The Silent War

ASTRO CORPORATION COMMAND CENTER

I might as well move a cot in here, thought Jake Wanamaker as he paced along the row of consoles. A technician sat at each of them, monitoring display screens that linked the command center with Astro ships and bases from the Moon to the Belt. Lit only by the ghostly glow of the screens, the room felt hot and stuffy, taut with the hum of electrical equipment and the nervous tension of apprehensive men and women.

There were only two displays that Wanamaker was interested in: Malapert base, near the lunar south pole, and Cromwell, about to start its runup to the asteroid Vesta.

Wanamaker hunched over the technician monitoring the link with Cromwell. Deep inside the cloud of high-energy particles, radio contact was impossible. But the ship’s captain had sent a tight-beam laser message more than half an hour earlier. It was just arriving at the Astro receiving telescope up on the surface of the Moon.

The screen showed nothing but a jumbled hash of colors.

“Decoding, sir,” the seated technician murmured, feeling the admiral’s breath on the back of her neck.

The streaks dissolved to reveal the apprehensive-looking face of Cromwell’s skipper. The man’s eyes looked wary, evasive.

“We have started the final run to target,” he stated tersely. “The radiation cloud is dissipating faster than predicted, so we will release our payload at the point halfway between the start of the run and the planned release point.”

The screen went blank.

Turning her face toward Wanamaker, the technician said, “That’s the entire message, sir.”

His immediate reaction was to fire a message back to Cromwell ordering the captain to stick to the plan and carry the nanomachines all the way to the predecided release point. But he realized that it would take the better part of an hour for a message to reach the ship. Nothing I can do, he told himself, straightening up. He stretched his arms over his head, thinking, The captain’s on the scene. If he feels he needs to let the package go early it’s for a good reason. But Wanamaker couldn’t convince himself. The captain’s taking the easiest course for himself, he realized. He’s not pressing his attack home.

Turning slowly, he scanned the shadowy room for Tashkajian. She was at her desk on the other side of the quietly intense command center. This is her plan, Wanamaker thought. She worked it out with the captain. If there’s anything wrong with his releasing the package early, she’ll be the one to tell me.

But what good will it do? I can’t get the word to him in time to straighten him out.

Tashkajian got up from her little wheeled chair as he approached her desk.

“You saw the report from Cromwell?” Wanamaker asked.

“Yes, sir.”

“And?”

She hesitated a moment. “It’s probably all right. The missiles are small and Vesta’s radars will still be jammed by the radiation.”

“But he said the cloud was breaking up.”

“Our reports from the IAA monitors—”

A whoop from one of the consoles interrupted them. “They found her!” a male technician hollered, his face beaming. “They found Pancho! She’s alive!”

The first that Pancho realized she’d passed out was when the excruciating pain woke her up. She blinked her gummy eyes and saw that somebody in a bulbous hard-shell space suit was lifting her off her back, broken ankle and all.

“Jesus Christ on a Harley!” she moaned. “Take it easy, for chrissakes.”

“Sorry,” the space-suited figure said. Pancho heard his words in her helmet earphones.

“That leg’s broken,” she said. Nearly sobbed, actually, it hurt so badly.

“Easy does it,” the guy in the space suit said. Through a haze of agony Pancho realized there were three of them. One holding her shoulders, another her legs, and the third hovering at her side as they carried her away from the wreck of the hopper.

“I’ll immobilize the ankle as soon as we get you to our hopper,” the guy said. “I’m a medic, Ms. Lane.”

“I can tell,” she groused. “Total indifference to pain. Other people’s pain.”

“We didn’t know your ankle was broken, ma’am. You were unconscious when we reached you. Almost out of air, too.”

Screw you, Pancho thought. But she kept silent. I oughtta be pretty damn grateful to these turkeys for coming out and finding me. Each step they took, though, shot a fresh lance of pain through her leg.

“We had to land more than a kilometer from your crash site,” the medic said. “Not many places around here to put down a hopper safely.”

“Tell me about it.”

“We’ll be there in ten-fifteen minutes. Then I can set your ankle properly.”

“Just don’t drop me,” Pancho growled.

“The ground is very stony, very uneven. We’re doing the best we can.”

“Just don’t drop me,” she repeated.

They only dropped her once.

When the Selene emergency team brought Fuchs, his three crew, and the Humphries security people to the hospital, Fuchs had the presence of mind to give his name as Karl Manstein. Medical personnel put each survivor of the fire onto a gurney and wheeled them to beds separated by plastic curtains.

Fuchs knew he had to get out of the hospital as quickly as possible, with his crew. He lay on the crisp white sheets staring at the cream-colored ceiling, wondering how far away from him the others were. Nodon’s wounded, he remembered. That’s going to make an escape more difficult.

It’s only a matter of time before they realize Manstein is an alias, a fiction. Then what?

But a new thought struck him and suddenly he smiled up at the ceiling, alone in his curtained cubicle.

When he and the Humphries security chief finally staggered through the hatch and the temporary airlock that the Selene emergency crew had erected, the head of the emergency team had asked them, “Anybody else in there?”

The security chief had shaken his head gravely. “Nobody alive,” he had said.

Humphries is dead! Fuchs exulted. Lying on his hospital bed, his eyes still stinging and his lungs raw from the smoke, he wanted to laugh with glee. I did it! I killed the murdering swine! Martin Humphries is dead.

Martin Humphries was quite alive, but gnawingly hungry. He had never in his life known hunger before, but as he paced, or sat, or stretched out on the thick carpeting of his closet hideaway, his empty stomach growled at him. It hurt, this hollow feeling in his belly. It stretched the minutes and hours and drove his mind into an endless need for food. Even when he tried to sleep his dreams were filled with steaming banquets that he somehow could not reach.

Thirst was even worse. His throat grew dry, his tongue seemed to get thicker in his mouth, his eyes felt gritty.

I could die in here! he realized. A hundred times he went to the airtight panel, touched it gingerly with his fingertips. It felt cool. He pressed both hands on it. Flattened his cheek against it. The fire must be out by now, he thought. His wristwatch told him that more than twenty hours had gone by. The fire’s got to be out by now. But what about the air? Is there any air to breathe on the other side of the panel?

Somebody will come, he assured himself. My security chief knows about this shelter. If he wasn’t killed in the fire. If he didn’t suffocate from lack of oxygen. Ferrer. Victoria might have gotten out. She’ll tell them I’m here. But then he wondered, Will she? I wouldn’t let her in here with me; she could be sore enough to let me rot in here, even if she got out okay. But even so, somebody will send people to go through the house, assess the damage. The Selene safety inspectors. The goddamned insurance people will be here sooner or later.

Later, a sardonic voice in his mind told him. Don’t expect the insurance adjusters to break their butts getting here.

It’s all that motherless architect’s fault, Humphries fumed. Idiot! Builds this emergency shelter without a phone to make contact with the outside. Without sensors to tell me if there’s air on the other side of the door. I’ll see to it that he never gets another commission. Never! He’ll be panhandling on street corners by the time I get finished with him.

There’s not even a water fountain in here. I could die of thirst before anybody finds me.

He slumped to the floor and wanted to cry, but his body was too dehydrated to produce tears.