The Precipice

NANOTECHNOLOGY LABORATORY

Charley Engles looked worried, upset. He nervously brushed his sandy hair back away from his forehead as he said, “Kris, I’m not supposed to let you in here.” It was well past midnight. Cardenas was surprised that anyone was still working in the lab complex. Selene’s security people hadn’t bothered to change the entry code on the main door; she had just tapped it out and the door had obligingly slid open. But Engles had been working his in cubicle, and as soon as he saw Cardenas striding determinedly past the empty work stations toward her own office, he popped out of his cubbyhole and stopped her.

“We got notified by security,” he said, looking shamefaced. “You’re not allowed in here until further notice.”

“I know, Charley,” she said. “I just want to clear out my desk.” Charles Engles was a young grad student from New York whose parents had sent him to Selene after he’d been crippled in a car crash. Even knowing that he could never return to them once he’d taken nanotherapy, his parents wanted their son’s legs repaired so he could walk again. “The cameras…” Engles pointed to the tiny unwinking red lights in the corners of the ceiling. “Security will send somebody here once they see you.”

“It’s all right,” she said, trying to mask her inner tension. “I’ll only be here a few minutes. You can go back to your work.”

Instead, he walked with her as she headed for her office. “What’s this all about, Kris? Why do they want to lock you out of your own lab?”

“It’s a long story and I’d rather not go into it right now, Charley. Please, I just need a few minutes in my office.”

He looked unhappy, almost wounded. “If there’s anything I can do to help…” Cardenas smiled and felt tears welling in her eyes. “That’s very kind of you, Charley. Thanks.”

“I mean, I wouldn’t be able to walk if it weren’t for you.” She nodded and added silently, And now that you can walk you’ll never be allowed to return to Earth.

“Well…” he shifted uneasily from one foot to the other. “If there’s anything you need, anything at all, just let me know.”

“Thanks, Charley. I’ll do that.”

He stood there for another awkward moment while Cardenas wondered how long it would take Security to send someone to apprehend her. Finally he headed reluctantly back to his own cubicle. She walked slowly toward her office. Once Charley stepped into his cubicle, though, Cardenas swiftly turned down a side passageway toward the rear of the laboratory complex. She passed a sign that proclaimed in red letters AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY BEYOND THIS POINT. This was the area where newly developed nanomachines were tested. The passageway here was lined with sealed, airtight chambers, rather than the cubicles out front. The door to each chamber was locked. The passageway itself was lined with ultraviolet lamps along its ceiling. Each nanomachine type was designed to stop functioning when exposed to high-intensity ultraviolet light: a safety precaution.

Cardenas passed three doors, stopped at the fourth. She tapped out its entry code and the steel door opened inward a crack. She slipped into the darkened chamber and leaned her weight against the heavy door, closing it. With a long, shuddering sigh, she reset the entry code from the panel on the wall, effectively locking the door to anyone who might try to get in. They’ll have to break the door down, she told herself, and that will take them some time.

By the time the get the door open I’ll be dead.

Dan dreamed of Earth: a confused, troubled dream. He was sailing a racing yacht, running before the wind neck-and-neck with many other boats. Warm tropical sunlight beat down on his shoulders and back as he gripped the tiller with one hand while the boat’s computer adjusted the sails for every change in the breeze. The boat knifed through the water, but suddenly it was a car that Dan was driving at breakneck speed through murderously heavy traffic. Dan didn’t know where he was; some city freeway, a dozen lanes clogged with cars and buses and enormous semi rigs chuffing smoke and fumes into the dirty gray, sullen sky. Something was wrong with the car’s air conditioning; it was getting uncomfortably hot in the driver’s seat. Dan started to open his window but realized that the windows had to stay shut. There’s no air to breath out there, he said to himself, knowing it was ridiculous because he wasn’t in space, he was on Earth and he was suffocating, choking, coughing.

He woke up coughing with Pancho’s voice blaring in his ears, “Recharge your backpack, boss! You’re runnin’ low on air.”

Blackness. He couldn’t see a thing. For a moment he felt panic surging through him, then it fell into place. Buried in the asteroid. Time to refill his backpack’s air tank. In the dark. By touch.

“Lemme help you,” Pancho said.

Dan sensed her beside him. The gravelly dirt shifted, crunched. Something bumped into his side.

“Oops. ’Scuse me.”

Dan pushed one hand through the gritty stuff, remembering where he’d put the cylinders.

“I’ve got the hose,” he said.

“Okay, good. That’s what I was lookin’ for.”

“Groping for, you mean.”

“Whatever. Hand it to me now.”

Dan felt her hand pushing against his side. “I can do it,” he said. “Better let me,” said Pancho. “YOU’re tired and fatigue makes you sloppy, causes mistakes.”

“I’m all right.”

‘Sure. But just lemme do it, huh? Tired astronauts don’t live long.”

“And rain makes applesauce,” he mumbled, pushing the end of the hose into her waiting hand.

“Don’t open it up yet,” Pancho warned. “Don’t want grit or dust contaminating the air.”

“I know,” he groused.

It seemed to take hours. Dan tried to keep from coughing but the air in his suit seemed awfully thick; his chest was hurting. He pictured old pantomime comedy routines as he and Pancho haltingly fumbled with the air hose, working blindly, and refilled each other’s suit tanks. They filled Dan’s backpack first, and within a minute he could take a deep breath again without it catching in his throat. Once they filled Pancho’s backpack he heard her inhale deeply. “Best canned air in the solar system,” she announced happily.

“What time is it? How long do we have to go?”

“Lemme see… seven and a half hours.”

“That’s how long we’ve been down here?”

“Nope, that’s how long we still have to go,” Pancho answered.

“Another seven and a half hours?”

Pancho laughed. “You sound like a kid in the back seat of a car.”

He huffed, then broke into a chastened grin. “I guess I was whining, wasn’t I?”

“A little.”

A new thought struck Dan. “After the time’s up, how do we tell if the radiation’s really gone down enough for us to get back to the ship?”

“Been thinkin’ about that. I’ll worm my extensible antenna wire up to the top of this rubble heap and see if we can link with the ship. Then it’ll be purty simple to read the ship’s sensors.”

“Suppose the ship’s comm system’s been knocked out by the radiation.”

“Not likely.”

“But what if?”

Pancho sighed. “Then I’ll just hafta stick my head out and see what my suit sensors read.”

“Like an old cowboy video,” Dan said. “Stick your head out and see if anybody shoots at you.”

“Hey, boss, you really did learn a lot from Wild Bill Hickok, didn’t ya?” This late at night there was only one man on duty monitoring Selene’s securitycamera network. He was a portly, balding former London bobby who had spent his life’s savings to bring himself and his wife to the Moon and live in comfortable, low-gravity retirement. He’d found retirement so boring, however, that he pleaded with Selene’s personnel department to allow him to work, at least part-time.

The uniform they gave him wasn’t much; just a set of glorified coveralls with an insignia patch on the left shoulder and his name badge clipped over its breast pocket. But at least he could spend three nights each week sitting alone and content, watching the videos his wife always complained about while still feeling that he was doing something worthwhile. He half-dozed, leaning back in his padded swivel chair, as the twenty display screens arranged in a semicircle around his desk flashed views from Selene’s hundreds of security cameras. Actually, only nineteen of the screens showed the cameras’ scenes; the screen directly in front of the desk was showing the football match from Vancouver, live. But with the sound well-muted, of course.

The computer did all the real work. The toffs in the main office programmed the computer with a long list of things that would be considered questionable or downright illegal. If the computer detected any such activity it sounded an alarm and indicated where and what was going on.

With the score still tied and only four minutes left in the final period, the blasted computer buzzed.

The guard frowned with annoyance. His central screen winked out for an instant, then displayed a ceiling-eye-view of a woman walking through one of the labs. unauthorized person blinked in red across the bottom of the screen. It took a few minutes to coax the information out of the computer, but finally the guard phoned the security chief, waking him of course, with the news that Dr. Kris Cardenas had entered the nanotechnology laboratory. The chief grumbled and cast a bleary eye at the guard, but at least had the good grace to say, “Thanks. I’ll send somebody down there.”

Then he hung up and the guard went back to watching the football game. It was going into overtime.