These are the times that try men's souls… Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered…

Thomas Paine

DAY FIVE

It was hot, unbearably hot. Georges Faure hated to wear black, but for this occasion it was necessary. The steaming tropical heal was boiling the vast crowd standing in the sunshine like patient cattle, yet inside his suit of mourning Faure felt comfortable, almost cool. He wore an astronaut's undergarment, threaded with plastic capillaries that circulated cooling water over his body.

As he sat on the dais listening to the interminable eulogies, Faure's only worry was that perspiration was beginning to gather on his forehead. The Sri Lankan government had put up an awning of colorful silk to shade the VIPs from the blazing sun, of course, yet even with the cooling undergarment the broiling heat was making his unprotected head perspire.

As surreptitiously as possible, he mopped his sweating brow, hoping he would not look like a sodden mess when he got up to speak.

He kept his face an impassive mask, although he could feel rivulets of sweat running down his cheeks. It will appear ridiculous if I drip perspiration from my nose while I am speaking, he told himself. Again he pulled out his capacious handkerchief and wiped his face.

At last he heard the Sri Lankan prime minister say, "I present to you the secretary-general of the United Nations, Monsieur Georges Faure."

As he walked slowly to the teak podium, carefully hiding his limp as much as possible, Faure realized that it was the rebels at Moonbase who had inflicted this indignity on him. If not for them, he would be comfortably ensconced in his air-conditioned office in New York instead of attending the funeral services of an obscure Peacekeeper captain who was so inept that he killed himself with his own grenade.

He focused his mind on the hateful Moonbase renegades even as his eyes looked out on a sea of dark, solemn-eyed faces. The Sri Lankan government had made a media extravaganza of Captain Munasinghe's funeral. After decades of civil war, they desperately needed a hero, a martyr, whom every citizen could admire. Jagath Munasinghe, at best a mediocre officer in life, was being built into a international hero in death.

Thousands of solemn faces stared up at Faure. He kept his own face blank, suppressing the smile that wanted to break out at the thought of having the world's media focused on him. By his express order, this funeral service was being beamed to Moonbase, too.

Leaning on the teak podium, he began, "The cause of peace has seen many heroes, many men and women who have given their lives. Captain Jagath Munasinghe has joined their illustrious ranks…"

Before long, Faure was virtually snarling, "And why has this brilliant young officer met such an untimely death? Because a handful of renegades at Moonbase refuse to accept international law. Scientists and corporation billionaires want to live beyond the law in their secret base on the Moon. Captain Munasinghe was killed trying to enforce the law which they resist. They killed him,"

Doug watched Faure's performance from the bunk in his quarters, where his digital clock read 6:28 a.m. Even before Faure had completed his diatribe, Doug pressed the keypad at his bedside that activated the phone.

He started to ask for Jinny Anson, but heard himself say instead, "Edith Elgin, please."

He muted Faure's image on the smart wall. Edith's voice came through, but no picture.

"This is Edith Elgin," she said, as clearly as if she were signing off on a news report. At least I didn't wake her up, Doug thought.

"Doug Stavenger," said Doug. "Are you watching the funeral services?"

"Sure am. Faure's working himself to a stroke, looks like."

"He's blaming us for that Peacekeeper's death."

"What'd you expect? Munasinghe's handed him a great public relations club and Faure's going to beat you with it as hard as he can."

Feeling frustrated that he couldn't see her, Doug asked, "Well, what can we do about it?"

Edith immediately replied, "I've got the whole thing on a pair of chips."

"What?"

"I've checked both my cameras. They show what really happened."

Doug's surge of hope dampened quickly. "But the media have been ignoring us. Would they play your chips?"

Edith laughed. "Does a chimp eat bananas?"

"No, really," he said,'the media all seem to be on Faure's side."

Her voice grew more serious. "I'll take care of that."

"Can you?"

"If I can't, nobody can."

Despite himself, Doug had to smile at her self-confidence. Or was it just plain ego?

"Are you really a billionaire?" Edith asked.

"Me?"

"Faure said you're a billionaire. Is that true?"

With a puzzled blink, Doug replied, "I don't know. Maybe. I guess my mother is, certainly."

"Say, have you heard anything from her? Your mother, I mean?"

"No."

"Doesn't that worry you?"

Doug leaned back against his pillows. Suddenly he felt very tired of it all. "You know," he said to Edith, "I haven't even had the time to worry about her. But now that you mention it, yeah, I had thought she would've called by now."

For several heartbeats Edith did not reply. Then she said, her voice low, "I'm sorry I brought it up, Doug. You've got enough on your shoulders without me adding to it."

He felt himself smiling at her. "That's okay. I guess if you hang out with reporters you've got to expect troubles."

She laughed. "That's it. Blame the media."

DAY SIX

Edith was surprised at how difficult it was to make contact with her boss at Global News in Atlanta. She had beamed the contents of her camera chips to headquarters, then spent the whole day trying to get through to the programming department to make certain they had received it okay.

Now it was past midnight, and still the smart wall display read: YOUR CALL HAS NOT BEEN ACCEPTED.

"Shee-it," she muttered in her childhood Texas accent, sitting tensely in the spindly desk chair of the one-room apartment the Moonbase people had given her.

Doug had told her that the commsats were blacked out, but Global should be able to take a message directed straight at their rooftop antennas. Yet her call did not go through.

"Did they take my broadcast chip?" she asked herself, wondering for the first time if Global would accept anything she sent from Moonbase.

She sank back in her chair, thinking hard. It was well past midnight at Moonbase. A few stabs at the keyboard on her desk brought up the information that it was 7:23 p.m. in Atlanta.

Manny'll be home, knocking back his first cocktail of the evening, she thought. Good!

But how to get him, if neither the commsats nor Global's private antennas were taking calls from the Moon?

She hated to call Doug and admit she couldn't get through on her own, especially since the guy was probably asleep at this time of night. Yet she couldn't think of anything else to do.

Doug's face popped up on her smart wall immediately. He was wide awake, still dressed, at his desk.

He listened to her problem, then showed her how to route calls through Kiribati. Edith thanked him, keeping her face serious, strictly business. Yet she found herself feeling glad that he wasn't in bed with someone else.

It took a few minutes more, but the wait was worth it once she saw Manny's look of shock when he recognized who was calling him.

"Edie! You're in Kiribati?"

"No, I'm still at Moonbase. How come y'all aren't taking calls from here?"

In the three seconds it took for his reply to reach her, Manny's surprised expression knitted into a frown. "That's not my doing, kiddo. If it were up to me I'd keep a special link open to you twenty-four hours a day."

"Well, put your drink down and get on it, then," Edith said sternly.

"We're getting everything you send," he said, looking worried, guilty. "We're just not allowed to acknowledge receiving your transmissions."

"Not allowed? By who?"

For three seconds she waited, and got, "Whom."

"Don't smart-ass me, Manny. Who's not allowing what?"

Manny took a long pull from the old-fashioned glass he was holding before replying. "Orders from the very top," he said.

"McGrath himself?"

"That's right. He wants us to cooperate in every way we can with the U.N."

"You mean he won't run the stuff I sent? Eyewitness report of the Peacekeeper's death?"

Manny shrugged. "I'm trying to get it past the suits upstairs, Edith. Honest I am."

"Honestly," she muttered.

"Honestly," he said, three seconds later.

"This is a weird situation," Edith said.

"Tell me about it."

For more than twenty-four tense hours, Joanna feared that the Peacekeepers were going to keep her and Lev in Corsica. When their Clippership landed at the Peacekeeper base, the two of them were shuffled through several layers of bureaucracy, including the most thorough medical examinations they had undergone in years.

"You will need a few days to adjust to terrestrial gravity," the chief doctor told her and her husband, from behind his metal desk.

In truth, Joanna did feel the sullen weight of Earth more than she had expected. She had spent more time on the Moon than on Earth for a quarter-century now, but she always exercised every day while in Moonbase and never considered her returns to Earth as health-threatening.

"I'll be fully adjusted in another few hours," Joanna said. She glanced at Lev, who seemed blithely unaffected by the six-fold increase in gravity.

The doctor shook his head good-naturedly. "No, I am afraid it will take several days, at least."

He was a smiling, plump, golden-skinned Chinese with many chins and rolls of fat showing at the open-necked collar of his short-sleeved Peacekeeper tunic. Joanna thought he might have been the model for statues of the happy Buddha that she had seen in gift shops. He spoke with a cultivated British accent, which sounded very strange coming from his round, almond-eyed Chinese face.

Joanna smiled back at him, coldly. "Doctor, have you found anything in the examinations your people have given us to indicate a health problem?"

"No," he said, drawing the word out. "But still the effects of increased gravity must be taken into account."

Sweetening her smile, Joanna asked, "You're waiting for the results of our blood tests, aren't you? You're stalling for time until you learn whether or not there are nanomachines in our blood streams."

The doctor's fat-enfolded eyes widened for just a heartbeat. Then he folded his hands across his ample belly and admitted, "Just so. We must be extremely careful about allowing nanomachines into the terrestrial environment."

Satisfied, Joanna replied, "We're not harboring nanomachines."

"We are not Trojan horses," Brudnoy chipped in.

"But you have both undergone nanotherapy on the Moon, haven't you?" the doctor asked.

"No," Brudnoy replied simply. "I've never had to, although I admit as I get older the temptation grows stronger."

"It does?"

Scratching at his beard, the Russian explained, "Each morning brings a new ache. My eyesight isn't what it used to be. My prostate is growing."

"That is natural," said the doctor.

"Yes, but my nanotech friends tell me that they could bring my eyesight back to twenty-twenty and shrink my prostate back to normal and strengthen my poor old muscles, with nanomachines."

Joanna looked at her husband with new eyes. Lev had never complained, she had never had an inkling that he felt his years. In bed he was as vigorous as men half his age. But if he feels old and creaky on the Moon, he must be in agony now, here. Yet he won't show it, not even to me.

She reached out and grasped his hand. He looked surprised, then grinned sheepishly at her.

The doctor was oblivious to their byplay. He said to Joanna, "But you, Mrs Brudnoy, you have used nanomachines, haven't you?"

Joanna nodded easily. "Many times. For cosmetic reasons, mainly, although I've had them scrub plaque from my arteries more than once."

"You see?" the doctor said, as if she had just confessed to a crime. "We cannot take the risk of having nanomachines infect our terrestrial environment."

"Doctor, I'm surprised to hear such nonsense from an educated man," Joanna said.

"Nonsense?"

"Of course it's nonsense. To begin with, there are no nanomachines in me. I underwent therapy and then the machines were flushed out, quite naturally."

"How can you be sure-"

"They know the number of machines they put in," Brudnoy explained, "and they count the number that come out. It's quite simple."

"But they could multiply inside the body, couldn't they?"

"Only if they're programmed to do so," said Brudnoy.

Before the doctor could reply, Joanna went on, "Second, and more important, is that nanomachines are machines. They are not alive. They cannot mutate and change. What if there were a few nanomachines left in my bloodstream? What harm could they do, even if they got loose into your environment?"

"That depends on what they were designed to do, I should think."

"Yes.' Joanna's smile returned. "If a few got into you, for example, they might remove some of the fat you've accumulated."

For an instant she did not know how the doctor would respond. He stared at her as he digested her words. Then his round pudgy face opened into a hearty laughter.

"Nanomachines could make me slim!" he gasped. "I could eat whatever I like and still become thin!"

Joanna leaned back in the stiff metal chair, thinking that she had won the man over.

But his laughter died away. "All this may be very true, but suppose you are carrying nanomachines that are harmful?"

"Harmful?"

Leaning his heavy forearms on his desk, the doctor said, "You are assuming that the specialists who treated you with nanomachines are benign people. Suppose they are not? Suppose they put into you nanomachines that can…' he fished for an appropriate subject.

"Gobble up plastics?" Brudnoy suggested.

Joanna scowled at her husband.

"Destroy plastics," the doctor agreed. "Or invade computers and eat up their memory drives. Or destroy red blood cells in humans. Or attack the human immune system. Or-"

"Aren't you being melodramatic?" Joanna said, almost sneering at the man.

"This is what we fear," said the doctor. "You may think it is not important, but we cannot take such a risk."

"I told you before," Brudnoy said, "we are not Trojan horses. Nor Frankenstein monsters."

"How do you know?" the doctor shot back. "You may have been infected without your knowledge."

"Nonsense!" Joanna spat.

"That is a risk we will not take," the doctor repeated firmly.

"Do you honestly believe that anyone at Moonbase would inject us with nanobugs that would be dangerous to Earth? Why would they do something like that? What possible reason could there be?"

The doctor folded his hands over his middle again. "Mrs Brudnoy, the chances of such an event are minuscule, I admit. But the consequences of such an event—no matter how unlikely it may be—would be catastrophic."

Joanna looked at Brudnoy, who shrugged helplessly.

"Those are my orders," the doctor said. "You are to be held here until the results of your blood tests come in."

"Where are the tests being done?" Joanna asked.

"There are very few facilities with the necessary equipment and personnel who are capable of performing such tests."

"Of course," said Brudnoy. "You've closed all the nano-technology facilities."

"Where are the tests being done?" Joanna insisted.

"It is very difficult to analyze blood samples for nano-machines."

"Where?"

The doctor hesitated, then said, "At the University of Tokyo."

"At a lab funded by Yamagata Corporation, I imagine," Brudnoy said.

Joanna was too furious to speak.

DAY SEVEN

"This is Edie Elgin, speaking to you from Moonbase."

Edith smiled into the minicam being held by one of the technicians from the defunct Lunar University. Doug Stavenger stood beside the camera woman, smiling encouragement to Edith.

She looked bright and beautiful in a close-fitting sheath of cardinal red. Doug had appropriated his mother's wardrobe, the most extensive in Moonbase, hoping that she would understand and not be too angry when she found out. Edith had to do some fast alterations, and now she prayed that the dress would hold together without popping one of her hastily-sewn seams.

"Behind me you can see Moonbase's extensive farm," she went on, thinking that maybe a popped seam would improve her ratings. If the shitfaced suits back in Atlanta put her report on the network at all.

"More than five hundred acres have been carved out of the lunar rock," she said, reading the script she and Doug Stavenger had put together. The words appeared on the flat display screen attached to the minicam just above its lens.

"Here, deep underground, the agricultural specialists of Moonbase grow the food that feeds the two thousand, four hundred and seventy-six men and women who live at Moonbase. This corner of the farm," she started walking toward a row of dwarf trees, "is the citrus arbor, where fresh oranges, grapefruit, lemon and limes are growing…"

Edith described the hydroponics trays, bending down to show how the plant roots reached down not into soil, but into liquid nutrients that were carefully matched to each plant's needs. She walked down one of the long rows, pointing out soybeans, legumes, grains and leafy vegetables.

"Over in that enclosed area," she pointed, "biologists are experimenting with growing plants in an atmosphere that is higher in carbon dioxide than normal. The scientists need to wear breathing masks to work in there."

Edith explained the full-spectrum lighting strips that ran along the farm's high ceiling. "This artificial sunlight is on twenty-four hours a day. Moonbase's farm never knows night, and its crop yield is more than five times the yield from a similar acreage on Earth."

She showed the flower bed that Lev Brudnoy had started years ago in lunar soil. And the pens of rabbits and chickens that provided Moonbase's meat. She did not mention the need for nitrogen, which had been imported from Earth but now would have to be mined from asteroids orbiting near the Earth-Moon system, just as the carbon for building the diamond Clipperships was mined.

"Before the current crisis erupted," Edith went on, walking smoothly to an area where two large titanium tanks stood empty, with holes where piping should be attached,'this area was going to be used for an experimental aquaculture section. The idea was to use some of Moonbase's precious water to grow fish, frogs and alga. Aquaculture can yield more protein per input of energy than even Moonbase's advanced hydroponic farming can, and the water can be recycled almost completely."

Her smile faded, her face grew serious. "Unfortunately, the aquaculture project has been put on hold while Moonbase's leaders and the political leadership of the United Nations discuss independence for Moonbase."

The camera panned slowly across the farm's rows of hydroponics tanks as Edith continued:

"Moonbase can feed itself. Even though no spacecraft has been allowed to land here for a week—except for the Peacekeeper troops who attempted to seize Moonbase—the men and women of this community on the Moon are self-sufficient. The question before the world's leaders now is: Will Moonbase's determination to be free be allowed to flower into true independence?"

The camera stopped on Brudnoy's little flower bed.

"This is Edie Elgin, at Moonbase."

"We're out," said the camera woman, lowering the minicam and its awkward prompter screen.

"Good work," Doug said, reaching out to shake Edith's hand.

"And I didn't mention nanomachines once, did I?" Edith said, grinning back at him.

"You did a great job," Doug said.

Edith's grin faded. "Now I've got to get the suits to run the damned thing."

Still clutching her hand, Doug started toward the airtight hatch that led out of the farm. "I've got an idea about that."

"Oh?"

"You talk to Atlanta, I'm going to talk to Kiribati."

Tamara Bonai was on the rooftop of the Tarawa Kiribati Hotel and Casino when Doug's call came through. As chairwoman of the board of the Kiribati Corporation, her responsibilities to her people were many and weighty. She knew that the Americans and Europeans regarded her people as childish islanders and regarded her as little more than a figurehead, an attractive front for the real power behind the corporation: Masterson Aerospace and its board chairman, Ibrahim al-Rashid.

Until the Moonbase crisis rose up like a sudden typhoon, Bonai had been content to be regarded as a figurehead. Kiribati Corporation was making good profits from its ownership of Moonbase, where the diamond Clipperships were manufactured for sale all over the world, and from its hotels and casinos, scattered across a dozen islands in the broad Pacific. A strange combination, nanomanufacturing on the Moon and resort hotels on tropical islands, but no stranger than other corporations that took their profits wherever they could find them.

Her father had bequeathed the corporate responsibilities to her. The old man had spent as many years as he could stand behind a desk; finally he had declared his early retirement and gone off to fish and play with his grandchildren. Tamara, the youngest of his five daughters and the only one still unmarried, inherited his desk.

With it came gradually building pressure from the United Nations to force Kiribati to sign the nanotech treaty. Knowing that it would mean the death of Moonbase, Bonai resisted as long as she could, looking to Masterson and the other international corporations for help. They gave none. She was especially surprised, even hurt, that Rashid stayed aloof from the struggle with the U.N. There were raging arguments in the Masterson Corporation board of directors. Joanna Brudnoy fought for Moonbase's survival. But Rashid insisted that the nanotech treaty was unavoidable; sooner or later they would have to obey it.

Now Moonbase had defied Faure and the Peacekeepers. They had declared their independence, a move that Bonai supported with all her heart.

Is it because of Doug that I want Moonbase to win? she asked herself. She had never seen Douglas Stavenger in the flesh; they had never been closer than the Moon's distance since they'd first met. Their only contact had been through videophones or virtual reality links. Yet she felt that Doug was important to her; she could fall in love with him some day.

She sat at a table near the railing that edged the roof and looked out at the sparkling ocean and the surf breaking on the reef beyond the island's white sand beach. One of the hotel's small army of assistant managers brought a phone to her and placed it softly on the table.

"Mr Stavenger is calling from Moonbase," the young man said.

Bonai thanked him and activated the phone with the touch of a manicured finger. Doug's earnest, handsome face filled the tiny screen as she worked the receiver plug into her right ear.

"Tamara, did you look at the video we beamed down to you a couple of hours ago?" Doug asked immediately.

"Yes. The Peacekeeper officer killed himself, didn't he?"

She glanced out at the ocean again as she waited for his response, thinking that he never called except on business. We have no personal relationship, she told herself. It's never even entered his mind.

"Global News Network is having difficulty deciding whether they want to air it not," Doug said.

"I understand that they are leaning over backwards to support Faure," Bonai replied, "although I don't see what good it will do them."

A boy was spearfishing for octopus out in the shallows by the reef, she saw. He lunged and pulled a pulpy tangle of tentacles out of the water on the end of his spear. It writhed helplessly, no larger than his hand. He bit its head and the writhing immediately stopped. She wished she could be out there too, having fun. With Doug.

"We're talking to the head of the network and trying to make a case for fairness, balanced reporting and all that," Doug said. Without waiting for her to reply, he added, In the meantime, it occurred to me that Kiribati might broadcast the video in your hotels—maybe even bounce it off your commsats so the rest of the Pacific nations can see it."

She frowned slightly. "But isn't the video the property of Global News? Wouldn't our airing it cause copyright problems? To say nothing of the U.N.'s reaction."

This time she watched Doug's face as she waited. He looked so earnest, so determined. "Yes, it probably would cause a flap. But we've got to show the world what really happened here!"

"Ah," she said, understanding.

Doug was continuing, "We need air time, Tamara! We need to tell the world that we've declared independence and we're serious about it and we didn't kill that Peacekeeper captain. Especially in the United States, we need to get our side of the story to the people."

"And this will force the issue. I see."

For nearly three seconds she waited. Then Doug asked, "Will you do it for us, Tamara? Will you help us?"

"On one condition," she replied.

She enjoyed watching his face turn perplexed.

"One condition? What is it?"

"That after all this is over you come here to Tarawa and go fishing with me."

He smiled at her once he heard her words. "You've got a deal!" Doug said fervently.

DAY EIGHT

"This is intolerable!" Joanna was raging. "We've been kept in quarantine for three days now!"

The image of the U.N. flunkie on her phone screen seemed serenely unperturbed, as bland and inflexible as a wax dummy.

"I'm terribly sorry, Mrs Brudnoy," he said in an infuriatingly soft voice, "but the quarantine is for your own safety. You have no idea how strongly public opinion feels about the killing of Captain Munasinghe. If you were allowed out without our protection, it could be quite dangerous for you."

Joanna glanced up from the screen to her husband, stretched out on the couch across the room. Lev knows how to accept imprisonment, she thought. It must be in his Russian genes.

But to the image in the phone screen she said, "Now look. I'm perfectly capable of arranging my own security. I could have a small army of bodyguards here in Corsica in a few hours if you'd allow me to make a phone call back to my corporate headquarters in Savannah."

"Aren't you comfortable in your quarters?" the bureaucrat asked. "Our instructions were to see that you had the very best suite-"

"The best suite in your jail!" Joanna spat.

"Really, Mrs Brudnoy

"Your damned medical tests have shown we're not infested with nanobugs. I don't care what your so-called security risks are. I want to get out of here!"

"I'm afraid—" The bureaucrat's vapid expression suddenly changed. He blinked several times and a small knot of anxiety appeared between his brows. "One moment, please."

The phone screen went blank.

Joanna wanted to scream. She looked over at her husband. "Lev, how can you just lie there?"

"I am planning our escape," he said, quite seriously. "All we need is a tunneling machine."

Before Joanna could reply the screen chimed and Georges Faure's face appeared, scowling like a miniature thundercloud.

The newscast from Kiribati came through while Faure was in his office discussing economic controls over international air traffic. He did not have the luxury, then, of demolishing the furniture or any other way of venting his fury.

He dismissed his underlings and watched the newscast alone, his anger and blood pressure rising with each second. There was Captain Munasinghe, screaming uselessly at his troops as they ingloriously ran away from Moonbase's garage. There was Munasinghe, obviously in a fit of hysteria, fumbling with a grenade and charging through the wide-open airlock. And there was Munasinghe, killed by his own grenade.

Idiots! Faure fumed silently. Who allowed this to happen?

He banged a chubby fist on his phone console and demanded to be put through to Edan McGrath, owner of Global News. But even before the electronics could make the connection he cancelled the call.

It will do no good, Faure told himself. The cat has escaped the sack. Whether or not McGrath has gone back on his promise to me no longer matters. Neither of us can put the cat back inside now.

Yet he made a mental note to work more closely with the New Morality zealots in Washington who wanted to put more limits on the news media.

Breathing deeply in a vain attempt to calm himself, Faure put through a call to Corsica, instead of Atlanta.

By the time Joanna Brudnoy's surprised face appeared on his desktop phone screen, Faure had almost regained his self-composure.

"Madame Brudnoy," he said as pleasantly as he could manage.

"Mr Faure," she snapped back. Obviously she was not happy at being detained in Corsica.

"It has come to my attention that you wish to return to your home," Faure said.

Joanna cocked a brow at him. "I didn't come back to Earth to sit in a Corsican jail cell, no matter how nicely furnished it may be."

"I quite understand," said Faure, "and I agree. Your detention has been a sad error on the part of certain over-anxious members of my staff. I apologize most humbly."

Joanna looked totally unconvinced.

Faure went on, "I am giving orders this instant that you are to be released and provided transportation for whatever destination you wish."

Warily, Joanna replied, "We've been given to understand that we'll need some hefty security because of public resentment over the Peacekeeper's death."

Faure made himself nod reluctantly. "Alas, that may be true, Madame."

"If you don't mind," said Joanna, "I'd rather provide my own security. And my own transport, too."

"Of course! Whatever you wish."

The woman looked suspicious. Faure made himself smile at her as he thought, With a bit of luck, some fanatic will assassinate her.

Joanna mumbled her thanks to Faure and broke the phone link. Looking up from the screen, she saw that Lev was already on his feet.

"We're free to leave," she said, not quite believing it.

Lev scratched at his beard. "Something's changed Faure's mind. I wonder what it was?"

Joanna had no answer.

"Do you think Rashid got to him, at last?"

With an angry shake of her head, Joanna replied, "No. I think Rashid was very happy to keep us bottled up here. I think he's going to be badly shaken up when we arrive in Savannah. At least, I intend to shake the little rat as hard as I can."

DAY TEN

He hasn't been alone for more than five minutes, the mercenary grumbled to himself. I don't mind taking him out in front of witnesses if I have to, but it'd be better to get him alone, make it look like an accident or something natural, like a heart attack.

He almost laughed to himself. Heart attack. The kid's twenty-five years old and healthy as a horse. It's going to have to be an accident.

Plenty of places for an accident to happen, he reasoned. Might have to take out a whole lot of people, though. Knock out the air pumps or rig an explosion in one of the labs.

He hasn't gone out on the surface since this thing started. It'd be easy to get him when he's in a spacesuit. Or maybe in the airlock. Christ, I'm starting to grasp at straws! Why's it so fucking tough, knocking off one guy?

Because you don't want to do it, he answered himself. Because you really admire the kid. He's everything you could've been if you'd been born different.

Yeah, sure. And I could fly if I had wings. The facts of the matter are that you've been assigned to decapitate the leadership here and this Stavenger kid is the leadership. Sooner or later the Peacekeepers are going to come back in force and either take this base or flatten it. If you haven't done your job by then you're dead. Either you get killed in the battle or they drag you back to headquarters, a failure. And you know what that means. Better to get yourself killed trying to do your job.

He tried to calm himself and think his problem through. The only time Stavenger's alone inside the base here is when he sleeps. And he hasn't been doing much sleeping, the past ten days. Conferences all the time. He's always got a gaggle of people around him.

Maybe tonight, though. He's got to sleep sometime. Maybe I'll walk him to his quarters and do him there and get it the hell over with.

"All right," Doug said, standing on a table in The Cave. "This your meeting. Let's hear what you have to say."

Almost the entire population of Moonbase was jammed into The Cave. Only a skeleton crew was left on duty at the monitoring center, and they were piped into this meeting through the base intercom. The dinner shifts were finished. The other tables and chairs had been pushed against the far wall so everyone could gather into the space. From his vantage atop the table, Doug saw their faces focused squarely on him. They were standing shoulder-to-shoulder; the only empty spots on the floor of the big cafeteria were the little squares of grass.

Edith Elgin, now in a Moonbase-issue white coverall, stood off to one side, where she had set up both her minicams on tripods to record the meeting.

Jinny Anson was standing in the front row at Doug's feet. She asked, "Well, are we independent or not?"

The acoustics in The Cave were good enough so that she didn't need amplification.

Doug answered, There's been no confirmation of our declaration of independence from the U.N. or any recognition by any country on Earth."

"Great," someone sneered.

"Physically, though," Doug went on, "we're showing that we can exist independently of supplies from Earth. The U.N. hasn't allowed a flight here since the Peacekeeper mission took off. We're under siege."

"Big deal.'.

"Wait a minute," one of the women asked. "You mean we can't go back Earthside if we want to?"

"I don't know," Doug said. "I'm sure we could arrange with Faure for transport to take people back Earthside, if there're enough who want to leave to make a flight necessary."

"What about us?" asked the manager of the Canadian dance troupe.

Doug lifted his hands in a gesture of helplessness. "Until we can negotiate your return Earthside, you'll have to remain here as our guests, I'm afraid."

"But we have contractual obligations! Dates in a dozen cities!"

"I can let you call Faure yourself, or your government in Ottawa," Doug suggested. "Unfortunately, no one is returning our calls."

"I don't want to be stuck here forever!" another voice called out.

"It won't be forever," Doug said, with a grin. "It'll just seem that long."

"My son's birthday is next week."

Doug made a can't be helped shrug.

"How soon can I launch my survey satellite to the Farside?" asked Zoltan Kadar. He had pushed his way to the front row, Doug noticed.

"That's a good question," Doug replied, stalling for time to think. "We'll have to work it out with the logistics program, to see if your launch will use any supplies that we might want to hold onto, in case this siege goes on for a while."

"All I need is rocket propellant and some electricity," Kadar shot back.

His rocket would be propelled by powdered aluminum and liquid oxygen, both extracted from the regolith and both in plentiful supply, Doug knew.

"We'll see," he said to Kadar.

"What're Lev and Joanna doing?" a man's voice asked from the crowd.

They went Earthside to negotiate face-to-face with Faure and the rest of the U.N. leadership," Doug said.

"Have they met with Faure yet?"

"Not yet. They were detained at the Peacekeeper base in Corsica for a couple of days, but they're back in Savannah now. She should be meeting with Faure in a few days, at most, I guess."

"How is this thing going to be settled? Are we going to be an independent nation or will the U.N. take us over?"

"It won't be the U.N.," Doug said. "It's starting to look as if Yamagata is really behind this whole business. If we lose, then it'll be Yamagata Corporation that takes over Moonbase."

"You mean this whole thing is a fight between corporations?"

"No," Doug snapped. "That is not what I mean. This crisis is a fight between our right to live and work the way we want to, and a power grab by the U.N. and/or Yamagata Corporation. The question is: Do you want to keep on living and working the way you have been, or do you want to be shipped back Earthside without a job?"

Someone said, "But if Yamagata's going to take over the base-"

"They'll staff it with their own people," another voice countered. "Yamagata's not going to keep us, that's for sure."

"What the hell can we do?"

Jinny Anson turned her back to Doug, to face the crowd. I'll tell you what we can do. Fuck 'em! We don't have to ask the U.N. for independence. We are independent! We can live here indefinitely. And if we have to expand the farm or build more solar cells outside, we can do that! We don't need those fuckers! We're free!"

The crowd roared, but from Doug's vantage atop the table it seemed that almost half the people in The Cave were roaring in protest against Anson's outburst.

"Okay, okay," Doug said, waving his hands to quiet them down. "I've got to admit it, Jinny, I agree with you about ninety-five percent."

"Only ninety-five?" She planted her fists on her hips defiantly.

"Hey, I wanna get back home!" a man hollered. "I don't intend to spend the rest of my life here."

"Me neither."

"Listen," Doug said. "For the time being, nobody's leaving. We're in a state of siege, looks like."

"For how long?"

"Until this thing gets settled, one way or the other," Doug answered.

"Or until the Peacekeepers come back with more troops," came a voice from the rear.

Doug conceded the point with a nod, thinking that if he were pushed far enough, Faure might destroy Moonbase rather than admit defeat.

"Okay," Doug said, loud enough to bounce his voice off The Cave's back wall. "We're going to have to act as if we really are independent. Jinny's right about that. As long as we're under siege, nobody can leave, so we might as well go about our work and show Faure and the rest of those flatlanders that we can get along without them."

"Then I can launch my rocket?" Kadar asked.

"We'll look into it."

"But I still wanna get home!" a voice wailed.

"Once this matter is settled," Doug told them, "anyone who wants to leave Moonbase will be free to do so. And anyone who wants to stay here permanently and become a real Lunatic, you'll be free to do that, too."

They asked questions and gave opinions and griped and argued among themselves for more than another hour. As Doug watched and listened, he realized that very few of these men and women had ever thought about remaining at Moonbase indefinitely. They were all contract workers, even Jinny Anson, accustomed to working on the Moon for a fixed period of time, then returning to Earth, to home.

Of all the people here, he realized, only Zimmerman and Kris Cardenas and her husband have consciously decided to live in Moonbase permanently. Maybe Jinny, he conceded. Her marriage had broken up because she spent so much time at Moonbase while her husband stayed Earthside.

And me. If I have to go back Earthside with these nanobugs in me, some crackpot nanoluddite will kill me, sooner or later. That's the sweet part of religion, Doug thought, you can be as fanatical as you want in the name of God.

The mercenary hung at the rear of the crowd, wondering how long these people could go around the same mulberry bush. Then Kadar climbed up on the table beside Doug and began telling them all, in elaborate detail, how wonderful the Farside astronomical observatory was going to be and how important it was to the future of the human race.

People started to drift out of The Cave, most of them still talking among themselves as Kadar droned on, unperturbed. As if talk's going to do any good, the mercenary thought. They've been talking for damned near four hours with nothing to show for it but a bunch of sore throats.

He watched Doug climb down stiffly from his perch on the table. Okay, he told himself, Doug's going to go back to his quarters now. Christ, it's after midnight. Okay, just tail along behind him and when he gets to his quarters, invite yourself in and get the job done.

DAY ELEVEN

"It's past midnight," Claire Rossi said tiredly as she trudged along the corridor that led from The Cave to her quarters. Nick O'Malley, at her side, towered over her like a redheaded bodyguard.

He nodded. "I've got the early shift tomorrow. Gotta be up and moving by six a.m."

She smiled up at him. "You can sleep in my place. It's closer."

He smiled back. "How could I refuse?"

But once they were snuggled in her bunk together, Claire whispered in the darkness, "Maybe I should get an abortion."

She felt the shock that went through him. "Abortion? Why? You can't! I don't want you to."

Feeling more miserable with each word, Claire said, "With all this going on, all this uncertainty… and if there should be any complications…"

He touched her bare shoulder tenderly. "You feel okay, don't you? There's nothing wrong, is there?"

"No," she said, "I feel fine."

"Then what's this talk about abortion? I don't like it."

"It's just…' She couldn't put the words together.

"Just what? This siege thing? Don't let that frighten you. Even if we have to go back Earthside we still have employment contracts. Masterson Corporation'll have to honor our contracts. We'll have our jobs."

"Suppose there's fighting?"

"How could there be?" he said. "We don't have anything to fight with."

"But Doug said Yamagata wants to take over the base."

He propped himself on one elbow and looked down at her. "And what's that got to do with it? We'd have to go back Earthside anyway, now that you're pregnant."

'I'd have to go back," Claire said. "I'm the one who's pregnant."

"Well, I'd have to go back with you, wouldn't I?"

"Why? We're not married. You're not under any obligation."

For a moment he was silent, then Nick chuckled softly in the darkness. "So that's it, then. You're worried that I won't make an honest woman of you."

"I never tried to-"

He smothered her lips with a kiss. "Listen to me, Claire darling. I love you. I love our baby, too. I'm going to marry you… if you'll have me."

She wrapped her bare arms around his neck and pulled him down to her. "I love you, Nick. I'm mad about you."

After a few moments he caught his breath and said, "So there'll be no more talk of abortion, right?"

"Right."

He fell silent for several heartbeats. Then he murmured, "I wonder if there's anybody here in Moonbase who can perform a wedding?"

Doug sat on the table's edge up at the front of the cafeteria until even Kadar ran out of steam. Only a handful of people were still in The Cave. Most had left long ago.

Edith was still by her minicams, recording every word of Kadar's monologue. Doug walked slowly over to her as the astronomer at last climbed down from the table and headed for the double doors to the corridor.

"You're a glutton for punishment," Doug said as she clicked off the two cameras.

Edith grinned. "He seemed to enjoy being recorded. He played to the camera for the last half-hour or so."

"Is any of that stuff useful to you?"

She started to dismount the minicams. "Maybe," she answered over her shoulder. "A couple of sound bites, add a few clips of the artist's renderings of what the Farside base will look like."

"Artist's renderings?"

"You do have drawings of the facility, don't you? Architect's sketches?"

"Computer graphics."

"Fine," said Edith. "Perfect."

Doug helped her to collapse the tripods, then hefted them both in one hand.

"I borrowed those from your photo lab," Edith said.

"Oh. I thought you smuggled them into the base beneath your Peacekeeper's uniform."

She gave him a searching look. "For a guy who's staring disaster in the face, you're pretty chipper."

"Must be the company," Doug said.

He walked with her, still gripping the folded tripods, toward the double doors. The Cave was empty now, except for them and Bam Gordette lingering by the doors.

"Now which way is the photo lab?" Edith asked. "I still get a little lost in these tunnels."

"Corridors," Doug corrected. "We call them corridors. And I'll take these back to the photo lab. No need for you to walk all the way there; it's 'way past your own quarters."

"You mean that teeny little monk's cell you gave me?"

"It's as spacious and luxurious as any compartment in Moonbase, almost."

I'll bet your quarters are bigger."

Doug felt his cheeks coloring. "Well, yeah, but I'm a permanent resident-"

"And the big cheese."

"Your quarters are just as good as any part-timer's. Better than most, in fact."

"Really?"

She's teasing me, Doug realized. And I'm enjoying it.

Gordette held one of the doors open for them and they passed out into the corridor.

"Thanks, Bam," Doug said.

Gordette nodded without saying a word. Doug walked along the corridor with Edith, toward her room, and forgot about him and everyone else.

"Tell me about the nanobugs," Edith said. The corridor lights were turned down to their overnight level. It made the bare stone walls seem somehow softer, less austere.

"The ones we used to scare off the Peacekeepers?"

"No. The ones in your body."

Doug looked into her bright green eyes. She's a news reporter, he reminded himself. Her interest is in a story, not in you as a person.

"I took a really bad radiation dose, about eight years ago. Got caught out in the open during a solar flare. My mother brought Professor Zimmerman up here, and Kris Cardenas, too. But Zimmerman was the one who pumped me full of nanobugs."

"They saved your life."

"More than once," Doug said.

"And they're still in your body?"

He nodded. "Zimmerman turned me into a walking experiment. The bugs he put in me are programmed to protect my cells against infection or any other kind of damage."

"And they just stay inside you? Do they reproduce?"

"According to Zimmerman, they rebuild one another when they wear down or become damaged themselves."

"Can you feel them inside you?" Edith asked, grimacing at the thought.

Doug laughed. "No more than you can feel your white blood corpuscles or your alveoli."

"My what?"

"The air sacs in your lungs," Doug said. "Here's your door."

"The Moonbase Hilton," Edith said.

"Is it really that bad?"

She tapped out her combination on the electronic lock. "See for yourself," she said, sliding the door back and motioning him into the room with a sweeping gesture.

Doug propped the tripods on the wall outside the door and stepped into Edith's quarters. It was a standard compartment, roughly ten square meters, maybe a little more. A bunk with built-in dresser drawers, a desk and chair, a sling chair made of lunar plastic, a table that folded into the wall with two stools beneath it, an empty built-in bookcase.

"You've got your own bathroom," Doug said, pointing to the half-open door. "You've got nothing to complain about."

"The shower turns off just when I'm getting relaxed," Edith said.

He shrugged slightly. "That's automatic. Water's not scarce, exactly, but we don't play around with it."

"And then those air blowers come on."

"Electricity's cheap. And the heat is recycled."

"It ain't the Ritz."

"You'd feel better if you had some of your personal things with you."

She agreed with a rueful nod. "I did come kind of light, didn't I?"

Doug went to the wall panel at the head of the bunk and turned on the display. The far wall showed a camera view of the crater floor.

Edith gaped. "Hot spit!"

"Didn't anybody tell you about the smart walls?"

"Well, sure, but I didn't know you could see outside. It's kinda like a window, isn't it?"

Doug pulled one of the stools over to the bunk and began to show Edith how to work the electronic display.

She sat on the edge of the bunk and watched views of the bleak, harsh lunar landscape. Then he started showing videos from Moonbase's library: educational stuff, mostly, although he rippled through a menu of entertainment vids.

"And we have all the university courses available. Some of the lectures are fascinating; they're all illustrated of course, multi-media."

Gradually Edith's attention wandered from the wall screen to Doug. She saw an intense young man, so strong within himself that he didn't even realize the aura he radiated. He's only twenty-five, she told herself. You're damned near ten years older. Well, seven, at least. So what's age got to do with it? another part of her mind answered. You've bedded enough old farts. Maybe robbing the cradle would be fun.

But not tonight, Edith decided firmly. You'd be giving him totally the wrong impression if you flopped in the sack with him tonight.

Doug let his hand drop from the wall panel and turned to face her. "Well, there's a couple of hundred choices available. And that's even with Earthside communications blacked out."

"You can't get anything from Earth?" Edith asked.

"They're not transmitting to us. Even the commercial commsats have gone dark."

"That's pretty damned rotten."

"All's fair in war."

"Still… what harm would it do to let you see commercial TV?"

Doug smiled. "It might do us all some good to be without commercial TV for a while. Improve our minds maybe."

"Thanks a lot!"

"I didn't mean news broadcasts," he apologized quickly.

"No, you're right. News is just as bad, almost."

"I'm sure you're a top-flight serious journalist," he said.

He was sitting inches away from her. She could touch his knee merely by moving her leg slightly. Don't do it! she warned herself.

Doug could smell her perfume: like the flowers Lev grows in the farm. She certainly is beautiful, with those big green eyes. But she's an important news reporter back Earthside. She probably thinks I'm just a kid. Or worse, a freak stuffed with nanobugs.

Yet Doug saw her strange half smile, as if she were waiting for him to say something, do something.

"I'm not contagious, you know," he heard himself say, surprised at his own words.

She blinked, as if stirring from a dream. "What?"

"The nanobugs. They won't contaminate you if we touch, or… er, kiss. You can't catch anything from me."

Edith laughed, softly, gently. "Shee-it, back Earthside you've got to be worried about catching all kinds of diseases from the guys you date."

Doug raised both hands. "I'm disease-free, believe me."

"You look pretty healthy."

"And you look very lovely," he said.

"I'm a lot older than you."

"Does that bother you?"

She hesitated only a moment. "No, I don't think it really does."

Doug moved next to her on the bunk and put his arms around her. Her lips felt soft and warm on his.

That voice in Edith's head was still warning her not to do this, but she almost giggled in the middle of a kiss as she answered, What's the matter, you scared he won't respect me in the morning?

What the hell, Edith said to her voice. And then she stopped thinking altogether.

Out in the corridor, almost exactly thirty meters from Edith's door, the mercenary let his back slide down the stone wall and hunkered down on the floor.

Goddamn, he said to himself. Looks like the kid's going to spend the night with her.

He draped his arms across his upraised knees and rested his head on his arms. Get some sleep. Maybe he'll come out before the morning shift starts to come through the corridor.

But he felt pretty certain that Doug was the kind who would spend the whole night.

DAY TWELVE

Edan McGrath, president of Global News Network, was sometimes called Edan Me Wrath. This was one of those mornings.

Unexpected because he was on vacation, he had stormed into his Atlanta office and demanded that his vice presidents for programming, news and legal meet him in his office immediately.

He was a big man who radiated power even though his once hard and muscular body was now weighed down with the fat of overindulgence. Bald, he kept the same trim moustache he had sported when he'd been a Georgia Tech football lineman. Even though his grandfather had handed him Global News as an inheritance, McGrath told anyone and everyone that being born with a platinum spoon in your mouth wasn't easy. "I've had to work to keep Global on top of the international competition," he would say. "I earn my keep!"

For an industry that rewarded egomania, his office was comparatively modest. No bigger than a minor airfield, its decor was muted Persian carpets and quiet little marble busts and statuettes from ancient Greece and Rome. No desk, but a large round table dominated the room. The walls were display screens, naturally. One of them perpetually showed the Global News feed from its Atlanta studios. The other at present displayed a trio of sleek yachts slicing through New Zealand waters in a trial heat of the Americas Cup race.

The head of the round table was wherever McGrath chose to sit. At the moment he was standing, big hands gripping the back of one of the padded chairs, a stern overweight father figure in an white open-necked sports shirt and whipcord navy blue slacks. He was deeply tanned and obviously boiling mad.

His three (out of dozens) vice presidents dutifully arrived in his office and took chairs around the table. McGrath thought of them as Larry, Moe and Curly, although his evaluation of which was which changed constantly.

"MeWrath' did not sit down. He pointed the ringers of one hand like a pistol at the vice president for news.

"This Edie Elgin works for you, doesn't she?"

The man swallowed obviously before answering with a timid, "Yes.' He was lean and sallow; he looked as if he hadn't been out-of-doors since puberty.

McGrath pointed the finger-gun at programming. "How come her report from Moonbase was aired from freakin' Kiribati instead of from Atlanta?"

Programming was made of sterner stuff. He too had been a football player and was still young enough to have retained his muscular physique.

"We agreed with the U.N. people on a blackout from Moonbase, chief. Remember? You talked to Faure yourself, weeks ago."

"But the freakin' broadcast aired out of Kiribati! We look like idiots! Every independent station on Earth is picking it up. Even our own subscribers are using it. They think it originated here!"

"We were just following your orders, chief," the news VP found the strength to say. "You told us not to air anything from Moonbase until further notice."

"Live footage of that shithead Peacekeeper blowing his own ass off and you keep it in the can?" McGrath roared.

"But you made this agreement with Faure…"

"That two-faced little frog let me think the Moonbase people had killed the Peacekeeper! He lied to me!"

"You didn't tell us-"

"And they've declared independence! This is the biggest story of the year! Of the decade! Don't you have any freaking sense?"

"You mean you'd've wanted us to air it?"

McGrath walked around the table to loom over the news VP Leaning over until his nose almost touched the younger man's, McGrath pointed to the elaborate corporate logo engraved on the wall above the doorway.

"What's our middle name?" he asked sweetly. Before the anguished vice president could open his mouth, McGrath bellowed, 'NEWS, goddammit! Global NEWS Network. A colony on the Moon declares independence and chases off a regiment of Peacekeeper troops—that's freakin' NEWS!'

The vice president was perspiring, his face white with fear and shock.

Straightening, McGrath whirled on the head of the legal department, a distinguished-looking man with the chiselled features of a video star, carefully coiffed silver gray hair, and a tan almost as deep as McGrath's own.

"How can Kiribati pick up a report from one of our employees and broadcast it around the world?"

The lawyer arched an eyebrow. "They can't. Not legally. We can sue them for billions."

McGrath stared at the man for several silent seconds. "It would make a great news story, wouldn't it?" he asked rhetorically. "Global News Network sues the nation of Kiribati in the World Court because a bunch of half-naked islanders have the brains to broadcast news from one of Global's own reporters while Global's news department DECIDED NOT TO AIR THEIR OWN REPORTER'S STORY!'

"He was following your own orders," the lawyer said mildly.

"That's right, chief," said programming. "You can't blame the news department for doing what you told them to do."

McGrath stood silently for a moment, then crossed his beefy arms across his chest.

"We look like freakin' assholes," he muttered.

"As I understand it," the head of the legal department tried to explain, "Edie Elgin beamed her report here from Moonbase. We were under your orders not to reply to any messages coming from Moonbase—we expected her to return with the Peacekeepers, after all."

"Okay, okay," McGrath grumbled,'so I told you not to carry anything coming from Moonbase. But our own reporter, for chrissake! Shows the world that Faure's a lying little sneak. And they've declared independence. Doesn't anybody think for themselves around here?"

An uncomfortable silence greeted his question.

The lawyer resumed, placatingly, "Apparently Elgin, or the Moonbase people, repeated her report to several locations around the world. Maybe she was trying to get one of our offices to acknowledge receiving it."

"We don't have an office in Kiribati," McGrath mumbled.

"That's true. But those islands are spread out over a considerable portion of the Pacific. Somebody out there must have picked up Elgin's report and decided to pirate it."

"So what can we do, legally?"

"Sue them, of course."

McGrath shook his head. "I'm not going to give the competition a chance to show the world what buffoons we've been."

"We've got to do something,' the lawyer insisted, "even if it's just a suit to protect our copyright."

McGrath fumed for a few moments. I'll talk to whoever's in charge there. I want to keep this as quiet as possible."

Programming piped up, "So what do we do about Moonbase now?"

"Edie Elgin's still up there?"

The news VP nodded.

"Then we run her reports, goddammit. We've got the only reporter on the scene at Moonbase. We play it for all it's worth!"

"But your agreement with Faure…?"

"Fuck him! You think the United Nations is more important than Global News Network?"

Ibrahim al-Rashid was not happy when his executive assistant—a lissome sloe-eyed Jamaican woman with a delightful lilt in her voice—informed him that another news broadcast was coming from Moonbase. Rashid watched Edie Elgin's report from Moonbase's farm in glum silence. His heart sank when she told the world that Moonbase could sustain itself indefinitely and did not need supplies from Earth.

Even before her report ended, Rashid's intercom chimed softly. He glanced at the phone screen: GEORGES FAURE, UNITED NATIONS, NEW YORK.

With a sigh, Rashid muted the news report from Moonbase's farm and activated the phone. Faure's face, even on the small screen, looked bleak.

"You have seen this latest news broadcast from Moonbase?" Faure asked, without preamble.

"I was just watching it now."

"The situation deteriorates with each moment," Faure said. "Now the entire world knows that Moonbase has asked for independence."

"I thought Global News had agreed to the blackout," said Rashid.

"They did. But once Kiribati broke the blackout, Global and the other networks broke their agreements with me."

Rashid sank back in his chair. Kiribati. That means Tamara Bonai has betrayed me. And Joanna's out there whipping up the other directors against me.

"It was my belief," Faure almost snarled,'that the Kiribati Corporation was under your control."

"It was my belief, too. Apparently we were both wrong."

"Then something must be done to correct them!"

"What do you have in mind?"

Faure's image glowered out of the screen, like a little imp trying to look threatening. "I might ask of you the same question," he retorted.

I'll call the person responsible for this. I'll see to it that it doesn't happen again."

"Too late for that," Faure snapped. "Now that the cat is out of the sack, we will not be able to stuff it back inside again. All the news networks are besieging my public information office for permission to send reporters to Moonbase."

"You don't have to grant such permission," said Rashid.

"Certainly not! But this means that the news networks will carry any propaganda that Moonbase beams to Earth!"

Rashid thought about that for a moment, and reluctantly decided that Faure was right.

"In that case," he said to the fuming image, "all we can do is counter their propaganda with information of our own."

"Yes, and in the meantime the World Court will meet to decide whether or not Moonbase can be considered as a nation of its own."

"Surely you can delay the World Court."

"Only to a certain extent."

"Long enough to send a stronger contingent of troops to seize Moonbase?"

Faure nodded tightly. "Yes, long enough for that, I should think."

For some time after Faure's call, Rashid sat in his desk chair, fingers steepled before his face, swivelling back and forth slightly. He was wondering what he could do about Tamara Bonai. This broadcast from Moonbase had to be her doing. She was defying everything that Rashid had worked so patiently to achieve.

There would be a showdown with Joanna soon, he knew. She's trying to drum up support on the board for a special meeting. Bonai will undoubtedly be on her side, unless I can prevent her from it.

The problem was that Bonai was not merely the figurehead president of the hollow-shell Kiribati Corporation. She was also the head of the Kiribati council of chiefs; technically, legally, she was a chief of state.

I will have to deal very carefully with her, Rashid thought. But she must be dealt with, one way or another.

A slow smile worked across his face. Bonai is a very beautiful woman. It could be quite enjoyable dealing with her—one way or another.

DAY FIFTEEN

Joanna's call woke Doug. He almost told the smart wall to answer it without canceling the video, but Edith stirred drowsily beside him and mumbled, "What's that?"

"Nothing," he whispered, bending over her and kissing her bare shoulder. "Go back to sleep."

Doug slipped out of bed and padded to his desk on the other side of the partitioned room. The phone kept on chiming softly, insistently.

The chair felt cool to his bare rump. He picked up the old-fashioned receiver and spoke softly, "Stavenger here."

From the delay he realized the call was coming from Earthside. His mother's voice asked testily, "Where are you? Why isn't there any video?"

A smile creased Doug's face. "Because it's almost four a.m. here, Mother, and I'm not dressed.' He pressed a stud on the phone console and his mother's features appeared on the wall screen opposite his desk, slightly larger than life.

"Are you all right?" he asked, and heard the same question from her, almost at the same instant.

"I've had a long talk with Rashid. He's as much as admitted that he's working toward a merger with Yamagata."

"A merger?" The thought alarmed Doug. He had never considered that Masterson Corporation might be taken over by another company.

"It would be a buyout, really. Lord knows how much cash Yamagata's promised him under the table."

"What can you do about it?" Doug asked.

He knew her answer before he heard it. "I'm rallying the members of the board. If Yamagata wants us, it's going to be a hostile takeover, and we intend to fight it every inch of the way."

"Do you have enough votes?"

As he waited for her response, Doug realized he didn't know the board well enough to count the votes himself.

"It'll be close," Joanna admitted. "Rashid's got a solid bloc on his side. But I think I can turn some of them around. Tamara Bonai might be the swing vote."

"Tamara?"

A slight smile turned the corners of Joanna's lips. "It might be worthwhile for you to visit her with the VR system. She's a year or so older than you, but a little sweet talk might help us."

Doug stared at his mother. Despite the smile, she meant it.

"Mom," he said, thinking of Edith sleeping in his bed, "I'm no Romeo.' He couldn't help smiling.

But Joanna was already saying, "Faure's been ducking me, as usual. His office has set up a meeting with two of his underlings, so I'm sending Lev to meet with them."

"We want to send some of the people here back Earthside," Doug said. "The dance troupe… and there's at least a dozen others who want to get home as soon as they can."

Joanna nodded once she heard his words. "I'll tell Lev to see what he can work out. An evacuation flight might be good publicity for us. Faure won't be able to turn down such a request. If he does-"

"Speaking of publicity," Doug interjected, "are Edith Elgin's reports doing us any good?"

Her face lit up once she heard the question. "Are they! She's going to get a Pulitzer, you mark my words."

"Great," said Doug. "But are they having any effect?"

"Everybody knows you've declared Moonbase's independence," Joanna said excitedly. "All the talk shows and newsheets are full of debates about it. I've gotten three U.S. senators to ask the White House to request a hearing in the World Court. Faure's turning blue over it!"

"Good," Doug said. "Great. How soon will the World Court take up our case?"

Joanna's reply came three seconds later. "We're pushing for an emergency session of the court. Otherwise it'll have to wait until November, when they convene again. At least they'll put it at the head of their agenda, even if it's November."

"November? That's more than six months away."

"I'm trying to get to them sooner."

Doug felt his brows knitting. "Faure could do a lot of damage in six months."

Once she heard him, Joanna nodded. "But at least the public knows what's going on now. Here in the States, especially, it's the hottest thing in the media. You tell that reporter that she's done more for Moonbase than a thousand troops could do."

Doug looked up and saw Edith standing by the partition that screened off the bedroom, quite naked.

"Okay," he said with a grin that he couldn't suppress. I'll tell her right away."

The digital clock on Jack Killifer's desk said 11.00 p.m. The offices of the Urban Corps' headquarters in Atlanta were nearly deserted.

The offices took up the entire top floor of the tallest tower in the Peachtree Center. Looking out through the sweeping windows, Killifer saw a city darkened, blacked out, as if fearful of an air raid. Only far down at street level were there bright anti-crime lamps blazing through the night. Otherwise all the buildings seemed totally dark and abandoned.

The sonofabitch enjoys making me stew around, waiting for him, Killifer groused to himself. Going on eight friggin' years I've been working for these people and he still treats me like some office boy.

The Urban Corps was one of the many disparate organizations loosely held together under the banner of the New Morality. They had elected presidents, won control of the House of Representatives, and had enough senators on their side to block legislation that they didn't like. The anti-nanotechnology treaty had originated in the New Morality. Nanoluddite fanatics had gunned down pro-nanotech advocates, even women suspected of having nanotherapy instead of plastic surgery, and then proclaimed at their trials with the fervor of true belief that they were doing God's work.

For years, though, Killifer had urged his superiors in the Urban Corps that Moonbase was a danger to them. As long as Moonbase exists it must use nanotechnology. As long as Moonbase exists it will continue to make its profits by building Clipperships out of pure diamond, using nanomachines, and selling those rocket craft to transport lines on Earth. As long as Moonbase exists, the nanotechnology treaty is a farce and everything that the Urban Corps and the New Morality has worked to achieve was in danger of crumbling away into dust.

And now it was all coming true. Moonbase was laughing at them, Stavenger and his bitch of a mother were thumbing their noses at them. The news media were all full of bull crap about Moonbase's declaration of independence. Even some politicians were starting to say that maybe the nanotech treaty shouldn't be interpreted so strictly.

It could all fall apart, Killifer had been warning them for years. Only now, only with the humiliating rout of the Peacekeepers from Moonbase, were they beginning to take his warnings seriously.

His desk phone beeped once. Killifer didn't have to pick it up. He knew that he had been summoned at last into the presence of General O'Conner.

Killifer hurried past rows of empty, silent desks and down a corridor formed by flimsy shoulder-high plastic partitions. Through an open door he stepped, into a reception area that was tastefully carpeted and furnished with small consultation desks. The door at the far end was shut. He knocked once and opened it.

General O'Conner was sunk in his wheelchair, half-dozing, a shrivelled shell of the dynamic powerful savior Killifer had met when he had joined the Urban Corps nearly eight years earlier.

They had kept the news of the general's strokes a secret, of course, known only to the innermost circle of the Corps. Not even the highest leaders of the other New Morality groups knew about it. To the outside world, General O'Conner was still the vigorous, forceful, charismatic leader of the organization that was transforming American cities from crime-ridden slums into rigidly controlled urban centers.

With the staff's careful handling of the crisis, General O'Conner had become an inaccessible figure, too lofty to waste his time with meetings and rallies. And the more inaccessible he became, the greater the tales of his power and saintliness. The less he was seen, the more he was admired and sought after. Rumors abounded of his appearances in disguise among the poor. He was'seen' all across the country, sometimes in more than one place simultaneously. Thanks to clever electronic simulations that kept his image before the public, the general was becoming a figure of mythic power.

"Well, what're you waiting for?" General O'Conner said, in his cranky slurred croak of a voice.

"I thought you had fallen asleep," said Killifer, going to the armchair beside him.

The general worked the toggle on his wheelchair's control box and trundled off toward the windows. "Is the whole city blacked out, except for us?"

Killifer had to get up and follow him. "Most of the city," he replied. "When curfew strikes, the power goes down. Electricity stays on for residences, of course."

"Apartments, too? Condos?"

"Yeah. It wouldn't be smart to shut off their power."

"Then why's everything pitch black out there?" the general demanded. "Are we the only ones showing any light?"

Killifer had explained this to the failing old man a dozen times since the blackout decision had been announced.

"That's right, we're the only one," he said. "The apartment blocks and condo buildings curtain their windows as a sign of respect."

The wizened old man glared at him. "And whose idea was that?"

"Yours, of course," he said.

"I never made such a decision. I'd remember it if I did."

"Well," said Killifer, "it was mine, really. Acting in your name, of course."

Actually, it had been the bright idea of one of the young psychologists on the staff. But Killifer had implemented it and he'd be damned if he'd let the young snot take the credit.

"Why?" O'Conner asked testily.

Killifer replied, "It gives the ordinary people the feeling that they're making a sacrifice. It makes them feel that they're contributing to the general welfare."

"You've learned well," rasped O'Conner. "Make them want to obey. That's the secret!"

"You've taught me well," Killifer said, feeling something almost like affection for the old man.

Wheeling his chair around to face Killifer, General O'Conner said, "Now what's happening with the Moonbase problem?"

Killifer shook his head. "It's getting worse instead of better."

"I see they're broadcasting news reports from Moonbase. I thought the media had agreed to a blackout."

"They had. But it's been busted wide open."

The general's bloodshot eyes narrowed. "How? Who did it?"

Killifer explained the series of events, tracing the break of the news blackout to Tamara Bonai in Kiribati.

"Kiribati?" General O'Conner's ravaged face glared at him. "Where's that?"

"In the Pacific. Micronesia."

The general seemed to sink in on himself, thinking. Then he started cackling.

"What's funny?" Killifer asked.

"I did missionary work out there when I was a kid."

That surprised Killifer. "You did?"

"Tonga. Fiji. I wore the black suit and tie and went out among the heathen.' He wiped at his eyes with a frail hand.

"I never knew."

"They were good people. They listened to me and smiled and agreed with everything I said. Helped me build a church for them. They even attended services."

"Terrific," Killifer muttered.

"But it didn't do one bit of good. They went about living the way they always had. Dressed up for me, of course. But other times they went back to being as naked as sin. To them, sex was about as casual as taking a swim in the lagoon."

He almost sounded wistful, Killifer thought. "Well, now they have office buildings and shopping malls and major tourist centers."

"And this woman, what's her name?"

"Tamara Bonai."

"She broke the news blackout?"

"She sure as hell did."

"Then she ought to be punished," General O'Conner said. "Swiftly and obviously. People ought to know that those who oppose God's will are struck down."

Killifer's insides shuddered. "You mean kill her?"

"Yes," said the general. "See to it."

"Me?"

"You. And nobody else."

He started to say, "But why me? I'm no…"

O'Conner's burning red eyes silenced him. The General had made up his mind and he had chosen Killifer for the job. That was unalterable.

One thing that Killifer had learned in his eight years with the Corps: you obey, but you ask for something in return.

"If we're going to punish people, what about Joanna Stavenger… I mean, Brudnoy."

"She's back here, back from the Moon?"

"Yeah."

O'Conner mulled it over for ten seconds. "You're right. Strike her down, too."

Killifer nodded, satisfied. The woman who had ruined his life was going to get what she deserved, at last.

"Too bad we can't get her son."

"Douglas Stavenger?"

"Yeah. He's up at Moonbase, though. Out of reach.' General O'Conner pointed a wavering finger at Killifer.

"Don't be so sure of that, my boy. No one's out of reach of the angel of death."

DAY SIXTEEN

"Hey, what're you doing there?"

The mercenary looked up. A woman in the slate gray coveralls of the transportation division was striding down the line of spacesuits toward him. She looked to be in her thirties, a little heavyset, mousey brown hair chopped short, and an angry frown on her face.

"Doug Stavenger asked me to check out his suit," the mercenary said.

"I maintain the suits," she said, jabbing a thumb toward her ample chest. Her nametag said LIEBOWITZ. "Since when does Stavenger send strangers to do my job?"

She was almost the mercenary's own height, and now that she was almost nose-to-nose with him he saw that her size was probably muscle, not fat.

He put on a smile. "Doug's worried about sabotage," he said. The best lies are always based on the truth, he knew.

"Sabotage? Are you kidding?"

The mercenary shook his head slowly. "No, I'm not kidding, Liebowitz. We're at war, aren't we? Under siege?"

"But who the frick's gonna sabotage anything here? Everybody here's for Moonbase. We're all on Stavenger's side."

"Yeah? Were you at the meeting in The Cave last week?"

"Sure."

"How many people there wanted to go back Earthside right away?"

Liebowitz's expression turned thoughtful. "Well, a few, I guess."

"And they won't be able to go until this war is settled, right?"

"Oh, I dunno. Stavenger talked about arranging an evacuation flight for 'em."

"You seen any evacuation flight arrive? The U.N. wants to keep us bottled up here until we cave in.' 'Yeah, maybe…"

The mercenary was enjoying sparring with her. He began to think it might be fun to share a meal with her, get to know her better. She was white, of course, but maybe…

He pushed those thoughts aside. "Well, don't you think that maybe some disgruntled technician or administrator might figure that a little sabotage here or there will help make us surrender and end the war? Then he can go home."

Liebowitz almost bought it. But after a few moments she said, "Naahhh. I just don't see anybody who's lived here for more'n ten minutes going around sabotaging anything. That could kill somebody, for chrissakes."

"Maybe so," the mercenary said. "But Stavenger's worried about it and he asked me to check out his suit."

She puffed out a breath between her teeth. "Okay. Okay. It sounds wonky to me, but if the boss wants you to check his suit, go right ahead."

She folded her arms across her chest and stood there, solidly planted, not budging. The mercenary went through the motions of checking Doug's hard suit, wishing she would go away, knowing she wouldn't, and telling himself that he'd have to come back when Liebowitz was off duty and some less dedicated technician was on the job.

"When's your shift end?" he asked as he looked over the seal ring on Doug's helmet.

"Same's yours."

"I'm working directly for Stavenger. No shifts; it's twenty-four hours a day for me."

She h'mphed. "Well, I'm on the day shift, as you can see. I finish at four, just like everybody else."

The mercenary returned the helmet to its rack, above the suit. "How about having dinner with me? Seven o'clock, in The Cave?"

She gave him a quizzical look. The mercenary knew exactly what was going through her mind. Would she want to be seen having dinner with a black man?

"Okay," she said guardedly. "Seven o'clock at The Cave."

It took him a couple of heartbeats to realize she had accepted. "See you there," he said, with a genuine smile.

And as he walked away, down the long line of empty spacesuits hanging like medieval arrays of armor with their helmets racked above them, he thought that after dinner with her he'd return and finish the job here.

Stavenger's going to go outside sooner or later, and when he does, a malfunction in his suit is going to kill him.

Later that day Doug was in Jinny Anson's office, meeting with the base director and the heads of the mining, transportation and research divisions.

Anson had rearranged the furniture so that the oblong conference table now butted against the desk like the vertical leg of a letter T.

Kris Cardenas was also sitting at the table, across from Zoltan Kadar, the astronomer. No one had invited the Hungarian to this strategy meeting; he had shown up with the others and grabbed a chair before anyone could shoo him away. His precious survey satellite to Farside had been launched the day before, so Doug wondered what he wanted now.

And sitting silently on the couch along the far wall of the office was Bam Gordette, silently watching, listening. He's become like my shadow, Doug thought. Everywhere I go, he goes. He doesn't say anything, but he takes in everything with those dark brown eyes, like a detective looking over a crime scene. Then a new thought struck Doug: Maybe Bam thinks he's my bodyguard. He sure acts like one. The thought made him smile to himself. I don't need a bodyguard here, not in Moonbase. But it made him feel almost grateful to Gordette for caring enough to act as one.

Doug took the chair at the foot of the table, facing Anson, who sat behind her desk.

"I've asked you here—most of you, anyway," he added, with a wry grin in Kadar's direction,'to talk over the chances of developing defenses against the next Peacekeeper assault."

"You think they'll be back, then," said Deborah Paine. Head of the research division, she had a frizzy blonde hairdo and an hourglass figure that had driven many men to distraction. She happened to be a very serious biologist, a topflight science administrator, and a cheerful lesbian.

"They'll be back," Doug said. "Faure's delaying any negotiations as much as he can. He's going to try to take us by force before agreeing to any compromise."

"We don't want any compromise, either," Anson snapped. "It's independence or bust."

Harry Clemens, the transportation division chief, clasped both hands behind his bald head and tilted his chair so far back Doug was afraid it would fall over. "So we've got to be prepared to defend ourselves, then?"

"That's right," said Doug.

"Against what?"

"More Peacekeeper troops," said Vince Falcone, head of the mining division.

"Worse than that," Clemens said in his mild, soft way.

"Like what?" Falcone asked.

"One modest nuclear warhead exploded a few hundred meters above the crater floor could knock out all our solar farms."

Doug countered, "But we've still got the nuclear backup. It's buried-"

"Nuclear warhead number two will be a ground blast, to knock out our generator."

Falcone nodded solemnly. "The second one doesn't even have to be a nuclear warhead. Conventional warhead will do, if they've got the generator pinpointed."

"Okay," said Doug, looking at each of them in turn. "The first thing we've got to do is figure out what they can throw at us. Then we've got to look for ways to defend ourselves against each possible threat."

"Lotsa luck," Falcone grumbled. He was built like a fireplug, with short thick arms and a nearly perpetual scowl on his dark face. Instead of the usual coveralls he preferred to wear dark turtlenecks and comfortable, loosefitting jeans that he jammed into scuffed old cowboy boots.

"There may be a way to defend against a nuclear warhead," said Deborah Paine.

Doug felt his eyebrows hike halfway to his scalp.

"The physicists have been using the mass driver's magnets to power a particle accelerator," Paine said. "If we could focus the beam on an incoming warhead, it could destroy the nuclear device's switching and fusing mechanisms."

"Are you sure?" Doug asked.

"It's actually pretty old stuff," she replied, "from the antimissile defenses that the Peacekeepers maintain in Earth orbit."

"So it turns the nuke into a dud, huh?" Falcone asked.

"Yes. The warhead will crash onto the crater floor but the bomb won't go off."

"That'd still do some damage to the solar panels," Clemens pointed out.

"Yeah, but not that many of 'em," said Falcone.

Doug asked, "Could we actually focus the particle beam that way?"

Paine shrugged. It looked delicious to all the men around the table, even though they knew she didn't do it for their benefit.

I'll have to ask the physicists about it," she said. "We should have plenty of time to aim the beam, if they fire the missile from Earthside. Days."

"Suppose they take over L-l and use it as a staging base. They could fire the missile from there."

Nodding, Paine said, "That would still give us a couple of hours or so, maybe more."

"Maybe less," Anson said, "if they fire it at high boost."

"Maybe."

Doug turned to Cardenas. "Kris, what are you and Zimmerman developing? Anything useful?"

She sighed. "Willi's got this bug in his ear about using nanomachines to make a person invisible. I was hoping something practical might come out of it, but so far as I can tell he hasn't accomplished a thing."

"And your own work?" Doug prompted.

"We can be a big help medically, of course. As far as weaponry is concerned, I haven't come up with anything except the gobblers. We can program them to eat metals, if you like."

"We can't strew the whole crater floor with gobblers," Doug said.

"Why not?" Anson shot back. "It's only be for a short time."

Doug ticked off on his fingers, "One, they'll most likely land during daylight-"

"You can program gobblers to operate in sunlight, can't you?" Anson asked Cardenas.

"It's more difficult, but doable. I'd worry about deactivating them, though."

"Two," Doug went on, "what's to stop the gobblers from i destroying our solar farms, the launch pads and their equipment, even the mass driver?"

Anson pursed her lips. Then she grinned. "Yeah, it would be like shooting ourselves in the foot, wouldn't it?"

"Shooting ourselves in the head," Clemens said, with surprising fervor. Doug realized he wanted no part of nanomachines that ate metals.

Turning in his chair to look at Gordette, Doug asked, "Bam, if you were in charge of the Peacekeepers, how would you go about taking Moonbase?"

Gordette shook his head. "I wasn't an officer, just a dogface."

"You're as close to a general as we've got here," Anson said.

"What do you think they're going to do?" Doug repeated.

Slowly, reluctantly, Gordette got to his feet. All eyes focused on him. "Well, to begin with, I agree with Mr Clemens.

They'll start with a bombardment to knock out our electrical power."

"Nuclear warheads?"

"Most likely. But they might use a conventional warhead for our nuclear generator, if they know its location precisely enough."

"They've got the same maps we use," Falcone grumbled.

"Then what?" Doug asked.

"Most likely they'd have already landed troops outside the crater, on the Mare Nubium side. They'll wait for the bombardment, then come over Wodjohowitcz Pass to get into the base."

Doug saw most of the people around the table nodding agreement.

"If our electrical power is out, all they'll have to do is knock on our door. We'll have to surrender to them."

"We have the fuel cells," Anson said.

Gordette shrugged. "How long do they give us? A few days? A few hours? The Peacekeepers will be occupying the crater floor; we'll have no chance to repair the solar farms. We'll be forced to give up."

"A nuclear blast probably'd screw up our radiators, too," I Falcone pointed out. "We'd be boiling in here inside of a few hours."

The meeting became grim, depressed. No one could offer a way to counter the scenario Gordette had drawn.

Then Kadar spoke up. "It may not be necessary for the Peacekeepers to destroy so much of our generating equipment."

"Oh?"

"All they have to do is put some biological agents in the drinking water we bring in from the south polar ice fields."

"Poison us?" Clemens blurted, looking shocked. Almost smiling, Kadar said, "It wouldn't have to be fatal. A virus that causes a disabling disease. An especially nasty variation of influenza, for instance. Or viral pneumonia. Brought in through our drinking water."

"We don't use that much new water," Anson pointed out. "Our recycling's pretty efficient."

"Perhaps so, but over a time scale of months? They could make us all deathly ill."

"Do we have to defend the south pole, too?" Anson wondered aloud.

With a shake of his head, Doug replied, "We just don't have the resources."

"But we can test the water coming in," Paine said, "and not allow it into the base supply until we're satisfied that it's all right."

"Or," Cardenas suggested, "we could run the incoming water through a nanomachine screen, program the nanos to pass only water molecules and divert everything else."

"That would help," Doug said.

"They won't be that subtle," Gordette said, still standing by the couch. "They won't want to wait weeks or months for a biological agent to take effect. Besides, they know we've got nanomachines that we could use to cure any disease they cause."

"So it'll be a direct attack."

That's what I think," Gordette replied. "They'll land their troops, bomb out our electrical power equipment, and then march in here."

Cardenas slumped in her chair. "Nanomachines aren't going to be much help, then."

"We can knock out a nuclear warhead," Paine insisted.

"Maybe," said Doug.

"How'll we deal with a whole regiment of Peacekeeper troops?" Anson asked glumly.

"We'll have to think of something," said Doug, trying to show a cheerfulness he did not feel.

"If we can keep on generating electricity…"

Doug pushed his chair back from the table. "I want to talk to the head honcho of the physicists about this particle beam idea."

"The new guy," Anson said. "He came up here on the last flight before this mess started."

"What's his name," Doug asked, "Wickens?"

"Wicksen," Paine corrected. "Robert T. Wicksen."

DAY SEVENTEEN

After the meeting Doug went straight to the office of Robert T. Wicksen. The physicist was a small, slight man, built like a sparrow, but with large, intelligent, gray eyes magnified by old-fashioned rimless glasses.

"Focus the particle beam on an incoming missile warhead?" Wicksen asked. His voice was flat and calm. He was not perturbed by Doug's question, he merely repeated it to be certain he understood what Doug was asking. Physically he reminded Doug of a tarsier: little, cautious, big staring eyes. Yet he seemed composed, unruffled, perhaps unflappable.

Wicksen's office was a cubbyhole crammed with electronic gear. No desk, not even any chairs; only a pair of stools that looked as if Wicksen had crafted them himself out of lunar metals. Yet everything was as neat as a picture out of a sales catalogue. Everything in its proper place. All the equipment humming reassuringly. All the screens displayed data curves that flickered and shifted as they spoke. Wicksen himself was equally neat, in a crisp open-necked white shirt and perfectly creased dark gray trousers.

"We need to know if it's possible to convert your particle accelerator into a beam weapon," Doug said, sitting on one of the room's two stools.

Sitting on the other stool, facing Doug like an elfish wizard in modern clothes, Wicksen nodded somberly. "It's possible. Anything is possible."

"But can you do it, Dr Wicksen?"

"Wix."

"Excuse me?"

"Wix. Everyone calls me Wix."

"All right… Wix. Can you do it?"

Wicksen extended one arm and tapped idly on the keyboard nearest him. "Have to increase the power output, of course," he muttered, more to himself than his visitor. "And focusing the beam isn't a trivial problem."

Doug asked his question again, silently, with his eyes.

Wicksen scratched his pointed chin a moment, then said, "Meet me at the mass driver tomorrow at ten. I'll be able to answer you then."

Doug sensed that trying to urge this man or hurry him would be a waste of breath. Wicksen understood the situation they were in. Doug had noticed him at the meeting in The Cave the previous week. Yet the physicist showed neither worry nor disappointment at being asked to break off his experiments and convert his accelerator into a weapon. He seemed more curious than upset.

"He's a strange duck," Doug said to Edith that night, in his quarters. She had moved in her meager possessions after their first three nights together.

"I've interviewed lots of scientists," Edith said, unzipping her white coveralls. "They're all pretty weird, one way or the other."

"I've got to make a call Earthside," Doug said, padding barefoot to his desk on the other side of the room partition. "Won't take long," he called to Edith.

"I'll keep the bed warm," she called back.

Grinning, Doug called Tamara Bonai at Tarawa. She was his one sure source of news about how things were going Earthside. His mother's calls were tapped, both Doug and Joanna were certain, so she had to be careful about how much she told her son.

But Tamara, as head of both the Kiribati Corporation and the island nation itself, could speak much more freely.

"You owe me a fishing trip," her image on the wall screen teased.

She was on the beach, obviously just after a swim in the lagoon. Her flowered pareo clung wetly to her graceful figure; drops of water beaded her bare shoulders; her long dark hair glistened in the high afternoon sun.

"As soon as I can get Earthside," he promised anew. Then he asked, "How's our publicity campaign?"

As he waited for her reply, Doug admired her long slim legs and the nipples that pushed against the pareo's thin fabric. Since he'd started sleeping with Edith he'd been noticing a lot more about the women he saw.

"Every network is carrying your reports from Moonbase now," Bonai said, smiling brightly as she sat cross-legged before the phone camera set on the sand before her. The camera automatically moved to keep her in focus.

"And there is considerable turmoil among the board of Masterson Corporation. Now that your mother is here on Earth, she's demanding a special meeting to take up the question of Moonbase's political independence."

"How's Rashid reacting?"

Bonai turned to look out at the lagoon as she waited for Doug's words to reach her. Then she turned back to the phone and said, "It's difficult to read his reaction. I'm sure he wants to push through a merger with Yamagata, but that possibility could cause a major rift on the board and he'd prefer to avoid a confrontation, if he can."

Within a few seconds Doug forgot how enticing Bonai looked and fell deeply into a discussion with her about the politics of Masterson Corporation, the United Nations, and world public opinion.

"Faure has not said a peep about Moonbase for more than a week now," she reported. "He's trying to ride out the waves your broadcasts have created."

Doug replied, "He's planning another attack on us. I'm certain of it."

Once she heard him, Bonai shrugged her bare shoulders. "Could be, I suppose."

"Can you try to get closer to Rashid, Tamara? I need to know what he's thinking, what he's planning to do."

When her reply came to him, it was, "Are you asking me to use my feminine wiles on him?"

"No, I-"

But Bonai hadn't waited for his response. She continued, "He has some reputation, you know. There are rumors he keeps a harem over in North Africa somewhere."

"I didn't mean-"

She kept on, "It might be fun to see what he's really like. Maybe I'll invite him here for a private get-together."

"Tamara, I didn't mean you should try to seduce him," Doug said.

She laughed. "Don't be so uptight! He won't be able to turn down a chance to win me over to his side."

"But-"

"It's nothing I won't do for you when you come here for your fishing trip," she added, mischievously.

Feeling perplexed, Doug didn't know what to say.

Still smiling, Bonai said, "Don't worry, Doug. I know what I'm doing. And I have plenty of big, strong bodyguards here to protect me—if I ask them to."

She clicked off the connection before Doug could reply.

Frowning at the empty wall screen, Doug got to his feet. Edith was standing by the partition, wrapped in a towel, eying him.

"Should I be jealous?" she asked.

"No!" Doug blurted. "Of course not."

"She's awful purty.' Edith used her Texas accent.

"She's the CEO of Kiribati Corporation," Doug said. "She's the person who got your first news report on the air Earthside."

"She's still awful purty," said Edith, reaching for him.

Doug thought he should feel annoyed. Instead, he felt almost pleased with himself.

As Doug rode on the tractor across Alphonsus's cracked and pockmarked floor, he realized that this was the first time he'd been outside in weeks.

He took a deep breath of canned suit air and felt his spirits rise. Strange, he thought, even sealed inside a spacesuit I feel free out here, happy. He looked up at the worn old mountains of the ringwall marching off across the horizon and recognized each rounded hump as an old friend from his childhood.

It was my childhood when I climbed those mountains and rode around the whole ringwall, he realized. I don't have time for that anymore. I've got an adult's responsibilities now.

Still, he relaxed and enjoyed the passing scenery: stark, barren, full of promise.

Driving the tractor was like second nature to him. The big lumbering machine would probably trundle out to the mass driver on its own, even if Doug let go of the controls, following the cleated ruts laid down by thousands of tractor journeys across the dusty regolith. But Doug held onto the T-stick. There were enough craterlets and rocks strewn across the ground to cause trouble if he got careless, he knew.

He realized that this was the first time he had been alone in weeks. Not even Bam Gordette was with him. Doug thought about the somber-faced black man. Gordette had been his constant companion wherever he went in Moonbase, his self-appointed protector. Bodyguard, chauffeur, military consultant: I've become dependent on him, Doug thought. I wonder what he thinks about all this. I'd like to think of him as a friend, but he's so quiet and reserved it's hard to tell what's going on inside his head.

He said he wanted to come outside with me, but he gave up the idea pretty easily when I told him it wasn't necessary. Is he afraid of being out here on the surface? Doug almost laughed, inside his helmet. He couldn't imagine Gordette afraid of anything.

The mass driver came into view, a long dark finger of metal stretched across the crater floor. It had its own acreage of solar farms to provide electricity for the magnets that flung lunar ores toward the factories in orbit around the Earth. Since the U.N.'s siege had begun, the space factories had shut down their operations and the mass driver stood unused in the silence of the lunar landscape.

Unused as an ore supplier.

The physicists had been overjoyed at the shutdown. Years earlier they had built a linear particle accelerator along the three-and-a-half-kilometer length of the mass driver, using its powerful cryogenic magnets to energize subatomic particles for their experiments. But they could use the facility only when the mass driver wasn''tbusy flinging packets of lunar ores off to the factories in Earth orbit. With the war the factories had been taken over by the U.N. The mass driver stood idle—and the physicists went into a frenzy of activity, ecstatic to use their particle accelerator twenty-four hours each day.

It was easy to spot Wicksen among the spacesuited figures milling around the hardware. His slight figure was encased in a white spacesuit that had WIX stencilled in electric blue on the front of his helmet and across his backpack.

Doug clambered down from the tractor and walked the last twenty meters to the group of people standing with Wicksen. They seemed to be huddled around him like a football team getting instructions from their quarterback.

Flicking to the suit-to-suit frequency, Doug heard the physicist saying,'… you'll be able to finish this series of runs while I'm putting the focusing magnets together."

"Here's Doug now," said one of the suited figures, pointing with a gloved hand.

Wicksen turned and stepped toward Doug. "You're a few minutes early."

"I made better time in the tractor than I expected," Doug said.

"That's all right.' The diminutive physicist clasped the sleeve of Doug's cermet suit. "Come along here, I want to show you what's involved in this problem."

He walked Doug the length of the mass driver, explaining in minute detail every step that had to be accomplished in converting the accelerator to an anti-missile gun. Doug's head was soon whirling with numbers and terms such as 'beam collimator' and'tesla limits'.

Doug found his attention wandering to the solid bulk of the mass driver itself. It was a triumph of nanotechnology, the most intricate piece of machinery yet constructed by nanomachines. The project had floundered through several false starts, but once Kris Cardenas had come to Moonbase and sunk her teeth into it, the mass driver had slowly taken shape out here on the crater floor: cryogenic aluminum magnets and all.

"Are you sufficiently confused?"

Wicksen's question snapped Doug's attention back to the here and now.

"What did you say?"

He could sense Wicksen smiling gently. "I've snowed you with a pile of details. Does any of it make sense to you?"

"Not much," Doug admitted. "What I really need to know is, can you do it?"

"Turn the accelerator into an anti-missile weapon?"

"Yes."

"Yes."

"You can?"

"That's what I've been telling you."

"How soon?" Doug asked.

Wicksen hesitated a moment, then answered, "Two days."

"Two days? That's all?"

"Two lunar days," Wicksen said.

"Oh. You mean two months, then," Doug said, crestfallen.

"We might get lucky and have everything work the first time we try it. That could shave a week or so."

Two months, Doug thought. Will that be soon enough, or will Faure strike before then?

"We'll need a target satellite to test it against," Wicksen added. "I was thinking that Kadar's survey bird would make a good test target. He's got all the data from it that he needs."

Doug heard a strange guttural sound in his earphones. Wicksen was chuckling at the thought of zapping Kadar's satellite.

He thanked the physicist and climbed back onto the tractor, wondering if there was some way to delay the attack that Faure was undoubtedly planning. Maybe Mom can get the World Court to hear our case before November. Or negotiate with Faure and try to settle this without another military confrontation.

His mind was filled with possibilities, alternatives, strategies as he steered the tractor back across the twenty-kilometer distance to Moonbase's main airlock.

He had only gone a few kilometers, though, when his suit's emergency alarm shrilled in his earphones.

"What…?"

Doug glanced down at the telltales on his wrist display. Air supply below safety minimum! Impossible, he told himself. I checked the suit out when I put it on. The air tank was full.

Must be a malfunction in the electrical circuitry, he told himself. Still, he jammed the tractor's throttle to its highest pitch. The ponderous machine lurched forward. There was no speedometer on the control panel; the tractor's electrical motors could not move the machine more than thirty klicks per hour, Doug knew.

Half an hour to the base, Doug thought. Better top off the backpack.

With his left hand on the T-stick, Doug fumbled for the tractor's oxygen hose, nested between the two front seats. He located it by feel and pulled it out of its housing. But when he tried to unscrew the cap of his backpack's emergency fill-up, it would not move.

How could it be frozen? Doug wondered, his mind racing. He could not remember if he'd tested it when he'd checked out the suit. I should have, he told himself. But he doubted that he did. Too goddamned complacent. Taking shortcuts in the checkout routine.

"Air level approaching redline for life support," the suit's automatic emergency system warned. "Replenish air supply or change to another suit."

Good advice, Doug grumbled silently, out here at least fifteen klicks from the airlock.

I can't be running out of air, he insisted to himself. But he coughed.

Desperately, he flicked to the base frequency and called, "This is Stavenger. I'm almost out of air! Need help!"

"Got your beacon, Doug," said the technician from the control center. "Hang on, we'll send a team out for you."

Won't do any good, he knew. They'll be riding tractors, too. They can't get to me any faster than I can get to them.

His breath caught in his throat. He felt as if he were gagging.

"No… air…"

An incredibly searing pain flamed through his chest. Christ almighty, my lungs are collapsing!

Yet he remained conscious, acutely aware of everything happening to him.

Can't breathe! He was gasping, his right hand clawing at the collar of his helmet. Can't breathe! The pain in his chest was excruciating, yet he did not pass out. His mind was still alert, still functioning.

This is what drowning must be like. You try to breath but there's no air.

Deliberately, he turned off his suit radio. They've got the tractor's beacon to track me. Don't want them to hear me screaming.

But he could not scream. There was no air in his lungs, no air in his throat. Nothing but pain and pain and more pain.

And he could not collapse into oblivion. His legs, his gut, even his hands and arms were flaming with agony now, but the mercy of unconsciousness was not allowed him. Doggedly, tears blurring his vision, pain racking his body, he slumped over the tractor's controls, too weak to sit upright. But still conscious.

Time lost all meaning. Doug knew he was in hell: endless, eternal suffering. Damned, damned, damned to torment forever. The silent, stark lunar landscape trundled past slowly, maddeningly slowly. Doug felt as if he were mired in quicksand, already sucked down into it, unable to catch a breath, impossible to breathe, to move, to do anything but suffer.

He wanted to faint, he wanted to die and get it over with. He thought deliriously that he must already be dead. Why, this is hell nor am I out of it.

He could not breathe. He could not cough or gasp or cry or beg for mercy. Yet he could not end the pain. It went on and on, endlessly, while his mind shrieked and gibbered with horrified terror.

Something banged into his helmet. He felt himself jerked back against the seat.

Slowly the pain eased away. His last touch with the world drifted away from him, leaving him floating in darkness, alone, silent, free of pain and desire and fear.

I'm dead, he thought. At last it's over. I'm dead.

He was breathing. He opened his eyes but saw nothing but mist, a gray fog.

"… had his suit radio off."

"Visor's fogged over. Turn up his fans, for chrissake."

"How the hell did he get into this fix?"

"Never mind that! Is he coming around?"

The voices were urgent, frightened; to Doug they sounded like a chorus of angels.

"Can't tell-"

"I can hear you," Doug said, coughing. "I can hear you."

"He's alive!"

"Barely."

Their frightened, urgent voices faded and Doug sank into blessed black oblivion.

DAY EIGHTEEN

"You are awake now, yes?"

Doug opened his eyes to see Zimmerman looming over him like a rumpled mountain, his fleshy face deathly serious, his eyes burning with inner fire.

The infirmary, Doug realized. I'm in the infirmary. He could smell the antiseptic, feel the crisp sheets on his skin. The little cubicle was clean and cool, walls and ceiling pastel. Electronic monitoring equipment hummed and beeped softly somewhere behind Doug's head.

"So," said Zimmerman quietly, "my little machines have saved your life again."

The old man's face wore an expression Doug had never seen before. Not tenderness, not from Zimmerman. But he seemed—concerned. He was standing over Doug's infirmary bed like a worried uncle or grandfather, looking faintly ridiculous in his disheveled, wrinkled, old-fashioned, three-piece gray suit.

"When are you…' Doug asked, his voice little more than a faint whisper, "When are you going to program nanobugs to keep your clothes pressed?"

"Jokes?" Zimmerman's shaggy brows shot up. "You almost die and now you make jokes at me?"

"What happened?"

The old man ran a hand across his bald pate. "You had no oxygen for breathing. My nanomachines extracted oxygen from the cells of your body and fed it to your brain, to keep you alive."

The pain…"

"Both your lungs collapsed, of course. My nanomachines kept your circulatory system going, however."

"Oxygen from my cells?"

Nodding vigorously, as if glad to get onto an impersonal topic, Zimmerman launched into a minor lecture about the amount of residual oxygen stored in the body's major organs.

"And the nanobugs extracted the residual oxygen?" Doug asked.

"Yah. And fed it into your bloodstream. That way your brain was kept alive even though your lungs collapsed."

"How did the bugs know to do that?"

Zimmerman scowled down at him. "You think they are stupid? They sensed your lungs collapsing and acted to keep you alive."

"You programmed them to do that? All those years ago when you put the bugs in me, you foresaw such a possibility?"

"I programmed the nanomachines,' Zimmerman emphasized the word slightly,'to maintain homeostasis and attack foreign invaders of your body. They sense any deviation from your normal condition and take immediate steps to counter it."

"They must work pretty fast."

They react in the millisecond range, usually."

Doug looked into the old man's intense eyes. "That's the third time you've saved my life, Professor."

Zimmerman shrugged as if it didn't matter. "It gives me the chance to write a new research paper—although who will publish it is a question, with this verdammt war going on."

"I don't know what I can do to thank you," Doug said.

For just an instant, the professor's expression softened. Then he took in a breath and said sternly, "Try to stay out of mischief."

With that he turned on his heel and headed out of the cubicle.

"Wait!" Doug called, his voice a painful croak.

Zimmerman looked back over his shoulder, one hand on the sliding partition.

"What're you doing in your lab? I haven't seen you in so long-"

"We discuss that later, when you are stronger."

"But what are you working on?"

With an impatient gesture, Zimmerman said, "This and that. You will see."

He slid the partition back and left the cubicle. Doug thought that perhaps Zimmerman didn't want him to see that he actually cared about him. But then he realized:

He hasn't come up with anything yet. All these weeks tinkering in his lab and he hasn't accomplished a mother-loving thing.

Before a full minute passed, Edith rushed into the cubicle, up to Doug's bedside, her green eyes staring at him.

"Are you okay?"

"I'm fine," he said, reaching out to her.

She leaned into his arms and kissed him hard. "You really okay?"

"A little weak, but I'll be back to normal in a couple of hours."

"Hours?"

"The nanomachines work fast," he said.

Edith sat on the edge of the bed and laid her head on his chest. "Christmas bells, I was so scared! They said your suit had malfunctioned and you might die."

Holding her tightly, Doug said, "Not yet, Edith. Not for a long time."

Hours later, after several sessions with the medics and Kris Cardenas, Doug was sitting up in bed, surrounded by Jinny Anson, Harry Clemens and Bam Gordette.

"The cermet suit failed," Doug said.

"We've gone over it," Clemens said. He was tall and lanky; it always surprised Doug that he spoke with a Down Maine twang instead of a cowboy's drawl. "Found a rupture along the seal between the air tank and the backpack frame. Looks like a pinhole in the insulation started it, then the pressure inside the tank broke it into a major leak."

"How could a pinhole get into the insulation?"

"Search me."

Anson said, "Somebody could've put it there."

Doug turned his head toward her. "Somebody? You mean sabotage?"

She nodded silently.

"I can't believe that, Jinny."

"The suit didn't fail," she said. "Somebody tampered with it."

Doug looked back at Clemens. "Harry?"

"I can't see how it could've failed by itself. I even thought maybe a micrometeorite hit the air tank, but when I started figuring out the angle it would've had to come in, it would've had to come up out of the ground!"

"So it wasn't a micrometeorite."

"Somebody dug out a pinhole in the insulation," Anson insisted. "Somebody who knows enough about suits to understand that the oxygen pressure inside the tank would break through the weak spot in half an hour or so after the tank was pressurized."

"Nobody here at Moonbase would do something like that," Doug insisted.

"Oh no?" Clemens countered. "Whoever it was covered up the pinhole with a smidge of foamgel insulation, so the leak wouldn't start until you'd been out on the surface for a half hour or so."

"The kind of foamgel the construction crew uses?" Doug asked.

Clemens nodded. "For stiffening temporary walls and stuff like that, right."

"The foamgel held the pressure in your air tank until it got brittle from exposure to vacuum," said Anson.

"If your tank had been down at a regular suit's pressure you would've been okay, I think," Clemens said. "But at fourteen-point-seven p.s.i., it blew out."

"And what about the emergency fill valve?" Anson added.

Clemens looked almost sheepish as he said, "The threads were smeared with dust. Froze the valve shut just as effectively as if they'd soldered it."

The realization made Doug's insides feel hollow. "We've got a saboteur among us?"

"A traitor," Anson snapped.

"But who? Why?"

"That's what we've got to find out. And fast."

Doug looked at Gordette, standing slightly behind Clemens, silent, taking in every word.

"Bam, I want you to look into this."

His eyes went wide. "Me?"

"Jinny and Harry have plenty of responsibilities to keep them busy. I want you to devote full time to this."

Gordette seemed startled. "But I don't know enough about spacesuits or any of that stuff. I'm not a cop. That's what your security department is for."

Doug shook his head. "Security doesn't have the personnel for this kind of investigation."

"But I'm just a glorified plumber."

"Jinny and Harry will give you all the help they can. You can call on anybody in Moonbase for technical assistance. And I'll tell security to cooperate with you fully."

Gordette's brows knit. It was clear to Doug that the man didn't want the job, but he couldn't refuse it.

"Another reason for you to do it, Bam," Doug added. "I don't want anybody outside this cubicle to know we're hunting for a saboteur. No sense stirring up everybody. And it might be easier to catch our traitor if he doesn't know he's being tracked down."

"Or she," Anson said.

Doug stared at her. Who did she have in mind? "Or she," he conceded. "Now get out of here and back to work."

"When are you going back to work?" Anson jibed.

"I'll be out of here as soon as the medics run one more set of tests. But I can work from this bed, don't worry."

"Me worry?" She laughed. "What have I got to worry about?"

"Someone tried to kill you?"

Her son's revelation shocked Joanna to her roots. She had taken his call in the comfortable little upstairs sitting room of her home outside Savannah. It was early summer beyond her windows: trees were in leaf, birds chirping in the afternoon sunlight. And there was an assassin stalking the confines of Moonbase's underground corridors.

"That's what Jinny and the others think," Doug said. He seemed cheerful and healthy enough, although now Joanna realized that he was sitting up in an infirmary bed.

He assured her that he was all right. "And I'm not completely convinced this wasn't just a freak accident, Mom."

Joanna realized she was biting her lip. "No," she said. "It wasn't an accident. It's just the kind of thing that Faure would do, the little sneak."

Doug smiled when he heard her words. "But how could he get an assassin smuggled in here?"

"That dance troupe," Joanna replied. "Faure timed all this so that the dance troupe would be stranded up there with you."

This time Doug actually broke into laughter. "You think one of the ballet dancers tampered with my spacesuit? They don't even know how to put one on."

"What about that reporter?"

She saw his eyes go wide once he heard her words. "Edith? She—it couldn't be her. It couldn't be!"

"Why not?" Joanna persisted. "You didn't have this kind of trouble before she talked her way into the base, did you?"

"It's not her," Doug said firmly. "It can't be."

Joanna did not reply, but her suspicions did not fade an iota.

"What's happening down there?" Doug asked, changing the subject.

"Lev's in New York, talking to Faure's flunkies. I've finally gotten Rashid to convene an emergency meeting of the board in two weeks. I have an item on the agenda calling for the board to urge the White House to recognize Moonbase's independence."

Doug's brows rose when he heard her. "Do you think you can carry that?"

"I've been counting noses. Tamara will be the swing vote, I'm certain of it."

"She'll vote on our side," Doug said.

"I want you to do everything you can to make sure of that."

She watched his face closely as he listened to her and digested her meaning.

"Mom," said Doug,'there's not much I can do from this distance except talk to her."

"Use the virtual reality link," Joanna urged. "Take her for a walk on the beach. Or a swim. She likes you, I'm certain of it."

From his infirmary bed, Doug stared at his mother's intense image on the little screen he had propped up on his lap. Good thing we're not living in the days when families arranged their children's marriages, he thought.

Then he wondered when he should tell his mother about Edith. And what do I really have to tell her? How serious is our relationship?

Do I love her? The question stunned him. Is this what love is, wanting to share your life with somebody. It's all happened so quickly, like falling off the edge of a cliff.

Does she love me? Will she want to share her life with me after this war is finished and she can go back Earthside again?

Yet in the back of his mind he realized that there had never been any hint of a traitor in Moonbase before Edith Elgin had arrived.

He heard his mother's voice, You didn't have this kind of trouble before she talked her way into the base, did you?

Doug ignored the voice. Or tried to.

DAY TWENTY-FOUR

Jack Killifer found that he was enjoying his visit to Tarawa. Despite his orders.

Outwardly, he was an American tourist taking in the beaches and fishing excursions by day, the gambling casino and musical shows by night. There were plenty of women, especially in the casino, most of them Asian, although he saw a couple of terrific tall blondes that must have been from Sweden or Germany or maybe even the States. Funny that there were hardly any island women in the casino, he thought. But he preferred big broads, anyway, not the dark little wahines.

There was one particular island woman that he had to find, though: Tamara Bonai.

Killifer had balked when General O'Conner told him to take care of Bonai himself. "Why not hire a professional?" he had demanded.

The wizened old man had glared at him from his wheelchair. "God's work has to be done by God's people, Jack. It would be wrong to bring in an outsider. Wrong, and dangerous. The fewer people who know about this, the better off we are."

Killifer had been forced to agree. Get a professional and you'd be blackmailed for life.

"If the woman was in the States, or Europe, or even Japan," O'Conner had added, "we could get one of our local zealots to do her. But out there on those islands, we don't have anybody we can depend on. That's why it's got to be you, Jack."

Reluctantly, he had bowed to the general's order.

"Besides," the old man had said, a vicious smile on his lips,'this won't be your first time. You murdered Foster Brennart, didn't you?"

Sitting at the bar closest to the roulette table, nursing a rye and ginger ale, Killifer thought back to Brennart and the first expedition to the lunar south pole. He'd wanted to kill Doug Stavenger; Brennart's death was more of an accident than anything else. He'd tried to trap the Stavenger kid up there on the mountaintop during the radiation storm. But Brennart had to be a friggin' hero and go out there with him. So Brennart died and became a legend while Stavenger pulled through and survived.

It was Joanna Stavenger that he had really wanted to kill. Joanna Brudnoy now. The bitch blamed him for her husband's death. Paul Stavenger had been killed by nanobugs from Killifer's lab. So his widow exiled Killifer to Moonbase. Either go to Moonbase or face trial for murder, she had told him. He picked Moonbase. It wrecked his career, ruined his life.

And she's still running other people's lives, Mrs Rich Bitch, lording it over everybody else. I'll get her. One way or the other I'll get her.

The tall glass in his hand suddenly shattered, spraying rye and ginger ale and ice cubes across the bar. The guy next to him jumped up from his bar stool and wiped at his shirt front, his expression halfway between surprise and anger. Fuck you, Killifer told him silently.

The bartender, a burly Micronesian in a loose fitting mesh shirt, hurried up to him.

"You okay?"

"Yeah," Killifer said, shaking his drenched hand. "I'm all right, don't worry."

"Man, that's some grip you got," said the bartender as he quickly set up another drink. "Take it easy, Iron Man, we only got a couple hundred of these glasses!"

"You didn't cut yourself, did you?"

A delicious redhead in a strapless gown took his hand in her gentle fingers, then looked up at him with big blue innocent eyes.

"Naw," Killifer said, smiling at her. "I'm okay."

"You must have some kind of troubles, crushing the glass like that. Like, real tension, huh?"

He admired the curve of her cleavage. "Everybody's got troubles," he said.

"Boy, is that true."

"You too?"

"Don't even ask," she said.

"Come on up to my room," Killifer said, "and we can tell each other about our troubles."

She didn't hesitate a microsecond. "Okay. Let's."

"Well," said Lev Brudnoy to his wife, "They agreed to evacuate up to sixty people from Moonbase. They're calling it a mercy flight."

Brudnoy had just returned to Savannah from a two-day trip to United Nations headquarters. Joanna met him at the Masterson Corporation airport. Now, in the privacy of their soundproofed limousine, he told her what he'd accomplished in New York.

"A mercy flight," Joanna echoed.

With a ghostly smile, Brudnoy said, "They intend to get as much publicity out of it as possible: bringing back people from Moonbase who might have been held as hostages."

"Hostages! Why, that lying little-"

Brudnoy put a lean finger to her lips. "Publicity is very important. Faure is very much aware that public opinion must remain on his side."

Joanna nodded understanding. "That's why they tried to make a hero out of that Peacekeeper captain."

"And why Faure went berserk with anger when the news networks started playing the reports coming out of Moonbase."

"I hope he bursts a blood vessel."

"They wanted Moonbase to stop broadcasting news reports," Brudnoy said, "in return for the evacuation flight."

"What?"

"I refused, of course. That's why a half-hour's conference took two days. They were adamant, but I—" Brudnoy placed a hand on the breast of his open-collar shirt' -I out-sat them. They demanded that we stop the broadcasts; I simply told them that it was impossible. After ducking into Faure's office fifty times or so, they gave in at last."

Joanna grabbed him by the ears and kissed him. "Good for you, Lev!"

"It was nothing. Had I known your reaction, I would have made more demands on them."

She studied his smiling face. Behind his grin, Lev looked tired, worried.

"Faure's building up a new military force to take Moonbase," he said softly.

"You're certain?"

He nodded wearily. "All the signs point to it. The U.N. bureaucrats are merely stalling for time, nitpicking about the evacuation flight and the arrangements for a meeting between you and Faure. In the meantime, I saw plenty of Peacekeeper officers heading into Faure's office."

"Really."

"And worse," Lev said. "There were several Yamagata Corporation people there, too."

Joanna leaned her head back against the limousine's plush upholstery. "I've got to get the board of directors to support Moonbase. If they back me, we can start to put pressure on the White House."

"And if they don't?" Lev asked.

"They will," Joanna said firmly. "They've got to."

Ibrahim al-Rashid steepled his fingers as he gazed at Tamara Bonai's image on the wall screen of his office. She is certainly beautiful, he thought. If only I could convince her to see things my way.

"Then you will attend the emergency board meeting in person?" he asked.

"Yes," Bonai said. "I want to be there."

She was apparently in her office, too, although it was difficult to tell, with all the rattan and bamboo decor and the wide windows looking out onto a delicious tropical beach.

"Perhaps you could come a day or so early," Rashid suggested. "I would be pleased to take you to New York City or wherever else you would like to visit."

Bonai seemed to think the matter over for a few heartbeats. "I've never been to Washington. I understand it's quite lovely in the spring."

"Washington," Rashid said, thinking quickly. "The national capital. I know a very comfortable hotel just a short walk from the White House. Perhaps I could arrange a visit with the President."

She smiled delightfully. "I'm afraid that would have to be arranged by my own foreign secretary. I am a chief of state, remember, and there is protocol involved."

Rashid smiled back at her. "Of course. But perhaps I could be of some help. I know the President personally, and a little friendly persuasion always makes the wheels turn more smoothly."

"That would be very kind of you."

"Nothing at all," he said. "I'd be happy to do it."

Bonai's face grew more serious. "You understand that I am fully in support of Moonbase's independence, don't you?"

"Of course. But you won't mind if I try to convince you otherwise?"

"You can try."

"You see, I have believed for many years that the true future of Masterson Corporation lies in the development of fusion power."

"As Yamagata is doing in Japan?"

"Yes, exactly. If we can work together with Yamagata we can open up the market for fusion power plants in North America. The market is worth trillions of dollars!"

"As long as you can import helium-three from the Moon."

Rashid kept the disappointment from showing on his face. She knows the whole story; there's no way to fool her about this.

"Yes," he admitted. "Fusion power makes economic sense only if we can use helium-three as a fuel."

"Which is why Yamagata wants Moonbase."

"Yamagata is producing helium-three at its own base in Copernicus."

"But without nanomachines to do the work, their costs are prohibitively high."

"I wouldn't say prohibitively," Rashid argued.

Bonai smiled brightly. "Then why do they want Moonbase, if not for our nanotechnology?"

"With nanomachines extracting helium-three from the Moon's soil," Rashid said, warming to his subject,'the costs of fusion power go down dramatically. We could offer the world the ultimate energy system, the energy source the stars themselves use! It would be cheap, efficient, and clean: no radioactive wastes!"

"No radioactive waste?" Bonai probed.

Rashid waved a hand in the air. "Well, some, of course. But very little, and totally manageable. Not like the old-style fission reactors, with their uranium and plutonium."

"I see."

"We could be the primary producer of fusion power systems for North and South America," he said, regaining his enthusiasm. "The market will be trillions of dollars every year! Think of the profits!"

"And who would make these profits? Masterson Corporation or Yamagata?"

"Both," Rashid answered.

She said nothing for several moments. Then, rather thoughtfully, Bonai offered, "We must talk about this in more detail."

"Yes. When you visit Washington. Before the board meeting."

She nodded. "Yes. Before the board meeting, certainly."

Rashid felt delighted. I'm winning her over! he told himself.