck smashed its front end through a store window across the street. The running men turned to flame as the invisible laser beam hit them. Their clothing burst into fire and they jerked, screaming, hair and flesh ablaze. They fell and the ground bubbled where the invisible laser beam struck.

The pencil line of boiling earth marched across the street to where Alec lay, close enough for him to hear the hellish hiss of it as he watched, paralyzed with fear.

Then the beam swung away. More explosions.

Another truck started to pull free of a building that was collapsing, but the truck itself blew up, hurling pieces of men and machinery so high into the air that they were lost in shadow.

Alec couldn’t move. He lay there soaked in mud and his own excrement as bullets zinged by, kicking up puffs of mud close enough to splatter his face. One truck seemed to be the only one fighting, and running, cursing men backed away from it, firing as they fell back.

Then another truck trundled slowly around the Post Office building. A dozen raggedly-dressed men charged at it, trying to capture it intact. The laser caught them in the open and they instantly became gibbering torches. More men appeared on the rooftop of the building where the first truck stood, but they must have been Alec’s men, for they sprayed the street with automatic weapons’ fire.

Bullets spanged everywhere and Alec knew he was going to be killed. Then he felt a tug at his ankles. Turning his head, he saw Ferret, lips pulled back over his yellowed teeth, bent over double to drag him through the muddy street over to the side of a building and a modicum of safety.

Ferret knelt beside Alec, wincing with every bullet that whizzed near, obviously terrified.

Before Alec could find the strength to say anything, he saw a third truck coming up from the other end of the street. Its laser was silent and a gang of armed men crouched on the mounting platform, behind the armored cab. More men walked stealthily behind it. They’ve captured that one, Alec realized, but they don’t know how to work the laser.

Jameson must have realized the same thing.

Alec saw him standing erect alongside the first truck, pointing a straight unflinching arm toward the captured one. The laser generator shrilled and the captured truck was caught in its merciless beam. Men screamed and burned, tires burst and the truck slumped to a halt. Then the beam found the oxygen and hydrogen lines of the fuel cell and the truck fireballed, searing Alec and Ferret with its glaring heat.

Suddenly it all stopped. The truck burned sullenly, the Post Office was a twisted mass of smoking ruins. The shooting ceased. No more shouting. No more movement. The street was littered with bodies.

Christ! They wiped us out and I lay there like a turd.

Alec forced himself up to his hands and knees.

“Okay?” Ferret asked, his voice high with fear.

“You okay? Okay?”

“Yes,” he said, still nearly breathless. “I’m all right.”

Two men jumped out from behind the corner of the building, guns levelled at them. Ferret threw his arms over his head and dived for the ground.

“Hey, it’s Alec!” Gianelli’s voice shouted.

“And that Ferret character.”

“He’s one of them,” Gianelli said. “Shoot the bastard!”

Alec heard the snick of a gun being cocked.

“No,” he commanded, as loudly as he could manage. “He saved my life. Leave him alone. He wasn’t with them. He pulled me out of the line of fire.”

“You got hit?” Gianelli asked, striding to Alec.

His face was grimy, streaked with soot. His partner kept his rifle levelled at Ferret.

“No,” Alec said. “I’m… I wasn’t hit.”

After an hour of cleaning and changing clothes, Alec felt strong enough to look for some food. The other men were dragging off the bodies of the dead, tending to each other’s wounds. The word had quickly spread that Alec’s deepest injury was soiled pants. The men shied away from him.

He found Jameson by a small cook fire, near one of the remaining trucks.

“You’re okay,” Jameson said.

Alec nodded. “And you?”

“Broke a fingernail on the safety of my rifle,” he said with utter seriousness.

“How many… did we lose?”

“Three killed, five wounded. Two pretty seriously. The other three are just scratched. Could have been a lot worse.”

We’re down to a dozen men, Alec thought. “Did they get one of the trucks?”

Nodding, Jameson said, “It cost them twenty-two dead.”

“And wounded?”

“They dragged most of their wounded away,”

Jameson said flatly. “The others died.”

A single pistol shot cracked through the smoldering darkness.

“That’s the last one now,” Jameson said.

“I got caught between you and them,” Alec mumbled. “Went out to… never got my pants down.”

Jameson shrugged. “I hear Ferret dragged you to safety. Guess I’ll have to start trusting him a little.”

“Yeah. Maybe he can help us locate some food.”

Jameson excused himself and left Alec alone by the tiny fire. While Alec tried to get some hot broth down, he heard one of the men grumbling:

“I don’t care if he does hear me! He was crapping in his pants while Ollie and the rest of ’em were getting killed. Some leader!”

And then Jameson’s voice, quiet, calm. “Maybe you don’t care if he hears you but if I hear you make another crack like that I’ll break your jaw. Understand? He was sick… still is.”

The reply was mumbled too low for Alec to hear.

He leaned back against the metal of the truck and held the warm cup of broth in both trembling hands. A dozen men. Twelve against Thebes.

Twelve of us and two trucks to cross the country and find Douglas and the fissionables. And most of the men think I’m either a coward or a madman.

Or both.

He almost laughed. The only real friend he had among them was the half-witted Ferret.

Alec looked up. The first hint of dawn was lightening the sky to the east. It would feel good to have sunlight warming him again.

“All right,” he whispered to himself. “Two trucks and twelve men. We 5tart north. Now!”