TOUCHDOWN MINUS 116 HOURS 30 MINUTES

Douglas Stavenger stood at the crest of Wodjohowitcz Pass, listening to the silence. Inside the base there were always voices, human or synthesized, and the constant background hum of electrical machinery. Out here, up on the mountains that ringed the giant crater Alphonsus, he heard nothing but his own breathing—and the faint, comforting whir of the spacesuit's air circulation fans.

Good noise, he thought, smiling to himself. When that noise stops, so does your breathing.

He had climbed down from the tractor near the spot where the plaque was, a small square of gold riveted onto the rock face, dedicated to his father:

On this spot Paul Stavenger chose to die,

in order to save the men and women of

Moonbase.

Doug had not driven up to the pass for the sake of nostalgia, however. He wanted to take a long, hard look at Moonbase. Not the schematic diagrams or electronic charts, but the real thing, the actual base as it stood beneath the uncompromising stars.

Everyone in the base thought they were safe and snug, dug into the side of the ringwall mountain they had named Yeager. Sheltered by solid rock, they had little fear of the dangers up on the airless surface, where the crater floor was bathed in hard radiation and the temperature could swing four hundred degrees between daylight and night, between sunshine and shadow.

But Doug saw how terribly vulnerable they all were. They had protected themselves against the forces of nature, true enough. But now they were threatened with destruction by the hand of war.

Doug looked out at the solar farm, thousands of acres of dark solar cells that greedily drank in sunlight and converted it noiselessly into the electricity the base needed the way a man needs blood. They could be blown to dust by conventional explosives or blasted into uselessness by the radiation pulse from a nuclear warhead.

Even easier, he realized, an enemy could knock out the radiators and we'd all stew underground in our own waste heat until we either surrendered or collapsed from heat exhaustion.

His eyes travelled to the rocket pads. They were empty now that the morning's lunar transfer vehicle had loaded up and departed. Beyond, he saw the geodesic dome that sheltered the construction pad; inside it, a half-built Clippership was being built by virus-sized nanomachines that converted meteoric carbon dust into the hard, strong structure of pure diamond. How could we protect spacecraft sitting out on the pads? We can't shelter them and we don't have the facilities to bring them underground. That dome is no protection against missiles or even bullets.

He looked farther out across the crater floor, to where the mass launcher stretched its lean dark metallic finger to the horizon. A single warhead could wreck it forever, Doug knew.

Well, we can't beat them in a shooting war, he told himself. That's certain.

Turning his gaze back to the edge of the solar farm, Doug saw the dark slick-looking film on the ground where the nanomachines were busily converting the silicon and metals of the lunar regolith into more solar cells.

That's what this war is all about, he knew. Nanomachines. And he thought he could feel the trillions of nanos inside his own body. If I go back to Earth I'll be a marked man. Some crackpot nanoluddite will murder me, just the way they've killed so many others. But if the only way to avert this war is to close Moonbase, where else can I go?

His mind churning, he turned again and looked down at the deep pit that would one day be Moonbase's grand plaza. If we ever get to finish it.

All construction jobs begin by digging a hole in the ground, he said to himself. It doesn't make any difference if you're on the Moon or the Earth.

Under the brilliant illumination of powerful lamps spaced around the edge of the pit, front-loaders were working soundlessly in the lunar vacuum, scooping up dirt and dumping their loads onto the waiting trucks. Clouds of fine lunar dust hung over the machines, scattering the lamp light like fog. The first time I've seen mist on the Moon, Doug mused. Not a molecule of water in that haze, though.

All of the machinery was controlled by operators sitting safely inside their stations at the control center. Only a handful of construction workers were actually out on the floor of the crater Alphonsus.

I should be inside, too, Doug told himself. The deadline comes up right about now. I ought to be inside facing the music instead of out here, trying to avoid it all.

In the seven years of his exile on the Moon, Doug had always come out to the lunar surface when he had a problem that ached in him. The Moon's harsh, airless other-worldliness concentrated his mind on the essentials: life or death, survival or extinction. He never failed to be thrilled by the stark grandeur of the lunar landscape. But now he felt fear, instead. Fear that Moonbase would be closed, its potential for opening the space frontier forever lost. Fear that he would have to return to Earth, where fanatic assassins awaited him.

And anger, deep smoldering anger that men would threaten war and destruction in their ignorant, blind zeal to eradicate Moonbase.

Simmering inside, Doug turned back to the tractor and climbed up to its bare metal driver's seat. The ground here along the pass was rutted by years of tractors' cleats clawing through the dusty lunar regolith. He himself had driven all the way around these softly rounded mountains, circumnavigating the crater; not an easy trek, even in a tractor. Alphonsus was so big its ringwall mountains disappeared beyond the short lunar horizon. The jaunt had taken almost a week, all of it spent inside a spacesuit that smelled very ripe by the time he came home again. But Doug had found the peace and inner tranquility he had sought, all alone up on the mountaintops.

Not today. Even out here there was no peace or tranquility for him.

Once he reached the crater floor he looked beyond the uncompromising slash of the horizon and saw the Earth hanging in the dark sky, glowing blue and decked with streams of pure white clouds. He felt no yearning, no sense of loss, not even curiosity. Only deep resentment, anger. Burning rage. The Moon was his true home, not that distant deceitful world where violence and treachery lurked behind every smile.

And he realized that the anger was at himself, not the distant faceless people of Earth. I should have known it would come to this. For seven years they've been putting the pressure on us. I should have seen this coming. I should have figured out a way to avoid an outright conflict.

He parked the tractor and walked along the side of the construction pit, gliding in the dreamlike, floating strides of the Moon's low gravity. Turning his attention back to the work at hand, Doug saw that the digging was almost finished. They were nearly ready to start the next phase of the job. The tractors were best for the heavy work, moving large masses of dirt and rock. Now the finer tasks would begin, and for that the labs were producing specialized nanomachines.

He wondered if they would ever reach that stage. Or would the entire base be abandoned and left suspended in time, frozen in the airless emptiness of infinity? Worse yet, the base might be blasted, bombed into rubble, destroyed for all time.

It can't come to that! I won't let that happen. No matter what, I won't give them an excuse to use force against us.

"Greetings and felicitations!" Lev Brudnoy's voice boomed though Doug's helmet earphones.

Startled out of his thoughts, Doug looked up and saw Brudnoy's tall figure approaching, his spacesuit a brilliant cardinal red. The bulky suits smothered individual recognition, so long-time Lunatics tended to personalize their suits for easy identification. Even inside his suit, though, Brudnoy seemed to stride along in the same gangly, loose-jointed manner he did in shirtsleeves.

"Lev—what are you doing here?"

"A heart-warming greeting for your stepfather."

"I mean… oh, you know what I mean!"

"Your mother and I decided to come up now, in case there's trouble later on."

Nodding inside his helmet, Doug agreed, "Good thinking. They might shut down flights here for a while."

"How is the suit?" Brudnoy asked.

Doug had forgotten that he was wearing the new design. "Fine," he said absently, his attention still on the digging.

"Do the gloves work as well as my engineers promised me they would?" Brudnoy asked, coming up beside Doug.

Holding out a hand for the Russian to see, Doug slowly closed his fingers. He could feel the vibration of the tiny servomotors as they moved the alloy 'bones' of the exoskeleton on the back of his hand.

"I haven't tried to crush any rocks with them," Doug said, half in jest.

"But the pressure is not uncomfortable?" Brudnoy asked. "You can flex your fingers easily?"

Nodding again, Doug replied, "About as easily as you can in regular gloves."

"Ahh," Brudnoy sighed. "I had hoped for much better."

"This is just the first shot, Lev. You can improve it, I'm sure."

"Yes, there is always room for improvement."

The suit Doug wore was a cermet hard shell from boots to helmet; even the joints at the ankles, knees, hips, shoulders, elbows and wrists were overlapping circles of cermet. The ceramic-metal material was strong enough to hold normal shirtsleeve-pressure air inside the suit even though the pressure outside was nothing but hard vacuum. Thus the suit operated at normal air pressure, instead of the low-pressure mix of oxygen and nitrogen that the standard spacesuits required. No prebreathing was needed with the new design; you could climb into it and button up immediately.

The gloves were always a problem. They tended to balloon even in the low-pressure suits. Doug's gloves were fitted with spidery exoskeleton struts and tiny servomotors that amplified his natural strength, so he could grasp and work even though the gloves would have been too stiff for him use without their aid.

"Maybe we could lower the pressure in the gloves," Doug suggested.

"We would have to put a cuff around your wrist to seal-"

"Priority message.' The words crackled in their earphones. "Priority message for Douglas Stavenger."

Tapping at the keypad built into the wrist of his spacesuit, Doug said, "This is Stavenger.' He was surprised at how dry his throat suddenly felt. He knew what the message would be.

"All frequencies from the L-l commsat have been cut off," said the chief communications technician. "Communications directly from Earth have also been stopped."

Doug's heart began hammering inside him. He looked at Brudnoy, but all he could see was the reflection of his own faceless helmet in the gold tint of the Russian's visor.

Swallowing hard, Doug said, "Okay. Message received. Thank you."

He waited a beat, then added, "Please find Jinny Anson for me."

"Will do."

An instant later the former base director's voice chirped in his earphones, "Anson here."

"Jinny, it's Doug. I need to talk with you, right away."

"I know," she said, her voice sobering.

"Where are you?"

"In the university office."

"Please meet me in my place in fifteen minutes."

"Right."

Doug turned and started along the edge of the construction pit, heading for the airlock in swift, gliding strides. Brudnoy kept pace beside him.

"It's started," he said.

I'll inform your mother," said the Russian.

With a bitter smile, Doug replied, "She already knows, I'm sure. They couldn't declare war on us without her knowing about it."

TOUCHDOWN MINUS 115 HOURS 55 MINUTES

"So they've done it," said Jinny Anson, with a challenging grin. "Damn flatheads."

Anson, Brudnoy and Doug's mother Joanna were sitting before Doug's desk. Anson was leaning back in her webbed chair almost casually. Wearing comfortable faded denim jeans and an open-collar velour blouse, she looked vigorous and feisty, her short-cropped hair still golden blonde, her steel-gray eyes snapping with barely suppressed anger.

Joanna seemed calm, but Doug knew that her composed expression masked an inner tension. She had let her shoulder-length hair go from ash blonde to silver gray, but otherwise she looked no more than forty. She was dressed elegantly, as usual: a patterned coral skirt, its hem slightly weighted to make it drape properly in the soft lunar gravity, and a crisply tailored white blouse buttoned at the throat and wrists, where jewelry sparkled.

Seated between the two women was Brudnoy, his long face with its untidy gray beard looking somber, his baggy eyes on Doug. Brudnoy's dark turtleneck and unpressed denims seemed almost shabby, next to his wife's impeccable ensemble. His gray lunar softboots were faded and shiny from long use.

Although Doug's office was little larger than a cubbyhole carved out of the ringwall mountain's flank, its walls were smart screens from padded tile floor to smoothed rock ceiling; flat, high-definition, digital display screens that could be activated by voice or by the pencil-sized laser pointer resting on Doug's desk.

Doug kept one eye on the screen covering the wall to the left of his desk; it was scrolling a complete checkout of Moonbase's entire systems. He needed to reassure himself that everything was operating normally. The other two walls could have been showing videos of any scenery he wanted, but Doug had them displaying the security camera views of the base, switching every ten seconds from one tunnel to another and then to the outside, where the teleoperated tractors were still working in the pit as if nothing had happened. The wall behind him was blank.

Feeling uneasy as he sat behind his desk, Doug said, "Now I don't want people getting twitchy about this. The base should run as normally as possible."

"Even though Faure's declared war on us?" Anson cracked.

"It's not that kind of a war," Doug snapped back. "There's not going to be any shooting."

"Not from our side, anyway," said Anson. "The best we could do is throw rocks at 'em."

"At whom?" Doug's mother asked testily.

"Peacekeeper troops," said Doug.

Everyone in the office looked startled at the thought.

"You don't think they'd really go that far, do you?" Anson asked, looking worried for the first time.

Doug picked up his laser pointer and aimed its red spot at one of the icons lining the top of the wall screen on his left. The wall became a schematic display of the Earth-Moon system, with clouds of satellites orbiting the Earth. A dozen navigational satellites clung to low orbits around the Moon, and the big crewed station at the L-l position still showed as a single green dot.

"No traffic," Doug said. "This morning's LTV's stopped at L-l. Nothing at all moving between LEO and here."

"Not yet," muttered Brudnoy.

"They wouldn't invade us," Joanna said firmly. "That little Quebecer hasn't got the guts."

Brudnoy ran a bony finger across his short gray beard. No matter how carefully he trimmed it, the beard somehow looked shaggy all the time.

"That little Quebecer," he reminded his wife, "has fought his way to the top of the United Nations. And now he's gotten the U.N. to declare us in violation of the nanotech treaty."

Joanna frowned impatiently. "We've been violating that treaty since it was written."

"But now your little Quebecer has obtained the authority to send Peacekeeper troops here to enforce the treaty on us," Brudnoy continued.

"You really think it'll come to that?" Anson asked again, edging forward slightly in her chair.

"Sooner or later," Doug said.

"They know we can't stop using nanomachines," Joanna said bitterly. "They know they'll be destroying Moonbase if they prevent us from using them."

"That's what they're going to do, though," said Brudnoy, growing more gloomy with each word.

"Then we'll have to resist them," Doug said.

"Fight the Peacekeepers?" Anson seemed startled at the thought. "But-"

"I didn't say fight," Doug corrected. "I said resist."

"How?"

"I've been studying the legal situation," Doug said. "We could declare our independence."

His mother looked more irked than puzzled. "What good would that do?"

"As an independent nation, we wouldn't sign the nanotech treaty, so it wouldn't apply to us."

Brudnoy raised his brows. "But would the U.N. recognize us as an independent nation? Would they admit us to membership?"

"Faure would never allow it," Joanna said. "The little Quebecer's got the whole U.N. wrapped around his manicured finger."

"How would the corporation react if we declared independence?" Jinny Anson asked.

"Kiribati couldn't do anything about it," said Doug.

Brudnoy sighed painfully. "If they hadn't knuckled under to Faure and signed the treaty-"

"They didn't have much choice, really," said Doug. Looking straight at his mother, he went on, "But what about Masterson? How's your board going to react to our independence?"

"I'll handle the board of directors," Joanna replied flatly.

"And Rashid?"

She smiled slightly. "He'll go up in a cloud of purple smoke. But don't worry; even though he's the board chairman now I can keep him in his place."

"Independence," Anson murmured.

Doug said, "We're pretty much self-sufficient, as far as energy and food are concerned."

"How long is "pretty much?"' Joanna asked.

"We can go for months without importing anything from Earth, I betcha," Anson replied.

"Really?" Doug asked.

She shrugged. "Condiments might be a problem. Ketchup, seasonings, salt."

"We can manufacture salt with nanomachines," Doug said. "Ought to be simple enough."

"Where can you get the sodium and chlorine?" Anson retorted. "Not out of the regolith."

Doug smiled a little. "Out of the reprocessors. Recycle the garbage."

Anson made a sour face.

"Could we really get along for months without importing anything from Earth?" Joanna asked.

"Maybe a year," Anson said. "If you don't mind eating your soyburgers without mustard."

Brudnoy flexed his gnarled fingers. "Aren't you glad that I insisted on planting onions and garlic, along with my flowers?"

"Do you have any jalapeno peppers out at the farm?" Anson asked.

Brudnoy shook his head.

"A year," Joanna mused. "This ought to be settled long before that."

"One way or another," said Brudnoy morosely.

"Pharmaceuticals might be a problem," Doug said, turning to the wall screen on his right. With the laser he changed the display from a camera view of the empty rocket launching pads to an inventory of the base's pharmaceutical supplies. "We've been bringing them up on a monthly schedule. Got a…' he studied the display screen briefly, "… three-month supply on hand."

"Maybe we can use nanomachines instead," Joanna suggested. It was an open secret that her youthful appearance was due to nanotherapy that tightened sagging muscles and kept her skin tone smooth.

"I can talk to Cardenas about that," Anson replied.

"And Professor Zimmerman," Doug said.

'You talk to Zimmerman," she snapped. "He always tries to bully me."

Brudnoy volunteered, I'll see Zimmerman."

"You?"

With a guilty smile, the Russian said, "He and I have been working on a little project together: using nanomachines to make beer."

"Lev!" Joanna glared at her husband.

Brudnoy raised a placating hand. "Don't worry. So far, we've accomplished less than nothing. The stuff is so bad not even Zimmerman will drink it."

Doug chuckled at his stepfather's self-deprecating manner. Then he said, "Okay. Our first move is to declare independence and-"

"How can we let anyone on Earth know we're applying for U.N. membership if all the communications links are cut off?" Joanna asked.

"We can talk to Earth," Anson assured her. "Radio, TV, even laser beams if we need 'em. We don't need the commsats; just. squirt our messages straight to the ground antennas."

"The question is," said Brudnoy, "will anyone on Earth respond to us?"

"They will," Doug said. "Once they learn what we're doing. And there's always the news media."

"Ugh!" said Joanna.

"Don't knock them," Doug insisted. "They might turn out to be our best ally in this."

"Our only ally," said Brudnoy.

"Okay, okay, so we declare independence," Anson cut in. "Then what?"

"If Faure refuses to recognize us we appeal to the World Court," said Doug.

Joanna agreed. "Tie him up legally and wait for world opinion to come over to our side."

"Lots of luck," Brudnoy mumbled.

"Do you think it'll work?" Anson wondered.

"It's got to," said Joanna.

"Jinny," said Doug, pointing a finger in her direction, "I want you to take over as base director."

"Me? Why? I haven't been behind that desk in almost eight years!"

Grinning at her, Doug said, "You know more about what's going on in these tunnels than I do. Don't try to deny it."

"But I've got the university to run," she protested. "And what're you going to be doing?"

"The university's going to be in hibernation as long as Earthside isn't allowed to communicate with us. Your students won't be able to talk to you."

"But you…?"

"I've been studying military history ever since Faure was elected secretary-general," Doug said. "One thing I've learned is that we're going to need somebody to give his undivided attention to this crisis. I can't be running the day-to-day operation of Moonbase and handle the war at the same time."

"You said it's not a war," Joanna said sharply.

"Not a shooting war," Doug admitted. "Not yet. But we've got to be prepared for that possibility."

"You can't-"

"He's right," Brudnoy said, interrupting his wife. "Doug should devote his full attention to this situation."

"And I'm gonna be base director again," Anson said. She did not seem displeased with the idea.

"So you will be our generalissimo," said Brudnoy, pointing at Doug. "Jinny becomes base director once again. And you, dear wife," he turned to face Joanna, "must serve as our foreign secretary, in charge of diplomatic relations with Masterson and the other corporations."

"And what will you be doing, Lev?" Joanna asked her husband.

"Me?" Brudnoy's shaggy brows climbed halfway to his scalp. "I will remain as usual: nothing but a peasant."

"Yeah, sure," Anson chirped.

Brudnoy shrugged. "I have no delusions of grandeur. But I think it will be important to keep the major corporations on our side."

"I'll handle relations with Masterson Corporation," Joanna agreed. "We'll try to put some pressure on the government in Washington to oppose this U.N. takeover."

"If you can keep the board on our side," Doug said.

His mother raised an imperious brow. "I told you, don't worry about the board."

"Or Rashid?"

"Or Rashid either," Joanna riposted. Turning slightly toward her husband, she added, " Rashid's a man with real delusions of grandeur."

"Okay," said Jinny Anson. "Then I'll run the base and you, Doug, you can run the war."

"Thanks a lot."

"Somebody's got to-"

"Hold it!" Doug snapped. The message icon on his left screen was blinking. Urgent message. And he saw that a cardinal red dot had cleared the swarm of low-orbit satellites around the Earth and was heading outward.

"Message," Doug called out in the tone that the computer recognized. His voice trembled only slightly.

"A crewed spacecraft just lifted from the military base on Corsica," a comm tech's voice said. "It's on a direct lunar trajectory."

"Peacekeeper troops," Doug said.

"Must be."

They all turned toward Doug.

"So what do we do now, boss?" Jinny Anson asked.

TOUCHDOWN MINUS 114 HOURS 35 MINUTES

"Five days," Doug said to the woman's image on his screen. "They'll be here in a little less than five days."

Tamara Bonai frowned slightly, nothing more than a faint pair of lines between her brows. But on her ethereally beautiful face it seemed a gross disfigurement. Her face was a sculptor's dream, high cheekbones and almond eyes; her skin a light clear teak; her long hair a tumbling cascade as lustrous and black as the infinity of space.

Like Doug, she was seated behind a desk. Her life-sized image on the wall in front of him made it look as if Doug's office opened onto her office on Tarawa: lunar rock and smart walls suddenly giving way to Micronesian ironwood and bamboo.

"When I visited Moonbase," she said, "the trip took only one day."

"We brought you up on a high-energy burn," said Doug. "The Peacekeepers are coming on a minimum-energy trajectory."

It took almost three seconds for his words to reach Earth and her reply to get back to his office at Moonbase. Usually Doug relaxed during the interval but now he sat tensely in his padded swivel chair.

Bonai smiled slightly. "The Peacekeepers are trying to save money by taking the low-energy route?"

Doug forced a laugh. "I doubt it. I think they want to give us as much time as possible to think things over and then surrender."

Her lips still curved deliciously, Bonai asked, "Is that what you will do: surrender?"

"No," said Doug. "We're just about self-sufficient now. We can get along without Earth for a long while."

If she was surprised by Doug's answer, it did not show on her face. Doug wondered if anyone was eavesdropping on their conversation. It was being carried by a tight laser beam, but still the tightest beam spread a few kilometers across over the four-hundred-thousand-kilometer distance between the Earth and the Moon. The island of Tarawa was tiny, but still big enough for Rashid or someone else to pick up the beamed signal.

"You are prepared to fight Peacekeeper troops?" she asked.

"We're not going to surrender Moonbase to them."

She seemed genuinely worried. "But they will have guns … other weapons. What weapons do you have?"

"There isn't even a target pistol in all of Moonbase," Doug admitted. "But we've got some pretty good brains here."

Once she heard his words, she shook her head slightly. "You can't stop bullets with words."

"Maybe we can," Doug said. Not waiting for a response from her, he went on, "We're going to declare our independence and apply to the General Assembly for admission to the U.N."

Her delay in responding to him was longer than three seconds. At last Bonai said, "It's my fault, isn't it? You're in this trouble because I bowed to the U.N.'s pressure and signed the nanotech treaty."

"You did what was best for your people," Doug replied. "You did what you had to do."

Masterson Corporation had owned and operated Moonbase from its beginning as a set of half-buried shelters huddled near the mountain ringwall of the giant crater Alphonsus. Nanotechnology made it possible for the base to grow, and begin to prosper.

Virus-sized nanomachines scoured the regolith of Alphonsus' crater floor, extracting oxygen and the scant atoms of hydrogen that blew in on the solar wind. Once ice fields were discovered in the south polar region, nanomachines built and maintained the pipeline that fed water across more than a thousand kilometers of mountains and craters. Nanomachines built solar cells out of the regolith's silicon, to supply the growing base with constantly increasing electrical power. Nanomachines had built the mass driver that launched payloads of lunar ores to factories in Earth orbit.

And nanomachines took carbon atoms from near-Earth asteroids and built Clipperships of pure diamond, Moonbase's newest export and already its principal source of cash flow. Diamond Clipperships were not only the world's best spacecraft; they were starting to take over the market for long-range commercial air flight on Earth.

The United Nations' nanotechnology treaty banned all nanotech operations, research and teaching in the nations that signed the treaty. Seven years earlier, when it became clear that the United States would sign the treaty—indeed, American nanoluddites had drafted the treaty—Masterson Corporation had set up a dummy company on the island nation of Kiribati and transferred Moonbase to the straw-man corporation. As long as Kiribati did not sign the treaty, Moonbase could legally continue using nanomachines, which were as vital to Moonbase as air.

But the day after Tamara Bonai, chief of the Kiribati council, reluctantly signed the nanotech treaty, the U.N.'s secretary general—Georges Faure—personally called Joanna Stavenger and told her that Moonbase had two weeks to shut down all nanotech operations, research and teaching.

Exactly two weeks later, to the very minute, all communications links from Earth to Moonbase were cut. And now a spacecraft carrying U.N. Peacekeeper troops had lifted from Corsica on a leisurely five-day course for Moonbase.

"You have no idea of how much pressure they put on us," Bonai said, her lovely face downcast. "They even stopped tourist flights from coming to our resorts. It was an economic blockade. They would have strangled us."

"I'm not blaming you for this," Doug said. "I only called to let you know that we're declaring our independence. As an independent nation that hasn't signed the nanotech treaty, we'll be able to keep on as we have been, despite Faure and his Peacekeepers."

She almost smiled. "Does that mean that you will continue to honor your contracts with Kiribati Corporation?"

Moonbase marketed its diamond Clipperships and other exports to transportation companies on Earth through Kiribati Corporation.

"Yes, certainly," Doug said. Then he added, "As soon as this situation is cleared up."

"I understand," she said. "We will certainly not object to your independence."

Doug smiled back at her. "Thanks, Tamara. I knew I could count on you."

The three seconds ticked. "Good luck, Doug," she said at last.

Thanks again. I think we're going to need all the luck we can get."

TOUCHDOWN MINUS 114 HOURS

Kind of a shame, the mercenary thought. They're pretty nice people, these guys I work with. The women, too. But I won't be hurting them. It's the leaders I'm after. The Brudnoys and Jinny Anson and the Stavenger kid.

Nodding as if reaffirming his mission, he went back to his work. Got to finish this job, he told himself. Can't leave anything undone. No loose ends; no mistakes.

The word spread through Moonbase's corridors with the speed of sound. In workshops and offices, in living quarters and laboratories, out at the spaceport, at the mass driver, even among the handful of spacesuited men and women working on the surface, the word flashed: We're at war. U.N. troops are on their way here.

It's about time, said the mercenary to himself. Years of diplomats in their fancy suits and their evasive language, farting around, trying to talk the problem to death, and now at last they're taking action.

He looked up from the work he was doing; he took pride in his work. No one suspected that he was a deep agent, a trained killer who had been inserted into Moonbase more than a year earlier to work his way into the community and wait for the right moment. He had been without contact from his superiors ever since he first set foot in Moonbase. He would operate now without orders.

Cripple Moonbase. That was his mission. For a year he had studied all of Moonbase's systems and personnel. The underground base was pathetically vulnerable to sabotage. Every breath of air, every molecule of water, depended on complex machinery, all of it run by sophisticated computer programs. Sophisticated meant fragile, the mercenary knew. A computer virus could bring Moonbase to its knees in a matter of hours, maybe less.

There was another part of his mission. Decapitate the leadership. His superiors used words such as incapacitate and immobilize. What they meant was kill.

TOUCHDOWN MINUS 113 HOURS 22 MINUTES

Doug sat alone in his quarters, staring at his blank wall screen. Declare our independence, he thought. Just like that. Tell the flatlanders down there that we no longer belong to Kiribati Corporation or any company or government on Earth. What words do I use to get that across?

His quarters were larger than his office, one of the new'suites' big enough to partition into a sitting room and a separate bedroom. It even had its own bathroom.

Leaning back in his comfortable chair of yielding plastic foam, Doug asked the computer to call up the American Declaration of Independence from his history program. Jefferson's powerful, eloquent words filled the wall screen. Doug reduced the display to a less imposing size, then spent several minutes studying it. Finally he shook his head. That was fine for 1776, he told himself, but this is nearly three hundred years later. They'd sound pretty stilted now.

Besides, he thought, everybody'd recognize the source. I'd be accused of plagiarism. That's no way to start a new nation.

He thought back to his studies of military history. The American general who had commanded the Allied armies in Europe during World War II—what was his name? Ike something.

A few touches of his laser pointer and he had Dwight Eisenhower's multimedia biography on the screen. He muted the sound and scrolled slowly through it, searching for the terse statement that Eisenhower had written back to Washington when the Nazis surrendered. His aides had wanted a long, flowery announcement filled with stirring phrases and fulsome praise for the various generals. Eisenhower had tossed their suggestions aside and written—ah! There it is: 'The mission of this Allied force was fulfilled at 02.41 local time, May 7, 1945."

That's what I want, Doug said to himself. Short, strong, direct.

He cleared his throat and called to the computer, "Dictation.' Then, after a moment's thought, he said slowly and clearly:

"Moonbase hereby declares its independence from Earth and asks for admission to the United Nations."

He stared at the words for a long moment, then decided they said what he intended to say. Briefly he thought of running them past his mother and Lev Brudnoy, but he shook his head at the idea. They'd want to tinker with the statement, maybe hedge it or decorate it with reasons and arguments. Ear candy. I'm in command, we've all agreed to that and we've all agreed to declaring our independence. This is the message we send to Faure and the rest of Earth.

Doug called up the communications desk at the command center.

"Beam this message to U.N. headquarters in New York," he said, "and spray it to every antenna on Earth. All the commsats, too. Send it by laser to Kiribati and to Masterson Corporation's headquarters in Savannah."

The chief comm tech on duty was a young man that Doug had played against in Moonbase's annual low-gravity Olympic games. He grinned as he scanned Doug's message.

"Right away, boss," he said.

Doug blanked his screen and leaned back in his foam chair. Okay, it's done. Now to see if it has any effect.

TOUCHDOWN MINUS 112 HOURS 17 MINUTES

Although Lunar University had no real campus, its heart was the plushly-equipped studio where teaching was done through electronic links to Earth and virtual reality programs.

Wilhelm Zimmerman liked his creature comforts. He demanded them. He had come to Moonbase because the 'verdammt treaty' had closed his university department in Basel. He had given up cigars and strudel and even beer, but he still managed to overeat, under-exercise, and drive Moonbase's supply and maintenance staffs into frenzies with his demands for couches and padded chairs big enough to take his girth comfortably.

He still dressed in the gray, old-fashioned three-piece suits he had brought to Moonbase with him seven years earlier. He had personally designed a set of nanomachines to keep the suits in perfect repair, renewing fraying cuffs and worn spots—atom by atom. The nanomachines even kept his clothes clean.

Still, as he sat sprawled in his favorite sofa, he looked like a rumpled mess, his jacket unbuttoned and flapping loose, his vest stretched tight across his ample stomach, tie loose from shirt collar, the halo of stringy gray hair surrounding his bald pate as dishevelled as King Lear in the storm scene.

"A direct trajectory here?" he was asking Doug. "It is customary first to go to a space station, yah?"

"I think they might be worried that most of the people in the space stations are on our side," Doug said.

Doug was sitting in one of the oversized, overpadded armchairs facing the sofa. Built by nanomachines that Zimmerman himself had programmed, the furniture looked ludicrously out of place in this vast, echoing electronics studio carved out of the lunar rock. No one else was in the studio. The lights had been turned off, except for the lamps on the end tables that flanked the sofa: slender graceful stalks of lunar aluminum; the tables were built of lightweight but sturdy honeycomb'sandwich' metal, also produced by nanomachines.

Zimmerman nodded as if Doug's answer satisfied him. "And you have notified the U.N. that we are now an independent nation?"

Nodding, Doug replied, "The U.N., and as much of the news media as we could reach."

"Still the troopship has not turned around?" Zimmerman's accent seemed to get thicker each year.

"Not yet."

"And there is no reaction from the U.N. to your declaration of independence?"

"Not yet," Doug repeated.

"So," the professor stretched out his short arms, "now we have nothing to do except wait, yah?"

"And prepare."

Zimmerman's shaggy brows shot up. "Prepare for what? Either they accept our independence or the Peacekeepers come in here and close everything."

"I don't intend to allow them to close Moonbase," Doug said evenly.

Zimmerman snorted. "And how do you intend to stop them? With prayer, maybe?"

"That's why I've come here to you, Professor," said Doug. "We need your help."

"To do what? Make a magic wand for you out of nanomachines? A death ray, maybe you want?"

Doug was accustomed to the old man's blustering. "I was thinking more along the lines of medical help," he said. "We may need-"

"I thought I'd find you here, Willi."

Kris Cardenas came striding out of the shadows. Despite her years on the Moon she still kept a deep tan, thanks to ultraviolet lamps. To Doug she looked like a California surfer: broad shoulders, trim build, sparkling blue eyes. She kept her sandy hair clipped short and wore a loose, comfortable jumpsuit of pastel yellow. No jewelry, no decorations of any kind. From the easy-going, no-fuss look of her, you would never suspect she was a Nobel laureate nanotech researcher.

"Our young friend here wants me to make everyone bulletproof," Zimmerman said, grudgingly dragging his bulk to one side of the sofa so Cardenas could sit beside him. Even on the Moon, Zimmerman did not move fast.

"No," Doug protested. "All I'm asking-"

"You think perhaps that the nanomachines you carry inside you will protect you against machine guns? They saved your life twice before, but they don't make you a superman."

"Willi," said Cardenas, with a charmer's smile, "why don't you let Doug tell you what he wants?"

"Medical supplies," Doug blurted before Zimmerman could say another word. "If we're cut off from Earth for more than a couple of months we're going to run short of medical supplies. I was wondering if nanomachines could be developed to replace or augment some of the pharmaceuticals we use."

"How can I do that? Your own silly rules prevent me from using nanomachines anywhere inside Moonbase, except in my laboratory," Zimmerman grumbled.

"The safety rules, yes, I know," said Doug.

"Even my furniture I had to make in my lab and then get a crew to schlep into here."

"We can't take the chance of having nanomachines propagate inside the base."

"Nonsense," Zimmerman muttered. "Superstition."

Cardenas stepped in again. "So you're ready to bend the safety rules, Doug?"

"We'll have to, at least a little."

"And you need help with medical supplies, right?"

"Right."

"Aspirin maybe?" Zimmerman grumbled suspiciously.

"More than aspirin," said Doug.

"Specifically?"

"I don't know, specifically. You'll have to talk to the medical staff."

"I will have to? These are your orders? You are the field marshal now and I am under your command?"

"That's exactly right," said Cardenas, still smiling sweetly. "That's the situation we're in, Willi, and we've all got to do everything we can to help."

Zimmerman mumbled something in German.

"Otherwise," Cardenas warned, "we'll all be sent back to Earth—and never allowed to work on nanotechnology again."

For a long moment the old man said nothing. Then, with an enormous groaning sigh, he nodded unhappily. It made his cheeks waddle.

"Yah," he said at last. "I will speak with your medical staff. I might as well. There is nothing else for me to do, now that Kiribati no longer takes our transmissions."

Lunar University's courses had been beamed to Kiribati for distribution to students around the world. That had worked well enough for the engineering and humanities curricula. But since most nations forbade teaching nanotechnology openly, the nanotech courses had to be packaged separately and delivered in clandestine ways. Cardenas often complained that she felt as if she were dealing in pornographic videos, "shipping them out in plain brown wrappers'.

"When this is over you can start teaching again," Doug said.

"You think we will win?" Zimmerman's tone made it clear that he had no such illusions.

"We'll try," said Doug, getting to his feet.

"And we'll do everything we can to help," Cardenas said. "Won't we, Willi?"

"Yah.' Without enthusiasm.

"Thanks," Doug said. "I appreciate whatever you can do."

He started off toward the door, threading his way through the equipment standing idle in the shadows of the unlit studio. Behind his retreating back, Cardenas leaned toward Zimmerman and whispered a suggestion to him. The old man frowned, then shrugged.

"Maybe we can make you invisible," Zimmerman called after Doug, his voice echoing through the darkened studio.

Doug looked back over his shoulder and suppressed the urge to laugh. That'd be great," he said, thinking that bulletproof would be a lot better.

Back in his quarters, Doug lit up his wall screen, scanning the computer's personnel files for anyone who had military experience. It was a fruitless search. Moonbase's employees were scientists and engineers, technicians and medical doctors, computer analysts, nurses, construction specialists, agrotechnicians, managers and administrators. They had all been hired through Masterson Corporation's personnel office, back Earthside. The only military veterans were a handful among the astronauts who piloted the transfer spacecraft from Earth, and none of them were at Moonbase at the present time.

Faure picked his timing very carefully, Doug realized. Halfway through the first phase of building the main plaza, with dozens of extra construction workers on hand and not a single spacecraft at the rocket port. We've even got that dance troupe from Canada visiting; another thirty-five mouths to feed.

He sat up straight and raised his arms over his head, stretching until he felt his vertebrae pop. Well, he said to himself, at least the dancers don't eat much. I guess.

Of all the two thousand, four hundred and seventy-seven men and women at Moonbase, only one had the slightest military experience. One of the construction technicians working on the new aquaculture tanks, a man named Leroy Gordette. His file showed that he had spent four years in the U.S. Army, enlisting when he had been seventeen, nearly ten years earlier.

His photo on the wall screen showed a serious, almost grim Afro-American with red-rimmed eyes and a military buzz cut almost down to his scalp. He looks fierce enough, Doug thought, staring at the picture.

"It's better than nothing," Doug muttered. "Phone," he called.

"Call please?" asked the computer's androgynous synthesized voice.

"Leroy Gordette," he said to the phone system.

"No response," said the computer a moment later. "Do you wish to search for him or leave a message?"

"Leave a message."

"Recording."

"Mr Gordette, this is Douglas Stavenger. Please call me as soon as you can. It's about the military situation we're in."

With twenty-twenty hindsight, Doug could see that this confrontation had been inevitable from the day Faure had won his campaign to be elected secretary-general of the United Nations; he intended to enforce the nanotech treaty with every weapon at his disposal. None of the others—not even Doug's mother—had foreseen that it would come down to military force. But Doug had studied enough history to understand that force was the ultimate tool of political leaders. He had no illusions about it, despite his assurances that this 'war' was not going to be a shooting match.

Faure was no military genius, but he was a tyrant. He fully intended to make the U.N. into a true global government. With himself at its head.

Moonbase stood in his way. The nanotech treaty was just an excuse. As long as Moonbase ignored the U.N.'s authority, nations on Earth could justifiably resist U.N. encroachments on their sovereignty. So Moonbase had to be brought into line. Or destroyed.

The trouble was, the more Doug studied history, the more he delved into the bloody, murderous track that led to the present day, the more he found himself reluctantly agreeing with Faure's professed aims.

Ten billion people on Earth. And that was only the official count. There were probably a billion more, at least, that the various national censuses missed. Ten or eleven billion mouths to feed, ten or eleven billion people to house and clothe and educate. Most of them were poor, hungry, ignorant. And their numbers were growing faster than anyone could cope with. Three hundred thousand babies born every day. All the wealth in the world could barely maintain a minimum level of existence for them.

The rich refused to help the poor, of course. Not unless the poor reduced their birth rate, lowered their numbers. Starvation swept whole continents; plagues killed millions. Still the numbers grew. The poor of the world increased and multiplied and became poorer, hungrier, sicker.

Only a world government could hope to deal with the global problem of population. Only a true world government had the faintest chance of redistributing the world's wealth more equitably. That was Faure's proclaimed goal, his aim.

Doug agreed that the goal was worthy, vital, crucial to the survival of the human species. He also knew that it would never be achieved; not the way Faure was going about it.

The beep of his computer snapped Doug out of his ruminations. Its message light blinked at him.

"Answer," he commanded the phone.

It was not Gordette returning his call. Doug recognized the face of one of the communications technicians, calling from the control center.

"Doug, we're getting a transmission from L-l. Single frequency. The secretary-general of the United Nations is about to give a speech and they want us to see it."

"Okay," he said, sagging back tiredly in his chair. "Pipe it through. Might as well put it on the general system, so everybody can see it."

"Will do."

Then Doug got as better idea. "Wait. Make an announcement that anyone not on essential duty should go straight to The Cave. Put Faure on the wall screens there. I want everybody to see this."

"Will you be going to The Cave, too?"

"Right," said Doug, pushing himself out of his chair.

TOUCHDOWN MINUS 112 HOURS

Georges Henri Faure felt not the slightest twinge of nervousness as he walked slowly to the podium. The General Assembly chamber was hushed, so quiet that Faure could hear his own footsteps on the marble floor, despite the fact that the chamber was completely filled. Every delegate was in his or her proper seat. The media thronged the rear and overflowed into the side aisles, cameras focused on him. The visitors' gallery was packed.

He was a dapper little man, shaped rather like a pear but dressed so elegantly that no one noticed his figure. Nor the slight limp that marred his stride. His thinning dark hair was slicked back from his high forehead, and his face was round, pink-cheeked, almost cherubic except for his old-fashioned wire-brush moustache. On the rare occasions when his iron self-control failed and he became agitated, the points of the moustache would quiver noticeably. It sometimes made people laugh, but it was a bad mistake to laugh at Georges Faure. He neither forgot nor forgave.

His eyes were small, deep-set, dark and never still. They constantly darted here and there, watching, weighing, probing, judging. Many said, behind his back, that they were the eyes of an opportunist, a climber, a politician. Faure knew what they said of him: that he was a man consumed by ego and vaulting ambition. But no, he insisted to himself; what drove him was not personal ambition but an inner desire, a drive, a sacred mission: to save the world from itself; to bring order and stability to all of humankind; to avert the tragedy of chaos and disaster that threatened the Earth's misguided peoples.

He reached the marble podium. The floor behind it had been raised slightly, cunningly, so that no one in the audience could see that he actually stood on a platform. Smiling down on the rows of expectant faces, he leaned his weight on his arms, to ease his aching foot. He waited a moment, feeling the warmth of the undivided attention of every delegate, the glow of the media's cameras and recorders, the admiration of the public. The first line of his speech was on the electronic prompter; the tumbler on the podium held the Evian water he was partial to. Everything was in its place.

He began:

"Delegates of the General Assembly and the Security Council, members of the news media, members of the public and citizens of the world—I stand before you with a heart filled with both sadness and hope.

"Since seven years ago, all work on nanotechnology has been wisely banned by mutual accord of the member nations of this august organization. I am pleased to report to you that the last remaining nation on Earth to refuse to sign the nanotechnology treaty and accede to its terms has now at last signed that treaty. Kiribati has joined the great commonwealth of nations at last!"

A storm of applause rose from the floor of the huge auditorium. A sharp-witted observer would have noted that it began in the section where the U.N. staff bureaucrats sat: Faure's employees.

In Moonbase, Doug sat at one of the tables in The Cave, the old cafeteria, watching the wall-sized display screen showing Faure. The Cave was jammed with people; everyone who was not needed on duty had packed its cavernous confines. All the seats along the cafeteria tables were filled and people were standing shoulder-to-shoulder in the aisles between the tables; the only open spaces were the squares of lovingly tended grass that were scattered across the rock floor. It was like a flare party, Dough thought, although no one was drinking or dancing. Or laughing.

Faure's hugely enlarged features gazed down upon them from the wide Windowall screen up at the front of The Cave like an electronic deity, larger than life.

"There are those misguided souls," Faure was saying, unconsciously touching the end of his moustache with a fingertip, "who ask why nanotechnology must be banned. There are those who question our policy."

He looked up and smiled mechanically, almost squeezing his tiny eyes shut. "To paraphrase the American revolutionary Jefferson, in respect to the public opinion we should declare the causes that have impelled us to this decision."

Jinny Anson, sitting next to Doug at the long cafeteria table, hissed, "That's a real outgassing, using Jefferson."

Doug nodded and said nothing.

Faure went on, "Nanotechnology offers enormous medical benefits, we are told. Its enthusiasts claim that nanomachines injected into the human body can prolong life and promote perfect health. Yes, perhaps. But for whom? For the starving masses of Africa or Latin America? For those dying of plagues because they are too poor to afford simple medical treatment?

"No! Nanotechnology would be available only to the very rich. It would be one more method by which the rich separate themselves from the poor. This cannot be allowed! The gap between the rich and poor is one of the most pernicious and dangerous causes of unrest and instability on Earth! We must strive to narrow this gap, not widen it."

"By making everybody equally poor," Joanna muttered, seated on Doug's other side.

"Furthermore," Faure continued, "nanotechnology can be used as an insidious new form of weapon, deadlier than poisonous gas, more difficult to detect and counter than biological weapons. In a world tottering on the brink of catastrophe, the very last thing we desire is a new weapons technology. We have worked for more than ten years now to convince nations to give up their armies and allow the Peacekeepers to protect their borders. We have reduced the world's nuclear arsenals to a mere handful of missiles. We stand for disarmament and peace! How could we allow scientists in their secret laboratories to design perfidious new weapons of nanomachines?"

"So," Zimmerman grumbled, down the table from Doug, "now I am an evil Dr Frankenstein."

Faure took a sip of Evian, replaced the glass delicately on the podium, and resumed.

"As I said, every nation on Earth has finally signed the nanotechnology treaty. At last, there is no place on Earth where nanotechnology can be practiced or taught."

Another burst of applause. But Doug knew what was coming next: the real reason for Faure's speech.

"Yet there is a place where nanotechnology is practiced every day, every hour. That place is not on Earth. It is on the Moon, at the privately owned center called Moonbase."

"Pass the bread, here comes the baloney," somebody in the cafeteria said, loudly enough to echo off the rock walls. No one laughed or even stirred to see who said it.

"The residents of Moonbase have refused to suspend their nanotechnology workings. They have refused to stop their researches into new forms and uses of nanotechnology.' Faure's face had become grim. "True, they have offered to allow United Nations representatives to inspect their facilities and their laboratories, but they absolutely refuse to abide by the requirements of the nanotechnology treaty."

He looked up at his audience. "This cannot be allowed! We cannot permit them to develop further the nanotechnology in secret, some four hundred thousand kilometers away from our supervision!"

Faure's moustache was starting to bristle. "Who knows what kinds of new and dreadful capabilities they are developing in their secret laboratories? Who knows what their intentions are?"

People in The Cave were jeering now. "The bastard knows we need nanobugs to make the air we breathe!"

Taking a deep breath, Faure raised his hands as if motioning for attention. "Therefore, I have sent a detachment of Peacekeeper troops to Moonbase to enforce the conditions of the nanotechnology treaty on the lunar residents. They will arrive at Moonbase within slightly more than four days. Their mission is one of peace; but they are of course prepared to defend themselves if the Moonbase residents offer resistance."

Faure looked up again and peered directly into the camera. He seemed to loom above the people in The Cave.

"To these renegades of Moonbase I have this to say: Resistance is futile. You must obey the same laws that everyone on Earth obeys. I will employ all the power necessary to enforce the conditions of the nanotechnology treaty, whether on Earth or on the Moon. If, in your misguided attempts to defy the United Nations and the will of the peoples of Earth, you use force against our Peacekeepers, you will regret it."

The audience applauded wildly. Faure smiled and dipped his chin several times: his way of bowing. Then the screen went blank.

Doug blinked several times. The crowd in The Cave stirred and rumbled with a hundred conversations.

"He didn't mention a word about our declaration of independence," Joanna said.

"Nor our request for U.N. membership," Brudnoy added.

Doug got to his feet. "And he isn't going to have a news conference, where reporters can ask him questions, either."

"How long until the Peacekeepers land?" Anson asked.

Doug pressed the face of his wristwatch; the digital readout changed from the local time to a countdown.

"One hundred eleven hours and forty-eight minutes," he said.

"Well," Anson said, digging her hands into the pockets of her jeans, "you'd better think of something between now and then, boss."

TOUCHDOWN MINUS 111 HOURS 48 MINUTES

"You're right," Doug said to Anson.

He clambered up onto the cafeteria table and raised his arms over his head. "Hey!" he shouted to the murmuring, scattering crowd. "Hold on! I've got a few words to say."

The crowd stopped heading for the exit and turned toward him, some looking expectant, others puzzled.

"You Lunatics so eager to get back to work that you can't hang in here a couple minutes more?" Doug asked, grinning at them.

"Hell, boss, we'll stay all day if you want us to," hollered one of the men in the rear.

"If you serve some drinks," another voice chipped in.

Doug kept his grin in place. "No drinks. And this is only going to take a few minutes."

Someone groaned theatrically. A few people laughed at it.

"I want you to know," Doug said, scanning their faces, "that we declared Moonbase's independence a few hours ago. We had to do it, so that as an independent nation we can refuse to sign the nanotech treaty and continue to work here the way we always have."

"You mean we're citizens of Moonbase now?" a woman asked.

"I have to give up my American citizenship?" another voice from the crowd.

"That's all to be ironed out in negotiations with the US government and other governments," Doug said. "We're not going to ask any of you to give up your original citizenship, not if you don't want to."

"What about those Peacekeeper troops Faure's sending here?"

"We'll tell them we're an independent nation now and they have no authority here," Doug answered.

"They gonna accept that?"

"We'll see," said Doug.

"Don't give up your day job," somebody said. Everyone laughed—nervously, Doug thought. But when he looked down at his mother, still seated at the table on which he was standing, she was not laughing at all. Not even smiling.

"We'll deal with the Peacekeepers when they get here," Doug promised. "They're not looking for a fight and neither are we."

"Yeah, but they got guns and we don't."

Doug had no rejoinder for that.

TOUCHDOWN MINUS 110 HOURS 7 MINUTES

If anyone noticed that Claire Rossi and Nick O'Malley left The Cave together, with equally somber expressions on their faces, no one made a fuss about it.

Almost everyone in Moonbase knew that Claire and Nick were lovers. She was the base personnel chief, a petite brunette with video-star looks and a figure that men wanted to howl after. He was a big, lumbering, easy-going redhead who ran a set of tractors up on the surface from the snug confines of a teleoperator's console down in the control center.

Nick was happy-go-lucky, and counted the most fortunate moment in his young life as the instant he saw Claire walking down one of Moonbase's corridors. He smiled at her and she smiled back. Electricity crackled. He stopped looking at other women and she had thoughts only for him. It was like magic.

But as they walked slowly out of The Cave, neither of them was smiling.

"We could be stuck here for months," Claire said as they shouldered their way through the dispersing crowd, heading for her quarters.

Nick was somber, deep in thought. "My work contract runs out in three weeks. What happens then?"

"I guess we won't be heading back Earthside until Doug and the politicians back home settle this thing."

"Yeah, but how do I get paid when my contract term ends? What happens then?"

She tried to smile up at him. "Well, we didn't want to be separated, did we? Maybe you'll have to stay here until my tour ends and we can go back home together."

Looking down at her, Nick saw that her smile was forced. "You don't seem so happy about it."

"It's not that," she said. "It's…' She fell silent.

"What?"

"Wait until we get to my place," Claire said, so solemnly that it worried Nick.

Once she shut the door of her one-room compartment, Nick asked almost desperately, "What is it? What's wrong?"

"It's not wrong, exactly," she said, going to the bunk and sitting on its edge.

"Well, what?"

"I'm pregnant," she said.

He blinked. "You're going to have a baby?" His voice came out half an octave higher than usual.

"Yes," she answered, almost shyly.

For a moment he didn't know what to say, what to do. Then the reality of it burst on him and he broke into an ear-to-ear grin. "A baby! That's great! That's wonderful!'

But Claire shook her head. "Not if we can't get off Moonbase, it isn't."

TOUCHDOWN MINUS 109 HOURS

Aboard the Clippership Max Faget, Captain Jagath Munasinghe stared suspiciously at the schematic displayed on his notebook screen.

"And this is the control center? Here?" he pointed with a blunt finger.

"That's it," said Jack Killifer. "Take that and you've got the whole base under your thumb."

Munasinghe wore the uniform of the U.N.'s Peacekeeping Force: sky blue, with white trim at the cuffs and along the front of his tunic. Captain's bars on his collar and a slim line of ribbons on his chest below his name tag. He was of slight build, almost delicate, but his large dark eyes radiated a distrust that always bordered on rage. Born in Sri Lanka, he had seen warfare from childhood and only accepted a commission in the Peacekeepers when Sri Lanka had agreed to disarmament after its third civil war in a century had killed two million men, women and children with a man-made plague virus.

Behind him, forty specially-picked Peacekeepers sat uneasily in weightlessness as the spacecraft coasted toward the Moon. None of them had ever been in space before, not even Captain Munasinghe. Despite the full week of autogenic-feedback adaptation training they had been rushed through, and the slow-release anti-nausea patches they were required to wear behind their ears, several of the troops had vomited miserably during the first few hours of zero-gee flight. Munasinghe himself had managed to fight down the bile that burned in his throat, but just barely.

Sitting beside the captain, Killifer wore standard civilian's coveralls, slate gray and undecorated except for his name tag over his left breast pocket. He was more than twenty years older than the dark-skinned captain and almost a head taller: lean, lantern-jawed, his face hard and flinty. Once his light brown hair had been shaved down almost to his scalp, but now it was graying and he wore it long enough to tie into a ponytail that bobbed weightlessly at the back of his neck. The sight of it made Munasinghe queasy.

"Forty men to take and hold the entire base," Munasinghe muttered unhappily.

"It's not that big a place," Killifer replied. "And like I told you, take the command center and you control their air, water, heat—everything."

Munasinghe nodded but his eyes showed that he had his doubts.

"Look," Killifer said, "you put a couple of men in the environmental control center, here—" he tapped a fingernail on the captain's notebook screen, "-and a couple more in the water factory, keep a few in the control center and the rest of 'em can patrol the tunnels or do whatever else you want."

"There are more than two thousand people there."

"So what? They got no weapons. They're civilians, they don't know how to fight even if they wanted to."

"You are absolutely sure they have no weapons of any kind?"

Killifer gave him a nasty grin. "Nothing. Shit, they don't even have steak knives; the toughest food they have to deal with is friggin' soybean burgers."

"Still…"

Feeling exasperated, Killifer growled. "I spent damn' near twenty years there. I know what I'm talking about. It'll be a piece of cake, I tell you. A walkover. You'll be a friggin' hero inside of ten minutes."

Munasinghe's dubious expression did not change, but he turned and looked across the aisle of the passenger compartment to the reporter who was sitting next to them.

TOUCHDOWN MINUS 108 HOURS 57 MINUTES

Edith Elgin had thought she'd chat with the women soldiers among the Peacekeepers all the way to the Moon. But ever since the rocket's engines had cut off and the spacecraft had gone into zero gravity she had felt too nauseous to chat or even smile. Besides, most of the women barely spoke English; the little flags they wore as shoulder patches were from Pakistan and Zambia and places like that.

If she didn't feel so queasy it would almost have been funny. The reporter who broke the story of finding life on Mars, the woman who had parlayed a Texas cheerleader's looks and a lot of smarts into prime-time news stardom, sitting strapped into a bucket seat, stomach churning, sinuses throbbing, feeling woozy every time she moved her head the slightest bit. And there's more than four days of this to go. Sooner or later I'll have to get up and go to the toilet. She did not look forward to the prospect.

At least nobody's upchucked for a while, Edith told herself gratefully. The sound of people vomiting had almost broken her when they had first gone into zero gee. Fortunately the Clippership's air circulation system had been strong enough to keep most of the stench away from her row. Still, the acrid scent of vomit made the cabin smell like a New York alley.

It had been neither simple nor easy to win this assignment to accompany the Peacekeepers to the renegade base on the Moon. The network was all for it, of course, but the U.N. bureaucracy wanted nothing to do with a reporter aboard their spacecraft. Edith had to use every bit of her blonde smiling charm and corporate infighter's savvy to get past whole phalanxes of administrators and directors and their petty, close-minded assistants. All the way up to Georges Faure himself she had battled.

"My dear Miss Elgin," Faure had said, with his smarmy smile, "this is a military expedition, not a camping trip."

"This is news," Edith had countered, "and the public demands to know what's going on, first-hand."

She had been brought to Faure's presence in the Secretariat building. Not to his office, though. The secretary-general chose to meet her in a small quiet lounge on the building's top floor. The lounge was plush: thick beige carpeting, comfortable armchairs and curved little sofas. Even the walls were covered with woven tapestries of muted browns and greens. The decor seemed to absorb sound; it was a room that gave no echoes, a room to share whispered secrets.

Edith had chosen to wear a clinging knee-length dress of bright red, accented with gold bracelets and necklace to compliment her sunshine yellow hair. Once it had been truly that happy color; for years now she had helped it along with tint.

Faure had let her wait for almost ten minutes before he showed up, a dapper little man in a precisely-cut suit of elegant dark blue set off perfectly by a necktie of deep maroon.

He took her hand so daintily that Edith thought he was going to kiss it. Instead, Faure led her to one of the plush armchairs and sat in the one facing hers. As she sat down, Edith looked past Faure's smiling figure to the ceiling-high windows that faced uptown, northward, along the East River. She could see the Fifty-ninth Street bridge and well past it, all the way up to the Triboro and beyond.

"What a sparkling day," she said.

Faure took it as a personal compliment. "You see how the electric automobile has already improved the air quality," he said, beaming. It made his tiny eyes almost disappear.

Edith wasn't willing to let him take all the credit. "I thought the electric cars were mandated by the U.S. government. The Environmental Protection Agency, wasn't it?"

"Ah yes," said Faure quickly. "But only after our own efforts had proven successful in reducing the pollution in Tokyo and Mexico City. Now all the major cities are following our lead.' Again the smile that almost swallowed his eyes.

Edith wondered silently, Is he using the editorial 'we' or the imperial?

But she smiled back at the secretary-general and said sweetly, "You know that a big chunk of the American public doesn't agree with what you're doing to Moonbase."

Faure's expression turned hard for a moment, then he shrugged and put on a sad face. "Yes, I know. It is very unfortunate. But one cannot make an omelet without breaking eggs, can one?"

Now he's saying 'one' instead of 'we', Edith realized.

"Most of the inhabitants of Moonbase are Americans," she said.

"They are violating the treaty that Americans themselves drafted. The very treaty that the American delegation originally proposed to the General Assembly and fought so hard to have passed."

"Still," Edith said, leaning back in the comfortable armchair and crossing her legs at the ankles, "many Americans sympathize with the people in Moonbase."

Faure made a what-can-I-do shrug.

"They would feel better about it," Edith continued, "if an American reporter went with the Peacekeepers and sent back on-the-spot reports."

The secretary-general began to shake his head.

"The American media would feel much better about it if a reporter were allowed to go along," Edith added.

"You mean those who control and direct the news media, no?"

"Yes. The top brass."

Faure sighed heavily. "Frankly, Miss Elgin, the American news media have not always been kind to me."

Edith kept herself from grinning. In most countries the government could muzzle the media pretty effectively. But the First Amendment was still in force in the US. So far.

"You see," Faure said, leaning closer to her, placing his hands on the knees of his perfectly-creased trousers, "it is not I who resists your request. The Peacekeepers are military men. And women, of course. They do not want a news reporter to travel with them. They fear it might hamper them-"

"The military never wants reporters around."

"Quite so. But in this case I can fully understand their hesitation."

Edith said, "If there's a news blackout, the media will have nothing to work with except rumors."

"We will furnish news releases, as a matter of course. Each day a complete summary will be given to the media."

"But some reporters will wonder how accurate it is. There's always the tendency to put your own spin on the actual events, isn't there."

Wearily, Faure replied, "I suppose so. But you must not impugn the integrity of the Peacekeepers. They have accomplished very difficult assignments in many parts of the globe. Take Brazil, for example-"

"Are you saying," Edith interrupted, "that it's up to the Peacekeepers themselves to decide if they take a reporter or not?"

"No, not at all. Merely-"

"Because I thought the Peacekeepers reported to you. I thought you made the final decisions."

"But I do!"

"Yet in this case you're going to let them dictate to you, is that it?"

Faure's moustache quivered slightly. "Not at all! I make the decision and they follow."

Smiling her prettiest, Edith knew she had him. "In that case, you certainly understand how important it will be to have an unbiased, trusted news reporter on the scene when they land at Moonbase."

Faure's face clearly showed that he did not like being mousetrapped. But slowly his expression changed; he smiled again, showing teeth.

"Yes, you are correct," he said slowly. "The responsibility is mine. All mine. The weight of the major decisions is upon my shoulders alone."

Edith recognized the crafty look in his eyes.

"This is not an easy decision to make, Miss Elgin," Faure went on. "Special arrangements require certain… ah, accommodations."

"What do you mean?" Edith asked, knowing perfectly well what he meant.

Leaning forward even more and tapping a pudgy finger on her knee, Faure said, "We have much to discuss about this. Perhaps we could have dinner this evening?"

The body tax. Edith controlled her inner anger as she told herself, Even after all these years of women's rights it still comes down to the damned body tax. He's got the power and he knows it. If I want him to do me a favor he expects me to do one for him in return. And all he sees is a good-looking blonde.

"Dinner sounds fine," she said, thinking, It won't be the first time you've opened your legs to get a good assignment. Sometimes you've got to give some head to get ahead.

TOUCHDOWN MINUS 96 HOURS

The mercenary stared at the message that was waiting for him on his wall screen.

"The prey runs to the hunter," he muttered to himself.

Slowly he peeled off his grimy fatigues and wadded them into a ball that he tossed onto his bunk as he headed for the shower stall. His quarters were one of the old rooms in Moonbase. Most people complained that they were small and cramped, but the mercenary found the space just fine for his needs. Two of the walls were smart screens, recently installed. The shower stall was new, too.

Making sure the temperature dial was still set for dead cold, the mercenary stepped into the stall and let the reviving water sluice over his body. The prey runs to the hunter, he thought again. Doug Stavenger wants to see me.

Ever since he had first begun training as a sniper, back during his army days, he had thought of killing as a sort of religious rite. A sacred responsibility. Everybody dies, the only question about it is where and when. And how.

I give them a clean death. Not like some of those freaks.

When he was taken out of the army to serve in the covert intelligence agency, he had the time and the need to take up the study of primitive hunters who believed that the animals they killed came to them for death. The prey runs to the hunter.

If you do everything just right, make all the proper rituals and set things up just the way they should be, then the prey comes to you and asks to be allowed to die. Not in so many words, of course. But they come to me for death.

Just like Doug Stavenger's going to do. Hell, he's already started along the path.

TOUCHDOWN MINUS 95 HOURS 54 MINUTES

Zoltan Kadar was a Hungarian who prided himself on being slicker and smarter than ordinary mortals. He also happened to be one of the top astronomers in the world and an extremely clever man.

But now he felt frustrated and, worse, ignored.

He strode along the corridor toward the base director's office, hands balled into fists, arms swinging like a soldier on parade. He was on the small side, quite slim, a fencer's agile figure. His hair was dark and straight, and came to a pronounced widow's peak centered above his heavy dark eyebrows. People called him Count Dracula, although once they got to know him they changed his nickname to Slick Willy. Kadar revelled in the characterization.

"Hey, Slick, where you going?"

Kadar barely slowed his determined stride as he recognized Harry Clemens, head of the transportation division. Clemens was one of the older engineers, a true Lunatic who had been working at Moonbase for many years.

"Hello, Harry."

Working hard to stay with Kadar, Clemens—lanky, balding, un-athletic—said, "Jeez, you look like you're going to lead the charge of the light brigade."

"They've cancelled my Farside survey flight," Kadar said through gritted teeth. "I'm going to get it back on schedule."

"Oh, yeah, I know about that. Too bad."

"Too bad for them. They can't just stop my work like that.' He snapped the fingers of his left hand.

"Everything's ground to a halt. We're at war, you know."

"Pah!"

"Nothing's going out, really. There's a Peacekeeper troopship on its way here."

"What has that got to do with building the Farside observatory?"

Clemens was a practical engineer, and he recognized a stone wall when he saw one. "Well, I've got to turn off here. I'm helping the nanotech crew to shut down the bugs building the Clippership."

"Goodbye, Harry," said Kadar.

"Hope you can get what you want, but I wouldn't count on it."

"Goodbye, Harry."

Another minute's march brought Kadar to the base director's office. He rapped once on the door and opened it.

Jinny Anson was sitting behind the desk, talking on the phone to some woman. She glanced up at Kadar and waved him to a chair in front of her desk. From the expression on her face, Kadar realized that she knew she was in for trouble.

"Where is Stavenger?" Kadar asked as soon as Anson clicked off her phone screen.

"Doug's taking charge of the war. I'm the base director pro-tern.' Before Kadar could draw a breath she added, "And all work outside has been suspended, Zoltan, not just yours."

"I'm not interested in the rest of them. It's my work that is important."

"Sure," Anson said good naturedly. "But we can't hang a surveillance satellite over Farside until this business with the Peacekeepers is cleared up."

"I don't see why. It's an uncrewed satellite. I will take care of all the monitoring myself. I have the programs all in place."

With a patient sigh, Anson explained, "Look, there's a

Moonwar

Clippership full of Peacekeepers on their way here to take over the base. We're going to try to stop them—don't ask me how, that's Doug's problem."

"But what has this to do with my work?" Kadar couldn't help putting a stress on the word my.

"The U.N.'s already taken over the L-l satellite. Maybe they've got Peacekeepers there, maybe not, we don't know."

"But again, what has this-"

"They're watching us, Zoltan. They're watching every move we make. With telescopes and radar and every other kind of sensor they've got."

"So?"

"So what's their reaction gonna be if we launch a rocket? They won't just ignore it. Maybe they've already got high-power lasers at L-l and they'll zap your rocket before they can figure out where it's heading."

"Nonsense! We'll simply tell them what the rocket's mission is."

"And they'll believe you?" Anson's earnest expression eased into a sly smile. "They'll believe a Hungarian?"

Kadar grinned back at her. "That might be a problem," he conceded.

"We don't want to do anything that'll give the UN a reason to start bombarding us. Your rocket stays in the shed until this crisis is over."

"Bombard us? That's idiotic. We're buried deep enough so that even nuclear bombs won't harm us."

"Really?" Anson snapped. "You really want to test that theory? And what about the solar farms and the mass driver and all your astronomical equipment out on the crater floor? What happens to them?"

Kadar slouched back in his chair like a petulant child. "I want to talk to Stavenger," he said.

"He's too damned busy for picobits like this, Zoltan. I'm the acting director and I say your rocket sits."

With a slight hike of his heavy brows, Kadar got slowly out of his chair and walked to the door.

"Thank you for your time," he said to Anson.

Ben Bova

"Nothing to it."

Kadar stepped through the door and closed it softly, saying to himself, Now where in hell can I find Stavenger?

TOUCHDOWN MINUS 95 HOURS 20 MINUTES

"When do they land?" asked Toshiru Takai.

Doug did not have to look at his watch. "In less than four days."

Takai nodded and made a sound halfway between a sigh and a groan.

Doug was walking with him slowly across the vast floor of the crater Copernicus, where the Nippon One base was situated, more than a thousand kilometers from Moonbase. Since they were communicating through a virtual reality program, they could walk on the lunar surface without space suits. Doug wore his usual unadorned sky-blue coveralls; Takai a similar jumpsuit of pearl gray, decorated with a single white heron over the breast pocket, the symbol of Yamagata Corporation.

"I tried to reach your corporate headquarters in Tokyo," Doug said, "but there seemed to be some difficulty with their receiving equipment."

"I imagine your transmissions are being jammed by the Peacekeepers," Takai said, showing no emotion on his lean, bony face. He was in his early thirties; Doug thought of him as his own age, roughly, even though Takai was at least five years older.

With an understanding smile, Doug said, "Our transmissions are getting through to Savannah and Tarawa and even New York."

Takai gave him a sidelong glance. "Do you want me to tell you that my superiors in Tokyo have decided not to speak with you?" His voice was low, but filled with strength.

"I'd like to know where they stand," Doug said evenly. "Where you stand."

"Why, here I am, in the middle of the most beautiful crater on the Moon!"

Doug laughed at the joke. Although they had never met physically, he had known Takai for three years now, ever since the young enginner had been chosen to direct the Yamagata lunar base. While their virtual selves could walk in the vacuum without even kicking up a cloud of dust, each of them was safely in his office, deep underground.

Yet Doug could reach out and clasp Takai's shoulder. Toshi, I need to know what Yamagata is going to do. It's important for us. For both of us."

"I know," Takai admitted.

Nippon One was the only other lunar base still active. Its reason for existence, aside from scientific studies, was to extract helium-three from the Moon's regolith and ship it to the nuclear fusion power plants that were springing up throughout Japan, China, and the Pacific Rim nations. Fusion power was not welcomed in Europe or North America, where anti-nuclear fears not only persisted, but were actively fanned by the nanoluddites.

The Europeans had closed down their base at Grimaldi when the nanotech treaty had gone into effect for the Euro-Russian consortium that managed the base. They still sent occasional maintenance crews to repair and refurbish the scientific gear that ran automated at Grimaldi, but even those visitors rode on Masterson LTVs or Yamagata's.

"Are you going to shut down Nippon One?" Doug asked, half-dismayed that he had to be so direct with his Japanese friend.

"That is not in my instructions," Takai replied.

Damn! thought Doug. He's not just being roundabout; he's being actually evasive.

"Toshi, I really need to know what Yamagata plans to do."

For several moments Takai said nothing. He simply walked along the virtual crater floor and avoided looking at Doug.

"What do you plan to do?" Takai countered. "Surely you don't expect to fight the Peacekeepers."

"We've declared our independence," Doug said. "Legally, the Peacekeepers have no right to bother us."

"Only if the UN accepts your independence."

Doug nodded.

"They won't," Takai predicted. "You know they won't."

"I'm not so sure. Time is on our side. If we can hold on and prevent the Peacekeepers from taking over the base, we could eventually get world opinion on our side and-"

"Time is on your side until the Peacekeepers land," Takai pointed out.

"But if we can keep them from taking Moonbase," Doug said earnestly,'then we can get through this. All we have to do is show the world that we can survive, that we can hang in there and take care of ourselves. Sooner or later they'll recognize the fact that we are independent."

Takai shook his head. "You're dreaming, Doug."

"No," Doug insisted. "It's like the situation in the American Civil War. All the Confederacy had to do was keep itself intact, not let the Union conquer it. In time, the nations of Europe would recognize it as a separate nation."

"But that didn't happen, did it?" Takai asked gently.

"We can make it happen here."

"No, Doug. That isn't going to be allowed to happen, believe me."

Doug hesitated, digesting not only Takai's words, but their tone. He knows more than he's willing to tell me, Doug realized.

"Don't you think Japan would recognize our independence if we drove off the Peacekeepers?"

"No, I don't."

"Is Yamagata against us? I need to know, Toshi. Lives depend on it."

Takai said nothing.

"Well?" Doug demanded.

The pained expression on Takai's face showed the tension he was feeling. "My instructions are to continue as usual. We will operate Nippon One as we normally do, despite your present … difficulties."

They both knew that Nippon One carefully refrained from using nanotechnology. Instead of using nanomachines to extract helium-three from the ground, they used cumbersome bulldozers and old-fashioned mass spectrometers to separate the isotope from the other lunar ores. It kept the cost of helium-three at least ten times higher than it would have been if nanomachines had been employed to ferret out the helium-three nuclei, individually.

But Nippon One bought its water from Moonbase. Shut down Moonbase and the Japanese base dies, too.

"I don't understand how that can be," Doug said.

"Those are my instructions."

Walking beside his virtual friend in silence, Doug thought, He wants to tell me what's going on, but he can't. His loyalty to Yamagata is preventing him from telling me the whole truth.

"We've already declared our independence, you know," Doug said.

"Yes, you told me. I doubt that it'll do you any good."

"What was Tokyo's reaction to that?"

"No reaction. The first I heard of it was just now, when you told me."

"Your corporate superiors didn't tell you about it?"

"Not one word."

"We beamed the information to Yamagata headquarters and to every news agency on Earth."

"I have not received any information about that," Takai said, genuinely upset.

"That must mean that Faure intends to ignore our declaration and proceed as if it's a non-starter."

"Yes, of course."

They took a few more paces across the crater floor, skirting a fresh-looking craterlet about the size of a beach ball's indentation.

"Toshi, how are you going to get water if Moonbase is shut down? You can't use nanomachines, and-"

"We will get our water the same way we do now."

"But Moonbase will be closed. The Peacekeeper troops are on their way to shut us down."

Takai grimaced, struggling inwardly. At last he said, The Peacekeepers are coming to remove you and your people from the management of Moonbase. That does not mean they intend to close the base entirely."

Doug stopped in his tracks. "Not…' His mind started spinning. "Not close the base? Toshi, are you sure?"

"It could cost me my position if anyone learns that I told you. Yes, I am quite certain. Or I should say that Tokyo is quite certain."

"They're not going to close the base?"

"Faure spoke directly to the head of the Yamagata clan himself and assured him that Moonbase will continue to supply water to Nippon One—after the Peacekeeper troops remove you and your staff from the base."

"Faure intends to continue running Moonbase," Doug repeated, feeling hollow with surprise. "The little fur ball doesn't care about the nanotech treaty; he wants to control Moonbase himself!"

TOUCHDOWN MINUS 93 HOURS 45 MINUTES

"But don't you understand what this means?" Joanna demanded.

"It means that Faure wants to take over Moonbase," said Doug.

"It means we can do business with him!" his mother replied eagerly. "We can cut a deal."

Doug stared at his mother. She was sitting bolt upright in the chaise longue she had brought from her home in Savannah as part of the elaborate furnishings for her two-room suite at Moonbase. Leaning toward her from the delicate little Sheraton sofa on which he sat, Doug shook his head unhappily.

"Faure won't make any deals. He intends to use the Peacekeepers to toss us out of here and then have the UN itself run the base."

Joanna gave her son a pitying smile. "Doug, he'll need trained personnel to run this base. He'll have to use the people who are here."

"That doesn't include thee and me."

"Don't be so sure," Joanna said. She seemed actually happy with Doug's news; pleased that Faure wanted to take over Moonbase.

"He'll want to continue to manufacture Clipperships, of course," Joanna mused. "That's where the profits are. Every transportation line on Earth wants our Clipperships and he can pump the profits into the U.N."

"Or his own pocket."

"Maybe," Joanna agreed. "Even better. The more venal he is, the easier it'll be to deal with him."

Doug shook his head again. "That's what the German industrialists thought about Hitler."

"Faure's no Hitler. He's not a fanatic. He isn't even going to stop our nanomachines. He just wants to run them for his own profit."

Getting to his feet, Doug said, "I'm still assuming that we'll have to handle the Peacekeepers, and we've got less than four days to figure out how to do it."

"What do you intend to do?"

He shrugged. "I've asked Zimmerman and Cardenas to meet me in my quarters. Lev and Jinny Anson, too. And one of the aquaculture technicians, the only guy in the base who's had any military experience at all."

"All right," Joanna said, looking up at her son from the chaise longue. "You do that. I'm going to put in a call to Faure. He'll negotiate. I know he will."

"Don't commit us to anything until I get a chance to see what it is, okay?"

Joanna nodded absently. "Oh, I don't think Faure will agree to anything concrete until the Peacekeepers get here and take over the base."

"That's what I'm trying to prevent."

"Good," she said. "If we could somehow keep the Peacekeepers out of here it would strengthen our hand tremendously."

"I'll see what we can do," said Doug.

TOUCHDOWN MINUS 90 HOURS 11 MINUTES

Moonbase had started as a clutch of temporary shelters, little more than aluminum cans the size of house trailers, dug into the lunar regolith on the floor of the crater Alphonsus and then covered over with rubble to protect them from the radiation and temperature swings between night and day. And from the occasional meteoroid strike. Meteor showers that were spectacular light shows in the night sky of Earth were potentially dangerous volleys of celestial machine-gun fire on the airless Moon.

By the time of Doug Stavenger's first visit to the Moon, on his eighteenth birthday, Moonbase had grown into a set of four parallel tunnels dug into the flank of Mount Yeager. Offices, labs, workshops and living quarters lined the tunnels. The water factory was at the front of one tunnel, the environmental control center—where the base's air was recycled and kept circulating properly—was at the rear.

In his seven years at Moonbase, Doug had seen those original four tunnels grow to eight, with the four new tunnels sunk a level below the original quartet. Rough rock walls were smoothed with plasma torches and painted in pastels selected by psychologists—then painted over by base personnel who demanded brighter, bolder colors. And the occasional graffitist. When the grand plaza's construction was finished, twenty more tunnels would be added beneath it.

If we ever get to finish the grand plaza, Doug thought as he walked toward his quarters. He nodded and smiled automatically to everyone he passed. Doug knew most of the long-time Lunatics by sight, but there were always hundreds of short-term workers at the base. How many of them will stay with us? he wondered. Even if we keep the Peacekeepers out and establish our independence, will we have enough people left here to run the base?

There were directional signs on the walls now, and electronic maps at intersections that showed a schematic of the tunnel system. Corridors, Doug reminded himself. We call them corridors now, not tunnels.

He turned left at an intersection and bumped into a man in olive green coveralls who was striding purposefully down the corridor. They each muttered an apology and fell into step, side by side, as they walked down the corridor.

Out of the side of his eye, Doug looked the man over. He thought he recognized him, but couldn't quite place who he was. The man was a couple of inches shorter than Doug's own six-one, but built wide and solid, like a bulldozer. Not an ounce of fat on him: he had felt iron-hard when Doug had bumped into him. His skin was the color of milk chocolate, his neatly-trimmed hair dark and wiry. Doug could not see his nametag without making it obvious he was looking at it.

So he said, "I'm Doug Stavenger," and stuck out his hand without breaking stride.

The man made a perfunctory smile. "I know."

For a moment Doug thought he was going to refuse to shake, but then the man took Doug's proffered hand and said, in a clear, distinct, deliberate baritone, "My name is Bam Gordette."

"Leroy Gordette?" Suddenly the picture from the personnel file clicked in Doug's mind.

Gordette replied, "Call me Bam. It's short for Bama, which in turn is short for Alabama."

"You're from Alabama?" Doug asked.

"Yeah, but I got no banjo on my knee.' Gordette smiled, but it looked purely mechanical.

"I was born in Georgia," said Doug.

"I know."

They had reached the door to Doug's quarters, which was doubling as his office now that Jinny Anson occupied the director's post. Opening it, Doug ushered Gordette in with a gesture. "The others will be here in a few minutes."

The smart walls were all blank as they stepped in. Gordette started to sit on the couch by the door, but Doug pointed to the sling chair next to his writing desk. As he went to the desk and dropped into his swivel chair, Doug said, "We can use the few minutes to get to know each other."

Gordette nodded tightly. Doug looked into his deep brown eyes and saw that Gordette would be a tough opponent in a poker game. He gave away nothing.

"You were in the army?" Doug prompted.

"Special Forces."

"How long?"

"I did a four-year hitch."

"Why did you leave?"

"Got a better offer."

Doug tapped on his keyboard and Gordette's personnel file came up on the wall screen to his left.

"What kind of a company is Falcon Electronics?"

"Small," said Gordette. "They did customized electro-optical rigs, stuff like that."

"You were with them almost nine years?"

"Right."

"And then you got a job with Masterson Corporation and came to Moonbase."

"Right."

Leaning back in his chair, Doug asked, "How do you like it here?"

Gordette thought for a moment. "Not bad. Most of the people here are smart, civilized."

"Civilized?"

"There's not much of a color problem here. Not like back in the States."

Doug felt shocked. "You had race problems?"

Gordette smiled again, but this time it dripped acid. "There's no black man on Earth doesn't have race problems."

"I'm part black," Doug said. "My father-"

"I know all about it. But your skin is white enough, and you got enough money, so it doesn't matter to you."

Doug felt as if he were battering against a solid steel barrier. Not that Gordette seemed hostile; he simply offered nothing. It was like talking to an automaton. And yet there was something going on behind those unwavering eyes. The man wasn't stupid, Doug judged. He's just sitting there, looking at me. As if he's studying me.

Lev Brudnoy stuck his head through Doug's open door and broke the tightening silence. Moments later, Jinny Anson, Professor Zimmerman and Kris Cardenas joined the conference.

As they carefully, meticulously, went over every inch of Moonbase's layout, equipment and supplies, Doug watched Gordette. The man said nothing, but seemed entirely focused on their discussion. He listened intently, hands clasped in front of his face as if in prayer. Every now and then, though, Doug caught him looking directly at him. Gordette never looked away. He simply stared at Doug, face utterly impassive, eyes boring into Doug as if he were taking X-ray photographs.

"So we can button up and wait for 'em to run out of air," Anson said, waving a hand at the schematic diagram of the base that filled one whole wall of Doug's office.

"Suppose they blow out the main airlock?" Brudnoy asked. "What then?"

Anson's normally perky expression paled slightly. "Why would they do that?"

"They want to take over the base," Brudnoy replied.

"Yeah, but they wouldn't want to kill us! Not if we're just sitting tight inside."

"Blowing the main airlock wouldn't necessarily kill us, would it?" Cardenas asked.

"No," said Anson. "It'd just open up the garage. All the tunnels would still be sealed off-"

"Corridors," Doug corrected.

"Whatever."

"Still," Brudnoy said, "if they blast out the main airlock that would surely mean that they are prepared to blow their way through any of the other airlocks and hatches in the base."

"It would mean they're ready to kill us," Doug agreed.

Zimmerman, sitting alone on the couch by the door, pointed out, "If they blast open the main airlock we would have to surrender. There would be no other option."

"Not unless we can breathe vacuum," Anson admitted.

Doug turned to Gordette and again the man was staring at him. "What do you think, Bam? What does your military experience tell you?"

Without the slightest hesitation, Gordette replied, "The Peacekeepers are trained to accomplish their mission with as little bloodshed as possible. They won't blow any airlocks. Not at first, anyway."

"You mean we could sit inside and wait 'em out?" Anson asked.

Gordette shook his head.

"What would you do," Doug asked, "if you were heading up this Peacekeeper mission?"

Getting slowly to his feet, Gordette walked to the wall map and pointed to the thin lines that represented the buried power cables that led from the solar farms into the base. "I'd cut your electrical power lines, here, here, and here."

"The solar farms," murmured Brudnoy.

"Without electricity this base goes down the tubes.' Gordette made a diving motion with one hand.

"We have the backup nuclear system," Anson said.

"They know that," Gordette replied flatly. "They've got as good a map of this base as you do."

Doug said, "So they'll cut the line from the nuke, too."

Gordette nodded.

"Kaput," said Zimmerman. "How long can we last without electricity? Thirty seconds, perhaps?"

"We have emergency batteries, fuel cells," said Anson.

"So? How much time do they give us?"

"A few hours."

"The Peacekeepers will have enough air to wait for us to surrender, no?"

"Yes."

From his chair in front of Doug's desk, Brudnoy looked up at Gordette with gloom in his pouchy eyes. "Is there anything we can do? Anything at all?"

Gordette seemed to think about it for a moment. "There's a maneuver that we use in martial arts when your opponent points a gun at you."

"What is it?"

Gordette slowly raised his arms over his head in the universal sign of surrender.

The room fell into a dismal silence. Doug looked at them; they seemed defeated already.

"What we've learned," he said in as firm a voice as he could, "is that we've got to keep the Peacekeepers from cutting our power lines."

"How?" Brudnoy asked.

Doug pointed toward Zimmerman. "We need something to defend those power lines."

"Something?" Zimmerman growled. "What?"

"That's what you've got to figure out, Professor. And you've got less than four days to do it."

TOUCHDOWN MINUS 63 HOURS 29 MINUTES

Joanna Masterson Stavenger was not accustomed to being snubbed, not even by the world's most powerful politicians. But Faure refused to speak to her.

At first the U.N. simply did not acknowledge her calls. The wall screen in her quarters showed nothing but electronic hash. The comm tech who was monitoring her transmission said flatly, They're not answering."

She reached the Masterson Corporation offices in New York and tried to pipe a call to Faure through them. After nearly twenty-four hours of delays and evasions, one of the U.N. flunkies blandly told her that the secretary-general was unavailable.

Huffing with impatient anger, Joanna called Masterson corporate headquarters in Savannah on a direct laser link.

"I want to speak with the chairman of the board," she told the young man whose face appeared on her wall screen.

"Mr Rashid isn't here, Mrs Brudnoy. He's in-"

Joanna did not wait for the sentence to end. "Find him, wherever he is. I need to talk to him immediately."

It took almost three seconds for her words to reach Rashid's aide and his startled expression to show on her screen.

"Get him!" she snapped.

Nearly half an hour later, Ibrahim al-Rashid's face finally appeared on the wall screen. He had been handsome once, but now his romantic good looks were sinking into softness. His closely-clipped beard was streaked with gray, as was his tightly-curled hair. He had a look of decadence about him,

Joanna thought. She knew that Rashid did not drink; he was a faithful Moslem in that regard. But there were drugs. And women, many of them. And the responsibilities that came inescapably with great power.

"Greetings and felicitations, most illustrious one," he said, his voice reedy but melodious. "How are you enjoying your visit to the Moon?"

"I need to talk to Faure," Joanna said, unwilling to engage in the usual banter.

Three seconds later Rashid's brows rose slightly. "I very much doubt that the secretary-general would be willing to speak with you at this point in time."

"Make it happen, Omar," Joanna snapped.

If her use of his old nickname upset him, Rashid showed no trace of it. He merely smiled patiently and replied, "And how do I do that, Joanna? Rub a magic lamp?"

Holding on to her swooping temper, Joanna replied, "You get that little Quebecer on the phone and tell him that I'm going to announce to the news media that he has no intention of shutting down Moonbase. He's going to continue using our nanomachines for his own profit!"

Rashid seemed more sobered than surprised when her words reached him.

"Your son's declaration of Moonbase's independence has not been carried by the media," he said slowly. "There is a blackout on news about Moonbase. Even here in the States the media have acceded to Faure's request for restraint."

"This isn't about Moonbase," Joanna replied impatiently. "This is about the secretary-general of the United Nations telling the world he's going to enforce the nanotech treaty when he's really planning to use our nanomachines for his own purposes."

She watched his expression intently. Does he already know about this? Has he already cut a deal with Faure?

At last Rashid said, "That does cast a new light on the situation. Perhaps the media would be interested in such a story. Do you have any evidence to back it up? Any corroboration?"

Suddenly Joanna felt wary. "Plenty," she said, thinking to herself, Omar could be part of Faure's scheme. He's never been a supporter of Moonbase.

Almost as if thinking out loud, Rashid murmured, "There is a reporter on board the Clippership heading for Moonbase."

"I don't want a reporter," Joanna said. "I want all the networks. I want every news service on Earth!"

"But the commsats have been programmed to reject all transmissions from Moonbase."

"I don't need the commsats. How do you think we're talking? The technicians here can beam my transmissions to any spot on Earth, almost. All the news services have optical receivers on their rooftops."

Rashid was silent far longer than the three seconds it took for the round-trip transmission from Moon to Earth and back again.

"Perhaps Faure would be willing to speak with you, after all," he said at last. "Let me see if I can reach him and get him to listen to reason."

"Good," said Joanna. "We've only got a little more than two and a half days before the Peacekeepers land here."

"Yes, I know."

"Don't let Faure delay until his troops land. I won't wait that long. Tell him he's got twenty-four hours to get in touch with me. Or else I go to the media."

"Harkening and obedience," said Rashid, just as he did in the old days when Joanna was chairman of the board and he was only a rising young executive.

TOUCHDOWN MINUS 38 HOURS 30 MINUTES

Edith's nausea was almost completely gone. A tendril of unease persisted deep inside her, but she thought it was probably more psychological than physical now. She still felt slightly dizzy whenever she moved her head too fast, but the moment passed quickly.

In fact, floating free in zero gravity was fun! She had set up her two minicams in the spacecraft's cargo bay, amid bulky crates marked AMMUNITION: 9 MM: FRANGIBLE and GRENADES: CONCUSSION: MARK 17/A.

She had interviewed two ordinary troopers, a shy teenaged boy from Bangladesh and his sergeant, a tough no-nonsense Cuban woman. It was like interviewing athletes: monosyllabic answers, platitudes, and long, perplexed silences.

Edith checked her hair in her hand mirror. It was floating nicely; not so wild that it would distract the viewer, just enough to show what weightlessness could do. The cameras were tightly tethered to a pair of tied down crates so they wouldn't bob around; there were no girders or other projections on the smooth curving bulkhead of diamond on which to secure them.

Captain Munasinghe glided through the hatch, trying to look as if he was unaffected by zero gee. He had removed the medication patch from behind his ear, but Edith saw faint rings there, like the scars from an octopus's suckers, and wondered how comfortable the captain really felt.

He was small and slim, dark skin shining as if it had been oiled. He had put on a fresh uniform, Edith saw, crisp and clean. His eyes were his best feature, large and dark and somehow fierce-looking. They'll show up great on camera, she thought. But he's so little, I'll look like a horse next to him.

Then she smiled to herself. Zero gee to the rescue. I'll just let him float higher off the deck than I do. Keep the focus tight, head and shoulders. He'll look taller than me and I'll bet he'll love it. Realistic journalism.

"I just want to ask you a few questions, Captain Munasinghe," she said, trying to put him at ease. "Just look at me and ignore the cameras."

"Yes. Fine."

"Ready?"

Munasinghe nodded, then licked his lips.

Wondering who had taught him to do that, Edith pressed the switch on her remote control wand and said, "Okay, here we go."

She arranged herself facing Munasinghe and slightly below him, so his head topped hers by a few centimeters. Camera one held the two-shot; the second camera focused on the captain's face. Edith would do her reaction close-ups afterward; they would be spliced in Earthside as cutaways.

"Here with me now is Captain Munasinghe of the United Nations Peacekeeping Force, the commander of this mission to the Moon," said Edith.

"Captain Munasinghe, how do you feel about leading forty armed troops to Moonbase?"

Munasinghe drifted closer to her as he replied, "The Peacekeepers were created by international agreement to enforce the decisions of the United Nations' secretariat. Moonbase is violating the terms of the nanotechnology treaty, therefore we have been dispatched to the Moon to put an end to this violation."

"Yes, but how do you feel personally about this mission?"

"I am proud to bear the responsibility of carrying out the United Nations' decision to enforce the nanotechnology treaty," he said. It sounded like a parrot repeating a line it had been laboriously taught.

The interview teetered between a disaster and a farce. Munasinghe had canned answers for every question she asked, undoubtedly written in New York for him to memorize. Worse, he kept pushing so close to Edith that she thought he wanted to rub noses with her. She could smell the cloying, faintly acrid odor of whatever breath treatment he had gargled.

She unconsciously moved away from him, trying to maintain a proper distance for their interview, but he kept moving in on her. In the back of her mind Edith remembered that different cultures have different ideas of the proper distance for social intercourse, but this was going out on the network, for chrissakes! It's going to look like he's coming on to me.

The cameras tracked them automatically, but after only a few minutes Edith's back bumped against one of the cargo crates and she could retreat no farther. Munasinghe hovered before her, his breath making her want to gag, his burning eyes boring into hers as if he intended to rape her.

Edith was about to give up all pretense of trying to conduct a rational interview and wind it up as quickly as she could, but some inner determination was urging her to get something, anything out of Munasinghe.

In desperation, she gestured with her free hand to the crates of munitions around them. "Do you think you're really going to need all this firepower against the people of Moonbase? After all, they're unarmed, aren't they?"

"They claim that they are unarmed, yes."

"You don't believe that?"

"I am a soldier," Munasinghe said, eyes burning into her. "I must be prepared for the worst that the enemy could possibly do to us."

"But what could a gaggle of scientists and technicians do to a platoon of fully-armed Peacekeepers?"

"We don't know, but we must be prepared."

"With hand grenades and explosives?"

"With every weapon at our disposal," Munasinghe said, without an instant's hesitation. "If the people of Moonbase offer the slightest opposition, we are prepared to use whatever level of force is required."

Edith's breath caught in her throat. "You mean you're prepared to kill them?"

"If necessary. Yes, of course."

"Even though they're unarmed?"

He jabbed a finger in her face. "You keep saying they are unarmed. How do we know this? How do we know what kinds of weapons they may have at Moonbase? I am responsible for bringing Moonbase under United Nations' jurisdiction. I am responsible for the lives of my troops. If the enemy offers the slightest resistance, the slightest provocation, I have ordered my troops to shoot."

"Shoot to kill?" Edith was surprised at how hollow her voice sounded.

"When you are in battle you don't have the luxury of attempting to merely wound your enemy. Shoot to kill, yes, of course."

"At the slightest provocation?"

For the first time, Captain Munasinghe smiled. "I have served in Eritrea, in Colombia, and against the Armenian terrorists. Believe me, you do not give an enemy a second chance to kill you. Not if you want to survive the engagement."

"Let me get this straight," Edith said. "You're saying that you've ordered your troops to shoot to kill at the slightest sign of resistance from the people of Moonbase."

"At the slightest sign of resistance," Munasinghe affirmed. "Better to destroy Moonbase and everyone in it than to return to Earth with our mission a failure."

Edith swallowed hard, then said, "Thank you, Captain Munasinghe."

She had to push herself past him, then forced a smile as she looked straight into camera one and concluded, "This is Edie Elgin, in space with the U.N. Peacekeeper force, on the way to Moonbase."

Munasinghe drifted back, then asked, "Is that all? Is it finished?"

"That's it," said Edith, hoping he would go away.

"Was it satisfactory? Can I see it?"

Wearily, Edith ran the abbreviated interview on camera one's monitor. Munasinghe watched himself, fascinated. Edith wondered if the network suits would play the interview. They had made it clear they wanted to cooperate with the U.N., and this interview could stir a lot of hostility toward the Peacekeepers if it was aired.

No, she told herself, they'll play it. They'll have to. So the U.N. bitches about it, so what. This is news.

TOUCHDOWN MINUS 27 HOURS 51 MINUTES

The mercenary returned to his quarters and sat on his bunk. The time to strike is nearly here, he told himself.

The situation was almost ludicrous. The more he thought about the base's electrical power supplies, its life support systems, its total lack of weaponry or military capability, the more he realized that a single man like himself could bring the entire base to its knees.

They won't need a ship full of Peacekeepers. I can do it all by myself.

But the Peacekeepers were on their way and there was almost nothing that the inhabitants of Moonbase could do to stop them.

Why assassinate the leaders when they can't offer any resistance? Just knock out their electrical power system and they're helpless. It won't make any difference if Doug Stavenger lives or dies; Moonbase will cave in as soon as the Peacekeepers arrive.

The mercenary got down onto the floor in front of his bunk and folded his legs into the lotus position. Resting the backs of his hands on his knees, he closed his eyes and murmured his mantra, seeking harmony and understanding.

He saw in his mind's eye what he always saw. His ten-year-old brother in convulsions, dying of the zip he had snorted while their mother lay sprawled on the sofa, too dazed with the same shit to phone for help. He saw his six-year-old self locked in the dark roach closet because he'd been a bad boy, watching his brother die through the closet door keyhole, listening to the screams that turned into strangled, choking sobs and finally ended in a groan that still tortured his soul.

If I had been good, I wouldn't have been locked in the roach closet. I could've helped Timmy.

He saw his mother die, too. She was the first person he ever killed. He was fifteen and a father but she still treated him like a little kid. Took the strap to him. He grabbed it away from her and swung it hard enough to knock her down. Her head cracked on the table leg and her eyes went blank.

He saw his first sergeant, as brutal a man as any, but fair and unwaveringly honest. And the old cowboy on the rifle range, the one who taught him how to shoot. And how to hunt.

Death was his companion always. His ancient friend. He was death's best assistant. That was his destiny, his purpose in life: to bring people to death.

He opened his eyes. Deep within him the ancient calm had returned. There were no doubts, no qualms, no divisions within him. He was one again. Whole. Death was at his side, invisible but palpable, his oldest and best companion.

After all, he told himself, Stavenger's entire life revolves around Moonbase. Take that away from him and he's as good as dead anyway. I'll merely be helping him to the place where he wants to be.

Still, he sighed.

TOUCHDOWN MINUS 20 HOURS

Joanna Stavenger actually felt nervous as she sat in her favorite armchair, waiting for Georges Faure's call. The secretary-general had at first refused to speak to her at all, but the threat of telling the media that he planned to use nanomachines despite his public denouncement of them apparently had forced his hand.

Apparently, she reminded herself. The little bastard's waited until the troopship is almost ready to land before agreeing to talk to me.

Faure had put up conditions. This was to be strictly a private conversation between the two of them. No third parties. And it was to be understood that he was speaking to her as a courtesy only, not in his capacity as secretary-general of the United Nations.

Joanna had agreed easily. She knew that Faure had no private existence; whatever he said to her was being said by the man who headed the U.N. And she conveniently forgot her pledge of privacy when she told her son that Faure was going to speak to her. Doug was not in her sitting room with her, but he was plugged into their conversation, in his own quarters.

Precisely at the appointed moment the synthesized voice of the communications system said, "Monsieur Faure is calling from New York."

"On screen, please," Joanna replied.

A window seemed to open on the wall before her and Faure's face appeared, no larger than life-size. Joanna had programmed the smart wall that way; she had no desire to see Faure looming over her like an intimidating giant.

"Madame Brudnoy," Faure said, with a polite little smile.

"Mr Secretary-General," Joanna replied.

While she waited the three seconds for his reply, Joanna examined the room in which Faure was sitting. It didn't look like an office; more like the living room of a spacious apartment in a high-rise building. She could not see much of the background behind him, but there was a window that looked out on the skyscrapers of Manhattan.

"I am not speaking as the secretary-general, Madame. This is a personal conversation between two private citizens."

Joanna nodded an acknowledgement.

"May I say that you look radiant? And your apartment, from what I can see of it, seems quite charming. I had no idea such luxuries were to be found in Moonbase."

Joanna had put on a tailored blouse of coral pink and a dark mid-thigh skirt: comfortable without being too dressy.

"Thank you," she said. "This is my personal furniture. I had it brought up from Savannah years ago. I assure you, the other living quarters here are nowhere near as elegant."

"I see," said Faure, after the annoying lag. "The privileges of the wealthy."

Joanna bit back the temptation to comment on Faure's luxurious apartment. "I appreciate your taking the time to speak with me."

This time it took more than three seconds for him to reply. His brow furrowed, his mouth pursed. At last he said, "Madame Brudnoy, it took a struggle with my conscience to decide to answer your request. I confess that my first instinct was to ignore it, and remain aloof from you and everyone else in Moonbase until this crisis is settled."

"I think it's always best to discuss problems frankly, face-to-face."

His frown eased somewhat. "Yes, I agree. That is why I am speaking to you."

"What about our declaration of independence?"

If the question jolted him, Faure gave no indication of it. "Declaration of independence? Pah!" He snapped his fingers. "A transparent ploy to avoid complying with the nano-technology treaty."

"A right of every nation," Joanna retorted. "Just because we're on the Moon doesn't mean we don't have the same rights as any other group of people."

"You are not a nation," Faure countered. "Moonbase is a division of a corporation."

"Moonbase is a community of more than two thousand people. We have the right to be independent."

His cheeks flushed, Faure waved both hands indignantly. "But you are not a nation! Two thousand people do not make a nation! You can't even exist by yourselves without supplies from Earth. It is as if a group of people on an ocean liner declared themselves an independent nation. It is nonsense!"

"We are self-sufficient," Joanna insisted. "We produce our own food. We can exist on our own without any help from Earth.' That was stretching things, she knew, and yet a part of her mind marveled at the realization that the stretch was not all that much. Moonbase could exist without help from Earth.

Faure made a visible effort to calm himself. "Madame Brudnoy, you know and I know that this so-called declaration of independence is nothing more than the smoke screen, the camouflage to disguise the fact that you wish to continue using nanotechnology and evade the conditions of the treaty."

"But you intend to continue using nanotechnology once you've taken over Moonbase," Joanna said.

Once he heard her words, Faure's face went from red to white, as if someone had slapped him.

He took a deep breath, then said evenly, "What makes you think that?"

Smiling, Joanna replied, "Don't you think I have contacts inside Yamagata Corporation? Several of the board members of Masterson Corporation are also on Yamagata's board."

Faure sat in silence for several moments. Then he made a little shrug and admitted, "It is entirely possible that we will allow some work on nanomachines to continue, once we have taken over operation of Moonbase."

"Moonbase will continue to supply water to Nippon One," Joanna said flatly, not making a question of it.

Reluctantly, Faure nodded.

"And Moonbase will continue to manufacture spacecraft using nanomachines," she added.

"Only temporarily," Faure replied once he heard her words. "You have contracts with various international transport companies. The United Nations will see that those contractual obligations are fulfilled."

"Of course," said Joanna graciously. "And by the time all our backlog orders have been filled, the United Nations will find that nanomanufacturing can be quite profitable. And not harmful in the slightest. Right?"

Faure leaned tensely toward the camera. "Madame Brudnoy, the nanotechnology treaty exists because of the fears that nanomachines have created. Your own husband was killed by nanomachines, was he not?"

Joanna kept herself from flinching. I should have expected that, she told herself.

Without pausing, Faure went on, "Nanotechnology can produce insidious weapons, deadly weapons. Nanomachines can kill, as you well know. A mistake, an error, and runaway nanomachines could devour everything in their path, like those armies of ants in South America that devastate entire landscapes and leave nothing alive in their wake."

His moustache bristling with fervor, Faure continued, "We cannot have nanomachines on Earth! No matter what glorious benefits they promise, we cannot take the risk that they present to us."

"But we're not on the Earth. You could allow nanomanufacturing here on the Moon," said Joanna.

He replied, "I am willing to allow it on a temporary, experimental basis—under United Nations' control."

With sudden understanding, Joanna said, "Because Yamagata insisted on it. And if Yamagata didn't go along with you, then the Japanese government would oppose your takeover of Moonbase and you can't afford to have them against you."

She realized that that was the truth of it. If Japan opposed Faure's plans, a whole bloc of opposition would arise in the U.N.

"You are very perspicacious," Faure said. He leaned back in his chair, seemed to relax. "But the facts are that Japan supports my efforts and the Peacekeepers will be landing at Moonbase in less than twenty hours. Fait accompli!"

"And who's going to run Moonbase after the Peacekeepers land?"

Once Faure heard her question, he smiled like the Chesire cat. "Why, who else but specialists from Yamagata Corporation?"

Joanna could not have been more stunned if Faure had leaped across the quarter-million miles separating them and punched her. She simply sat in her armchair, mouth hanging open, while Faure smiled his widest at her.

TOUCHDOWN MINUS 17 HOURS 38 MINUTES

Dr Hector Montana was not known for his bedside manner. He was a brusque, no-nonsense physician who had spent most of his career dealing with factory workers, construction crews, and industrial accidents. He was a capable surgeon and, thanks to Moonbase's electronic communications systems, he could consult and even work with virtually any physician on Earth.

Until the war sprang up.

Now he scowled openly at the young couple sitting tensely before his desk. He was a slim, pinch-faced man with graying hair combed straight back off his low forehead. His skin was the color of sun-dried adobe. His profile looked as if it had been carved by an ancient Mayan: high cheekbones, prominent nose.

"Pregnant.' He made the word sound like an accusation.

"Yes," said Claire Rossi. "There's no doubt about it."

"I'm not an obstetrician."

"Yes, but we thought you should know."

O'Malley spoke up, "I want to make sure she gets the best medical attention possible."

"Then you should've taken some precautions beforehand," Dr Montana snapped. "We don't have facilities for this sort of thing here."

Nick bulled his shoulders forward slightly, matching the physician's frown with one of his own. "We don't need facilities, for God's sake. I just want to see that she gets the proper care."

"I can't even get in touch with other medical centers back on Earth," Montana grumbled. "We've been blacked out."

"Surely this emergency will be over with soon enough for me to go back Earthside," said Claire. As chief of the personnel department, she knew Moonbase's policy perfectly well. Pregnant women were shipped back Earthside before their pregnancies became so advanced that rocket flight was not recommended.

"And what if it isn't?" Montana snapped.

"Then you'll have to take care of her," O'Malley said, with more than a hint of belligerence in his voice. "You're a doctor, aren't you?"

"You want my considered medical advice? Abort it. Get rid of it now, to be on the safe side. There's no telling how long this stupid blockade is going to last."

"We can't!" O'Malley said.

"You're young enough to have a dozen babies. This one is bad timing, that's all."

"I won't," Claire said quietly.

"You're both Catholic, is that it?" Montana's voice softened slightly. "I am too. The Church won't-"

"We're not going to have an abortion," O'Malley said, his voice darkening. "And that's final."

Montana huffed at him. "Well, maybe the Peacekeepers will take over the base and send us all back home."

TOUCHDOWN MINUS 12 HOURS 22 MINUTES

Doug stood atop a house-sized boulder and watched the drivers park their tractors on the three unoccupied landing pads of the rocket port. The half-built Clippership that had been towed onto the fourth pad gleamed in the starlight.

Jinny Anson, recognizable by the bright rings of butter yellow on the arms of her bulky spacesuit, stood beside him.

"Okay," her voice said in his helmet earphones, "we clutter up the landing pads so they can't use 'em. But they can still put down on the crater floor just about anywhere they want to."

Doug nodded inside his helmet. Jinny was right. Alphonsus's floor was flat enough for a Clippership to set down. The ground was cracked with rilles, pockmarked with small craters and strewn with rocks, but there were plenty of open spaces where a good pilot could make a landing.

"All you're doing is forcing 'em to sit down a kilometer or so farther away from our main airlock," Anson went on. "What good's that going to do?"

"Maybe none," Doug admitted. "But I sure as hell don't intend to let them use our landing pads."

He sensed Anson shrugging inside her suit.

"Jinny, it's just about the only chance we've got, other than just folding up and surrendering."

"That damned Quebecer wants to turn the base over to Yamagata?" Anson asked for the fortieth time.

"That's what he told my mother."

"Son of a bitch.' She pronounced each word distinctly, with feeling.

"Come on, let's get inside," Doug said. "They're finished here and I want to see how far Zimmerman and Cardenas have gotten along."

The nanotech lab was a series of workshops set along one of the old Moonbase tunnels. The rooms were interconnected by airtight hatches and that entire section of corridor could be sealed off from the rest of the base, if necessary. Each workshop room and the corridor outside had powerful ultraviolet lamps running along their bare rock ceilings, capable of disabling any of the virus-sized nanomachines that might have inadvertently been released to float in the air. The floors and walls were strung with buried wires that could generate a polarizing current that would also deactivate any stray nanomachines.

These safety systems were turned on at the end of every working day, to guarantee that no nanomachines infected the rest of the base. The containment worked. Although nanomachines were assembled constantly for tasks as diverse as ferreting oxygen atoms out of the regolith and building spacecraft structures of pure diamond out of carbon dust from asteroids, there had been no runaway 'gray goo' of nanomachines devouring everything in their path, no plagues of nanobug diseases.

Over the years Professors Cardenas and Zimmerman and their assistants had developed nanomachines for medical uses. Moonbase employees regularly received nano injections to scrub plaque from their blood vessels and to augment their natural immune systems. In a closed environment such as the underground base, nanotherapy helped to prevent epidemics that might endanger the entire population. It was a standing joke that people returned from Moonbase healthier than they arrived. No one in Moonbase even had the sniffles, except for those few who were allergic to the ubiquitous lunar dust.

And the Cardenas/Zimmerman team was working on that.

Or had been, until the U.N. crisis erupted.

Doug went to Cardenas. Zimmerman would see no one; he had locked himself in his lab with orders that he could not, must not, would not be disturbed under any circumstances whatsoever.

"It's my fault," Kris Cardenas told Doug. "I teased Willi that afternoon you came to us in the university studio, told him he ought to figure out how to make a person invisible."

"That's what he's working on?"

Cardenas nodded.

"But what help is that going to be?"

She shrugged. "Leave him alone. While he's pushing down that line he'll probably come up with one or two other things that'll be really useful."

Doug started to object, but Cardenas added, "It won't do you any good to try to get him onto another track. He'll just bluster and roar and go right back to what he wants to do."

"I know," Doug admitted ruefully.

"Let me show you what we've accomplished," Cardenas said, leading Doug to the massive gray metal tubing of the high-voltage scanning probe microscope that stood at one end of the lab table.

The two scientists working at the table made room for them. Cardenas peered at the microscope's display screen briefly, made a small adjustment on a roller dial, then turned smiling to Doug.

"Take a look."

The display screen showed a swarm of dots surrounding a flat grayish thing. The gray material was shrinking rapidly. The dots seemed to be devouring it like a pack of scavengers tearing apart a bleeding carcass.

"We've revived an old idea," Cardenas said as he watched. "Something we were working on more than twenty years ago, back Earthside."

Slowly, Doug backed away from the screen and looked into her brilliant blue eyes. "Gobblers," he whispered.

"Right. This particular set is programmed to disassemble carbon-based molecules…" Her voice trailed off as she saw the expression on Doug's face and realized that it had been gobblers, from her own lab in San Jose, that had killed Doug's father up on Wodjohowitcz Pass.

"Oh!" she said, fingers flying to her lips.

Doug fought the memory. It had happened before he'd been born. He'd been eighteen when he finally discovered that his half-brother Greg had used gobbler nanomachines to murder Paul Stavenger. That's all in the past, Doug told himself. Greg's been dead for seven years and it's all over and there's nothing you or anybody else can do to change the past.

"It's all right," he said brusquely to Cardenas. "I was just… it just caught me unawares, that's all."

"I had forgotten," Cardenas said, her voice low, trembling slightly. "Twenty-five years ago…"

"It's all right," he repeated. Taking a deep breath, he tried to bury the past and concentrate on the present.

"By the time the Peacekeepers land, though, the Sun will be up and the nanomachines will go into estivation, won't they?"

"We can program a batch to work at high temperature."

"What about the UV?"

Cardenas nodded and leaned her butt on the edge of the work bench. "It's pretty intense in sunlight, yeah. But I think we can work around it."

"We don't want a set of nanobugs that can't be turned off," Doug warned.

She almost smiled. "Scared of the gray goo?"

"Aren't you?"

"Uh-huh.' She lowered her head a moment, thinking. "Look, when the ship lands, what actually touches the ground?"

"Four landing pads. They're about two meters in diameter and twenty, thirty centimeters thick."

"And made of diamond?"

Doug nodded. "Their surfaces and internal bracing are diamond. There're some hydraulic lines inside them."

"The hydraulics are oil-based?"

"As far as I know, yes. I could check with the manufacturing division to make sure."

"Okay," Cardenas said, walking slowly away from the electron microscope. Doug followed in step beside her.

"The ship lands, right?" she said, thinking out loud. "Its landing pads come down on top of our gobblers. Covers them up, so they're no longer in sunlight. And they're shielded from the UV."

"I get it. Then they can eat their way inside the landing pads and start taking the hydraulic system apart."

"You got it."

Doug broke into a grin, but it faded before it was truly started. "Only one problem, Kris."

"What's that?"

"What good's it going to do us to prevent their Clippership from leaving the Moon? We want to stop them from getting here."

TOUCHDOWN MINUS 11 HOURS 45 MINUTES

Zoltan Kadar sat bleary-eyed in the middle of his monitoring screens, almost in tears as he squinted at the drawing of the Farside observatory. A beautiful dream, he told himself. My crowning achievement. It would be called the Kadar Observatory some day.

But it's only a dream. I can't even get an observation satellite to survey the ground.

For more than three days and three sleepless nights Kadar had hounded Doug Stavenger, to no avail. Most of his calls were intercepted by Jinny Anson, who sternly told him not to bother Stavenger.

"He's got too much to do, Zoltan, to worry about your satellite shot."

Twice he actually got to Stavenger himself, by tracking down Doug's movements through the length and breadth -and depth—of Moonbase.

The first time, he accosted Stavenger as Doug was talking with the technicians in the control center. Doug listened patiently to Kadar's complaints, then gripped the astronomer's slim shoulder.

"Dr Kadar-"

"Professor Kadar!"

Doug almost laughed in his face. "Professor Kadar, I understand how upset and frustrated you must feel. But you're not the only one. All our outside activities have been shut down, except for our preparations for defending Moonbase against the Peacekeepers. I'm afraid your survey of Farside is just going to have to wait."

And with that, a solidly built, grim-faced black man took Kadar's other arm and firmly led him to the door. Kadar glared at him, and when that didn't work, he stared at the man's nametag on his shirt front.

"Mr Gordette," Kadar said with as much dignity as he could muster,'there is no need for you to leave your fingerprints on my arm."

Gordette released him. "Sorry," he muttered. "Just wanted to make sure you leave Doug alone. He's got a lot to do, you know."

"So I've been told."

Late that night Kadar actually got Stavenger on the phone. If I can't sleep, Kadar told himself, why should he?

But Stavenger didn't seem to be sleeping. His image came up immediately on the smart wall of Kadar's quarters. Stavenger was sitting at a desk in his own quarters, wide awake.

"Dr Kadar," Doug said as soon as he recognized his caller's face.

"I'm sorry to call so late-"

"It doesn't matter. I was just going over our inventories of supplies."

"My satellite is ready for launch," Kadar said. "All I need is your approval and-"

"With all due respect, Professor Kadar, there's no chance in hell of your getting your satellite launched until this crisis with the Peacekeepers is resolved."

"It's only one small rocket. They'll see that it's going into a lunar orbit."

"I'm not going to debate the point, Professor. No launch."

"You're standing in the way of science!"

Wearily, Doug replied, "Maybe I am. It can't be helped. If it's any consolation, there are a lot of other frustrated people in the base right now. We've got a whole troupe of ballet dancers here who can't return Earthside until this mess is resolved."

Ballet dancers did not assuage Kadar's feelings. But as he sat amidst his monitoring screens, admiring the drawings of what would someday be the Kadar Observatory on the far side of the Moon, he suddenly realized that frustrated ballet dancers might be more appreciative of his predicament than the management of Moonbase.

Ballet dancers. Kadar pulled himself up from his console chair and headed for his quarters. A shower, a shave, some clean clothes—if I must spend this crisis in frustration, perhaps there is a charming ballerina or two who can understand me and offer consolation.