Melissa had easily eluded Rashid's attempts at romance during their first dinner together in his tent She had talked nothing but business, and learned more about the rumors of building a new type of Clippership out of diamond, using nanomachines. Rashid, ardently wanting to impress her, had blithely laid out everything he had heard about the scheme at her feet.

His reward was a brief kiss goodnight and the vague promise of delights to come.

Melissa dared not report back to General O'Conner or her cohorts at the Urban Corps headquarters in Atlanta. The only communications links on the storm-ravaged atoll belonged to Masterson Corporation; she wasn't prepared to take the risk of being overheard.

Instead, she tried to think out a plan of action for herself. The nanotech scheme had to be stopped, preferably nipped in the bud. Greg Masterson must be behind it, she reasoned. He always was fascinated with nanotechnology. Another reason to ban it everywhere.

If they actually succeeded in making this breakthrough in spacecraft manufacturing with nanotechnology it would be a body blow to the U.N. treaty. Greg could sit up there at Moonbase and build spacecraft and make billions. These people here in Kiribati would get rich. Then they would start using nanomachines to manufacture other things: automobiles, perhaps; aircraft, certainly. Who knew what else?

The nanotech treaty would be a shambles, a mockery. All because this little island nation could be bribed into resisting the will of the people, the mandate of God.

All because of Greg, she knew. He's sitting up there, above us all, laughing at us. Laughing at me. I've got to stop Greg, Melissa told herself. I've got to tear him down from his throne in the sky. I've got to wipe out Moonbase.

Her only tool, she realized, was Rashid.

He invited her to dinner the next night, but she refused. Again the following night, and she refused again. But by the third night, Melissa had done enough research into Rashid's own personal and corporate life so that the beginnings of a plan had started to form in her mind. When he oh-so-casually asked her if she would like to keep him company during dinner, she accepted.

His answering smile pleased her.

In place of candles, Rashid's tent was lit by battery-powered fluorescent lamps. His table was still meager, supplies had to be flown in from Hawaii, yet Melissa could see the effect he was trying to create: a romantic dinner for two, alone from the rest of the world.

Instead of the usual slacks and shin, Rashid wore a flowing white robe with gold embroidery, and a cloying musky cologne that made Melissa's nostrils twitch. She half expected to hear reedy Middle-eastern music; instead, the background was the rhythmic beating of the surf against the reef out beyond the island.

"And how is your wife today?" Melissa asked coyly as they sat at the folding table facing each other.

Rashid smiled blandly. "I've been much too busy to speak with her today. I'll call tomorrow."

Nodding understandingly, she asked, "Moslems are allowed four wives, aren't they?"

He seemed pleased that she knew. "The Koran allows four, yes. But the laws of the United States make polygamy illegal."

With a slight frown, Melissa said, "Secular law shouldn't be placed above religious law. Don't you agree?"

"In this case, I agree wholeheartedly!"

Melissa looked down at her dinner, a prepackaged meal heated in the portable microwave oven. We might as well be aboard an airliner, she thought. The natives who had returned to the island were catching fresh fish in the lagoon, although the papaya and mango and other fruit trees had been stripped by the typhoon's winds, if not flattened altogether.

Rashid did not offer wine; neither of them imbibed. Instead they drank clear water produced by the desalting plant that had finally gone into operation.

Slowly, as they ate and chatted, Melissa brought the subject around to Moonbase.

"I just don't understand how the corporation can risk so much of its resources on a totally unproven scheme," she said.

"Unproven?"

"The idea of manufacniring Clipperships with nanomachines," Melissa said. "Nanotechnology isn't really that reliable. It's dangerous, in fact."

"They use nanomachines at Moonbase all the time."

"Yes, of course," she said, "but only for the simplest of tasks, like taking oxygen out of the regolith. When it comes to trying to build the mass driver, they're having trouble, aren't they?"

Rashid's eyes narrowed slightly. "You're very well informed."

"I am your assistant," said Melissa. "It's my job to know what you need to know."

"Yes."

"And it worries me," she went on, "that your whole standing in the corporation hangs on this crazy scheme. How on Earth did you ever agree to be part of it?"

His brow knit more deeply. "I really had no choice. I was transferred here on the orders of Joanna Stavenger."

"Isn't she Greg Masterson's mother?" Melissa asked innocently.

"Yes. And he's the director of Moonbase."

"But you're his superior. He reports to you in the corporate chain of command."

His nostrils flaring slightly, Rashid muttered, "Not for long, I imagine. He'll be sitting on the board of directors before I do, no doubt."

"Because of his mother?"

"Why else?"

"But she's retired, hasn't she? She's living up at Moonbase, too."

"She's still on the board of directors. And still very powerful."

Melissa took a sip of water, then asked, "So because of this woman you must risk your career?"

Stiffening, Rashid replied, "I wouldn't put it just that way."

"But suppose Kiribati decides one day to sign the U.N. treaty? What happens then?"

"That won't happen."

"No one expected New Zealand to sign the treaty, but they did. What if Kiribati does, too?"

Rashid puffed out a breath. "The whole scheme collapses like a house of cards."

"And yet you have-the key to the corporation's salvation in your hands, don't you?"

"I do?"

"Fusion power," said Melissa. "The secret of the stars, brought to Earth."

"Ah, yes! Fusion. Yes, I had great hopes for it." His face darkened again. "Before I was assigned to the Kiribati Manufacturing and Entertainment Corporation." He pronounced the words with clear disgust.

"And what's happening with the fusion development program?" Melissa asked.

"Nothing. It's dead in the water. If the corporation would only put some funding behind the effort…"

She reached across the table to put her hand on his. "Why don't you move in that direction?"

"I can't," he said. "I've got to get this miserable resort complex up and going."

"Wouldn't the board back you, if you made a strong presentation about the benefits of fusion energy?"

Rashid blinked at her several times as he stroked his trim dark beard. "With Quintana gone," he muttered, "the balance of power on the board is rather shaky."

"Moonbase has always been such a marginal operation," said Melissa eagerly. "Why not cut it entirely and devote our resources to developing fusion? That way there won't be any problems with the U.N. treaty to worry about, and you can end this farce of a resort complex here in these godforesaken islands."

"But the fusion generator requires helium-three."—Melissa waved an impatient hand. "One trip to the Moon per year could scoop up enough helium-three to run a hundred fusion generators. You don't need a permanent base on the Moon for that."

"Are you certain?"

She nodded. "Make fusion work and you can forget about Kiribati."

Rashid laughed shakily. "I could go home to Savannah."

"You could be elected to the board of directors!"

"And solve the world's energy problems."

"You could become the most powerful man in the corporation," Melissa urged. "The most powerful man on Earth!"

He laughed again, stronger. "I could live in a Moslem nation, where a man is allowed his proper number of wives."

"And concubines," said Melissa, deliciously.

For an instant Rashid looked as if he would toss the table aside and seize her in his arms. But then the fire in his eyes dimmed, shifted. His face fell.

"Greg Masterson," he muttered. "And his mother."

"But they're a quarter-million miles away," Melissa said. "You can outmaneuver them."

He shook his head. "Joanna is a powerful woman. And Greg—he must be the one behind this diamond Clippership concept."

Melissa took a deep breath, then said, "Why don't you let me deal with them?"

"What do you mean?"

Very seriously, Melissa replied, "Let me go to Moonbase and speak to them directly. Let me try to convince them that shutting down Moonbase is the right thing for the corporation to do."

"How on Earth can you possibly do that?"

With a knowing smile, Melissa said, "Oh, there are ways to convince people of almost anything."

"Are there?"

"Yes, of course. Especially if you know things about them that they would prefer to keep others from knowing."

PIE FARM

"I am honored that you have come to see my humble patch of weeds," said Lev Brudnoy, quite seriously.

He had been bent over one of the miniature lime trees that he had planted in a row of pots filled with lunar sand. Getting the cuttings to start the miniature citrus orchard had been relatively easy; people brought them up from Earthside, and, after an intense inspection by Moonbase's environmental protection scientists, they were carried in sealed containers to the farm. The little orchard was another step in Operation Bootstrap.

Joanna cocked a brow at him. "Come off it, Lev. We're not in old Mother Russia anymore."

Brudnoy pawed awkwardly at his shock of graying hair. "But you are such a great lady, and I am only a sort of peasant…"

"Lev," said Joanna sternly, "how long have we known each other?"

He screwed up his eyes, thinking. "About nine months, more or less."

"How much actual work have you seen me do in that time?"

"Work?" He spread his hands. "Your work is far removed from the kind of thing I do."

"Not any more," said Joanna. "If we're going to make a success of this Operation Bootstrap that you helped hatch up—"

"Me?"

"Yes, you. Maybe it was entirely Doug's idea, but I have a feeling that you at least aided and abetted him."

Brudnoy spread his arms in a gesture of helplessness. "I am part of the cabal, I confess it freely."

Joanna's expression relaxed into a smile. "Very good. So am I, from here on. I'm here to help you. What do you want me to do? Weeding? Picking? Name it."

He swallowed visibly. "Well, we don't have weeds. So far, we've, been able to screen them out before we accept a new batch of seeds or cuttings. But pruning is important…"

Joanna rolled up the sleeves of her blouse and made a mental note to wear regular coveralls the next time she came to Brudnoy's farm.

"Look, I know how I'd feel if I was still the base director and my predecessor showed up all of a sudden," said Jinny Anson.

Seated behind his curved glass desk, Greg eyed her suspiciously. "Do you?" he retorted.

Anson gave him a disarming smile. "I don't want your job, Greg! Honest. Been there. Done that. All I want is a place where my husband can work in peace."

"Doug suggested he come up here."

"With two teenaged daughters?" Anson shook her head. "You don't want that, I don't want that, and they don't want that."

"Then what?" Greg demanded.

"Damned if I know," Anson admitted. "There's gotta be someplace on Earth where Quentin can teach without being hounded by the New Morality bigots."

A slow smile crept across Greg's lips. "You could move to Kiribati."

Anson blinked. "Kiribati."

"The islands are really lovely," said Greg. "I wish I were there, right now."

"Kiribati," she repeated.

Three extra people at Moonbase strained the living accommodations. Zimmerman got the base's only unoccupied quarters. Anson and Cardenas had to share one room, and a ninety-day contract employee, a young nanotech engineer working on the mass driver, reluctantly agreed to gite up his quarters and double up with one of the other short-timers for the remainder of his stay.

Anson called her husband in Austin as soon as the crew that delivered the extra bunk to her quarters had shut the door behind them.

"Kiribati?" Quentin's placid face crinkled into a mild frown. "Where the hell's that?"

Knowing that she was taking her husband's career in her hands, she said, "Way out in the middle of the Pacific. They used to be called the Gilbert Islands, I think."

Once her words reached him, his frown dissolved. "The Gilberts? Robert Louis Stevenson lived there! He loved it! Said it was the best place on Earth."

"Really?"

They chattered back and forth—with three-second lags—for more than an hour. Quentin pulled up a geography program that showed them both the modern Kiribati: palm-fringed atolls in the tropical Pacific; small towns with happy, crime-free people.

"It'll be a better place to raise the girls than Austin," said Quentin, with real enthusiasm.

Jinny worried about tropical islanders' ideas about sex, but said nothing.

"I could start the English department for this new university," Quentin went on. "I could really-' Suddenly his voice cut off and his big smile vanished.

"What is it?" Jinny asked.

Before her words could reach him, Quentin said, "But what about you? You'll have to leave your job with Masterson Aerospace if we move to the islands."

Jinny relaxed. "Don't sweat it," she said easily. "I've got a new job all picked out. I'm going to be president of the new university, whatever we decide to name it."

His eyes widened once he heard her response. "President? Wow."

"Damn' right," said Jinny. "I'm gonna be your boss, sweetheart!"

She couldn't get what she wanted without going to bed with him. Melissa decided that she had played Rashid as far as she could; the next step had to involve sex.

Rashid was no fool. He realized that the only way for him to get out from under this Kiribati farce was to move the fusion development forward. He had to get the board of directors hot for fusion energy, divert their attention—and their funding -from Moonbase and nanotechnology.

Both Rashid and Melissa assumed, automatically, that Greg Masterson was behind the diamond Clippership scheme. And Melissa urged, almost begged, Rashid to send her to Moonbase to deal with Greg.

Yet Rashid was wary of allowing Melissa to go to Moonbase. He wanted to know how she could possibly stop Greg Masterson and, even more difficult, his mother.

She told him, part of it, in bed.

They had their usual dinner in his tent. This time, though, instead of keeping him at arm's length Melissa let Rashid hold her, kiss her, undress her. She almost laughed at the way his hands trembled as he rumbled with the old-fashioned hook-and-eye at the back of her blouse's collar.

It wouldn't do to tell him outright, she knew. Her story would have much greater impact if she seemed to reveal it to him reluctantly, overpowered by his masculine mastery, her resistance melting away under the fierceness of his passion.

So she let him paw her and walk her to his double-sized cot and run his hands and lips over her naked body. She felt almost nothing, she kept herself in rigid control. But she moaned for him and writhed and gasped and heaved when he entered her.

At last it was finished. She wanted to leap out of the narrow bunk and run to the lagoon for a cleansing swim in the warm enfolding waters. Instead she lay at Rashid's side, breathing softly.

He turned toward her and propped himself on his elbow. Looking down at her in the darkened tent, he asked, "Was that enjoyable for you?"

Melissa made a sigh. "The best I've had in years and years," she said languidly. Truthfully."

He laughed gently. "How many years?"

"Ever since…', Melissa let her voice fade away into the shadows.

"Since when?"

"I shouldn't tell you," she whispered. "I shouldn't let anyone know."

"Know what?"

For long moments she remained silent, waiting for his curiosity to grow unbearable, knowing that the best lies were always based on truth.

He leaned over her, grasped her by the shoulders almost menacingly. "What is this great secret? Tell me."

Melissa let the breath sigh out of her. "It was so long ago, so many years have passed

"You can confide in me," he said more gently. "I won't tell anyone else."

"Years ago—a lifetime ago-' She hesitated.

"You must have been only a girl," he said.

"Yes," Melissa replied. "I was very young. And I fell in love."

"Ahh."

"With Greg Masterson."

Even in the darkness of the tent she could see his eyes go wide. "Greg Masterson?"

"I was his lover," said Melissa, in a little girl's voice. "But he cast me aside. He nearly destroyed me."

Rashid dropped onto his back and lay beside her. "Greg Masterson," he muttered.

"Greg Masterson," she repeated.

"And you want to go to the Moon to be with him again."

"I want to go to the Moon," whispered Melissa, "to repay him for the way he treated me."

"You no longer love him?"

"I've hated him for nearly twenty years."

Rashid was silent for a long time. At last he asked, "And what can you do to him on the Moon that you can't do from here on Earth?"

"I can confront him. And his mother. His mother is at Moonbase. She's protected him all these years."

"Protected him? From what?"

"From-' Melissa stopped herself. She had no intention of telling Rashid everything. "From me," she said. "I was carrying Greg's baby when he sent me away. I had an abortion. All my life I've had to live with the knowledge that I murdered my own child."

It was a clever variation of the truth. But it was enough to convince Rashid.

"So you want to go to Moonbase to confront Greg and Mrs. Stavenger."

"Yes. I want them to know that if they don't shut down Moonbase I'll tell the whole world about him, how he abandoned me, how he made me commit murder."

Rashid thought it over for a few moments. "But that all happened almost twenty years ago, you say."

Melissa pulled her trump card. "There is no statute of limitations on murder. The law says abortion is murder. I'm willing to stand trial for what I did. I deserve to be punished. But Greg will have to stand trial beside me, as an accomplice to murder."

"My god!"

"That's the law now in America," she said.

"It would ruin him," said Rashid.

"It would force him to return to Earth to face trial," Melissa said.

"His mother would never allow that."

"Do you think she would shut down Moonbase instead?"

"Yes," said Rashid. "I think she would. The old tigress would blow up Moonbase and all the people in it before she'd let her son be humiliated and destroyed like that."

Melissa nodded in the darkness. What would Mrs. Stavenger do once she knew that her precious son would have to stand trial for the murder of his stepfather?

"Then you'll send me to Moonbase?" Melissa asked.

He hesitated. "There's a board of directors meeting coming up next week. I've asked to be put on the agenda, to make a presentation about the fusion program to them. Let's see how that goes. It might not be necessary to… go to all that trouble."

Melissa knew that she should not press him too far. "You're thinking of me, aren't you? Trying to save me the pain, the suffering of confronting them."

"If the board allows me to push the fusion development, then why go to all that trouble?"

"But if the board decides against you…?"

"Then," Rashid said, his voice cold and hard, "yes, I will send you to Moonbase like a guided missile."

"Good," said Melissa.

"You want to go?"

"I want to help you," she said quickly. "I want to see you gain the power and recognition that you deserve."

"But you must return to me," he said, excited by the future parading before his eyes. "I will become the most powerful man in the corporation, once Moonbase is closed."

"And I will be one of your loving slaves," Melissa lied.

It aroused Rashid just as if it were the truth.

BOARD OF DIRECTORS

Good things always happened to Alan Johansen. Never a deep intellect, he had at least been clever enough to pick extremely wealthy parents. He also inherited their good looks: Johansen had the chiseled blond features of a Nordic warrior of old, although his slim, almost delicate build was more like that of a dancer than a Viking: With his slicked-back hair and thin-lipped smile he looked like a chorus boy from the Roaring Twenties.

He was, in fact, chairman of the board of Masterson Aerospace Corporation. And very confused and troubled.

It was bad enough that Joanna Stavenger insisted on attending Board meetings electronically, instead of in person. Her image appeared on the wallscreen at the end of the conference table, floating above their heads like the magic mirror in Snow White. At least Carlos Quintana was able to keep things running smoothly, even with that infernal delay whenever she wanted to say something.

Now Quintana was gone, and half the board members were scheming and trying to make alliances against the other half, and to top it off they had set up this dummy corporation on some tropical islands out in the South Seas to take over all their space operations. It sounded awfully tricky to Alan, maybe even illegal.

And on top of everything else, the man they had sent out to those islands was pestering him with some crack-brained idea about nuclear energy, of all things. Why, nuclear energy was as dead as the horse-and-buggy. People hated nuclear! It was full of dangerous radiation.

"Alan sat at the head of the-polished board room table, watching Rashid's video. In the Windowall that stretched almost the length of the entire room, a smallish metal sphere stood, humming slightly, doing nothing.

"As you can see from the power gauges," Rashid's voice was saying, "this one small generator can produce enough electrical energy to power an entire city the size of Savannah."

"And this is nuclear fusion?" asked one of the white-haired men sitting halfway down the table.

"Yes," Rashid's voice replied. "Fusion, not fission. No uranium or plutonium is involved. The fuel basically comes from water and the waste product is helium: inert and safe. You can use it to blow up balloons for your grandchildren."

A few snickers of laughter went down the conference table.

"I thought you said we needed fuel from the Moon to make this work," said one of the women directors.

"One shipload per year will fuel as many fusion generators as we can profitably build," Rashid answered.

"So we wouldn't need to keep Moonbase open?"

"No. We could even process the helium-three without nanomachines, if we must."

"Now wait a minute," Johansen interrupted. "I thought you said the helium was a waste product. Now you're saying it's the fuel? I don't understand."

Patiently, Rashid tried to explain, but Johansen felt more confused than ever.

"But the point is," said the comptroller, "that we could get the fuel we need from the Moon without keeping Moonbase open."

"That is correct," said Rashid.

"Then why have we started up this dummy corporation in Kiribati?" asked Johansen.

Rashid's voice answered from the screen, "The Kiribati Corporation exists specifically to allow Moonbase to continue using nanotechnology in spite of the U.N. treaty."

"In other words, we're sinking all this money into those islanders just to keep Moonbase poking along?"

Rashid's voice replied, "Without nanotechnology, Moonbase could not exist."

Joanna's face, in the screen at the far end of the room, hardened as soon as she heard the question. "We're keeping Moonbase poking along' she said, with steel in her voice, "because we will soon be able to manufacture spacecraft out of pure diamond, using nanotechnology."

"Who needs a diamond Clippership?" asked one of the women. IThe Clipperships we have now work just fine, don't they?"

Johansen twiddled his fingers impatiently until Joanna's response came from the Moon:

"Diamond ships will be lighter, yet far stronger, than anything made of metals. Therefore they will be safer yet more economical to operate. They will be cheaper to manufacture, yet the market will pay more for them than they do for today's Clipperships. Our profits will be double, or even greater."

"You mean Moonbase will actually start showing real profit, after all these years?"

Again that agonizing wait.

Then Joanna replied, "I mean that diamond Clipperships, built by Moonbase, will make this corporation more profitable than it's ever been."

"Then why do we need this fusion thing?" Johansen asked, almost surprising himself that he spoke his thoughts out loud.

The Windowall view of the fusion reactor vanished and Rashid's trimly bearded face loomed over them. "Because, with fusion generators Masterson Corporation can become bigger than the old petroleum companies were!"

"We can't sink risk money into both these new ideas," said the comptroller, sitting at Johansen's right hand. "It's just too chancy."

"Suppose the World Court decides that our Kiribati Corporation is nothing but a subterfuge to get around the U.N. treaty?" Rashid threatened.

But before anyone on the board could respond to that, Joanna countered, "How long will it take to make this fusion process practical? And profitable?"

Rashid hesitated. "Well, the power conversion system needs to be developed."

"Power conversion?"

"Magneto-' Rashid cut his words short. "MHD is what its called."

"How long will that take?" asked the comptroller. "And how many bucks?"

Before Rashid could reply, Joanna said firmly, "We're not asking for a penny of corporate risk funding on our new Clippership development."

All heads turned to her image.

"Moonbase will build a prototype diamond Clippership on our own. It won't cost the corporation a cent."

The board broke into a dozen conversations at once.

Joanna's voice stilled them all. "But once that prototype ship is demonstrated and the aerospace lines start placing their orders, I'll expect every Moonbase employee who worked on the program to get a share of the profits."

Johansen wished for the hundredth time that Quintana were still there. He'd know what to say. As it was, the board sat in stunned silence for what seemed like half a lifetime.

Finally the comptroller spoke up. "Mrs. Stavenger, if your people up there can build a diamond Clippership without additional funding from the corporation and sell the concept to the aerospace lines, I'm sure we can work out an equitable profit-sharing plan."

Rashid, in an agonized voice, asked, "But what about the fusion program?"

Johansen spoke up. "Let's wait before we make a decision about that. Let's see what Moonbase can actually do for us, first"

Sitting in his bare little office in the concrete building on Tarawa, Rashid sank back in his chair. The board of directors nodded their heads—white haired, bald, silvery gray—and agreed with Johansen's idiotic decision.

Angrily, Rashid punched his desktop keyboard and blanked the display screen on the office's wall.

Melissa Hart got up from her chair at the side of the desk and stepped behind Rashid. Gently she massaged his shoulders as she whispered, "Let me go to Moonbase. Let me use the sword of vengeance against them."

Rashid closed his eyes as her deft fingers kneaded the tension out of him.

"Yes," he said. "You go to Moonbase on the next available ship."

ROCKET PORT

This one was different. Doug could hardly contain his excitement as he stood in the rocket port's observation bubble and watched the LTV come down. The LTV. The one they were going to modify for the asteroid mission.

He spotted the puffs of rocket exhaust against the dark sky as the controllers made their final adjustments, then the LTV took shape, big and lumpy with tanks and pods, and then the main engine fired its final braking burst and the ungainly vehicle settled down on its rickety-looking legs in a dirty white cloud of gaseous aluminum oxide and blowing lunar dust.

Doug just stood there, practically on tip-toes, his hair brushing the curved plastiglass of the bubble, and admired the spacecraft. This wasn't a wom-out cripple, ready for the scrap heap. This LTV was practically new; his mother had insisted on getting quality for her money.

To his surprise, the personnel access tube was worming its way toward the hatch in the passenger pod. Were there passengers aboard the ship?

Doug slid languidly down the ladder into the flight control center and asked the two controllers on duty.

"One passenger. VIP from Tarawa," said the chief controller.

Surprised, Doug said, "Well, I might as well go down and greet him."

"Her," the controller corrected. "Personal representative from the chief operating officer of the Kiribati Corporation."

"Oh," said Doug. "The new owners."

He ducked out of the flight control center and slid down the ladder into The Pit. He walked briskly to the airlock hatch and waited for the indicator light to turn green. As soon as the hatch cracked open, Doug grabbed it and helped to swing it all the way.

"Welcome to Moonbase," he said. The words almost stuck in his throat. The LTV's pilot and co-pilot both were holding the arms of a very beautiful dark-skinned woman who looked as if she were dying.

It had been a miserable flight for Melissa. Worse than hell, forty-eight hours of weightlessness. She had never been in space before, and the nausea of free-fall simply overwhelmed her, despite all the medication. She puked her guts out during the first few hours of the flight and had the dry heaves the rest of the way.

The only thing that kept her going was the mantra she repeated to herself all the long, exhausting way to the Moon. It was a mantra of hate. She filled her mind with a vision of Greg Masterson. The man who had betrayed her so brutally. All men were betrayers, of course, but Greg had been the worst. She had loved him, once. She had conceived his baby. Now for nearly twenty years she had survived by hating him. His betrayal had driven her into self-loathing and a life so foul it had nearly killed her, just as she had killed the unborn child within her, but Melissa fought for her life with one burning goal set before her pain-filled eyes: to make Greg pay. To make him feel the agony she had felt. To make him suffer as she had suffered.

It was not a worthy goal, she knew. General O'Conner and the others would be horrified if they could see into her soul. But it was the goal that had kept Melissa sane all these years. And now she was close to achieving it.

Hate can move mountains, she said to herself. Faith, hope and hate. And the greatest of these is hate.

Now her long journey was over. With at least some sense of weight to anchor her stomach, she looked with watery eyes at a bright-faced young man beaming a ridiculous greeting to her.

I'll take care of her," Doug said. The two crewmen looked enormously relieved.

"Come on," he said, taking Melissa by the arm. "You're okay now. You just need to cleak up a bit and get some food into you."

Melissa groaned at the thought of food. "I must look a mess," she said.

Grinning, Doug admitted, "A shower and a change of clothes would help." She smelled so bad his own stomach wanted to heave.

He led Melissa to the waiting tractor and the co-pilot dumped her one travelbag on the back seat. As they trundled along the dimly-lit tunnel, Doug accessed the central computer and found the room assigned to Melissa. She must be a real VIP, he thought, to get the personnel department to push another short-timer into doubling up.

Fortunately Melissa's assigned quarters weren't far from the main airlock. Doug walked her there and told her to take a shower.

I'll wait out in the tunnel and take you to lunch when you're ready," he told her.

Melissa was too miserable and weak to debate with the stranger. She stumbled into what looked like a cell carved out of rock, found the shower stall, and stepped in fully clothed. The water was tepid, at best, but it felt good. Slowly she stripped off her soggy clothing as the water sluiced over her.

She was looking for soap when the water stopped. Blinking drops from her eyes, she turned the controls. Nothing. Suddenly blasts of air pummeled her from vents in the ceiling and sides of the stall. She shivered, but as the air evaporated the droplets on her skin it began to feel warm, even hot

And then it, too, suddenly stopped. Melissa shook her head, feeling like a hamburger in an automated oven. As she stepped out of the shower she realized that her nausea was gone. She shook her head again. No wooziness at all.

Leaving her soiled clothes in the shower, she opened her bag and got dressed: crisp clean ivory slacks and a pullover blouse of metallic gold. It was a struggle, though; every move she made seemed too big. She nearly toppled over onto the bunk when she tried to step into the slacks. Of course, she told herself. You're on the Moon. The gravity's much less here. Carefully, she finished dressing and slipped on a pair of soft-soled espadrilles.

No jewelry, only her wristwatch. She looked at herself in the shadowy reflection of the desktop computer screen; there was no mirror in the room. Warmed-over shit, she appraised herself. Well, girl, that's as good as it's going to get.

Wondering if the nice young kid was still waiting out in the hall, she stepped cautiously to the accordion-pleat door and slid it partway open.

Doug saw her peeking out. "Hi!" he said. "Feeling better?"

The shock of recognition almost knocked her legs out from under her. Standing there grinning at her was a young Paul Stavenger. Bigger than Paul, lighter skinned. But it was Paul's eyes she saw looking at her; Paul's irresistible smile.

Then it flashed into her mind: Paul's son, Douglas, lived here at Moonbase with Greg and their mother. Paul's son. Joanna's son.

She pushed the door all the way open and stepped out into the tunnel, very carefully.

"We'll have to get you a pair of weighted boots," Doug said, offering her his arm. "First stop, though, is The Cave."

Melissa clung to his arm and let him do the talking. She learned that The Cave was some sort of cafeteria or galley where Moonbase people took their meals. The thought of eating felt better to her now that her stomach was in place. She actually felt hungry. Ought to be, she told herself. You lost everything you had in there and then some.

"You haven't told me your name," she said as they walked slowly down the tunnel.

"Doug Stavenger," he answered. "And yours?"

She covered her emotions quickly. "Melissa Hart," she said, not trusting herself to say more. Joanna's baby. Greg's half-brother.

Then she remembered that this was the young man whose body swarmed with nanomachines. This was the symbol of wickedness that General O'Conner was sworn to destroy. Almost, she disengaged from his arm. The thought of those evil machines inside his body frightened her. But he looked normal enough, and she was afraid that if she let go of his arm she'd stumble and fall.

"You didn't have any trouble working the shower, did you?" he asked as they walked down the tunnel.

"The water shut off on me."

"Oh, sure. There's a timer. Water's pretty precious, still, so there's an automatic cutoff in all the showers."

"And air driers?"

Doug nodded easily. "We generate a lot of heat, most of it's too low-grade to be put to anything useful, but we can save a lot of towel laundering by using some of it to dry off in the shower."

"I see," Melissa said.

"Not that we use water for the laundry," he added.

"No?"

"Don't have to. Just take the dirty laundry outside; the dirt dries out almost immediately in the vacuum, so you can shake it off."

Melissa wondered if he were telling her the truth or pulling her leg.

"And the ultraviolet out there sterilizes everything, too, of course."

He seemed quite serious. Melissa realized mat Doug Stavenger was a bright, good-looking, charming young man. Paul's son in every way. Once they were seated at a small table in The Cave and Melissa no longer had to worry about walking in the feeble gravity, she could study his face, feel his intensity. He had Paul's infectious enthusiasm, the same drive that could sweep you up and carry you away, despite yourself.

"…so you've actually brought us the LTV we're going to use for our asteroid mission," he was saying.

Melissa paid scant attention to his words. She saw Paul again. And the whole sorry mess of twenty years ago played itself out in her mind. All the pain and rejection and fury boiled up inside her, burning worse than the bile she had vomited on the way to the Moon.

"Your brother is the director of Moonbase, isn't he?" she asked, struggling to keep her voice from shaking.

"Greg. That's right"

"And your mother lives here, now, doesn't she?"

Doug nodded eagerly. "In fact, there she is now." He stood up and waved.

Melissa turned in her chair and saw Joanna: older, a bit thicker in the middle, her hair more gray than ash-blonde now, but unmistakably Joanna. While the other women in The Cave wore mostly coveralls, Joanna was in a midnight blue pantsuit set off by a flowered silk scarf at her throat. She doesn't need weighted boots to hold her down, Melissa thought; those bracelets and necklaces must be heavy enough to do the job.

Doug saw that his mother had spotted him and pulled up a third chair for her. Joanna smiled as she approached their table, but her smile froze once she recognized who was sitting with her son.

It's Melissa Hart! Joanna realized as she neared Doug's table. She looks as if she's been through hell and back. Painfully thin. And her eyes—as if she hasn't slept in years. What's she doing up here?

"Melissa," she said as she put her tray on the table. "Whatever brings you here?"

"She came up on the LTV you're buying," said Doug.

"Really?" Joanna sat down between them

"I'm here as the representative of the new corporation's COO," Melissa said coolly.

"Omar? You're working for him?"

"For Mr. Rashid, yes."

Doug sensed their mutual hostility. It was as obvious as the snarling of a pair of lionesses arguing over a bleeding chunk of fresh meat.

"I didn't know you were still with the corporation," Joanna said.

"I dropped out," Melissa replied, "but I'm back now."

"And in such a key position, too."

Melissa said, "Mr. Rashid seems pleased with my work."

"I'm sure," Joanna murmured-

Doug broke in, "Just what are you doing here, Melissa? Why've you come to Moonbase?"

Before she could think of a reply, Joanna said, "Rashid is pushing the idea of developing nuclear fusion power."

"Using helium-three?" Doug asked.

"You know about it," said Melissa, impressed.

"I've looked into it. Power conversion is the key to its economic success."

Turning to Joanna, Melissa lied, "I was hoping to get your support for the fusion development." This isn't the time or place to confront her, she told herself. I want to see Greg. He's the one I've come for.

"I suppose we could program nanomachines to glean helium-three out of the regolith," said Joanna.

"You don't really need nanomachines to do that," Melissa said.

"We're fully committed to nanotechnology here," Joanna replied icily.

"But the U.N. treaty—"

"Won't be signed by Kiribati. You know that."

"Still," Melissa said, "the fusion program shouldn't be dependent on nanotechnology."

Doug said, "We want to show the world that nanomachines aren't harmful, despite all the hysteria down there."

Melissa kept herself from replying.

"After all," Doug went on, "nanomachines can do a lot more than scour the regolith for raw materials. The medical applications of nanotech are the greatest thing they've got going for them."

"Are they?" Melissa countered. "Nanomachines killed your father, didn't they?"

Doug felt as if she had slapped his face. He saw that his mother had gone white, too.

"That was twenty years ago," Joanna said stiffly. "Nothing like that has happened again."

"Are you sure?"

"Positive."

"Nanomachines saved my life," Doug said, recovering somewhat 'If it weren't for nanotech I'd have died of radiation poisoning."

"And now you can live forever, is that it?"

"Really," Joanna started.

But Doug silenced her with a gesture. "I don't know how long I'll be able to live. But wouldn't you want to extend your lifespan, if you had the chance?'"

"That's just it, isn't it?" Melissa retorted. "Of all the billions of human beings on Earth, how many of them will get the chance to live forever?"

"Answer the question," Doug insisted. "If you, yourself, had the chance to extend your lifespan indefinitely, would you take it?"

"No," Melissa said honestly. "I don't want to extend this misery one minute longer than I have to. Life is pain, don't you understand that? The sooner we're out of it, the better off we are."

Moonrise

DIRECTOR'S OFFICE

"Melissa? Here?" Greg stiffened at the news. "What does she want?"

Joanna was too nervous to sit down. "She wants to see you."

"But why?"

"Who knows? She says she's here to ask our support for Rashid's fusion program."

"You don't think that's the truth?"

Joanna glared at her son. "Do you?"

Greg leaned back in his desk chair and stared at the ceiling. The bare rock seemed lower than usual, heavier, inching down to crush him.

"You're going to have to see her," Joanna said.

"Yes," he said, feeling the desperation creeping into his bones. "Yes, I suppose I will."

"Would you like me to be with you when you do?"

What to answer? Greg wondered. I can't tell my mother that I'm afraid to see Melissa by myself. But I am! I don't want to see her, I don't want to be anywhere near her. She's bringing me nothing but pain, I know it, I can feel it.

"Well?" Joanna insisted.

"Yes," Greg blurted. "I think it would be better if you were present when I talked with her."

"Good. I do too."

Doug didn't forget about Melissa, but he relegated her presence at Moonbase to a corner of his mind. He had more important things to do.

He brought Bianca and Lev Brudnoy to his room and imaged on his Windowall the LTV sitting on its pad.

"She's a beauty," Doug said, beaming at the picture on the screen. "Only been used for seventy-two flights; practically new."

Brudnoy scratched at his beard. "I've always wondered why Americans tend to personalize their machinery. It looks like any other LTV, to me."

Bianca was more practical. "Okay, how long are we going to let it sit out there?"

"I've requisitioned a dome for it," said Doug. "The machine shop's putting it together now."

"So we put up the dome over the landing pad?"

"No, that'd interfere with the rocket port operation too much. We put up the dome a half-mile away from the pad and tow the LTV to it."

"We're going to work on the ship in spacesuits?" Brudnoy asked.

"No, the dome will be pressurized."

"But we'll need suits to get to and from, won't we?" asked Bianca.

Doug admitted it with a shrug. "Can't be helped. There's no space inside the base to work on it"

"The main garage? Is the ceiling high enough?"

"I checked. Ceiling's okay, we can just about squeeze her in, but there's not enough room for the LTV when all the tractors are inside."

"But at least half of them are left outside, usually," said Brudnoy.

Shaking his head, Doug told them, "I know. I asked Greg about it, but he just scrolled up the regulations on his screen. The main garage's got to be able to house all the tractors in an emergency."

"What kind of emergency?" Brudnoy asked.

"Solar flare," Bianca and Doug answered in unison.

"So your technicians will have to spend an hour getting into spacesuits and then walk or ride half a mile past the rocket port to work on our LTV," said Brudnoy.

-'They can work in their shirtsleeves once they're inside the dome, "Doug pointed out.

Brudnoy sighed. "And then spend another hour getting back into their suits to go home again."

Doug spread his hands helplessly. "What else can we do, Lev? You know how much work it takes to carve out extra space underground. We can't blast out the space we need with plasma torches; it'd take too long and too much effort. The dome's our best bet."

"I presume you've run all the numbers through your computer," Brudnoy said drily.

"Frontwards and backwards," said Doug. "I've gone through every option I could think of. The dome's our best choice."

"I just hate all that extra work of getting into the suits," the Russian muttered.

"It's the prebreathing that takes most of the time," Bianca said. "If the suits ran at the same pressure that the base does we could zip into them in half the time."

"Well, they don't," said Doug, "and it takes time to breathe the excess nitrogen out of your system."

Brudnoy's pouchy eyes looked even sadder than usual.

With a grin, Doug added, "When I'm director of Moonbase I'll start our people working on suits that run at normal base pressure, so you'll be able to hop into them in a couple of minutes."

Bianca shook her head. "You'd think after all these years somebody would've already done that."

"Not much need for it," said Doug. "What kind of an emergency could come up so suddenly that you need to jump into a suit in a few minutes?"

Brudnoy nodded. "True enough. I've been here more than twenty years and I've never seen such an emergency."

Doug nodded.

"On the other hand," the Russian went on, "it's going to slow down our work tremendously. Isn't there some way we can put up a pressurized access tube to the dome?"

"A mile-long tube?" Bianca asked.

"Wait!" said Doug. "Why don't we pressurize one of the tractors? Couldn't we put the crew module from the LTV itself onto a tractor? That way we can take three or four people at a time out to the dome in their shirtsleeves." 'Yeah!" Bianca cheered. "That could work." Brudnoy was more reserved. "Check it out on your computer, my friend. Don't celebrate until the engineering program tells us it can be done."

"It's good to see you again, Greg," said Melissa.

"It's been a long time," he said, staring at her from behind his desk. She looks awful, Greg thought. Her face is still beautiful, but it's like a death mask, a skull, her skin is stretched so tight over the bones it's a wonder she can open her mouth. And she's so thin! As if she's been a prisoner of war all these years.

She wore a shapeless gray pants suit, its jacket falling halfway to her knees. When she sat in front of Greg's desk and crossed her long legs, he saw that the trousers ended in stirrups that looped under her weighted boots.

It was Melissa's eyes that frightened Greg. He saw fury in them, hot red rage. He remembered the last time he had been with Melissa, when he had told her they were through. Her eyes were red then, too, but with tears and pleading. I turned my back on her and she's never forgiven me for it, Greg realized. All these years she's been hating me.

He turned to his mother, sitting beside Melissa. Joanna was outwardly cool and controlled, but Greg knew that she was just as tense as he was. He could see it in the way Joanna was nervously fingering the ends of the flowered silk scarf she was wearing.

Greg had to swallow before he could bring his voice back. "I understand that you're working for Rashid now, with the new corporation."

Melissa's chin dipped a bare centimeter. "That's right"

Greg opened his mouth again but no words came out He didn't know what to say. He looked up at the ceiling, menacingly low.

Joanna prompted, "Rashid's pushing the fusion program, isn't he?"

"I'm not here to talk to you-two about Rashid or his programs or anything like that.'Melissa said, her eyes flaring.

"Then what?" asked Joanna.

She focused those laser-beam eyes on Greg. This is the man who abandoned me, she thought, staring at him. The man I begged to stay with me. The man I thought I loved. The man whose child I was going to have. A wave of self-loathing swept over her, made her shudder visibly. I pleaded with him! I got down on my knees and begged him! And he turned his back on me. He walked away, the cold-hearted sonofabitch. He knew I was pregnant with his baby and he just walked away from both of us.

"Murder," she whispered.

I murdered my own baby. You made me do it, the two of you. You threw me out like so much garbage. I aborted the baby. I committed murder.

"What are you talking about?" Joanna demanded.

Greg knew.

Melissa pointed a skeletal finger at him. "You murdered Paul Stavenger. You used nanomachines to kill him."

"That's nonsense!" Joanna snapped.

"Is it?"

Greg couldn't answer. He couldn't speak. He gripped the armrests of his swivel chair and stared in growing horror at Melissa. It's all coming back. It's all rising up again, all around me, walling me in, smothering me.

"I have Jack Killifer's sworn statement," Melissa was saying, her voice cold and hard as ice. "He gave you a sample of nanomachines that attacked long-chain carbon molecules. Gobblers, he called them."

Joanna blustered, "That doesn't mean—"

"You put them in with the nanomachines that Paul was using up here on the Moon, didn't you, Greg? They killed Paul and two other men."

"My husband died in an accident," Joanna insisted.

"He was murdered. By your son. And I can prove it."

"That…' Greg choked out the words, "… that was, for god's sake, that was twenty years ago, almost."

Melissa smiled thinly. "There's no statute of limitations on murder."

"You haven't got a shred of evidence," Joanna said. "Even if this Killifer person gave Greg a set of nanomachines, what of it? You can't prove murder in a court of law."

"Can't I? Criminal courts have become much tougher over the past few years."

"We'll have the best lawyers in the world."

"Fine. Hire all the lawyers you want. A big, scandalous trial will be perfect. The public will love to watch the two of you, week after week. It'll be the entertainment highlight of the year."

Two of us?" Joanna asked.

"You aided and abetted your son, Mrs. Stavenger. Didn't you? Accessory after the fact."

"Now wait…' Greg started.

Melissa silenced him with a glance. "Mrs. Stavenger, it was you who covered up the evidence of the murders. It was you who sent Jack Killifer to Moonbase, so he wouldn't be available to tell anyone what he'd done until nearly twenty years afterward."

"You can't be serious," Joanna said.

"I've never been more serious in my life," Melissa replied. "The murderer son and his accomplice mother. Think how that's going to look on video back home."

Greg stared at her. The bitch is trying to ruin my life. She's trying to ruin both our lives. He thought how easy it would be to get up from this chair, walk around the desk, and snap her neck like a brittle stick.

Then he gasped with the sudden realization that Doug had ordered Killifer out of Moonbase. And I let him do it! Greg raged at himself. Doug knew exactly what he was doing. He knew Killifer would testify against me once he got back to Earth! He's been against me from the very beginning. Doug, Melissa—all of them!

Joanna took a deep breath, then asked Melissa, "What do you want?"

"Justice," said Melissa.

"And what do you think would be just, in this case?"

Melissa turned away from Joanna's cool gray-green eyes to look squarely at Greg once again. "Shut down Moonbase," she said flatly. "Put an end to all the nanotechnology you're using here."

Greg blinked at her. "And what else?"

Melissa shook her head. "First things first. I want an end to this evil of nanotechnology. An end to this place where rich people can escape the problems of Earth."

With a shaky laugh, Greg asked, "That's all? Just shut down Moonbase?"

"And any nanotech operations you might have elsewhere," Melissa said.

"And for that, you'll forget about this murder business?" He couldn't believe it.

Melissa smiled again, this time showing teeth. "Oh no, Greg. You misunderstood me. Moonbase has to be shut down. But you'll still have to stand trial for murder. In Atlanta, I imagine. In the federal court in Atlanta."

"You little bitch! You want to destroy me!"

"That's right," Melissa said calmly. "I'm going to destroy you. And Moonbase with you. And the nanotechnology that you're protecting."

For the first time, Joanna looked alarmed. "My son's life was saved by nanotherapy. He can't return to Earth."

"He'll have to. He'll have no other choice."

"But they'll murder him! One of your fanatics will kill him just the way they killed Carlos Quintana."

Melissa replied coolly, "Surely, Mrs. Stavenger, you have enough money to protect your son. Even if you go to prison, the family fortune will still be there for him."

"To live behind walls all his life?" Joanna said, her voice almost pleading. "To live separated from the rest of civilization?"

"What's he doing here?" Melissa retorted. "A quarter-million miles from civilization."

Greg watched and listened, the horror within him freezing his insides. They're worrying about Doug when she wants to put me on trial for murder. She wants to destroy me and Mom's thinking of Doug! Moni doesn't care about me; it's Doug she's trying to protect.

"All right!" he shouted, leaping to his feet. "You want to kill me? You want to wipe out Moonbase? All right, I'll help you!"

Joanna's face went white. "Greg, what are you—"

He came around the desk, swift as death, and grabbed Melissa by her bony wrist.

I'll show you!" Greg roared, dragging Melissa toward the door. "I'll show you all!"

ZIMMERMAN'S QUARTERS

"So? You have come to see my monastic little cell?" Zimmerman asked as he stepped aside and allowed Doug to enter his room.

Stepping past an unopened garment bag thrown carelessly on the floor, Doug said, "I think we can make the room feel a lot bigger if we put up a couple of Windowalls for you."

"Windowalls?"

"Big flat-screen display panels. You could show videos of scenes you like, make it seem as if you're looking out a window."

Zimmerman bobbed his fleshy jowls. "Yah, that would be an improvement."

I'll let you have one of mine until we get some new ones brought up," said Doug.

Zimmerman gave Doug a crafty look. "You didn't come here to discuss my interior decorating problems, hah?"

"No," Doug admitted cheerfully. "I've come to enlist your help."

"Sit," said the professor, gesturing to the desk chair as he eased his bulk onto the sagging bunk. "What help do you need from me?"

"We want to build Clipperships out of pure carbon -diamond—using nanomachines."

Zimmerman's shaggy brows rose. "So? That would make them much stronger than metal ships, no?"

"And lighter," Doug said.

"My experience has been mostly in medical uses of nanotechnology, not rocket engineering."

"It would help us enormously if you'd work with the technicians here. Just look over their shoulders a bit. Encourage them."

"Stick my nose in."

"You'd be an inspiration to them."

Zimmerman shook his head. "I'd be an old man bothering your young people. The one you want is Professor Cardenas. She has experience in engineering programs."

"I intend to ask her, too. But I wanted to ask you first."

"Why first?"

"Because I respect you so much," Doug replied. "I owe my life to you."

Zimmerman slouched back on the bunk until his head rested against the cushioned wall. "The Chinese believe that if you save a man's life, you are responsible for him ever afterward," he said gloomily. "I have the feeling that you are going to find many things for me to do."

Doug laughed. "I'm not Chinese. But I do want your help on this."

"I suppose—"

The ceiling lights flickered.

"What was that?" Zimmerman sat up rigidly on the bunk.

"Don't know," said Doug. "The lighting system must've switched—"

They flickered again.

"Does this happen often?" Zimmerman looked decidedly worried.

"No, never," Doug said, puzzled. "I don't know what's going on."

From outside in the tunnel they heard the ceiling speakers paging, "DOUGLAS STAVENGER, PLEASE CALL THE BASE DIRECTOR'S OFFICE. DOUGLAS STAVENGER, PLEASE CALL THE BASE DIRECTOR'S OFFICE."

Feeling uneasy, almost worried, Doug tapped the phone key on Zimmerman's computer keyboard.

Joanna's face appeared on the screen, strained, distraught. "Doug! Where are you?"

"I'm with Professor Zimmerman, in his quarters."

"Your brother's snapped! -He's run off with Melissa Hart somewhere, screaming that he's going to destroy everything."

"Greg? What do you mean?"

Then he heard the unmistakable thud of an airlock hatch slamming shut.

"EMERGENCY' blared the speakers out in the tunnel's ceiling, loud enough to be heard clearly through the flimsy accordion door. "EMERGENCY. AIR PRESSURE DROP IN MAIN GARAGE. ALL AIRLOCKS HAVE AUTOMATICALLY SHUT. FOLLOW EMERGENCY PROCEDURES. UNLESS YOU ARE WITH SECURITY OR ENVIRONMENTAL CONTROL GROUPS, REMAIN WHERE YOU ARE. DO NOT MOVE FROM YOUR PRESENT LOCATION UNTIL NOTIFIED BY BASE ENVIRONMENTAL CONTROL."

The sad sweet strains of the Rose Adagio from Sleeping Beauty filled her mind as Bianca Rhee floated through a nearly-perfect grand jete, higher in the air than any prima ballerina could possible achieve on Earth, arms extended, toes pointed properly, when the loudspeakers bellowed out their warning.

She landed on her toes, stumbled off-balance, and staggered against the flimsy partition that closed off her little practice area from the rest of the main garage. Almost angrily she yanked out the earplug and snapped off the miniature chip player clipped to her belt.

"EMERGENCY," the automatic warning repeated." AIR PRESSURE DROP IN MAIN GARAGE. ALL AIRLOCKS HAVE AUTOMATICALLY SHUT. FOLLOW EMERGENCY PROCEDURES. UNLESS YOU ARE WITH SECURITY OR ENVIRONMENTAL CONTROL GROUPS, REMAIN WHERE YOU ARE. DO NOT MOVE FROM YOUR PRESENT LOCATION UNTIL NOTIFIED BY BASE ENVIRONMENTAL CONTROL:"

Bianca didn't feel any air-pressure drop. Some stupid sensor's gone down, she thought But she padded in her ballet slippers to the edge of the partition and looked out at the main garage. People were hustling for the hatches that led into the base's four main tunnels.

And she felt a breeze.

Bianca had screened off this unused part of the main garage to serve as her practice hall. It was as far away from everything—and everyone—else as it could be, a good hundred meters from the nearest airlock.

There was definitely a wind surging through the main garage. She could see dust swirling along the floor. Somehow one of the airlocks to the outside must have been opened and the air was rushing out into the vacuum. A pang of fear shook her. I'll never get to one of the tunnel hatches in time!

A rack of six spacesuits stood a few meters away, hanging like empty suits of armor against the rock wall. There were racks like this spotted throughout the garage, standing ready against a possible emergency.

Bianca dashed to the nearest suit, ducked under its torso and wormed her way into it. As soon as her hands wiggled into the gloves attached to the arm cuffs, she reached overhead and grabbed the helmet, desperately hoping that the backpack's tanks were filled with breathable air. She clapped the helmet down on the neck ring and sealed it, then took a deep breath. The seal mechanism automatically activated the air flow.

Okay, she told herself shakily. The gasket around the waist of the torso shell will hold your air; you've got a couple of minutes to get into the leggings. It was awkward bending inside the hard shell of the suit's torso, but she ripped off her ballet slippers and got into the leggings faster than she had ever done before. Then she sat on the floor and pulled on the boots.

I did it! Bianca exulted. I got into the suit. Then she remembered that if she stayed in the suit for more than a few minutes she would get decompression sickness: the bends.

Greg had dragged Melissa from his office, down the tunnel toward the rear of the base.

"You want to destroy everything?" he had screamed at her. I'll show you how to wipe them all out! All of them!"

Melissa tried to keep up with him but her legs wouldn't work right in the low lunar gravity. She stumbled, flailed her free arm to regain her balance, then tripped again and fell to the floor. Greg hauled her along, skidding and scraping on the cold rock floor.

Two women and a young man, all in the olive green coveralls of the mining division, rushed up the tunnel toward them.

"What's the matter?" one of the women asked. "What's going on?"

"Get out of my way!" Greg roared. "Get out! Now! Leave us alone!"

The two women glanced at Melissa, sitting on the tunnel floor with her legs drawn up, glaring up at them.

"I'm the base director," Greg bellowed, banging the nametag on his chest with his free hand. "Get out of my goddamned way."

"Call security," said the young man. "Let them take care of it."

They hesitated a moment longer, staring at Greg's wild-eyed expression and Melissa, her arm still hanging in his grasp.

"Come on," said the young man. The three of them hurried up the tunnel.

"Assholes," Greg muttered after them.

Melissa yanked her wrist free of Greg's grasp. He turned on her, hand raised to strike.

I'll help you," she said, climbing slowly to her feet 'You don't have to drag me. I'll go with you willingly."

"You bet you will," Greg said. And he started down the tunnel again.

"Where are we going?" Melissa asked, trying to keep up with him without stumbling again.

"EVC," he muttered.

"What?"

"Environmental control center. The air pumps."

Breathlessly, Melissa answered, "Good."

Greg felt lightheaded, almost giddy, as he hurried down the tunnel. Don't run, he warned himself. You might trip yourself and fall. You don't want to look foolish in front of Melissa. He thought about the veteran Lunatics he had seen taking yards-long strides in the gentle gravity, soaring along like ballet dancers. I'll show those wiseasses, he thought I'll show them all. Let's see how far they can jump when there's no air left to breathe.

For the first time in his life Greg felt free, totally, absolutely free. It didn't matter what anyone thought or said or did. This is the end of it all. At last it'll all be over with, finished. The end of everything. No more fear. All my worries are behind me now.

To Melissa, this tunnel seemed longer than the others. As she struggled to keep up with Greg, she saw that they had passed the area where laboratories and offices lined the tunnel on both sides. Now the doors were farther apart and the labels on them proclaimed MAINTENAISjCE STORES and ELECTRONICS SPARES.

At the end of the tunnel was a dull metal hatch with an electronic security pad alongside it.

"Rank has its privileges," Greg said, almost giggling as he tapped the keyboard with his index finger. "All the base director has to do to open any hatch, anywhere, is punch in his personal code."

Greg's eyes were aglow. Melissa thought he looked—happy. I've freed him, she said to herself. I've freed us both.

The hatch clicked but did not open. Greg grasped its metal wheel, gave it half a turn and then pushed.

Inside was a shadowy cavem that throbbed with the sound of pumps.

As Greg, suddenly solicitous, helped Melissa over the hatch's coaming, he explained, "All the base's air supply is routed through here. That's the recycling equipment…' He pointed to a clump of bulky metal shapes connected by a maze of piping. "We'll take care of them later."

He pushed the hatch shut, then spun its wheel, locking it.

"Find a tool box," he ordered Melissa. "There's got to be tools stashed here someplace."

"What about those lockers?'1 She pointed to the row of metal lockers a few feet down the wall from the hatch.

"Right' said Greg. He yanked the lockers open, one after the other, and slammed each door shut again with a disgusted clang. "Emergency space suits, emergency oxygen tanks, extra coveralls—where "do they keep the fucking tools?' His roar echoed off the bare rock walls.

"Here." Melissa called from a workbench on the other side of the hatch.

Greg rushed to her. "Right!" He yanked open the metal boxes lining the back of the workbench and lifted out a heavy wrench. "Just what I need."

Grinning madly, he went back to the hatch and lifted the back cover off the security pad. Then, raising the wrench over his head like a spear, he jammed it into the electronic works of the hatch's security pad. Sparks crackled, throwing blue-white highlights against his grimacing face.

"There," Greg said triumphantly. Then he jammed the wrench into the hatch's wheel, to prevent it from being turned. "Now if they want to get in here they'll have to blast."

He whirled around, eyes blazing. Melissa felt her heart thundering beneath her ribs. We're going to do it! she said to herself. We're going to tear it all down! We're going to put an end to all of it, at last!

There was a computer at the end of the workbench. Greg strode to it, bending over the keyboard.

"One system at a time," he muttered. "First the lights."

The computer screen lit up. Greg worked the keyboard, fingers moving in staccato rhythm. Melissa thought the sparse overhead lights flickered, but the lighting was so dim in this cavern that she couldn't be sure.

"Damn! The backup nuke conies on-line automatically and there's no way to shut it down unless the solar farms come back on."

He pecked at the keyboard again, harder. "Shit," he muttered. "Shit, shit, shit."

"You can't do it?" Melissa asked, looking at the incomprehensible alphanumerics scrolling up the display screen.

"I can do it," Greg growled. "I just can't do it through the damnable computer. Too many redundancies and backups."

"Then what—"

"The main airlock!" Greg crowed. "I can open the main airlock long enough to blow all the air out of the garage! Emergency decontamination procedure. Look!"

Melissa saw another jumble of symbols on the computer screen, but overhead loudspeakers immediately blared out a warning that echoed through the big cavern.

"That's just a start!" Greg shouted.

He ran back to the workbench, picked up another wrench, and waved it in the air. "I'm going to wipe them all out!I can do it! Watch me!"

Melissa followed him down the narrow walkway between man-tall metal shapes that throbbed and chugged ceaselessly.

"I don't need the compiler system," Greg railed, banging his wrench angrily on the metal domes of the pumps as he passed them, making the cavern ring. "I don't need the fucking computer! I'll do it the hard way!"

"Do what?" Melissa asked.

Instead of answering her, he turned and pointed back to the workbench. "Get every tool you can carry. Bring them to me. Now!"

She scurried to obey, staggering slightly in the unaccustomed gravity, righting her balance by leaning against the cold metal pumps.

She went to the toolbox they had already opened and lifted out an assortment of wrenches, pliers and screwdrivers. By the time she got back to Greg he had already twisted off two of the four bolts holding down the domed top of one of the pumps.

"It all gets down to plumbing," Greg mumbled as he worked furiously. "All the high technology of this base depends on pipes that carry either air or water."

"You're going to break the pumps?"

Greg looked up at her, a grease stain already smeared across his forehead. I'm going to cut off their air supply. Let them choke to death on their own fumes."

"Us too?" she asked.

He laughed. "Of course, us too. We'll die together, Melissa. You'll like that, won't you?"

"I was in love with you," she said.

"No greater love has any man," Greg babbled as he yanked at the bolts of the pump, "than he lays down his life for his ex-lover."

She dropped to her knees next to him. "Kill them all," she whispered urgently. "But be sure to kill us, too."

"We'll die," Greg said triumphantly. "We'll all die!"

CONTROL CENTER

Doug flew down the tunnel, his feet barely touching the ground, leaping the distance between one closed airtight hatch and the next in a few long, loping lunar strides.

Jinny Anson was already in the control center when Doug got there. So was his mother and Lev Brudnoy.

"They're in the EVC, affl right," Anson was saying, pointing at the big electronic wall map of the base. "Sonofabitch blew out the garage and now the oxygen partial pressure in tunnel four is below safe level."

"How could he do that?" Joanna asked, wide-eyed.

Still scowling at the wall map, Anson replied, "He just opened the main airlock. All the air in the garage got sucked out into the vacuum."

"But how—"

"There's an emergency procedure in the computer controls," Anson answered impatiently, "so we can clear the garage of toxins or radioactives or any other crap in a hurry."

"Was anyone in the garage?"

"Of course! We're counting heads now, making sure everybody got out okay."

"What about tunnel four?" Doug asked. "That's the tunnel that leads into the EVC, isn't it?"

"Yeah, right. He must've shut down the pumps, I guess. Or maybe turned off the air-circulating fans. It doesn't take much."

"What is he trying to do?" Brudnoy asked.

"Commit suicide," Joanna replied without an instant's hesitation.

"And take all of us with hint?" Anson almost snarled the words.

Joanna nodded silently.

Doug asked, "Has anybody been able to make contact with him?"

Anson shook her head. "He doesn't answer, not even the paging system. And he must've knocked out the surveillance cameras somehow, we can't get a picture from inside theEVC."

"Damn!"

Doug saw that the consoles were fully manned; tight-lipped technicians sat at the monitor screens, headsets clamped to their ears, fingers running over their keyboards as they checked every system in Moonbase.

In the control center's air of quiet frenzy, Anson had naturally, automatically taken charge.

"He's trying to knock out the whole base," she said, thinking aloud. "Already blown out the garage and tunnel four's down below safe minimums. It's only a matter of time before he gets the rest of us."

"What can we do to stop him?" Joanna asked, sounding a bit frantic.

"First things first," said Anson. Turning, she marched to one of the consoles and spoke to the technician seated there. "Activate all the emergency air filtration systems. And get a squad of safety people to manually check them."

Doug saw the question in his mother's eyes. "Backup systems," he explained, "to filter the carbon dioxide out of the air. Even if Greg shuts down the main recycling equipment, the backups will keep our air breathable."

"For how long?" Joanna asked.

Brudnoy looked at her with sad eyes. "A few hours," he said softly. "At most, a few hours."

"Shouldn't we get everyone into spacesuits, then?" Joanna suggested.

"There aren't enough suits for everyone," Brudnoy countered.

Doug added, "And it would take an hour of pre-breathing before you could get into a suit without giving yourself the bends."

"Besides," the Russian said, "if the EVC goes down, the suits will only prolong your misery for a few hours more."

"Very encouraging," Zimmerman said loudly as he stepped through the control center's entrance. "I don't suppose you have suits my size anyway."

They all turned to see the fat old professor walking toward them as carefully as a man negotiating a minefield. Zimmerman's gray three-piece suit looked rumpled, but there was no sign of fear in his fleshy face. He looked more annoyed than afraid.

"I told you to stay in your quarters," Doug said. "How did—"

"You expect me to sit in that coffin of a cell, all alone? Never! If I am to die, it will be in company."

"But the hatches."

"Bah! Obviously I learned how to open them."

"You shut them behind you, I hope."

Anson said, "They close automatically, don't worry about it."

"So what is the problem?" Zimmerman asked.

Doug swiftly explained. The old man's face went gray.

"Cut off our air? He must be a madman!"

Without looking at his mother's reaction, Doug said, "We've got to get in there and stop him before he knocks out all the pumps and kills us all."

Brudnoy said, "The security team said the hatch to the EVC was sealed shut. They started to force it open manually but the air pressure kept on dropping in the tunnel and they had to get out."

"He's got himself barricaded in there," said Doug.

Anson said, "At least we got everybody out of the garage and tunnel four. No casualties."

"Yet," Brudnoy muttered.

"But even if he stops the pumps," Joanna asked, "won't the air recycling equipment keep going?"

"Won't do us a rat's ass worth of good if the pumps shut down," Anson replied, brow's knitted. "If he shuts down all the freakin' pumps, we'll all be asphyxiated within a couple of hours."

"But you said we had backups…"

"They'll scrub of the CO2 for a few hours," Anson said flatly. "They were only meant for short-term emergencies, not to replace the main system indefinitely."

"What can we do?" Joanna pleaded.

"I've got to get in there and stop him," said Doug.

"You?" Zimmerman asked.

"Me."

"But how?"

Turning to Anson, Doug asked, "Is there any other way into the EVC besides the hatch from the tunnel?"

She shook her head gloomily.

Doug asked, "What about the air ducts?" He turned back to the big electronic map. "All the air ducts in the base lead into the EVC, sooner or later. Maybe I can crawl through one—"

"Only if you are the size of a little mouse," Brudnoy said morosely. "The ducts are too small for you."

"There must be some way to get in there."

Brudnoy scratched at his beard, staring at the big wall map. Then he reached up and traced a finger along a ghostly gray line that reached from the EVC to the edge of the base, at the face of the ringwall mountain. It branched four times, once into each of the base's main tunnels.

"The plasma torch vents," he murmured.

"What?"

"When we started excavating these tunnels," Brudnoy explained, "we vaporized the rock with plasma torches."

"Everyone knows that," Joanna snapped.

"Yes, dear lady. But everyone forgets that we vented the vaporized rock outside through large ducts."

"Big enough for a man to crawl through?" Doug asked eagerly.

Brudnoy nodded. "We made them big so the vapors could get out quickly and dissipate into the vacuum outside."

"Terrific!"

"But those vents have, been sealed off for years," Anson pointed out.

"The seals were very simple, very primitive, if I recall correctly," said Brudnoy, furrowing his brow. "Nothing more than a series of airtight partitions every hundred meters or so. And they can be opened and closed from here in the control center, once you call up the proper program."

"That program must be ancient, Anson snapped.

"As old as I am, do you think?" countered Brudnoy, with a smile.

Doug whirled to the nearest empty console and began working its keyboard even before he pulled up a chair to sit in.

"Come on, Lev," he called. "Help me find it."

Brudnoy leaned over Doug's shoulder as the screen scrolled through several menus. Finally, a schematic of the vent system came up.

"Okay!" Doug said, nearly shouting. "I can crawl through the vent that runs along the tunnel here, work my way into the central vent, and then come down into the EVC."

"Is there air in the vents?" Joanna asked.

"Yep," said Anson. "Same pressure as the rest of the base, too."

"Then I can work my way through without a problem," Doug said.

"You'll have to get through the partitions," said Brudnoy.

"Those partitions haven't been opened in nearly twenty years, Anson said.

"They're controlled from here, though, aren't they?" Doug asked.

She nodded, but warned, "Some of 'em might be sealed shut. Dust gets into everything, y'know."

I'll need some power tools, then."

Nodding, Brudnoy said, "The two of us should be able to pry the hatches open, even if they don't respond to the controls."

Doug did not reply to the Russian. Turning to Anson, he said, "Get a repair team suited up and working on the hatch that Greg sealed. Start them prebreathing now. We're going to need every second we can squeeze out. Come on, we don't have any time to waste!"

"Wait a minute," Anson said. "If we pry that hatch open, the whole EVC's gonna lose its air. It'll go down to the pressure in tunnel four," she snapped her ringers, "like that.'

"Can't be helped," said Doug.

"Yeah, but what if you're in the EVC when they break through?"

With a shrug, Doug repeated, "Can't be helped. We have to do everything we can, as quick as we can."

"But the risk—"

Tell the crew working on the hatch to bring some breathing masks from the infirmary. If they can get them on us fast enough we'll be okay."

"You're taking a helluva chance," Anson said.

"What's the alternative?" Doug challenged. "Let my brother kill all of us? Let Moonbase die?"

Joanna stepped up to her son. "Doug, I can't let you do this. It's too dangerous."

"You can't stop me, Mom."

"Douglas—"

"I'm not going to let him destroy Moonbase," Doug said firmly. "He tried to once before, remember? I'm not going to let him get away with it."

"Your life is worth more than Moonbase," Joanna said.

He locked his gray-green eyes with hers. "No, it isn't," Doug said flatly. "Moonbase is more important than any of us."

"Not to me."

"It is to me," Doug said. Then he added, "He's trying to kill you, too, you know."

Joanna's mouth opened, but no sound came out

Doug started for the door.

"Aren't you going to at least put on a spacesuit?" Joanna called after him.

"No time, Mom! I've got to get to Greg as fast as I can."

The bends, Bianca Rhee thought, trying to fight down the panic surging through her. Breathing the low-pressure air in the suit tank means that the nitrogen in my cells will bubble out and cause all kinds of trouble.

How long do I have? she asked herself as she hurried across the emptied garage toward the nearest hatch to a tunnel. Minutes? Seconds?

She reached the hatch to tunnel four, fumbled with the electronic keypad in her eagerness to get it open, and finally managed to get her gloved finger on the proper button. The hatch slid-open and she stepped into the little chamber between the outer and inner hatches that served as an airlock.

Okay, she told herself shakily. So far so good.

She got the inner hatch open and, with a sigh of relief, slid up the visor of her helmet.

And choked. She couldn't catch her breath. No air! she screamed silently as she slammed her visor down again. They've pumped the air out of this tunnel! What if they've pumped the air out of all of them?

A sharp needle of pain seared her chest. Got to try the next tunnel. She stumbled through the airlock again, back out into the garage, and headed for the hatch to tunnel three. ~ Her legs gave way before she reached it. Agonizing pain flared through her. She felt as if she was being electrocuted. Or burned at the stake.

Jesus, Mary and Joseph, she cried to herself. It hurts! Christ! Oh Christ, Christ, Christ it hurts!

Greg got to his feet slowly and admired his handiwork. What had been a set of air pumps was now a shambles of disconnected parts scattered across the cold rock floor of the EVC.

"That's one," he said, puffing slightly.

Melissa stood beside him, her cool gray jacket smeared with grime, her hands greasy, knuckles skinned from banging them as she tried to help Greg.

"Let's get the next one," she urged.

"Give me a minute," Greg said, stretching his arms over his head. He was unaccustomed to so much intense physical exertion.

"They'll be trying to get in here again," she warned.

Greg gave her a knowing smile. "Not yet. I pumped down the air pressure out in the tunnel before taking the pump apart. They can't breathe the thin stuff out there now."

"But they have spacesuits, don't they?"

"Sure. But it takes an hour of prebreathing before you can get into a suit. Unless you want to die of the bends."

"Prebreathing?" Melissa asked. "Bends?"

"Never mind," Greg snapped. "Let's get to work on the next set of pumps."

"Good!"

"Four tunnels," Greg said as he stooped to gather his tools. "Each one has its own set of air pumps, including backups. Triple and quadruple redundancy." He laughed, a brittle sound that rang off the stone walls. "A lot of good it's going to do them!"

"Will we have time to do them all?" Melissa asked.

Walking leisurely to the second set of pumps, Greg replied, "Plenty of time. And then we'll do the recycling system, just to make certain." He laughed again. "That'll be our own little bit of redundancy."

He slapped the big wrench on one of the nuts holding down the main pump's domed top. It made a beautiful, echoing clang.

"We won't pass out before the job's finished, will we?" Melissa asked. She worried that Greg would screw up, one way or another. They were so close to the final ending, she didn't want to go through this and then find that they had failed.

"No," Greg assured her. "This chamber is sealed off from all the others. There's enough air in here for the two of us for days on end."

"But how will we…?"

"Finish it?" Greg's smile beamed at her. He moved closer to her, whispering like a little boy, "When all the pumps are done, when I've knocked out the recycling system, I'll open the hatch out into the tunnel. Our air will blow out and we'll be dead in a couple of minutes."

"You're sure?"

"As certain as death can be," Greg said.

Melissa kissed him on the lips. "Then let's make love while the air goes out. Let's die in each other's arms."

Greg cocked his head slightly. "Sure. Why not?" She sighed. It would all be over soon. What was it Shakespeare said? All the heartache and the thousand natural shocks flesh is heir to. It's all going to end, and Moonbase and nanotechnology with it. She felt a peace and contentment that she had not known since childhood.

"Stop daydreaming and help me with this," Greg snapped.

Startled, she looked at the man she hated, the man she loved, and went to help him.

A dull booming sound reverberated through the shadowy, high-ceilinged cave.

"What was that?" Melissa asked.

Greg peered up into the shadows. "I don't know."

Another, like the growl of distant thunder.

"They're trying to get in again!"

"No," said Greg. "It's not the hatch. It's too far away, whatever it is."

Melissa thought wildly. "Maybe they're launching a ship, getting away!"

Greg shook his head angrily. "There's only one LTV on the pads and it can only hold a half-dozen passengers, max."

"Your mother—"

"My mother wouldn't even think of trying to get away," Greg said. "It wouldn't even enter her mind. Or Doug's, they'll try to figure out some way to save everybody, whole base."

"You're sure?"

"Positive. Especially Doug. He'll want to be a hero. He'd rather die than let Moonbase be destroyed. Even if he was safe in bed in Savannah, once we wipe out Moonbase he'll die too."

"You're sure?" Melissa repeated.

Greg laughed bitterly. "That noise is probably Doug battering his thick skull against the airlock hatch, trying to ram his way in here."

VACUUM VENT NO. 3A

"When all else fails," granted Brudnoy, "use the precision adjuster."

He and Doug gripped the long metal rod they had scavenged from the construction spares supply and rammed it again into the square metal ceiling panel that was the access to the vacuum vent that ran the length of tunnel three. The booming thud reverberated hollowly down the length of the tunnel.

"Well," Doug panted, "I don't think we're going to surprise them."

Brudnoy peered up at the access panel. It had barely budged. "I don't know about that," he said, wiping sweat from his eyes with the back of his sleeve. "They may hear the noise we're making, but will they know what's causing it?"

"Maybe not," Doug agreed half-heartedly. He gripped the rod again in both hands. "Come on, let's get it done."

We're not moving fast enough, Doug told himself. Greg's in there taking the EVC apart and we're stuck here as if we're glued to the floor.

For one of the rare times in his young life Doug felt real anger. He wants to kill us all, kill himself and me and Mom and everybody. He wants to kill Moonbase. He wants to kill my father all over again.

Never! he snarled inwardly. I won't let him get away with it He rammed the rod with all his strength against the unyielding ceiling panel.

Four more bangs and the panel gave way with a groan. Doug could see it lift away slightly from the lip of the square in the rock ceiling.

"I think that did it," he said, puffing from the exertion.

"Yes." Brudnoy was panting, too. Wheezing.

"Okay," said Doug. "You'd better get back to the control center and tell them I'm on my way."

"But I'm going with you," said Brudnoy.

"No," Doug said, placing a hand on the Russian's bony shoulder. "This is something I have to do alone. Besides, I need you to take care of my mother."

Brudnoy gave him an odd look. Then he shrugged submissively. "I understand. I'm too old for heroics."

Doug smiled at him sadly. "You're out of shape, you know."

Shrugging, Brudnoy replied, "Too much soft living. Here, at least I can help you up."

"I can jump it. Get on back before he starts pumping the air out of this tunnel, too."

"They can't," Brudnoy countered, "now that the hatches have all been closed."

Doug nodded. "Yeah, all he can do is knock out the pumps or the recycling system and let us strangle slowly."

"It's always best to look on the bright side," said Brudnoy.

With a rueful grin, Doug backed up a few steps, then lunged forward and leaped, arms outstretched. His fingertips caught the open space where the panel had been pushed ajar. Hanging there with one hand, he shoved at the panel with the other. It hardly moved.

"No leverage," Doug gasped.

"Stand on my shoulders," said Brudnoy, ducking under Doug's flailing feet. "Then you can use both hands."

"You knew this would happen all along, didn't you?" Doug asked, as Brudnoy straightened up under him. He pushed the panel aside; it screeched like a rusty hinge.

"Simple physics," Brudnoy said.

Doug hauled himself up into the vent 'Thanks," he said, looking down at the Russian.

"There you are!" It was Zimmerman, hurrying along the tunnel. He reminded Doug of a big sea lion waddling across a beach.

"You should be in your quarters," Doug called down to him.

"So? I will be safer there?"

Brudnoy turned slightly to hide the smile that the professor's sarcasm triggered.

"We can't have people just wandering around the base," Doug said.

"I am not wandering. I came looking for you."

"Oh? Why?"

"To warn you."

Brudnoy's smile vanished. "Of what?"

Waggling a stumpy finger up toward Doug, Zimmerman said, "You think you are superman, maybe, because you have the nanomachines in you?"

Doug blinked down at the professor. "I hadn't even thought about that."

"Good. Forget about them. They will not make you into a hero. They cannot protect you from all harm."

"I didn't think they could," Doug said.

"They are medical, metabolic," Zimmerman went on. "They can heal injuries quickly. But that is all they can do for you."

"Okay," said Doug.

"Do not think you can perform superhuman feats. You cannot"

"Okay," Doug repeated, feeling slightly exasperated "Thanks for the warning. I've got to get going now."

"Yah. I know." Zimmerman stood there fidgeting for a moment, men said in the softest voice Doug had ever heard out of him, "Good luck, my boy."

Grinning, Doug replied, "Thanks."

Brudnoy handed him the power drill they had brought with them. Doug grasped it, men started to worm around for his trek down the vent

"Turn on the transponder," Brudnoy reminded.

"Yeah, right." Doug reached for the little black box clipped to his chest pocket and pressed its stud. Now they could track his progress back at the control center. If I get killed, he thought sardonically, at least they'll know where to find the body.

"One more thing," Brudnoy called.

"What?" Doug asked, getting irritated at the delay.

"I want you to remember something your father often said. Every time he had a difficult job to do, he said it"

"My father?" Doug asked, more gently.

"If it is to be, it's up to me," Brudnoy said. "That was your father's motto."

"If it is to be, it's up to me," Doug repeated.

"Yes," said Brudnoy.

"Thanks, Lev. That's good to know."

"Good luck."

"Right."

Brudnoy and Zimmerman watched the young man disappear into the darkness of the overhead vent.

"Come on," said Brudnoy to the professor. "Time for us old men to go wait with the women."

Zimmerman shook his head, glanced up at the ceiling, then let Brudnoy lead him back toward the control center.

Doug tucked the hand drill into the thigh pocket of his coveralls and undipped the penlight from his chest pocket. The pencil beam seemed feeble as he swung it back and forth. The vent was barely wider than his shoulders, and caked with dust. Should've brought a breathing mask, he said to himself. At least there won't be any rats or bugs. Shouldn't be. All the inbound cargoes are checked Earthside and on arrival here. There won't be anything in this vent to surprise me. Couldn't be.

But he knew he was trying to convince himself of something he was really unsure of.

Joanna almost threw herself at Brudnoy when he and Zimmerman came back into the control center.

"He's in the vent?" she asked, her voice high with tension.

Brudnoy said as soothingly as he knew how to, "He's on his way. He'll be at the EVC in half an hour, at most"

Anson muttered, tight-lipped, "They can do a lotta damage in half an hour, I betcha."

Brudnoy shrugged. "As long as they don't damage the recycling equipment too badly…"

"Good thing they don't have any explosives in there," Anson said, turning back to the wall screen.

"It's a question of time now," Brudnoy said to Joanna. "Can Doug get there soon enough to stop them from doing too much damage."

Joanna fought to keep back her tears. Doug was going to have to fight Greg. At best, only one of her sons would come out of this alive, she knew.

"We're picking up his transponder signal," called one of the technicians from his monitoring station.

"Put it on the big screen," Anson commanded.

A blinking red dot showed up on the wall screen, halfway down the gray line marking the vent running atop tunnel three.

Zimmerman, sitting on one of the little wheeled console chairs like a walrus perched on a beach ball, pointed and asked, "That is him?"

"That's him," Anson replied.

"Can we speak with him?"

"He's got a pocket phone," she said. "He'll call in when he hits the first partition."

Joanna stared at the blinking red dot as it moved slowly along the gray line. Brudnoy stood beside her and put an arm around her shoulders. She leaned against him, grateful for the support.

Roger Deems unconsciously gnawed on a fingernail as the eight others—three women among them—filed into the security office. Just my luck, Deems thought, to be tapped for the security job this month. The others looked equally unhappy.

The security assignment was rotated among the long-time Lunatics. Usually the job required nothing more than keeping the base's surveillance cameras working. Drugs were a minor problem, but the long-timers usually policed themselves pretty well and kept the short-timers under control. The still that produced rocket juice was an open secret and seldom made problems for anyone. The toughest moment Deems could remember had been when two short-timers got into a fistfight in The Cave over a woman they both coveted. By the time that month's security chief had arrived on the scene, like the sheriff in an old west barroom brawl, the other Lunatics had already ended the fight simply by dousing the combatants with all the fruit juice they could grab from the dispensers. Wet and sticky, the two young men felt foolish and embarrassed. Wyatt Earp was not really needed.

Deems had been at his desk, performing a routine check of the surveillance cameras, when the automatic emergency announcement blared from the overhead speakers. The sound of the airtight hatches slamming shut all along the tunnel startled him, but he didn't get too worried until Jinny Anson's voice came on the speakers and ordered everyone to stay put, then ended with an ominous, "THIS IS NOT A DRILL."

Before Deems could get out of his desk chair Anson was on the phone, telling him tightly what had happened and what she expected him to accomplish. Deems swallowed twice to keep down the bitter bile that was suddenly burning its way up his throat, nodded once to Anson, and got busy. He punched into the loudspeaker system, startled to hear his own voice booming out in the tunnel as he said:

"THIS IS THE SECURITY CHIEF. WE NEED VOLUNTEERS TO HELP CLEAR UP THIS EMERGENCY. ANYBODY IN TUNNEL TWO WHO ISN'T INVOLVED IN LIFE SUPPORT WORK AND DOESN'T HAVE TO GET PAST ONE OF THE CLOSED HATCHES, REPORT TO THE SECURITY OFFICE RIGHT AWAY."

Volunteers. Deems almost laughed. Anybody who could reach the security office without going through one of the closed hatches was a volunteer. By definition.

Now the three women and five men stood crowded, worried and uncertain before his desk.

"The base director's locked himself in the EVC and is threatening to cut off our air," Deems said to the assembled 'volunteers," without preamble.

They gasped, shocked.

"We need to open the EVC's hatch," he went on, running a hand through his thinning hair, "and we don't have time for prebreathing."

"Whaddaya mean, "we?" Why do we hafta do it?"

"Yeah, aren't there specialists for a problem like this?"

"Like who?" Deems asked, trying hard to scowl at them.

No one had an answer.

"Listen," he said, leaning back in his chair and folding his arms over his chest, "we can sit here on our rumps and let the cuckoo sonofabitch choke off our air or we can try to do something about it. Which is it gonna be?"

"You mean we need to get into suits?"

"It's that bad?"

"Air pressure in tunnel four is 'way down, unbreathable," said Deems, actually beginning to enjoy the feeling of authority, "and the pressure's dropping in tunnel three."

"Christ! My wife's in three!"

Deems raised a chubby hand. "Don't panic. We've already got safety people evacuating three. She'll be okay."

"But we have to get into suits?" one of the women asked, not certain she had heard him correctly.

"That's right. No time for prebreathing, either."

"Isn't that dangerous?"

"Not if we do it right," said Deems. "We're going to the suit rack at the end of this tunnel and purge a half-dozen backpack tanks. Get rid of the low-pressure mix that's in 'em and refill them with regular base air. Then you won't need prebreathing and there's no danger of the bends."

"But if you pump up the suits to room-normal pressure they'll get so stiff we won't be able to move in them," said one of the men. Deems recognized him as an engineer from the mining group.

"You won't have to do any delicate work," he countered. "Just set up a laser torch to burn through the hatch."

The engineer looked dubious and muttered something too low for Deems to catch.

"But we've gotta move fast," Deems said, starting to feel like a real leader. "No time to waste. We've gotta get into the EVC before he knocks out all the pumps and recyclers."

"Isn't there any other way to get to the EVC?"

They don't like this, Deems could tell by looking at their faces. Not any of it. Can't say I blame them.

"Doug Stavenger is working his way through the old plasma vents," he said, "but we don't know if he can make it all the way to the EVC or not. In the meantime, we gotta get that locked hatch open."

"Wait a minute," said one of the engineers. "If the pressure's down in tunnel four and we burn through the hatch, won't that blow the air out of the EVC?"

"Right"

"And anybody in there gets killed."

"Most likely."

"Then what about Stavenger? What if he's in there when we blow the hatch?"

Deems shrugged. "We'll carry extra suits and try to get them on all three of the people in there before decompression get them."

"Fat chance," grumbled the engineer.

Deems knew he was right.

"Shouldn't we be taking the recyclers apart?" Melissa asked. Her arms hurt from exertion and she could feel blisters welling up painfully on the palms of her hands.

Greg snorted impatiently, kneeling over one of the pumps. "What good's the recycling equipment if the pumps aren't moving fresh air? Kill the pumps and you kill the people."

He seemed calmer now. Methodical. When they had first burst into the EVC Greg was frenzied, wild-eyed. Now he worked with the deliberate, meticulous care of a man who was totally dedicated to his task. He's really going to do it, Melissa said to herself for the hundredth time. He's going to kill them all. He's going to kill himself. He's going to kill me.

For the first time, she realized that there was no way to stop Greg. If she tried to interfere with his dismantling of the pumps, he would calmly brain her with one of the wrenches.

She shuddered.

"Haven't heard that booming noise again," Greg said absently as he worked, head bent over the inner works of the pump.

"No," said Melissa. "It's stopped."

"What do you think they're doing, outside?"

"I don't know," she said. "Getting into spacesuits, maybe?"

Greg laughed. "Fat lot of good it'll do them. There aren't enough to go around. Oh, I suppose my mother and her little circle of sycophants are in suits. But the others—no."

"Maybe they're calling for help."

Greg looked up at her. His face was smeared with grime, but he smiled brightly at Melissa. "I'm sure they are. They must be screaming for help. But the quickest any help can come from Earth is six hours or more, and that's only if they have an LTV all ready to go and it's programmed for a high-energy boost."

"They could be calling to the other bases here on the Moon, couldn't they?"

"My mother, ask Yamagata or the Europeans for help? She'd sooner die."

"You don't really believe that."

His dark eyes snapped at her. "Don't tell me what I believe! If she asked Yamagata or the Europeans for help, they'd end up owning Moonbase. She'd never do that. She wouldn't even think of it."

"But that's better than dying, isn't it?"

Greg pulled a section of pipe away from the dismantled pump and let it drop to the rock floor with a clang. "Besides, what could anybody do to help her? Before anybody can break through the hatch to get to us, everybody out there'll be dead."

Melissa paced back and forth along the narrow walkway between pumps, arms folded across her chest, massaging her aching muscles.

"They must be doing something," she said.

Greg snorted disdainfully. "If I know my mother, she's spending her last moments writing me out of her will."

Doug's sneeze rang along the length of the metal-walled vent like a raucous gong. The dust was filling his nose, choking his throat whenever he inadvertently opened his mouth. The vent was big enough for him to crawl on his hands and knees, but still the dust floated languidly up to his face with every step he took.

How on Earth could dust get into these closed vents? With a shake of his head he reminded himself that he wasn't on Earth and lunar dust got into everything, its burnt-gunpowder smell was as common in Moonbase as the odor of frying oil in a hamburger joint back Earthside.

I wonder what the nanomachines are doing with the dust particles that get down to my lungs, he asked himself. Despite the sneezing and coughing, he seemed to be breathing well enough.

He had passed three partitions. Two of them had opened up on the electrical signal from the control center, when Doug had phoned Anson. The third refused to budge, and Doug had to drill off its hinges, which were caked solid with lunar dust.

The partitions had been set up like valves in the blood stream, to flip open in one direction only, letting fumes flow outward toward the vacuum outside the base, but sealing firmly shut once the outward-pushing pressure dropped.

As long as the last seal holds, the one at the end of the vent, where it opens out at the face of the mountain, as long as that one holds the vent will hold air for me to breathe, Doug told himself.

Then a sudden thought struck him. Is there a backup set of controls in the EVC? Could Greg pop the outside hatch open and blow all the air out? And me with it?

No, he told himself. Greg doesn't know I'm coming along the vent, so even if there are backup controls he won't know to use them. It's not possible.

He hoped he was right

In the thin beam of his penlight he saw that the vent ended in a T-shaped intersection up ahead. That's the junction with the main trunk, he knew. I'm at the end of tunnel four; the EVC is only a few dozen yards away.

He fished the phone out of his pocket again, flicked it on, and said softly, I'm at the juncture with the main trunk."

The comm tech's voice said, "Hold one."

Then Anson came on. "Okay. We've got an emergency team in suits ready to start burning open the hatch."

"In suits?" Doug blurted, startled. "But they haven't had enough time—"

"They're breathing regular air at base pressure."

"Oh. Okay."

"Are you ready to pry open the access cover in the EVC?" Anson demanded.

"Yes," Doug said. "In about two minutes."

"Okay. I'll start the team working on the hatch. That oughtta draw their full attention."

"Right."

"They've got a spare suit with them, for you."

"Only one?"

"They've got two more, but I told them to be sure they slap one on you before they do anything else."

"Okay. Thanks."

Doug stuffed the phone back in his pocket, thinking, Once they blow that hatch all the air's going to rush out of the EVC. Explosive decompression. A spacesuit won't help unless they can get it on before your blood boils and your eyes pop out of your head.

He inched his way to the final access panel. I've got to stop Greg before they blow that hatch, he told himself.

MAIN GARAGE

"There's a body here!"

Deems had to bend over to see the spacesuited figure slumped on the main garage's rock floor halfway between the hatches to tunnel four and tunnel three.

Several of the team gathered around the fallen figure, bending stiffly in their overpressured suits.

"He's unconscious."

"I think it's a woman."

"If whoever it is got into that suit without prebreathing, he's got the bends. Or she."

Just what we need! Deems growled to himself. Some stupid shit who didn't get in to safety in time.

Pointing to the man closest to him, he said, "Drag him inside tunnel two and call the medics. Then get your butt back out here right away. We're gonna need every pair of hands we've got."

It felt spooky as his eight men and women waddled cumbersomely through the main garage to the closed hatch that was the entrance to tunnel four. The garage was usually bustling and noisy with tractors being repaired, technicians yelling back and forth, music from individual disk players wailing over the clang and clamor.

Now the garage was deathly silent and still. It seemed to have taken hours to purge the spacesuit tanks of their low-pressure mix and refill them with room air. Then getting into the damned suits took even longer. The metal shell of the torso and leggings were unaffected by the additional air pressure, but the gloves ballooned so badly they looked like boxers' mitts, and all the suit joints were painfully stiff. It's like we've all got arthritis real bad, Deems thought.

He watched four members of his team checking out the cutting laser, clumsy and slow in the overpressured suits. The laser looked heavy and sinister, mounted on a tripod like some kind of gun. Clusters of power condensers and cooling blades lined its length. Another pair from their group sat on the rock floor awkwardly connecting power cables together.

Who the hell got himself caught in a suit out here? he wondered. Personnel claimed they checked out everybody working in the garage, they all got into tunnels one and two okay. And the only guy on the surface made it to the rocket port, so he's accounted for. Somebody's miscounted or screwed up someplace.

Tunnel four was two hundred yards long, Deems knew. Twice the length of a football field. They were going to lug the laser down to the sealed EVC hatch at the end of the tunnel, dragging the cable along, and start cutting the hatch open.

And when we do, he said to himself, we'll be killing anybody inside the EVC. He glanced at the three empty suits on the floor by the hatch. Shaking his head inside his helmet, Deems thought that the suits would be about as much good as an umbrella in a typhoon.

The Stavenger kid's gonna die, he thought We'll get the two who're trying to wipe us out, but we're going to kill the Scavenger kid in the process.

"Did you hear that?" Melissa asked, looking up toward the rock ceiling of the EVC, lost in the shadows beyond the strips of overhead fluorescent lamps.

Greg was hunched over the display screens at the front of the chamber. Tunnel four was almost a vacuum, and although somebody had shut all the airtight hatches in the other tunnels, the oxygen level in tunnel three was sinking nicely.

"Hear what?" he called to Melissa.

"It sounded like—"

"Wait!" Greg snapped, silencing her. "Listen!"

Melissa walked to his side. She felt utterly weary. Her knuckles were skinned, her hands greasy, her clothes a mess. She had stripped off her jacket, and now she felt chilled in nothing but the light sleeveless blouse she had worn beneath it.

Greg tapped on the keyboard and the display screen showed the tunnel outside. Four people in spacesuits were aiming a heavy cutting laser at the EVC hatch.

"They're trying to get through the hatch," he whispered.

Melissa stood by him and glanced again up toward the shadowy ceiling. She thought she had heard something from up above, but in this echoing cavern, maybe it was a noise from the tunnel outside that had caught her ear.

Greg laughed, shakily. "It'll take them hours to burn through the hatch," he said. "I know the kinds of lasers they use for cutting metals."

It sounded less than reassuring to Melissa. "I thought you said they couldn't get through the tunnel at all."

"They must have set up a death squad," he said. "They're just killing themselves faster, that's all."

Doug clamped his penlight in his gritted teeth and tried to work the edge of the power drill into the dust-caked rim of the access panel. Things don't rust up here, he thought, but the dust packs as solid as concrete after a few years.

He had carefully removed the hinges from the access panel, trying to do it as quietly as he could. Surprise is still a weapon, he told himself. As long as they don't know I'm here I've got an advantage over them.

Perspiration stung his eyes but he kept levering the power drill with both hands, using the drill like a miniature crowbar, trying to pry the damned panel loose. Does Greg have any weapons with him? he suddenly wondered. As far as Doug knew there wasn't a gun anywhere on the Moon. The worst Greg might have would be a steak knife from The Cave. Or a wrench that he could use as a club.

The panel creaked a little. Doug saw light seeping into the vent from below. Worming the point of the drill deeper into the crack he had created, he struggled to his knees—head bent to keep from banging the top of the vent—and leaned all his weight on the tool, wishing for once that they were on Earth where his weight counted for more.

Groaning, the panel edged up an inch or so. Doug grabbed its edge with both hands and pushed, straining so hard he felt pain across his shoulders and down his back.

With a final shriek of protest the panel opened all the way. Doug pushed it clattering aside and looked down into the environmental control center. A pump's disassembled parts lay scattered oh the stone floor twenty feet below him. He could see another pump, apparently still working, on the side of the narrow walkway. No sign of Greg or Melissa, though.

The walkway down there looked very tight. If I don't hit it just right I'll land on the pump or the pieces Greg's strewn across the floor. I could break an ankle. Or my neck.

But there was no time to hesitate. Twenty feet down. You're on the Moon; you can drop twenty feet with no sweat. Still, Doug grabbed the edge of the open access hatch and lowered himself slowly, hanging by both hands for a moment

Then he saw Greg, only ten yards away, by the front hatch. And Greg, turning suddenly, saw him.

Doug let go and started to drop with the dreamlike slowness of lunar gravity to the walkway below. Greg howled madly, grabbed a heavy wrench and threw it at his brother.

Doug felt his left arm shatter with pain as he hit the floor, slipped on a loose piece of junk, and went down flat on his back. As he fell he saw Greg grab for another weapon.

ENVIRONMENTAL CONTROL CENTER

It was Doug!

Greg turned at the blood-freezing screeching noise of metal grinding against metal and saw his half-brother hanging like an ape from the ceiling. Then Doug let go and dropped slowly, like a monster in a nightmare, toward the floor. Howling, Greg reached for a wrench and threw it at Doug, then leaped to the workbench and grabbed the first tool his hand could reach, a screwdriver, smaller, but comfortably heavy.

Melissa stood frozen against the workbench, screaming, "Get him! Get him!"

Greg saw that Doug had sprawled on his back. Got to put him out before he can get to his feet, Greg told himself. He leaped toward his fallen brother.

Through pain-hazed eyes, Doug saw Greg springing at him. There was no room on the confined walkway to do more than turn on his side, no place to hide or even dodge.

Greg landed on Doug's side with a thump that drove the air from Doug's lungs. He tried to shield himself, but his left arm wouldn't work. He could hardly move it.

Greg held the screwdriver like a knife up above his head and stared down into his half-brother's pain-widened eyes. For an instant he hesitated. Melissa was screaming something. Greg saw not Doug, but Paul Stavenger looking up at him accusingly. Murderer! he heard Paul call him. You murdered me once and now you're going to do it again.

Through pain-hazed eyes Doug saw his half-brother hesitate, the screwdriver held over his head like a dagger. Pushing Greg's weight off him, Doug reached up with his good arm and grabbed Greg's wrist.

It was a nearly equal contest. Doug's left forearm was broken, but he was stronger, more muscular than Greg. Gripping Greg's wrist, Doug pulled himself up to a sitting position, forcing Greg backwards. Then he began bending Greg's wrist back slowly, slowly, until Greg grunted and dropped the screwdriver.

The two brothers sat on the cold stone floor, gasping, glaring at each other.

"How'd you get in here?" Greg growled.

"Vents," Doug panted. "Plasma torch exhaust vents."

"What do you think… you're going to… accomplish?"

Doug pointed with his good hand toward the hatch up at the front of the EVC. "They'll be breaking through," he said, breathing raggedly. "When they do… we're all dead. The tunnel's… almost down to vacuum."

Suddenly Doug's world exploded. Flashes of light burst before his eyes and then it all went utterly black.

He slumped over, the back of his head oozing blood. Greg looked up and saw Melissa standing triumphantly over them, a heavy wrench grasped tightly in both her gaunt hands. The wrench was stained with Doug's blood.

"That takes care of him," she snarled.

Greg climbed slowly to his feet

"You heard what he said," Melissa urged. "They're going to kill us when they get the hatch open."

"We're trapped in here," Greg said, looking around wildly. "There's no way out."

"Then let's finish what we came here for."

"We won't have time!"

"We've got to!"

Another thumping sound from the hatch.

"They're going to burn through it," Greg said, his voice shaking. He looked down at Doug again; his half-brother seemed dead.

"Do something!" Melissa shouted.

Greg tried to clear his thoughts. "He came through the old plasma vents…' Straightening up, Greg went to the computer by the workbench. "Those vents open to vacuum! If I can open them all, it'll suck all the air out of the base in a few minutes."

Melissa's eyes glowed. "That'll do it!"

Greg began scrolling through the computer programs, searching for the controls to the plasma vents.

Doug couldn't focus his eyes. Everything was a blur, a red smear. Blinking, coughing, he pushed himself up to a sitting position and slumped against one of the pumps. He wiped at his eyes with his good hand and they came away sticky with blood.

Far, far away he saw a slim figure bent over a glowing computer display screen. Greg. Someone was standing beside him but his vision was too blurred to make out who it might be.

"Hurry!" she was saying, her voice pitched high and shrill. "Hurry! I can hear them outside the hatch!"

"I've got it," Greg said, his voice as calm and implacable as death.

"Greg…' Doug croaked, his throat raw. "Don't…"

Greg turned and his eyed flashed wide. "I thought she'd killed you."

"Don't do it," Doug said again. "You'll be killing Mom."

He saw his brother's eyes widen slightly. But then Greg said, "What of it?"

Doug pushed himself to his feet, feeling slightly dizzy. He reached out a hand to steady himself against the gutted shell of a pump.

"Stay away," Greg warned, growling. Yet his fingers hesitated over the keyboard.

Melissa tried to push him away. "If you won't do it, I will," she snarled.

Strength was returning to Doug's legs. The pain hi his left arm was bearable, a sullen throb. His vision had cleared and he felt stronger with each step he took toward the pair of them.

"Stop it, Greg. Stop it now while you can. Put an end to the killing."

I'll put an end to everything!' Greg snapped. But he stared at his brother without touching the keys that would open the plasma vents.

"No, you don't want to do that, Greg. You can't destroy Moonbase. It means too much to everyone on Earth. It means the future of the human race."

"The human race!" Melissa laughed bitterly. "The world would be better off if the human race were wiped out to the last pitiful one."

Doug was almost within arm's reach now. The nano-machines had stopped the bleeding from his scalp wound, repaired the blood vessels in his brain that Melissa's blow had ruptured. They were even beginning to knit together the fracture in his forearm.

"I'm warning you!" Greg screeched. "Stay away from me!"

"Just back off from the computer, Greg," Doug said as softly as he dared. "Go to the hatch and tell them you're coming out peacefully."

"No!"

"You've got to, Greg. This isn't just between you and me. There's more than our lives involved here, much more."

Greg took an uncertain, lurching step backwards, like a drunk too addled to understand what he was doing.

"Coward," Melissa hissed. She stabbed a finger toward the keyboard.

Doug lunged forward blurringly fast and caught her frail wrist 'No," he said. "You're not going to destroy us."

"Leave her alone!" Greg threw himself at Doug, clawing at his throat Melissa scratched at Doug's face with her free hand.

He staggered back under their assault, flung Melissa aside like a rag doll and grasped one of Greg's strangling hands. His brother was trying to choke him. Beyond his insanely twisted face, Doug could see Melissa reaching for the keyboard again.

Doug jabbed a thumb in Greg's eye. He howled and released Doug's throat Stepping back just enough for the leverage, Doug punched his brother in the jaw with a short, compact right Greg's eyes rolled up and he collapsed to the stone floor.

Melissa was banging on the keyboard, desperately hoping to strike the key that would open the plasma vents to vacuum. Doug reached for her again when suddenly the big chamber seemed to erupt into a tornado. Dust swirled as Doug's ears roared painfully.

He saw Melissa's face, glowing with triumph, crumble into a mask of blood. Blood gushed from her ears, her eyes. Her mouth filled with blood as she twirled in the rushing air, and slid across the floor, arms flapping like a scarecrow's.

Doug had only a moment to turn and look down at Greg, bleeding from every pore, before he too collapsed and died.

MOONBASE INFIRMARY

Douglas Scavenger was sitting up in the bed, tubes carrying whole blood, saline solution, and liquid nutrient into his arms, monitoring machines above his head blinking and displaying crawling, glowing lines that represented his heart beat, breathing rate, blood pressure. Each factor was so high that the monitors had been specially programmed so that they would not constantly be screeching their warning signals.

His mother was sitting on a hard plastic chair at the foot of the bed while Zimmerman stood beside the bed, scowling at him.

"The nanomachines have raised your metabolic rate by a factor of nearly three," he muttered. "I don't understand it."

Joanna said softly, "They saved his life; that's enough for me."

"Yah, but how?" Zimmerman insisted. "How did they do it?"

"Don't ask me," said Doug. "One moment I was passing out in the EVC. The next thing I knew, I woke up here in the infirmary."

Still scowling, Zimmerman mumbled, "They must have shut down your heart rate to lower your blood pressure and prevent ruptures of the capillaries."

"How did they know to do that?" Doug asked.

Zimmerman looked down at him. "How did they make the decision to suspend your heart function? Did they simply react to the immediate physical stimulus, or…' His voice trailed off.

"Or what?" Joanna asked.

With a shake of head hard enough to make his jowls waddle,

Zimmerman continued, "Or did they make an assessment that it was safer to shut down your heart than to allow your capillaries to burst?"

"Make an assessment?" Doug echoed. "Like they're intelligent?"

"No, that cannot be," Zimmerman said. But he didn't seem terribly certain of it.

"The bugs must have reacted to the immediate stimulus, as you said," Doug suggested.

"Yah. Perhaps. And yet

"Whatever they did," Joanna said, "they saved Doug's life."

"By stopping my heart and killing me."

Zimmerman seemed lost in thought. "They are either very stupid, or much more intelligent than I had ever thought possible."

He reached for the curtain screening off Doug's bed, muttering, "I must talk to Kristine about this. This is very unexpected."

Without another word to Doug or his mother, Zimmerman stepped out of the cubicle.

For several moments Doug simply lay in his bed, silent, looking at his mother's sad, abstracted face. Finally, he said, "It's a shame we couldn't save Greg."

Joanna's face clouded. "There wasn't anything they could do for him. All his internal organs were ruptured. Melissa too."

Doug's last conscious memory of them flashed through his mind. Blood spurting everywhere, their final strangling, gargling shrieks.

"And Bianca Rhee was killed too?"

His mother nodded. "No one seems to know what she was doing out in the garage. They found her in a spacesuit but she had already died of heart failure."

"From the bends."

"Yes, nitrogen bubbles blocked her heart valves."

Leaning his head back against the pillows, Doug wished he could feel something. Some emotion. Sorrow. Pain. Even relief. Nothing. Just a blank emptiness inside him. As if the nanomachines that had saved his life had also taken away his soul.

His mother still looked stricken. Nearly twenty years she's protected Greg and now he's dead. He killed himself and I couldn't stop him. I tried and failed. He killed my father and Melissa and Bianca. And himself. And I couldn't prevent it.

"It's not your fault," Joanna said, as if she could read his mind.

"What?"

"It's not your responsibility. Greg would have killed himself sooner or later. I know that. I suppose I've known it all along."

"If I had just been a little faster—"

"No," Joanna said. "You saved the base. You saved me."

"He opened the plasma vents to vacuum," Doug said. "He wanted to kill us all. That's what he said."

"What Greg really wanted was to kill himself."

"I should've stopped him."

"Jinny had sealed the vent access hatches in tunnels one and two," Joanna said. "We had evacuated three and four. So no one was killed when he opened the main hatch. Some equipment's been damaged, but it's nothing that can't be repaired."

Bianca died, though, Doug said to himself. I'll have to go out to the main garage and find her ballet slippers. They must be back in the screened-in area where she practices. Then he corrected himself: practiced. Past tense. She's dead.

He closed his eyes for what seemed like a moment, but when he opened them again his mother was gone and the tubes had been disconnected from his arms. Flexing both hands, Doug realized that the fracture in his left arm must be healed. Another gift of the nanobugs, he thought.

"You're awake?" It was his mother again. This time Lev Brudnoy stood beside her, tall and gangling but looking neater, straighter than Doug remembered him. His beard was nicely trimmed, his hair combed. Instead of coveralls he was wearing dark slacks and a deep green turtleneck shirt Joanna was in a colorfully patterned dress.

"We're heading back to Savannah in a few hours," Joanna said.

"We?" Doug asked. "The two of you?"

"Yes," said Brudnoy.

His mother added, "Lev and I have become…very close, over the past few days."

Brudnoy actually blushed.

Doug tried to make a smile for them, and hoped it worked. "Why Savannah?" he asked.

"To pick up the pieces," she replied. "I've got to make certain that the board of directors doesn't try to hinder the repairs we need here. And I want to push your diamond Clippership project."

Doug guessed, "Jinny Anson will run the base?"

"Yes. I may have to get myself elected to board chairman again," Joanna said. "It may be some time before I can get back here."

"I understand," Doug said.

"Zimmerman and Kris Cardenas are staying. They'll be able to help you."

"I understand," Doug repeated.

And he did. Joanna needed to get away, to return to more familiar surroundings, to immerse herself in something more than regrets and grief for the son she had lost. She knows I can get along okay, Doug told himself. And she's bringing Lev along to help her over the emotional bumps. Doug could see the wry humor of it, even though he could not make himself smile. Lev's going to be my stepfather.

By the time they were ready to go out to the rocket port, Doug was strong enough to get out of bed and go with them. The medics argued against it, but the monitors showed that his metabolic rate was stable and his weight—down nearly five pounds a few days earlier—was almost back to normal.

Doug watched their liftoff from his favorite perch, in the tiny observation blister of the rocket port. The big, ungainly LTV was there one instant, and an instant later it was gone in a cloud of aluminum oxide smoke.

Doug slid down the ladder to the cramped flight center, then wordlessly went out to the tunnel that led back to the base. Instead of taking the tractor, though, he pulled on one of the spacesuits standing on the rack and, after an hour of prebreathing and solemn meditation, he climbed up to the hatch that opened onto the floor of the crater. Without a spacecraft sitting on any of the pads it was hard to tell that humans were present in Alphonsus' wide ring of mountains. The Sun was down but the sky gleamed with thousands of diamond-hard pinpoints of stars, strewn so thickly Doug felt almost as if he could walk upon them. His practiced eye scanned the weary, slumped old mountains of the ringwall, smoothed to an almost glassy polish by eons of infalling meteoric dust. He traced out the sinuous cracks in the crater floor, knowing that deep below there was ammonia and methane, precious life-sustaining resources.

He looked up and saw the Earth, a glowing crescent of blue and white, its night side clear to see against the starry sky. Warm and rilled with life, Doug knew. And yet he felt no longing, no desire to return to the world of his birth. The human race will die there, he knew, unless we help them to expand beyond Earth's confines.

He looked again at the barren lunar landscape stretching all around him. Turning, he saw the barely-discernible mounds where the original Moonbase shelters had been buried, the slight cleft in the mountain face where the airlock of today's base stood, the glittering acres of the solar power farms. Lifting his gaze, he traced out the rounded top of Mt. Yeager and the notch of Wodjohowitcz Pass.

We're already putting names on the wilderness, Doug said to himself. We're starting to place our marks here.

He saw Moonbase as it would be. A thriving city built underground but large enough for trees and flowering bushes and maybe even a stream of real water meandering through a grassy expanse. He saw spacecraft made of pure diamond plying the routes between Earth and Moon, and heading outward, toward the distant planets, toward the stars themselves.

He saw the human race growing, learning, facing the frontier and the future with hope and brimming desire.

There's a lot of work to do, he realized. A lifetime of work, and then some. Generations of work.

Nodding inside his helmet, he strode toward the airlock, Time to get started, he told himself. If it is to be, it's up to me.

REVISION HISTORY

v1.0

-proofread in RTF

v1.1

-conversion to standard HTML format (BookFixer)

-added chapter links, chapter navigation

-converted single quotes

-compliant with HTML Guide for the Prooflist Group (07/01/02)