But when the blast of war blows in our ears, Then imitate the action of the tiger…

Shakespeare Henry V

THE HAGUE

"Telephone for you, Senator. The White House."

Jill Meyers looked up from her computer screen. Despite the fact that she had not been a member of the U.S. Senate for nearly six years now, her private secretary still called her 'Senator'.

"Who is it?" she asked warily.

"The President," he replied, in his usual near-whisper.

Jill grinned at her oldest assistant, "I guess I can make time for the President."

Almost instantly the face of an intense young man appeared on her desktop screen. "Justice Meyers? One moment, please, for the President."

His image disappeared and the screen showed the seal of the President of the United States on a royal blue background. The American eagle held a sheaf of arrows in one talon and an olive branch in the other: war or peace.

It took more than a moment for the President to come on, of course. The power trip. The President doesn't get on the horn until she's absolutely certain that the party she wants to talk to is already on the line. No flunkies.

Jill glanced up at her private secretary and realized with a pang that he'd been a fresh-faced kid just out of law school when he'd first come aboard as a senatorial aide. We're all getting old, she thought, catching her own reflection in the phone screen. Her face was round and ordinary as a pie pan, she thought, with mousey brown hair as straight and limp as overcooked spaghetti. And still that scattering of freckles across her snub of a nose, like a tomboy version of Huck Finn.

"Jill," said the President, "You're looking very pensive today."

The President looked elegant, as usual. Silver-gray hair swept back stylishly, bright blue eyes sparkling. Her latest facelift had tightened the sagging flesh beneath her chin and made her seem ten years younger.

"What can I do for you, Mrs President?" Jill asked, genuinely curious about the reason for this call. It had to be nearly 7.00 a.m. in Washington, early for her.

"It's this request for extradition-"

"Oh. The Killifer business."

"Yes. I don't understand what you've got to do with it."

"I've been asked to intercede, in my official capacity as a justice of the World Court.' Jill said.

"Asked? By whom?"

"Joanna Brudnoy."

"I see.' The President's tone went decidedly frosty.

"The Justice Department has apparently refused to extradite the man to Kiribati."

"We have no treaty of extradition with that nation," the President said.

"That's why the World Court has been asked to intercede," said Jill.

"I see."

"Killifer was identified as the man who raped and murdered Tamara Bonai, yet the American government has refused to extradite him to Kiribati to stand trial. The victim was Kiribati's head of state, for God's sake."

"That's a very serious charge," said the President.

"There's an eye-witness."

"Douglas Stavenger, I know. But he's on the Moon and his so-called eye-witnessing was done through a virtual reality link. Any competent defense lawyer will make mincemeat of that."

"I'm not so sure," Jill said. In any event, I'd think you'd want the sonofabitch to be brought to justice."

The President did not flinch at Jill's deliberate profanity.

"Jill, this is all tied up with the Moonbase business."

"Which means it's all tied up with the New Morality people, right?"

"Those are my supporters, Jill."

"And they're protecting a murderer?"

The President's face was a smooth, blank faqade. She gave away nothing. "An alleged murderer," she said coolly.

"I may not be a lawyer," Jill countered, "but I do know a few points of law. You're protecting Killifer. Why?"

"Jill, I thought you were one of my supporters, too. I know you don't agree with everything the New Morality does, but you've always been on my side."

"Why are you protecting this man?"

There's much more here than you're aware of, Jill."

"Wait a minute," Jill said. "I've served time at Moonbase. I was there with Paul Stavenger when it was nothing but a bunch of tin cans stuck in the ground."

"You had an affair with Paul Stavenger," the President murmured.

"Name me one woman who served at Moonbase in those days who didn't," Jill rejoined happily. "He was one helluva guy before he married Joanna."

"Joanna," the President said, with obvious distaste.

"If I were still in the Senate instead of stuck here in the World Court, I'd be fighting you on this Moonbase business. You're making a bad mistake."

With the ghost of a smile, the President said, "That's the thanks I get for nominating you to the International Court of Justice?"

"Come off it, Luce."

"You backed me on the nanotech treaty when you were in the Senate."

"Because I didn't want nanotechnology turned into a new arms race," Jill said. "I never thought the treaty'd be used against Moonbase. They can't exist without nanomachines and you know it."

The President sighed. "So I suppose you'll vote in favor of their independence if the question comes up before the World Court?"

"It's on our docket for November. I've tried to get an emergency session to hear the matter, but I was voted down."

"It doesn't matter, Jill. By November the question will have been settled conclusively. In fact, it should be settled in about a week or so."

"You're going to do it, then? Attack Moonbase?"

"The United Nations is doing it, not me."

"But you're not raising a protest? If you hollered, Faure would have to listen."

"I am not going to interfere with a U.N. operation," said the President.

Jill fumed in silence for a moment, then grumbled, "Well, I hope you don't expect to get re-elected."

This time the President's smile showed teeth. "The New Morality will re-elect me because I backed the enforcement of the nanotech treaty."

"You think so?"

"All the polls show it conclusively."

"So you're not going to let Killifer be extradited?"

"Under no circumstances."

"Damn! If I were Doug Stavenger I'd come down there and hang the man myself."

"Vigilante justice? From a judge of the World Court?"

"Justice," Jill snapped. "When your own government won't give you justice, you've got the right to make your own move. Jefferson wrote that into the Declaration of Independence, remember?"

"But Jill dear, Stavenger and the rest of his Lunatics don't regard us as their government anymore. Do they?"

Jill had no answer. Luce always was the better debater; she could score points off the devil himself whenever she chose to.

MOONBASE

Jinny Anson's office was crowded. Doug sat at the foot of the table that butted against her desk, flanked by Zimmerman and Cardenas, the heads of Moonbase's major departments, and the physicist Wicksen. There was no room at the little table for Edith, so she sat slightly behind Doug and to his right.

Bam Gordette sat alone on the couch by the door, separated from all the others by a meter of empty floor space and an uneasy distrust that was almost palpable. The others are treating Bam as if he's a leper, Doug thought.

"You're certain the Peacekeepers are gonna make their move so soon?" Jinny Anson was asking.

"We've got maybe a week, if we're lucky," Doug replied grimly. "What can we accomplish in that time?"

A gloomy silence filled the office. Even the normally perky Anson looked downcast.

"Wix?" Doug asked. "We need the beam gun up and working in a week."

The physicist shook his head slowly, his big soulful eyes staring straight at Doug. "I told you it would take two lunar days… two months."

"You've got seven Earth days," Doug said. "Maybe less."

Wicksen started to shake his head.

"Put every man you've got onto it," urged Doug. "And every woman."

"We're already working flat out."

"How close are you?"

The physicist shrugged uncomfortably, more like a writhing.

"The beam collimator is finished. The aiming circuitry is ready to be tested. Then we've got to bring the kloodges out to the mass driver and mate them. Then we need to test the complete system."

"Kloodges?" Edith asked. "What are they?"

"Ramshackle collections of hardware," Harry Clemens answered in his laconic twang before Wicksen could respond. "Clinking, clanking, caliginous collections of junk."

"Oh."

"Makeshift hardware," Wicksen said, grimacing slightly at Clemens. "Slapped together quickly, without worrying about how it looks."

"Kloodges," Edith repeated.

Doug demanded, "Can you put it all together by the end of this week?"

"We have to test-"

"We don't have time for testing!" Doug said sharply. "Get the hardware together, make it functional. You can test it after it's completely assembled, if the Peacekeepers give us enough time."

Wicksen's big eyes widened even further. "You'd hang the survival of this base on untested equipment?"

"If it doesn't work, we're dead anyway," Doug pointed out. "Right?"

The physicist thought it over for a moment, his big tarsier's eyes staring at Doug. At last he admitted, "Right."

"Wait a minute," Anson said, from behind her desk. "Wix, will you have enough time to rig the control system so you can operate the beam gun from inside, here?"

"No. We'll have to run it manually, out there at the mass driver."

"In suits," said Vince Falcone.

Wicksen nodded solemnly.

"With a nuclear warhead coming at you," Falcone added.

Another grave nod.

Anson said, "So if the beam gun doesn't work you and your people get fried by the nuke."

"That's right," Wicksen said slowly. "We'll be operating an untested apparatus, in the open, in surface suits, and if it doesn't work the first time we'll all be toast."

All eyes turned to Doug.

"The alternative is to let the Peacekeepers nuke our solar farms," he said. But he was thinking, I can't force Wix and his people to go out there under the gun. I can't order him to do it.

Wicksen smiled a strange, enigmatic smile. "Well… I can see that we'll have to make the apparatus work the first time.' He pushed his chair back from the table. "I'd better get back to the workshop. We have a lot to do and not much time to do it."

The others watched him walk out of the office and slide the door shut softly behind him.

Anson shook her head. "The Japs aren't the only ones who've got kamikazes."

Falcone, his swarthy face set in a scowl, said to Doug, "You're gonna let him go out on a suicide job?"

"Do you see any alternatives?" Doug returned, forcing himself to sound much firmer than he felt.

Before Falcone could answer, Doug added, "Except surrender?"

"Okay, Wix has made his decision," Anson said. "Let's move on."

Gratefully, Doug turned to Zimmerman. "Professor, what have you cooked up for us?"

"Nothing," said Zimmerman flatly.

"Nothing?"

"Nothing that can be ready in a week."

Doug turned to Cardenas. "Kris?"

"We're ready to inject therapeutic nanomachines into anyone who'll accept them. After your recent experience," she glanced inadvertently at Gordette, "lots of people have come to realize that nanomachines can be extremely helpful to them, healthwise."

"Good," said Doug.

"But there's a downside, too," Cardenas added, raising a warning finger. "Most of the people here intend to return Earthside, sooner or later. They're scared of trouble down there if they're carrying nanomachines in them."

Doug slumped back in his squeaking little plastic chair. "So what's the bottom line, Kris?"

"Most of our people refuse to be injected. But we're ready for emergency nanotherapy for people who're hurt or wounded."

The stupid fools, Doug thought. Then he realized his own fears of returning Earthside, where nanoluddite assassins waited. Like Killifer. Like the fanatics who murdered anyone who publicly espoused nanotechnology.

"Okay," he said wearily. "I assume you're working with the medical staff."

Cardenas grinned. "All three of 'em."

Neither Debbie Paine nor Harry Clemens had anything useful for Moonbase's defense. By the time Doug reached Vince Falcone, though, the burly, swarthy engineer had a knowing glint in his eyes.

"I been thinking," Falcone said.

"I thought I smelled wood burning," quipped Clemens.

"They'll be comin' over Wodjo Pass, right?" Falcone asked rhetorically.

Doug looked over at Gordette, who nodded warily.

"Maybe we can block the pass," said Falcone.

"Block it?"

"Sure. You know the foamgel we use for insulation and whatnot? Smart hydrogel is what it is. Expands or shrinks, depending on how you set it up."

Doug remembered that foamgel had been used on his sabotaged spacesuit. He glanced over at Gordette again; Bam was staring at him with unwavering eyes.

Falcone was grinning now with self-satisfaction. "Suppose we spray a ton or so of the glop along Wodjo Pass, see? The Peacekeepers are coming across the pass in tractors, right? When they're in the middle of the pass we radiate the gel with microwaves from the antennas on Mount Yeager."

"And the gel swells up to a couple hundred times its original size!" Anson said eagerly.

"You got it," said Falcone. "Their tractors are caught in the glop like flies in a spiderweb. Like trucks stuck in deep mud."

"You can stop their tractors?" Doug asked. It was the first piece of good news he'd heard.

Still grinning, Falcone said, "I think so."

"But couldn't the troopers get out and walk across the foam?" Debbie Paine asked. "It hardens like concrete, doesn't it?"

"Yeah, that's right," Falcone admitted.

Doug turned to Gordette. "Bam, what do you think?"

The room fell utterly, uncomfortably silent.

Gordette spoke up, "Even if they can get out and walk to the crater floor, they'd have to leave most of their heavy equipment behind, in the tractors."

"Heavy equipment?" Clemens asked.

"Missile launchers," said Gordette. "Artillery. Ammunition cases. They could only bring what the troopers could carry. That's a big advantage to us."

"Can you produce that much foamgel in a few days?" Doug asked.

Falcone scratched at his stubbly chin. "We got some in inventory already… I'll get the chem lab to turn out as much as they can."

"But will it be enough?"

"Dunno," Falcone answered. Then he brightened. "Wait a minute," he said, looking excited. "It could get even better."

"What?"

"If we can divert enough power from the solar farms to the microwave antennas on Yeager-"

"Assuming Wix's beam gun works and the farms aren't nuked," Anson interjected.

"Yeah, yeah," Falcone said impatiently. "Anyway, gimme enough power for the microwave transmitters and we can fry the Peacekeeper troops while they're still up in the pass."

Doug felt his brows knitting. "What're you saying, Vince?"

"The troops'll be in suits, right? Lotsa metal in their suits. A microwave beam of sufficient strength'll heat up the metal, even penetrate the suits and cook the guys inside!"

Anson nearly came up out of her chair. "You can wipe 'em out up there in the pass before they ever get near us!"

"No!" shouted Edith.

Surprised, Doug turned toward her.

"No, you can't do that," Edith said, her face set with determination.

"Whattaya mean we can't?" Falcone snapped. "I haven't gone through the numbers but I'm willing to bet-"

"You mustn't kill any of them," Edith said.

"Mustn't kill…?"

"How can we fight 'em if we can't kill 'em?"

Edith edged forward slightly in her seat. "The worst thing you can do, the absolute worst, is to kill any of the Peacekeepers."

Doug realized what she was driving at. "Captain Munasinghe," he muttered.

"Right. Faure tried to make a martyr out of him, tried to use him to work up public opinion against you."

"But he killed himself," Debbie Paine said. "It wasn't our fault."

"Okay," said Edith. "Now imagine what happens if you cook a hundred Peacekeeper troops. Picture what the media Earthside will do with that."

Silence descended on the office again, gloomier and deeper than before.

"We've been working for weeks now to present Moonbase's side of this story to the media, the weak little guys being bullied by the big, bad U.N. and Peacekeepers," Edith said. "And it's starting to work. Public relations polls in the States and Europe show that the people are rooting for us and against the U.N."

"With that and five bucks I can buy a cup of coffee," Falcone grumbled.

"Your claim of independence is coming up before the World Court in a few months," Edith went on. "You need to have the best possible public image."

"And that means we can't kill the soldiers attacking us?" Anson demanded.

"That's exactly what it means," said Edith heatedly. "Right now a lot of people Earthside are on your side. The underdog always get sympathy. But you start sending body bags back to Earth and your support will evaporate damned quick."

"So we could win the battle and lose the war," Doug said.

Nodding, Edith answered, "That's what it comes down to. Kill Peacekeeper troops and you'll just convince everybody Earthside that Faure is right. They'll come at you with still more troops. Or missiles, or whatever it takes to wipe you out."

"So we can't kill the Peacekeepers," Falcone muttered, unbelievingly.

"Then how do we keep them from taking over?" Anson wondered aloud.

Doug echoed her. "How can we win the battle without killing any of the enemy?"

"Damned good question," Clemens murmured.

For long moments no one said a word. Finally Doug turned to Gordette.

"Bam, how can you stop soldiers without killing them?"

They all turned to Gordette, still sitting by the door. Doug saw the distrust, the outright repugnance on their faces; he wondered what Gordette saw, what he felt.

Gordette looked them over with a gaze that swept the small, crowded office. Then, turning to face Doug squarely, he said, "You'll have to incapacitate them."

"How?"

Gordette cocked his head to one side, thinking. "They'll all be in spacesuits. They'll be linked by their suit radios. Can you jam their communications?"

Doug said, "We ought to be able to do that."

"If they can't talk back and forth they'll lose their cohesiveness. Instead of a battalion they'll be a handful of individuals."

"Like ants!" Paine exclaimed. "One ant by itself is pretty useless. But a whole nest of them can mount an invasion of another nest."

"Cut off their communications," Doug repeated.

"Not enough," said Falcone. "You'll still have few hundred soldiers armed with guns and whatnot. They can be directed by hand signals, for chrissakes."

"Not if they are blind," rumbled Zimmerman.

"What?"

"I have been stupid," Zimmerman said, shaking his jowly head. "Invisible I cannot make you… but I can make them blind!"

"Blind them? How?"

"Simple," said the professor. "Let them come into our tunnels. We fill the air with nanomachines that cling to their visors and darken them so they cannot see."

Doug immediately asked, "Can the bugs cling to their suits, too? Jam up their joints, immobilize them?"

"Like the dust outside!" Anson said.

"Yah! Better than dust," Zimmerman replied. "My nanos will turn them into statues!"

"But only once they're inside the base, in the corridors," Clemens said.

"Yah. The nanos must have air to float in."

"So we can make them deaf, dumb and blind," Falcone said.

"And immobile," Cardenas added.

"Freeze 'em in their tracks," said Anson.

"Can you produce these nanos in a week?" Doug asked.

For the first time since Doug had known the old man, Zimmerman's fleshy face looked uncertain. "One week? Not possible! But I will try."

Doug nodded, but he though that it was awfully risky to allow the Peacekeepers into the base in the hopes that Zimmerman's nanobugs could neutralize them. Assuming Zimmerman could make the bugs and they worked as advertised. Even then, everything depended on Wix's beam gun stopping the incoming nuke. And Falcone's foamgel stopping the Peacekeepers' heavy equipment up at Wodjohowitcz Pass.

One untested idea on top of another, Doug realized. And if any of the Peacekeepers gets killed, we've lost everything.

NIPPON ONE

Colonel Giap tried to suppress the distaste he felt for the Yamagata volunteer.

The man was Japanese, short and wiry, quite young. He had an air of superiority about him, an aura of other-worldliness, as if all of Giap's responsibilities and worries did not matter at all.

The slow build-up of three hundred Peacekeeper troops -and these seven special volunteers—had strained Nippon One's facilities to the breaking point. Never a large or comfortable base, its cramped little compartments were now jammed with the extra personnel. Four people were sleeping in cubicles designed for one. Peacekeeper troops even slept in the tunnels on thin foam mattresses or tatami mats.

Giap's 'office' was a storage bin that had been half-emptied by the enormous drain on the base's logistics. We had better move on Moonbase within the week, the colonel told himself. There will be no food left for us in eight days.

He looked directly into the dark brown eyes of the Yamagata volunteer and saw a placidity, an almost amused sense of superiority. This man is actually looking forward to his death, Giap realized. Then he wondered how much of his bravery of fanaticism came from narcotics. The Sacred Seven, as the suicide volunteers called themselves, lived by themselves, crammed into a single cubicle; they had brought their own food and drink. And so-called medicines.

Three Japanese, three Americans, and an Iranian made up the Sacred Seven. One of the Americans was a woman. All of them were either serenely other-worldly, as their leader was, or brittle and wired, with eyes that glittered with the burning intensity of fanaticism. All of them wore a shoulder patch that showed a fist clutching a bolt of lightning.

There was no space for a desk in the compartment. The two men sat on the floor, cross-legged, facing one another barely centimeters apart, Giap in his light blue uniform, the Japanese volunteer in a gym suit—with the shoulder patch. Above them rose stacks of half-empty shelving. Giap's personal computer, hardly bigger than his fist, lay on the bare stone floor at his side.

"My orders," Giap was saying, "are to capture Moonbase intact."

"If possible," the volunteer added.

Giap seethed inwardly at the man's smug attitude. He knows what my orders are. Someone has been leaking the information to him.

"It will not only be possible," Giap hissed, "but inevitable."

"Assuming all goes according to your plan."

"My plan is very thorough."

"Of course," said the volunteer airily. "However, should the assault fail, for any reason, my team will destroy Moonbase for you."

"And destroy yourselves in the doing of it."

"That is nothing. To give our lives in the service of God is the greatest good."

Giap wondered whose god this man thought he was serving. These zealots all professed loyalty to the New Morality even though their individual religions must obviously be different from one another.

"I want you to understand that you are not to make any move whatsoever unless and until I order it," Giap said.

The volunteer nodded benignly.

"You and your people are under my command. You will obey my orders."

"Yes, of course. But you will assign a squad of your troops to help us open up the old plasma exhaust vents."

It was not a question, Giap knew.

"Yes, as soon as we have secured the main garage area," he replied.

"Good. Then we will climb into the vents and make our way to the key Moonbase facilities: the water factory, the environmental control center, the control center, the farm, and the nanolabs. I myself and one of the Americans will knock out the nanolabs."

"Only if I order it," Giap insisted.

"Of course," said the volunteer, with his maddening patient smile. "We will need your troopers' assistance to climb up into the vents, won't we?"

Giap nodded slowly. The volunteers will each be carrying a hundred kilos of high explosive. Not an easy burden to shoulder in a spacesuit, he knew.

Suicide bombers. The idea rankled him. Someone in the Yamagata chain of command did not trust him to capture Moonbase. Someone in the Yamagata chain of command was working for the New Morality in addition to the corporation. Whoever it was had added these insane volunteers to make certain that Moonbase would be eliminated if it couldn't be taken intact.

SAVANNAH

The two women were taking lunch on the patio, shaded by a pair of ancient oaks and cooled by a breeze generated from hidden fans built into the brick walls that edged the meticulously cultivated garden of show flowers.

Joanna Brudnoy wore a light sundress of rose pink; Jill Meyers a tailored blouse and knee-length skirt. They had known each other since Jill had been a NASA astronaut working with Paul Stavenger in the very earliest lunar shelters that eventually became Moonbase; long enough so that neither felt the need to try to impress the other.

"We're in summer recess now," Jill Meyers said.

"And how long will that last?" Joanna asked, glancing out at the two men working in the garden. One of them actually was a gardener, the other a security guard in disguise.

Jill gave her a freckle-nosed grin. "The International Court of Justice has its own calendar, Jo. Officially, it'll stay summer until November, when we reconvene."

"And that's when you'll hear Moonbase's petition?"

Justice Meyers nodded.

"Isn't there any way of hearing it sooner?" Joanna pleaded. "A special session, perhaps?"

"I tried, Jo," said Jill. "I went all-out, but I got outvoted, ten to five."

Joanna toyed absently with the salad in front of her. "Is that how they'll vote in November, do you think?"

"No, not at all. They just didn't want to go to the trouble of a special session, that's all.' Before Joanna could comment, Jill added, "And they're waiting to see if Moonbase can last until November. If Moonbase survives that long, it'll be a strong indication that they really can be independent."

Joanna let go of her fork and it clinked against the glass dish. "Faure's going to attack them again any day now."

Nodding, Jill agreed, "That's what I hear, too."

"Isn't there anything you can do?"

"I talked with the President. She's not going to lift a finger."

"We've been putting as much pressure on our Senators as we can," Joanna said. "But Moonbase is a private operation, not part of the government."

"There's not much they can do about it," Jill said.

"But there must be something!"

"Wait," Jill said gently. "Wait and pray."

Joanna eyed her. "You sound like a New Morality convert."

Jill took it with a smile. "You don't have to be a New Morality fanatic to believe in the power of prayer, Jo."

Several miles away, in the riverfront headquarters of Masterson Corporation, Jack Killifer sat tensely in one of the tight little stalls that passed for offices among the corporation's personnel department employees.

"I'm taking an awful chance, Mr Killifer," said the young woman sitting at the desk. She spoke in a near whisper; the padded partitions that marked off her tiny space did not extend all the way to the ceiling. Soft music purred from the hand-sized radio on her desk next to her computer monitor screen.

"Like I'm not?" Killifer snapped, low enough to avoid eavesdroppers, he hoped. His appearance had changed: his gray pony tail was gone; now his hair was dark and clipped short, military style. He had also grown a bushy moustache that he had darkened to match his hair.

"I found your personnel record," she said, looking worried, "but, lord's sake, it's almost nine years old!"

"I don't want my old record," he almost snarled. "I want you to generate a new one."

"But that would be a total fabrication."

"So what?"

"What if my supervisor checks on it? What could I say?"

Killifer had thought it all out beforehand. "I won't be around long enough for anybody to notice. A week, maybe less."

"It's an awful risk," she repeated. "For both of us."

"No risk at all for you," Killifer said, getting fed up with her fears. "If anybody complains you just tell 'em I showed you documentation."

"Documentation?"

Killifer pulled a thin sheaf of papers from his jacket pocket. They were not forged, since they were written by a bona fide personnel executive from the Urban Corps' headquarters in Atlanta. The information in them, however, was completely false.

"Here, scan these into your records before you piss yourself."

"Sir!"

Killifer sighed. These damned New Morality uptights. Can't even spit without them getting wired over it.

"Forgive me," he said.

"Forgiveness is the Lord's work," she chanted. Then she turned to her keyboard and activated the scanner.

Good, Killifer thought as he handed her the falsified personnel documents. By the time I walk out of here I'll be on the payroll as a member of the Masterson security staff. If this uptight little broad doesn't faint on me first.

MASS DRIVER

"Everything takes longer to do in these suits.' Wicksen's voice was calm, not complaining, not making excuses; it was as if he were reading a report aloud.

Doug watched the men working at the end of the mass driver. While those who worked on the surface regularly had personalized their spacesuits one way or another, Wicksen's physicists and technicians were in unmarked, anonymous suits straight off the standby racks.

At Doug's insistence, a team of construction engineers was building a makeshift shelter for Wicksen's people a few dozen meters from where they were busily putting together the equipment for the beam gun. Like one of the old tempos, the shelter was dug into the ground and would be covered with loose rubble from the regolith. Wicksen and his assistants could run the beam gun from there. Maybe the shelter would protect them from the radiation of a nuclear explosion, if the gun didn't work.

"How's it going?" Doug asked.

"Slowly," said Wix. "But we're making progress. We connected the beam collimator this morning. By tomorrow the aiming circuitry should be functional. Day after tomorrow, at the latest."

"And then you're ready to shoot?"

Wicksen's flat, unruffled voice came through Doug's helmet earphones, "Then we'll be ready to see if anything really works. After testing the assembly we can power up the magnets and see if the circuitry can handle the load without shorting out."

"But your calculations-"

"Mathematics doesn't necessarily reflect the real world," Wicksen said. "Physics is more than numbers in a computer."

"Oh. I see."

"I remember when I was a kid in high school, we had a volunteer teacher's aide come in and help us in our science class. He was retired, used to be a big-time physicist. His daughter was a famous folk singer."

Doug wondered what this had to do with the defense of Moonbase, but hesitated to interrupt Wicksen.

"He took us out to the gym and attached a bowling ball to one of the climbing ropes. The rope was hanging from a beam 'way up on the ceiling. Then he carried the bowling ball up to the top tier of the benches where we sat during the basketball games."

"What was he doing?" Doug asked, curious despite himself.

"Teaching us physics. The law of pendulums. He held that big old bowling ball a centimeter in front of his nose, and then let it go."

"And?"

"It swung on that rope all the way across the gym, like a cannonball, then swung right back toward him again. We all started to yell to him to duck, to get out of the way. But he just stood there and grinned at us."

Wicksen paused dramatically. Doug waited for him to finish the story.

"The bowling ball stopped a centimeter in front of his nose, then started swinging back again. And he said, "See? It works that way every time. That's physics!" And I was hooked for life."

Doug thought he understood. "The demonstration was a lot more convincing than reading the equations about pendulums, right?"

"Right," said Wicksen. "Of course, you've got to know what you're doing. You've got to release the bowling ball without pushing it even the slightest little bit. If you push it, it'll come back and smash your head in."

"Is the gun going to work?" Doug asked.

He could sense Wicksen trying to shrug inside his suit. "We don't know. All the equations check out, but we won't know until we try it."

"And you probably won't get a chance to try it until a nuclear warhead is falling on our heads."

"Probably.' If that thought perturbed Wicksen in the slightest, it didn't show in his voice.

He's actually happy about this, Doug realized. He's running an experiment that might get himself and all his people killed, but the whole project excites him. Like a hunter tracking down a lion in thick underbrush: dangerous, but what an adrenaline rush!

Doug took his leave of the physicist, wishing he could be as fatalistic as Wicksen. As he climbed into his tractor and trundled away from the mass driver, heading back toward Moonbase, he tried to see things the way Wicksen did. Either the experiment works or we all get killed. Is that the way he really thinks? Or is it that he's so absorbed in the experiment itself that he's not thinking at all about the consequences.

Doug's first stop after getting out of his spacesuit and cleaning it was the control center. Everything looked normal in the big, dimly lit room. The quiet hum of electronics. Rows of consoles monitored by men and women staring at the screens, pin mikes at their lips and earphones clamped to their heads. A controlled intensity, with the big electronic wall displays that showed schematics of the entire base looming over all of them.

He saw Jinny Anson bending over the shoulder of the chief communications technician.

Walking over to her, he asked, "What's up, Jinny?"

She straightened up and Doug saw that her face was somber. "Lot of activity at L-l," she said, gesturing toward the comm tech's center screen.

Doug saw a radar plot of the space station that hovered nearly sixty thousand kilometers above them. Several additional blips clustered around the red dot marking the station.

"Resupply?" Doug mused.

"Not likely," said Anson. "Their regular resupply run took place on schedule last week. No, they're delivering something to the station, but it's not life support supplies or propellant."

Doug took in a deep breath. "The nuclear missile?"

"Maybe more than one."

For a moment Doug was silent, thinking. Then he said, "I'm going to call Harry Clemens. It's time to pop an observation satellite so we can keep an eye on Nippon One."

Anson nodded, then grinned ruefully. "You might not like what you see, boss."

Gordette was sitting in The Cave, nursing a mug of the stuff that passed for coffee at Moonbase. It was midday, and the cafeteria was filling up with the lunchtime crowd. But no one sat at Gordette's table. No one came near it; a ring of empty tables surrounded him.

Pariah, he said to himself. That's the word. For days he's been trying to recall the term. At last it came swimming up from his subconscious. Pariah. Outcast. Murderer. Assassin. That's me and they all know it.

It would've been better if Doug had let me die, Gordette told himself. He says he trusts me, but none of these others do. They all know about me now, or they think they do. And they all hate me.

Then he saw Paula Liebowitz carrying a tray in both hands, making her way through the crowded tables, heading straight toward him. She walked with a determined stride and an odd, tenacious expression on her face, right up to Gordette's table.

"Do you mind if I sit here?" she asked, almost truculently.

Gordette spread his arms to take in all the empty chairs. "Be my guest."

Liebowitz plopped her laden tray on the table and took the chair next to Gordette.

"Is it true? Did you really try to kill Doug Stavenger?"

Gordette couldn't make out what was in her eyes. It wasn't anger, exactly. But it wasn't tenderness, either.

"It's true," he said flatly.

"You're a hired assassin? A hit man?"

He puffed out a sigh. "When I first met you I was trying to sabotage Doug's suit."

"Son of a bitch," Liebowitz said. She wasn't calling Gordette a name, he realized; merely expressing her emotions.

He tried to shrug. "That's what I was sent here to do."

"And when you invited me to dinner, that was part of it? You were going to try to use me to help you kill Stavenger?"

"No," he answered slowly. "I invited you to dinner because I liked you."

"Yeah. Sure."

"Even trained assassins need some human companionship now and then," Gordette told her.

"Don't try to make a joke out of this!"

"It's no joke, believe me."

"Why should I believe anything you say?"

"Why do you ask me, then?"

"I liked you," Liebowitz said. "I was even thinking about going to bed with you."

"Get your kicks with a black man, huh?"

She frowned with puzzlement. "What?"

"I'm black."

"And I'm a Jew. What's that got to do with anything?"

Gordette thought it over for a moment. "Nothing. Nothing's got anything to do with anything."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"I don't know," he said, getting irritated with her cross-examination. "So I liked you and you liked me. So what?"

"Stavenger's letting you stay here? You're still working with him?"

Gordette nodded.

"He trusts you? After you tried to kill him?"

"I told him the story of my life," Gordette said, acid in each word, "and he decided he's gonna reform me. Start me a new life here on the Moon, where everybody loves me and trusts me."

"Yeah, you've made it so easy to be loved and accepted."

"The only thing I've made easy is being black, so you can spot me at a distance."

"What the hell's this black business got to do with it?"

"You see any other black people up here?"

Liebowitz almost laughed at him. "My supervisor's black. There's dozens of Afro-Americans and blacks from other countries here.' She turned in her chair and pointed. "Look. Black people. And Asians. Hell, they even let Italians up here!"

"Very funny."

"The first American astronaut on Mars was black."

"Big deal."

"Stop feeling sorry for yourself."

"Okay. Good advice. I'll do that," he mumbled.

Liebowitz glared at him like a disappointed mother. "You really tried to kill him?"

"I slit his throat. All right? Is that what you wanted to hear? My fuckin' confession?"

He said it loudly enough so that people at the nearest tables turned to stare at him.

"What I want to hear," Liebowitz said, her voice low, "is where you're going from here."

"Straight to hell," Gordette said.

"So you're going to isolate yourself, build a wall and not let anybody near you."

He pointed to the ring of empty tables around them. "You see anybody trying to make friends with me?"

"I am," she said.

He blinked, uncomprehending.

"I'm having lunch with you, aren't I?" Liebowitz said. "Maybe you can tell me the story of your life and make me believe that you're something more than just a hired killer."

Ben Bova arrrrrrrrrrrgggh and no arrivals of lunar cargo carriers. The manufacturing facility had shut down for lack of raw materials. No lunar transfer vehicles needed maintenance or repair; they were all hanging silent and useless in weightless geodesic cocoons that protected them from incoming radiation and the occasional meteoroids that peppered cislunar space. The tourist hotel was still running, but its business had dropped sharply since the war against Moonbase had started.

Jill Meyers gazed sadly through an observation port in the hotel module. She had helped to build Masterson, back in the days when she'd been a government astronaut. She was accustomed to seeing spacesuited figures bustling from module to module, jetting along in solo maneuvering units or riding the bare-bones shuttlecraft called broomsticks. But now the whole region was quiet, empty. This war was costing Masterson Corporation millions of dollars per day, and even though the U.N. promised reparations, Meyers knew that nothing could repay time lost, careers interrupted.

"There you are!"

Jill turned from the circular glassteel observation port to see Edan McGrath standing in the hatch. His sizable bulk almost filled the hatchway, the lighting from the central corridor silhouetting him dramatically.

"You finally got here," Meyers said, taking a step toward him.

"I've been looking all over this tin can for you," he replied gruffly. "Come on, let's eat. I haven't had a bite since breakfast."

The hotel's restaurant was nearly empty. Only two other couples sitting at the elegant tables, and a family of four off in the farthest corner, where the children wouldn't annoy other diners. They've got more waiters than customers, Meyers noticed as she scanned the richly-decorated room. Windowall screens displayed astronomical scenes, glorious interstellar nebulas glowing delicate pink and electric blue. Meyers realized that real windows would have shown the scenery outside spinning lazily; not the most soothing background for flatland tourists to eat and drink by.

McGrath had ordered champagne. They clinked their fluted glasses and toasted each other's health. Meyers had dressed in comfortable tan slacks and a loose blouse embroidered with flowers. McGrath wore a bulky white turtleneck sweater over jeans that looked stiffly new.

With a lopsided grin on his beefy face, McGrath asked, "Do you come here often?"

It was a corny line and they both knew it.

Meyers laughed politely. "I used to, in the old days."

"I understand you were quite a hell-raiser back then," he said.

Her smile turned reminiscent. "Back then," she murmured.

The waiter brought them oversized menus. McGrath ordered three courses and more wine, Meyers only a salad.

"Okay," he said, after the waiter had left, "you asked me to meet you here. What's up?"

Meyers looked into his pale blue eyes. "Edan, you know that if I were still in the Senate I'd be raising all kinds of hell about this war against Moonbase."

"I'd hardly call it a war," he said.

"That's what your network calls it."

McGrath shrugged. "That's show business, Jill. You know how it is."

"I need your help to put pressure on the President," she said.

His brows rose slightly. "I thought you were on her side. You're the same party-"

"Not on this," Meyers snapped. "I've never been a blind supporter of the New Morality and she knows it. She named me to the World Court to get me out of the Senate because she knew I'd raise hell about going after Moonbase."

"Why don't you raise hell now? I'd give you all the air time you want."

"I can't," Meyers said, shaking her head. "As a judge in the International Court of Justice I've got to stay strictly out of politics."

With a laugh, McGrath asked, "What you're doing now isn't politics?"

"This is private, just between you and me."

"And Global News and the White House," he added.

Meyers gave him a disdainful look. "You know what I mean, Edan."

"Okay, okay," he said, raising his hands in mock surrender. "But what more can I do? Global's been airing Edie Elgin's reports from Moonbase. Faure's pissed as hell with me over that."

"You could start by showing what a ghost town this space station has become," Meyers said. "American jobs are down the tubes because of Faure."

"And the New Morality's insistence that the nanotech treaty be enforced even on the Moon."

"Right."

"You want me to take on the New Morality?"

She hesitated, studying the expression on his face. McGrath had been handsome before he'd let himself start going to fat. He still looked pretty good. But is he strong enough? Meyers wondered.

Carefully, she said, "I want you to show the American public—the world public, really—how much this war against Moonbase is really costing."

The waiter brought McGrath's first course. Once he left, McGrath lifted his soup spoon, but instead of digging in he jabbed it in Meyers' direction.

"You know," he said, "There's nothing like a really good controversy to boost ratings."

Meyers grinned at him.

MOONBASE

"What on Earth are you doing?" Claire Rossi blurted.

Nick O'Malley was dragging a bulky container into their one-room quarters. It looked like an oversized piece of soft-sided luggage, and it made their little compartment crowded.

"Emergency procedure," O'Malley said, pushing the container into the corner between the bunk and the desk. Still it took up almost half the floorspace.

Rossi watched impatiently as her husband knelt on one knee and began to rip open the Velcro seams of the container. She leaned over his broad shoulder and looked inside.

"A spacesuit!"

"Right," O'Malley said. "I'm going to show you how to get into it, in case you need to while I'm not here."

"Why would I—oh."

As he hauled the torso and leggings of the suit out and spread them on the bunk, O'Malley said, "When the attack comes we might lose air pressure. This gadget here will yowl when the pressure drops below a safe minimum."

He put a small gray box on the shelf carved into the stone wall above the bunk.

"When you hear this go off, you get into the suit as fast as you can. Here, I'll show you how."

"But suppose I'm in the personnel office when it happens?" she asked.

O'Malley shook his head. "When the Peacekeepers start their attack everybody not on essential duty will go to their quarters. That's orders from management."

She almost started to twit him about her personnel job being considered non-essential, but the dead serious expression on her husband's face stopped her.

Instead she asked, "Is everybody getting a spacesuit?"

"Not enough to go around," he answered, shaking his head.

"Then why do I get special treatment?"

He smiled bleakly at her. "Because you're a special person. You're married to me. And you're pregnant."

"But that means somebody else will have to go without a suit."

His lips were a grim, pinched line. "Claire, hundreds of people here are going to go without a suit. But you're not. Now let me show you how to put it on properly."

She knew better than to argue with him. He's trying to protect me, she told herself. And the baby. But if the air pressure goes down, lots of people will die here. And how long will the suit keep me?

Aloud, as she struggled into the clumsy leggings, she asked, "Where will you be when the shooting starts? Not operating the tractors, of course."

He scowled. "No. I've been assigned to help Professor Zimmerman, for the sake of St Ignatius."

"Zimmerman?"

"I think Doug Stavenger wants me to be the old man's bodyguard."

"Is the professor getting a suit?" Rossi asked as she tugged on the boots.

"There isn't one in the base that'd fit him."

"Oh dear."

As he knelt at her feet and helped her zip the boots and leggings together, O'Malley said, "After just half a day with the old bugger, I almost wish somebody would knock him off."

"That's no way to talk, Nick."

"He's impossible."

"He's a genius and geniuses have their quirks."

O'Malley made a sour face. "You know what I've been doing for him all morning? Collecting dust!"

"What?"

"I've been teleoperating a tractor all damned morning, scooping up dust off the regolith for him to experiment with."

"That sounds crazy."

"Tell me about it. He wants to build nanomachines that behave like dust particles, so he tells me he needs samples of dust to work with."

Rossi wormed her arms into the suit's torso, then popped her head through the neck ring.

"Why does he want to make nanomachines that behave like dust particles?" she asked.

"Because he's 'way beyond quirky, that's why. He's outright daft."

SAVANNAH

"It's easy duty," said the security chief. "Four men outside, two inside. Pretty soft, really."

Jack Killifer sat in the stiff little plastic chair in front of the chief's metal desk, trying hard to keep his face from showing what he was feeling inside. I'm in Joanna Brudnoy's house! he exulted. Okay, it's just the servants' wing of the house, but still—here I am.

The security chief wore a tan summerweight uniform with epaulets and shoulder patches and even a couple of medals pinned above his left breast pocket. Tin soldiers, Killifer thought.

He himself was in a baggy shirt and Levis, the 'uniform of the day," as instructed.

The security chief kept glancing at the array of display screens that made up one whole wall of the bare little office. They showed security camera views of the grounds around the house, the garage, the pool area, and every room inside except the master bedroom.

"The only thing you've got to remember," the chief said, swivelling his attention back and forth between the screens and Killifer, "is that she doesn't like to see uniformed guards around the place."

"So we dress like gardeners," Killifer said, putting just a hint of disdain in it.

"Yeah. Both chauffeurs are on the team, of course, and the butler's supposed to be a black belt. He carries a nine-millimeter, too. All the time."

They had issued Killifer a brand-new Browning machine pistol: fifty rounds, either semi- or full-automatic. It still smelled of packing grease.

"But the butler only works the day shift, doesn't he?" Killifer asked.

The chief hiked an eyebrow. "The butler works until they both go to bed. He don't sleep until they do."

"Uh-huh."

"So all you've got to do is patrol outside, make yourself look like a gardener, and keep an eye out for strangers."

"What about people coming up to the house in cars?"

"You don't have to worry about that. The two inside guys take care of that. And the butler."

One of the inside 'guys' was a terrific-looking redhead, Killifer had already discovered. Hard as nails, though.

"What's she need all this security for?" he asked, probing for weak spots in the security system. "You don't need six people and machine pistols for burglars."

The chief shrugged carelessly. "I don't ask and they don't bother to let me in on their secrets. It's a cushy job, so don't knock it."

Killifer shrugged back at him. "Yeah, okay, but I'd kinda like to know what I'm supposed to be looking out for."

Eying the display screens, the chief muttered, "Religious fanatics."

"What?"

"She's worried about fanatics from the New Morality trying to kill her."

"No shit?"

The chief's tic of displeasure told Killifer that he was probably a Believer himself.

"If some religious nutcase wanted to kill her, why not just drive a car bomb into the house?"

"Not their style," said the chief. "The fanatics do their killing face-to-face, and they don't believe in taking out innocent people when they hit somebody. Besides, she's in and out so much—travels all the time, really—you can't be sure she's home unless you actually see her."

"Yeah," said Killifer. "I guess that's right."

"Listen," the chief said, suddenly intense, leaning across his desk to stare directly into Killifer's eyes. "Don't judge the New Morality movement by the actions of a few crazies. Most of those assassins are foreigners, not Americans. Fanatics."

Killifer nodded, knowing that the chief was certainly a Believer. Wonder what he'd say if I told him I worked for the Urban Corps. And that General O'Conner his own God-almighty self has sanctioned the assassination of Joanna Brudnoy.

It had been ridiculously easy to get hired onto the Masterson security team that guarded Joanna's house. New Morality adherents had faked his employment record in the corporation's computer files and provided a lucrative transfer to one of the women employed in the house guard detail. Killifer had miraculously popped out of the personnel files and been taken on within two days.

The weakest link in the security system is the system itself, Killifer knew. Manipulate the system and make it work for you.

The next step is to get into the house, on the night detail, when the butler's asleep and Joanna's in her bedroom where there are no cameras watching.

MOONBASE

"Well, how much of the stuff can you make?" Vince Falcone asked, his patience obviously fraying.

"How much time do I have?" asked the head of the chemistry lab.

"I don't know."

"Then I don't know, either."

"Days," said Doug, stepping between them. "Maybe only two days, maybe a few more."

"Two days?" the chemist gasped. She pushed back a strand of dark blonde hair from her forehead. "Only two days?"

Doug wondered where she'd been all this time. "We're expecting the Peacekeepers' attack before this week is out," he said.

She looked past Doug to Falcone. "How much do you need?"

"Four tons."

She blinked, swallowed. Then, straightening her back, she said, "We'll have to get the processing plant devoted completely to the job."

Falcone's frowning, swarthy face relaxed slightly. "Maybe three tons'll do."

The chemist shook her head. "Still, that's impossible to produce in two days. We don't have any time to lose."

"Can you come close?" Doug asked.

She was a petite wisp of a woman, her orange coveralls stained and faded from hard use. "We generate the foamgel as part of the process for making the insulation tiles we use for flooring and wall covering and all."

The insulating tiles were a small but consistent export to the space stations in Earth orbit, Doug knew. Moonbase also exported an even smaller but growing trickle of them to building contracting firms on Earth.

"We'll have to shut down the back end of the production line," the chemist was musing, "and rev up the foamgel production end."

She looked up at Falcone again. To Doug they seemed like a dark lumpy storm cloud and a light graceful swirl of cirrus.

"I can put all the raw stock we have on hand into producing foamgel, but I'll need more raw materials. Every tractor you can get scooping regolith."

"You got it!" Falcone promised.

Doug left them huddled together over her phone console and hurried down the corridor to Zimmerman's nanolab. One of the base's best tractor teleoperators, Nick O'Malley, had been assigned to work with the professor. But if we need every tractor scooping outside, I'll have to shift Nick back to his regular job.

He could hear their arguing voices from fifty meters down the corridor. Zimmerman's heavy rumbling and O'Malley's higher-pitched yells. Nick's not taking any guff from the professor, Doug thought as he pushed through the door marked NANOTECHNOLOGY LABORATORY—PROF. ZIMMERMAN—AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY.

"So you are the expert here and not me?" Zimmerman was bellowing angrily.

"I know more about it than you do, damned right I do!" shouted O'Malley, red-faced.

"Stop it!" Doug commanded. "Shut up, both of you!"

Zimmerman whirled on Doug, his loose jacket and vest flapping like sails with the wind taken out of them.

"An assistant you gave me? A führer you gave me! A dictator!"

"What's the problem?" Doug asked as calmly as he could.

"He thinks he is the professor and I am his student!" Zimmerman complained loudly.

"I only said-"

"You are not to say}' Zimmerman roared. "You are to do. You are my assistant, not my colleague!"

"Professor, please!" Doug insisted. "What is the problem?"

Gesturing with both hands, Zimmerman grumbled, "He thinks to tell me what I should do. He thinks he is the expert here."

"All right, all right," Doug said, trying to be soothing. He turned toward O'Malley. "Nick?"

"I just said that if he needs nanobugs to act like dust, why doesn't he just use the flaming dust itself?"

"You see!" Zimmerman snapped.

"Wait a minute," said Doug. "Nick, what do you mean?"

O'Malley sucked in a deep, deep breath. Doug realized he was trying to hold onto his own temper. He was a big man, and if he got truly angry there could be real trouble.

"What I mean," he said slowly, "is that we don't need to invent nanomachines that behave like dust particles. We can pump the corridor sections full of regular lunar dust. Run 'em through an electrostatic grid so they'll stick to the Peacekeepers' suits and visors just like you want 'em to."

"An electrostatic grid?"

"We can rig that up easy; just need to connect some electricity to the air filter screens in the corridors."

"We, he keeps saying," Zimmerman muttered.

Doug put a hand on the old man's shoulder. "Professor, I think he's right."

"And I am wrong?"

Forcing a smile, Doug said, "No, but we don't have time to produce your specialized nanomachines. Nick's worked out on the surface; he knows how the dust clings to suits."

"So I must sit back and retire like a useless old man?"

"No, not at all," Doug said. "You can work with Kris Cardenas on the medical side. We're going to need your nanomachines to take care of the injured and wounded."

Zimmerman huffed out an enormous sigh. "You expect injured and wounded? How many?"

"I have no idea," Doug answered truthfully.

The professor turned away and walked a few steps deeper into his lab. Then he spun around and pointed a trembling finger at O'Malley. "Very well! Go play with your verdammt dust! I will stay here and do important work!"

O'Malley started to reply, but one glance at Doug and he shut his mouth with an audible click of teeth.

"We need you, professor," Doug said softly. "You know that. I need you. Moonbase needs you."

"Yah. While you and this young lummox here go out to fight, I sit here like a dreamer."

"It's your dreams that we're fighting for," said Doug. Then he took O'Malley by the arm and led him out of the nanotechnology laboratory.

Harry Clemens seldom showed tension. Word around Moon-base was that he didn't have any bones, that's why he always looked so relaxed.

But he was sitting rigidly in one of the little swivel chairs in front of a console in the control center, eyes riveted on the screen that showed the little tubular rocket vehicle, as the launch computer counted aloud: '… four… three… two… one… zero."

Clemens saw a flash of smoke and dust. The rocket was gone when it cleared.

"Radar track on the line," said the technician sitting to his right. He saw the radar display on the screen just above his view of the now empty launch pad.

"Looks good."

He swivelled slightly to see Jinny Anson standing behind him.

"Now we'll see if they try to shoot it down," Anson said tightly.

"L-l's painting it," the radar tech called out.

"I launched it retrograde," Clemens said to Anson,'so L-l won't have more than a few minutes to calculate its trajectory."

The Moon rotates on its axis so slowly that very little momentum was lost by launching a rocket in the direction opposite to its spin. On Earth, a launch westward could cost four kilometers per second of precious velocity, or more, depending on the launch site's latitude.

"They won't need more than a few seconds to nail your orbit," Anson said flatly. "Besides, they know goddamned well it's gonna pass over Copernicus. They got lots of time to focus a laser on it."

Clemens' high forehead wrinkled. "You think they'll zap it?"

"If the Peacekeepers've put a big enough laser at L-l, yeah, they will."

"Do you think they've put weapons-strength lasers in Nippon One?"

Anson gripped Clemens' shoulders and grinned down at him. "We'll find out pretty soon, won't we?"

Edith was reviewing her day's shooting in the video editing booth at the lunar university's studio facility. The studio itself was dark and empty; no lectures or demonstrations, no interactions with Earthside students had taken place since the U.N. had cut off regular communications. The editing booth felt almost like home to Edith, though. Even though she was alone in it, she enjoyed working the big control console. When she had first started in television news, sitting at the console with all its switches and keypads made her feel like the captain of a starship in some futuristic drama. Now it just felt like a familiar, comfortable place where she could edit her work until it was a finished, polished piece of TV journalism. The fact that she was doing the work on the Moon no longer impressed her.

She was splicing together scenes from three separate shoots, trying to put together a coherent report on the preparations that Moonbase was undertaking to face the impending Peacekeeper attack—without betraying any of the steps that might tip off the U.N. about what to expect. Her footage dealt almost entirely with the human side of the coming battle: the tiny medical staff getting ready to handle wounded men and women; the highly-trained technicians and engineers and scientists moping in The Cave, their work, their careers, their lives in limbo until this war was settled one way or the other; the silent emptiness of the construction pit where the grand plaza was going to be built. Nothing was moving there now, not even a teleoperated tractor. All work on Moonbase's future had been stopped.

She had scrupulously avoided the nanotech labs and the plastics processing center where Falcone was driving the chemists to produce tons of foamgel. She had done a long interview with Claire Rossi, already known to TV viewers Earthside as Moonbase's first bride. Now Edith revealed that Claire was pregnant, but could not return Earthside because of the impending battle.

Good, human interest stuff, Edith thought as she edited Claire's interview. It's a shame I couldn't get her to cry, though.

The phone's chime startled her out of her concentration. She swivelled her chair from the editing screens to the phone screen and tapped the ANSWER keypad.

A young male comm tech's face appeared on the screen. "A call for you, Ms Elgin. From Earthside."

"Earthside? I thought all links were shut down."

"This is coming in on a special laser tight beam, from Atlanta: a Mr Edan McGrath."

Edith felt her eyes go wide. "McGrath? Put him on!"

Someone had once called McGrath the sexiest bald-headed man on Earth. Looking at his image in the phone screen, Edith thought he wasn't really sexy, but he sure radiated energy and power.

"Mr McGrath," she said, surprised at how humble she sounded.

Three seconds later he said, "Edie, I wanted to tell you that I think you're doing a fine job up there. An excellent job! I'm proud of you."

She blinked with surprise. The top boss doesn't break a U.N. blackout just to praise one of his reporters, Edith told herself, even if I am his number one on-screen personality.

"Thank you," she said. Again, timidly.

McGrath hadn't waited for her response. He kept on talking. "After this is all over and you get back here, I'm going to personally see that you get a regular prime-time slot for yourself. No co-host, all yours. And a full-length documentary on your experiences up there. And a book deal, too. The only reporter at Moonbase. I've got to hand it to you, kid. You're the greatest."

It was the 'kid' that broke Edith's spell. He wants something, she realized. Of course he does! He wouldn't go to the trouble of establishing a clandestine laser link unless he wanted something from me.

"I'm glad that you like what I'm doing," she said. "Now what's the reason for your call?"

When her words reached him, McGrath's brows hiked. Then he broke into a big, boyish grin.

"Can't fool you, can I?" he said, brushing at his moustache. Edith thought it had been considerably grayer the last time she'd seen him. He must be coloring it.

"The Peacekeepers' attack is imminent," he went on. "From what I've been able to find out, they'll come at you in another few days. A week, at most."

He stopped, waiting for her reply. Edith nodded and said, "That's the way it looks here."

"Okay," he said after the delay. "Here's my question. Can you cover the battle for us?"

"Cover the battle?"

He hadn't stopped for her reply. He was saying, "I know you're only one person, Edie, but I've been thinking maybe you could get some of the Moonbase people to handle cameras, give us a blow-by-blow, minute-by-minute eyewitness account of the fight. Like Ed Murrow did in London during the Blitz."

Edith knew who Edward R. Murrow was, but she wasn't certain of what the Blitz might be. She didn't fret over it. McGrath wants real-time coverage of the battle! I've got to tell Doug. This could be the biggest publicity break of all for Moonbase, showing the brave unarmed Lunatics desperately trying to hold off an army of U.N. Peacekeepers with their missiles and guns and all. Wow!

"Can you do it?" McGrath asked, almost plaintively.

"Mr McGrath," Edith said, slowly, feeling the strength welling up inside her,'do you realize that if we show the battle in real-time it's going to give Faure and the U.N. a terrible black eye? I mean, they'll look like monsters, attacking these unarmed people."

The three seconds were agony now. At last McGrath nodded grimly. "That's right. I'm fully aware of it. I was wrong to back Faure against Moonbase. It may be too late to save the base, but I want the Global's viewers to see what the little shit is doing to you. I want the world to see it!"

"Okay!" Edith said happily. "You've got it!"

He broke into a fleshy grin when her acceptance reached him. "Can you do it? How much of the battle can you actually show?"

Grinning back at him, Edith replied, "Moonbase has security cameras in every corridor, in every lab and workshop. And outside, too. I can show you the crater floor outside the base and even a view of the Mare Nubium, on the other side of the ringwall mountains. We'll get it all, don't worry."

Three seconds ticked by, then McGrath said, "Great! Do it. Don't worry about expenses."

She signed off, almost delirious with joy. But as she hurried down the corridors to find Doug and tell him that Global News was now on his side, she realized that what she would really be showing the world was how the Peacekeepers marched into Moonbase and either accepted a surrender or blew the place apart.

BASE DIRECTOR'S OFFICE

"Take a look," said Jinny Anson.

She touched the keyboard on her desk and the wallscreen lit up to show a satellite view of the beautiful crater Copernicus.

Doug paid no attention to the crater's symmetry, however. He stared at the array of tractors and other vehicles parked on the plain of Mare Imbrium, just outside Yamagata's base, Nippon One.

"No wonder they're not flying here on Jobbers," Anson muttered. "There aren't enough rockets on the whole Moon to lift that much equipment."

Doug felt almost breathless. "There must be enough transport there for a thousand troops."

Bam Gordette, sitting on the other side of the table that butted Anson's desk, said quietly, "Not that many. More than half those vehicles'll be carrying food, water, air, ammo, missiles—logistics."

Doug sank back in his chair. "How many troops do you estimate, then?"

Gordette waggled a hand. "Three hundred, three-fifty, tops."

"That's enough to do the job," Anson said. To Doug. She pointedly kept from looking at Gordette.

Staring at the mass of vehicles parked out on the open mare, Doug muttered, "What we need is a good solar flare to knock out them out."

"That would only postpone the inevitable," Anson said.

Doug looked at her, sitting behind her desk. "Jinny, you used to be a lot of fun to talk to. You're getting morose."

"Yeah, I've noticed that, too," she answered, straight-faced. "Wonder why?"

"How old is this information?" Doug asked, pointing at the wallscreen.

"This is real-time," she said. "The bird's made four passes over the region, so far."

"And they haven't tried to blind it or knock it off the air?"

"Why bother?" Gordette said. "If I was running their operation, I'd want you to see how much stuff we got."

"It is kinda depressing," Anson agreed. Again, without looking Gordette's way.

"Who else has seen this?" Doug asked.

"Nobody," she replied sharply. "The bits are transmitted from the satellite to our computer and straight to my office. That's why I asked you to come here and see it. Not even Harry Clemens is getting this data."

"Good," Doug said. "It certainly is depressing."

"Three hundred troopers," Anson mused. "With missiles and all the other goodies."

"Well," Doug said, trying to brighten the mood, "at least we know they're still at Copernicus. They're not on their way here yet."

"Take 'em about two days to cover the distance?" Gordette asked.

"Just about," Doug replied.

"Two Earth days," Arisen said. "Forty-eight hours. Maybe a little less if they push it."

Steepling his fingers almost as if in prayer, Gordette said, "Well, if they're gonna knock out your satellite it'll be just before they haul ass and start on their way here."

"Why bother?"

"Standard operating procedure. No commander wants the enemy watching his route of march, if he can help it."

Anson looked from Gordette to the wall screen and back again. "So if our bird goes off the air…"

"That means they're starting on their way here," Doug finished for her.

As if on cue, the wallscreen display broke into wild jagged streaks and then went blank.

The three of them rushed down to the control center, once they were certain that the reconnaissance satellite had actually been knocked out, and the dead wallscreen wasn't merely a malfunction somewhere in the communications system.

"You want to launch another recce bird?" Anson asked as they dashed along the corridor, hurrying past startled people.

"Not much sense to that," Doug said over his shoulder.

"Yeah," Gordette agreed. "Just be target practice for them."

The control center was calm, with its usual air of controlled intensity, the quiet hum of consoles, the flickering of display screens in the dimly-lit chamber. Doug automatically glanced at the big wallscreen that displayed a schematic of the entire base. The usual scattering of red and yellow lights, but otherwise everything was operating normally.

Doug knew from hours of studying the ballistics that a nuclear-tipped missile could be launched from the L-l station and reach Moonbase in less than an hour. Even faster if the Peacekeepers wanted to goose it, but Doug thought that they would want to take at least an hour so that they would have time to make pinpoint mid-course corrections. If his reasoning was correct, they would want the nuke to go off over the solar farms inside Alphonsus's ringwall after the Peacekeeper assault force had arrived on the other side of the mountains, shielded from the nuke's radiation pulse, and ready to cross Wodjohowitcz Pass as soon as the explosion had knocked out Moonbase's main electrical power supply.

The radar view of L-l showed the same cluster of spacecraft hovering around the space station that Doug had seen the last time he'd looked.

"Can we get a visual?" he asked Jinny. "Turn one of the astronomical'scopes on it?"

She nodded and walked off toward the technician who was monitoring the automated astronomical equipment sitting out by the central peak in the middle of Alphonsus.

Edith came tearing into the control center, breathless.

"Doug," she said, puffing as she skidded to a stop next to him, "McGrath wants me to pipe the battle Earthside in real time!"

"Who's McGrath?"

"The top boss! He owns Global News!"

Doug shifted mental gears as fast as he could; still, it took a few moments for him to realize what Edith was telling him.

"You'll show what's happening here when the Peacekeepers attack?"

"To the whole blazin' world!" Edith said, exultant.

For the first time in what seemed like years, Doug felt a genuine smile curving his lips. "Faure's not going to like that… not at all."

Through her sitting room window, Joanna could see a soft twilight descending on the garden and the woods beyond it. The trees had been planted there to cover up the view of Savannah's skyline and give the occupants of her house the feeling that they were truly out in the countryside rather than half a mile from the Interstate.

"Global's going to broadcast the confrontation?" she asked Doug's image, grinning at her from the Windowall screen above the fireplace. She could not bear to use the word battle or attack. She knew that Moonbase could not win a battle or survive an attack.

"Edan McGrath himself called Edith and asked her to do it," Doug said after the three-second lag. "Real-time coverage; blow by blow."

"I've already got a pocketful of senators demanding an investigation of the President's handling of the Moonbase crisis," Joanna mused. "Coverage of the confrontation will show the voting public how you're being attacked by the U.N.'s Peacekeepers."

"This has got to stay confidential," Doug was saying, not waiting for her response. "We don't want Faure to know about it beforehand."

Joanna's brows knit. "But, Doug, maybe if we leaked the information Faure would call off the attack."

She watched her son's image in the display screen. Once he heard her words he shook his head. "The Peacekeepers are already on their way here, Mom. No one's going to call off the attack. Not now."

Alarm tingled through Joanna like an electric current. "You're certain?"

"In forty-eight hours or less we'll be able to see them coming across Mare Nubium."

Joanna suddenly felt as if someone had ripped out her insides. All these weeks she had known it would come to this, yet she realized now that she had desperately clung to an unconscious hope that it could all be averted.

"You'll have to surrender to them, then," she said dully.

Three seconds passed. Doug replied, "Maybe."

"You can't fight them! You don't have any weapons."

Again the agonizing wait. Doug said, "We don't have any guns, that's true enough. But we're not beaten yet."

"Doug, what are you thinking of? You can't fight an armed battalion of trained Peacekeeper troops! You'll get yourself killed! You'll destroy Moonbase!"

He hadn't waited for her response. He was saying, in a calm, carefully measured tone. "I can't tell you what we're planning, Mom, because even a tight laser link spreads enough for some snooper to eavesdrop. But we're not going to obediently open our hatches and let the Peacekeepers take over Moonbase."

"Doug, they'll kill you!"

He smiled at her words. "If we surrender and have to return Earthside, I'm a dead man anyway."

Joanna started to reply, then realized that her son was right. He had nothing to lose by fighting for Moonbase.

"Naw, I don't mind working the night shift," Killifer was saying. "At least I'll be indoors, under the roof, if it rains."

The security chief looked slightly uneasy. "I don't usually put newcomers inside the house," he said, "but Jonesie's come down with some virus and we need a replacement for him right away."

"It's okay," Killifer repeated, trying hard not to sound eager. I'll take his shift."

"You already did you regular shift; I don't like asking you to double up."

Killifer shrugged as carelessly as he could. "Four to midnight is easy. I wouldn't go to sleep until after midnight, anyway."

The chief swivelled back and forth slowly in his desk chair, making it squeak slightly, eying Killifer as if he weren't certain he was doing the right thing. Killifer sat in front of the little desk, doing his best to appear nonchalant.

Then he got an inspiration. "I get overtime pay for this, don't I?"

The chief visibly relaxed. "Yeah, sure. Time and a half."

Killifer nodded as if the money was his reason for agreeing to the extra shift so readily. "Double shift isn't so bad," he said. "It's only for a few days, right?"

"Yeah," said the chief. "Until Jonesie comes back."

"I'd just be spending my pay in some bar or someplace," Killifer said. "This way I make plastic instead of spending it."

"All right," the chief said, still uneasy. "Go downstairs and change into a regular uniform. You work with Rodriguez. He monitors the screens, in here, and you sit in the kitchen until she and her husband go to bed. Then you patrol the rooms once every half-hour. Check all the windows and doors. Except the master bedroom; just make sure their door's shut tight. Pay particular attention to the sliders that go out to the pool deck."

"Right.' Killifer nodded.

"Remember, she doesn't like to see us. Stay in the kitchen until they go up to the master bedroom."

"What about the butler?"

"He'll go to bed after they do," said the chief.

"Okay. Good."

Again the chief hesitated. Killifer could feel his pulse throbbing in his ears as he sat facing the man across the pathetic little metal desk.

At last the chief said, "All right. Go downstairs and get into your uniform."

Killifer got up from his chair slowly, turned and went to the office door.

"And thanks for filling in," the chief said. Reluctantly.

"Nothing to it," Killifer replied over his shoulder. He pulled the door open, then added, "I can use the extra plastic."

The bastard suspects something, Killifer said to himself as he stepped out into the hallway. Not enough to turn me down, but this doesn't sit right with him.

Then he grinned as he clattered down the metal spiral staircase. What the hell! Let him worry all he wants to. I'm in the house for two to three nights and she's home with her creaky old man. Once the butler goes to bed I'll scope out the house and figure out the best way to get to her and then get away. Shit, they'll be paying me to do it. Overtime.

NANOLAB

Keiji Inoguchi was surprised by Professor Zimmerman's call. He hurried to the nanolab, eager to accept Zimmerman's invitation before the crusty old man changed his mind.

"I am most honored that you have asked me to visit your laboratory once again," he said, after he had bowed to the professor.

Zimmerman dipped his chin in acknowledgement. "I am asking for more than a visit, my friend. I need your help."

Inoguchi sucked in his breath. "My help? In what way can I help you?"

Zimmerman led the Japanese scientist back into the bowels of his lab. They walked past rows of computer screens and gray, bulky cryogenic tanks beaded with moisture, Zimmerman in his usual gray suit, grossly overweight, dishevelled, looking distracted and unhappy; Inoguchi in an immaculate white turtleneck shirt and sharply-creased slacks, lean and eager, his eyes snapping up every piece of equipment as if they were cameras.

Hands jammed in his trouser pockets, Zimmerman said heavily, "I am relegated to assisting my former student, Professor Cardenas."

"Yes?"

"She has asked me to prepare nanomachines capable of repairing wounds inflicted by gunshot or shrapnel—flying metal from explosions."

"And you want me to assist you in this?" Inoguchi asked.

"I realize you represent the United Nations and are not to take part in the fighting," Zimmerman said. "But for medical work perhaps you are allowed to use your skills, yah? For humanitarian reasons."

"Of course," Inoguchi said without an instant's hesitation. "Humanitarian purposes come before politics and other considerations."

Zimmerman stopped in front of a lab bench that supported a massive metal sphere connected to a desktop computer by hair-thin fiber optic cables.

"My staff," Zimmerman gestured to the sphere.

Inoguchi understood immediately. "Your processors."

"Yah," said Zimmerman, lowering his bulk onto a spindly-looking stool. "Now we must teach them to build other nanos that will seal wounds quick, before the patient bleeds to death."

"Can you do this?"

The old man nodded slowly. "Yah. I have already done it once. Now I must do it again—in a day or so."

Inoguchi grinned at the professor. "We have much work to accomplish, then."

Colonel Giap did not relish being under Faure's direct supervision. The man is a politician, what doeshe know of military tactics? Giap asked himself. I should report to General Uhlenbeck, through the normal chain of command. Instead I must bear with this politician questioning every breath I draw.

He tried to reassure himself with Clausewitz's dictum that war is merely an extension of politics. It was scant consolation. Yes, politicians such as Ho Chi Minh successfully directed the liberation of Vietnam from the imperialists, he knew. But that was generations ago, and besides, Ho and his comrades had military experience of their own. Faure had probably never even fired a pistol at a target range.

"Was it wise to incapacitate their satellite?" the U.N. secretary-general was asking.

Giap, sitting on the bare floor of his closet-turned-office, replied to the image on his laptop's screen with all the patience he could muster, "It was necessary. Their satellite could observe our time of departure and our route of march. That would be giving the enemy more information than we want them to have."

He waited the three seconds, watching Faure twiddle his moustache. Then the secretary-general replied, "But by disabling their satellite, you have told them that you are ready to march."

"Yes. What of it? Don't you think they have cameras atop their ringwall mountains looking for us to appear over their horizon?"

Faure's face creased deeply once he heard Giap's comment. "Then of what good was it to cripple their satellite? I do not understand your reasoning."

They went around the subject twice more, Giap resolute and implacable, Faure irritable and demanding.

At last Giap said, "Sir, you may consider my action premature or even mistaken, but it has been done and argument will not undo it."

Faure flushed angrily once he heard the colonel's words.

Before he could say anything, Giap added, "If you wish to remove me from command, I understand entirely."

The secretary-general's eyes widened momentarily, then he quickly asserted his self-control. Forcing a smile that narrowed his eyes to slits, Faure made a soothing gesture with both hands.

"No, no, of course not, colonel. I have every confidence in you."

Of course you do, Giap said to himself, now that our jump-off for the attack is only hours away.

"What you're looking at," said Edith into her pin mike, "is almost certainly a nuclear-armed missile."

The monitor screen in the little editing booth showed what Moonbase's astronomical telescope was focused upon: the clutch of spacecraft hovering around the big space station at the L-l libration point some fifty-eight thousand kilometers above the Moon's surface. The picture, with Edith's commentary, was being broadcast live over Global News Network.

"Despite international agreements that date all the way back to 1967 banning nuclear weapons in space, the United Nations has brought a nuclear-armed missile here to use against Moonbase. Although Moonbase's residents…"

Doug watched Edith's performance as he suited up for another surface excursion. It's one thing to reveal to the world that Faure's going to nuke our solar energy farms, he told himself, it's something else to try to knock out the missile once they launch it against us.

Doug hitched a ride on one of the tractors carrying a team of construction workers out to the mass driver. It took the better part of half an hour to trundle the few kilometers in one of the electrically-driven tractors. Doug thought that once this war was over, one of his immediate priorities was going to be developing faster ground vehicles. This is asinine, creaking along at a top speed of thirty klicks per hour.

Then he realized that the Peacekeeper battalion was chugging along at pretty much the same low speed, and he didn't feel so bad about it. Besides, he added silently, by the time this war is over there might not be a Moonbase and you just might be dead.

The Sun was up over the ringwall mountains, bathing the crater floor in harsh, brilliant light that cast long slanting shadows. It would remain daylight for another twelve days. The Peacekeepers remembered that the nanobugs Moonbase had used against them the first time were deactivated by solar ultraviolet.

The mass driver was crawling with spacesuited figures. Laser welding torches flashed against the dark bulk of the long metal machines. Doug clambered down from the tractor, leaving the construction team to drive a few hundred meters on, to where their cohorts were digging a trench for the prefab shelter for Wicksen's people.

The suit-to-suit radio frequency was alive with chatter, but Doug found Wicksen visually, from his slight form and the bright blue WIX stencilled on his backpack. There was so much crosstalk on the regular suit-to-suit frequency that

Doug walked up to the physicist and tapped him lightly on the shoulder.

Wicksen seemed to recognize Doug's suit and held up three gloved fingers. Doug tapped frequency three on his wrist panel.

"I've saved this freak for private conversations," Wicksen's voice said in his earphones.

"How's it going?" Doug asked.

"Have they launched yet?"

"Not as of half an hour ago.' Then he added, "I would've gotten a call if they'd launched while I was riding out here."

"We should have this kloodge put together in another ten or twelve hours."

"Good."

"But there won't be any time to test it."

"Then it better work right the first time," Doug said.

He could sense Wicksen shaking his head inside his helmet. "Nothing works right the first time. Haven't you ever heard of Murphy's Law?"

Ignoring that, Doug asked, "How soon will you have the extra electrical power connected?"

Pointing past the mass driver's long metal track, Wicksen answered, "The extra men you assigned me are doing that now. You're going to have a temporary brown-out when we fire the gun."

"Better than having a nuclear explosion inside the crater," Doug said grimly.

Wicksen was silent for a long moment. Then he said, "Thanks for putting the construction crew to work for us."

"The numbers that the safety people ran on their computer said that four meters of regolith rubble should protect you from the radiation blast—if they got the yield from the bomb right."

"Whether it works or not, we all feel a lot better knowing we can sit in the shelter while we're running the gun. Thanks a lot."

"Nothing to it. The construction people have nothing else to do."

Turning back toward the mass driver, Wicksen made a wistful little sigh. "I sure wish we had time to test this beast."

"So do I," Doug said fervently. "So do I."

SAVANNAH

"But I must speak to Seigo Yamagata," said Ibrahim al-Rashid. "It is most urgent."

Rashid's office had once belonged to Joanna Brudnoy, when she had been chairman of Masterson Corporation's board of directors. Many was the time that she had summoned him into her sanctum and he had dutifully scurried to her in response. Once he had acceded to the chairmanship, however, Rashid had completely refurnished and redecorated the office. His desk was a sweeping, curving modernistic work of glass, his high-backed black leather chair custom-built to his measurements. The walls were adorned with tapestries from Persia and India, the windows were actually wall screens that could display any of thousands of scenes stored in his personal computer's memory.

One of those screens now showed the image of a young Japanese man in an open-neck white shirt and tastefully checkered sports jacket, sitting at a desk in an office panelled in what appeared to be teak.

"Seigo Yamagata is not available at present," he said in the homogenized American English of a television announcer. "I am Saito Yamagata, his eldest son. May I be of assistance to you?"

"I must speak to your father," Rashid demanded.

The younger Yamagata smiled gently and said, "I regret to tell you once again that he is not available."

Rashid felt as if he were talking to a brick wall. Or worse, a large soft pillow that absorbed his words without being moved by them in the slightest.

"This is important!"

"Of course it is," Yamagata agreed readily. "That is why the staff has routed your call to me, rather than some underling."

Rashid blinked with surprise. "You mean that you are in charge?"

His face going serious, the young man replied, "My father left instructions that you are to be received by his personal representative and no one else. That personal representative is me."

Sinking back in his cushioned leather chair, Rashid recognized the oriental manner of stonewalling: polite, gracious, accommodating, but stonewalling just the same.

"How may I help you?" Saito Yamagata asked solicitously.

Bowing to the inevitable, Rashid said, through gritted teeth, "I have received information that among the Peacekeeper troops marching on Moonbase there is a special contingent of Yamagata suicide bombers who intend to blow up Moonbase."

Yamagata's brows rose a couple of millimeters.

"Destroying Moonbase is idiotic!" Rashid snapped, unable to contain his temper any longer. "Our entire operation, my whole understanding with your father, depends on Moonbase providing helium-three for your fusion generators. How can they provide anything if the base is blown to bits?" He fairly shouted the question.

Saito Yamagata's expression had gone from polite interest to mild surprise to the absolute blank face of a man who has much to hide.

"Is your information trustworthy?" he asked softly.

"I have my sources both in United Nations headquarters and the Peacekeepers' chain of command."

"I see."

"This is a betrayal of our understanding," Rashid said harshly. "It also destroys the very thing that your father wants so badly—Moonbase."

The young man nodded. "The suicide bombers are not Yamagata employees. They are volunteers from the Bright New Sun, an organization of fanatics that is allied with your own New Morality movement."

"Then how are they allowed to be with the Peacekeepers? Who permitted them to come to Nippon One?"

"My father accepted their…' Yamagata searched for the right word, "… their help, most reluctantly. You must understand that even in Japan, religious zealotry is a very powerful force."

"But you're going to allow them to destroy Moonbase!"

Yamagata smiled thinly. "Not at all. My father is not stupid. He bowed to the pressures of the Bright New Sun and allowed them to add a squad of kamikazes to the Peacekeeper force. But they will not be permitted to damage Moonbase. The Peacekepers will take the base and there will be no need for suicide bombers."

Rashid closed his eyes for a few moments, trying hard to think it all through.

"Suppose," he said at last,'that the Peacekeepers fail to take Moonbase."

"Impossible," said Yamagata.

"They drove off the first attack, didn't they?"

Yamagata smiled again. "This time there are three hundred troops, armed with missiles and heavy weapons. A nuclear bomb will knock out Moonbase's electrical supply. This time they will not fail."

"But those people at Moonbase are very clever," Rashid insisted. "Suppose they stop the Peacekeepers?"

With a slight shrug, Yamagata said, "Then there will be no option except allowing the kamikazes to blow up as much of Moonbase as they can."

"But that is lunacy!"

"A clever play on words," the young man said, although his expression showed no humor.

"You can't let them blow up Moonbase!" Rashid yelled.

"The forces are in motion," said Yamagata. "How they will play out remains to be seen. Even if Moonbase is entirely destroyed, it can be rebuilt."

"But… but-"

"Patience is a virtue, Mr Rashid. Yamagata Industries will receive the U.N.'s mandate to operate Moonbase, no matter what condition the base may be in when the fighting is finished. If necessary, we will rebuild it. The important thing is that Moonbase will be in our hands."

It was not until that instant that Rashid realized he had put his future into the hands of ruthless men.

Only a few miles away, Joanna paced restlessly through the living room of her home.

"A new exercise regime?" Lev asked, stretched out on the big sofa across from the unused fireplace.

"How can you just sit there?" she blurted. "The Peacekeepers have already started their march to Alphonsus."

Her husband made a wry face. "What can we do about it? The decisions are in Doug's hands. Working ourselves into heart seizures won't help."

"If only we could get there…"

"And give Doug two more useless people to worry about?"

She whirled and rushed toward him. "Lev, call him. Talk to him. Make him understand that he's got to surrender! He can't fight the Peacekeepers! They'll kill everyone in Moonbase."

Slowly, like a weary old man, Lev swung his legs off the sofa and sat up. He grasped Joanna's wrist and pulled her down onto the cushion beside him.

"Listen to me, dear one. Doug understands the situation as well as we do, or better. He knows what he can do to defend the base-"

"Against missiles and nuclear bombs? You saw the news broadcast!"

Lev put a finger on her lips, silencing her for the moment.

"It isn't our decision to make," he said softly. "If I called him, not only would it distract him from the thousands of vital things he must think about, but I would end up agreeing with him—victory or death!"

Joanna stared at him as if he had gone mad. "Victory or… what are you saying?"

"Doug believes in Moonbase with all his soul," Lev replied. "To him, it is his world, his life. He won't want to live in a world without Moonbase."

"No," Joanna said, feeling weak with shock. "That can't be. Doug can come back here. He can live with us. I'll protect him, guard him…' Her voice faded into silence.

Lev shook his head. "Not all the fanatics belong to the New Morality, my darling. In his own very rational way, your son is a fanatic, too. That's what it takes to fight hopeless odds."

Joanna sank back into the sofa, stunned with the realization that Lev understood Doug better than she did.

And in the security office in the servants' wing of the house, Jack Killifer leaned over his partner's shoulder, grinning at the camera display of the Brudnoys in their living room.

Rodriguez glanced up at Killifer. "You ought to be in the kitchen. That's your post, not here."

Killifer grinned at him. "The entertainment's better in here."

MOONBASE

"There they are."

Doug stared at the smart wall display in Jinny Anson's office. Three columns of tracked vehicles had come up over the horizon and were moving majestically across the barren plain of Mare Nubium, churning up plumes of dust from the regolith. He realized that the dust had lain there undisturbed for billions of years. No, not really undisturbed, he reminded himself. Meteroids fell into the regolith constantly, adding to it, grinding it up, creating the dust that the cleated tracks of the Peacekeeper force were now violating.

The cameras atop Mount Yeager and two other peaks in the Alphonsus ringwall showed the approaching attackers clearly. Ahead of the middle column rode a smaller tractor, clean white except for a blue patch on its side.

"Can we get a close-up of that lead vehicle?" he asked quietly.

Anson worked her keyboard and the view zoomed in on the first tractor. The blue square was the U.N. emblem: a polar projection map of Earth on a sky-blue background, surrounded by a pair of olive branches.

Doug snorted with disdain. Olive branches. The symbol of peace. Leading three columns of soldiers and weaponry devoted to conquering Moonbase.

"We'd better get down to the control center," Anson said. Her voice was hushed, strained, just as Doug's.

"Right," he said tightly.

Robert T. Wicksen got the news in his helmet earphones.

Automatically he looked across the crater floor toward Wodjohowitcz Pass. From where the mass driver stood, the pass appeared as little more than a dimple in the ring of rounded smooth mountains.

"What about the missile at L-l?" he asked, his voice shaking just slightly.

"Still sitting there," came the voice from the control center.

Wicksen puffed out a relieved breath. "Keep me informed, please."

"Will do."

Clicking to the suit-to-suit frequency, Wicksen called out. "Listen up, people. The Peacekeeper troops are coming across Mare Nubium. The balloon will be going up very soon now."

A dead silence greeted his warning. None of his exhausted team had a word to say.

Vince Falcone was swearing under his breath, but his mut-terings were loud enough for one of his technicians to ask, "Repeat, please. I didn't get it."

"You don't want it," Falcone said into his helmet microphone.

He and six picked assistants were trying to spread the smart foamgel across the narrowest portion of Wodjohowitcz Pass from storage canisters on the backs of the tractors they were driving. The work was slow, tedious, and made exasperatingly difficult by the fact that the gel tended to clot in the hoses instead of flowing smoothly, as the chemists had promised.

When the clotting problem had first surfaced, hours earlier, Falcone had told his people merely to increase the pressure on the nitrogen gas they were using to force the gel out of the storage tanks. But nitrogen was rare and precious on the Moon, and Falcone quickly saw that they weren't going to have enough to do the job. He had originally wanted to use oxygen for the pressure gas, it was plentiful and cheap, but the chemists had worried that oxygen would react with the gel and change its chemical properties too much.

"Helium would be best," the chief chemist had mused. "If only we had enough helium…"

So they had settled on nitrogen, raiding the life support backup supplies for two dozen tanks of it. And now it wasn't doing the job.

Time and again, Falcone and his cohorts had to stop their tractors and physically clean out the jammed hoses with wire brushes that the chemists had provided them.

"Everything in chemistry comes down to plumbing," Falcone muttered to himself. "Might as well be cleaning a goddamned latrine."

A voice crackled in his earphones. "What I don't understand is why nobody's hardening the microwave antennas against radiation."

Falcone looked up from his work and tried to identify the questioner as his voice continued, "I mean, like what good is this goop gonna do if the antennas are knocked out by the nuke's radiation pulse?"

Newman, Falcone decided. He never could see past his friggin' nose. "What happens if Wix's smart guys don't stop the nuke?" he demanded.

For a moment no one replied, then Newman said, "The warhead goes off above the crater floor, right?"

"And what happens then?"

"Uh… it knocks out the solar farms."

"And where do the antennas get their electricity?"

"From the… oh, yeah, I get it. If the nuke goes off the antennas are dead anyway, right?"

"So there's no sense sending anybody up to the top of Yeager to harden the antennas. Capisce?'

No response, although Falcone thought he heard stifled giggling from somebody.

A few minutes later his earphones chimed, so he dropped his brush and let the kinked hose fall gently to the ground as he tapped the keypad on his wrist.

A comm tech's voice announced, "Peacekeeper vehicles are in sight, crossing Mare Nubium."

"How long before they reach the pass?" he asked.

"Unknown. The thinking here is that they'll stop and camp at the foot of the ringwall until the nuke from L-l hits."

Grunting an inarticulate reply, Falcone arched his back slightly and looked through his visor up to the top of Mount Yeager, where the microwave transmitters stood. For the first time he realized that this entire 'blue goo' business was totally untested.

Christ, I hope it works, he said to himself. If that nuke isn't stopped by Wicksen's zap gun, the microwave transmitters'll be knocked out and all our work will have gone for nothing.

And, he added as he bent stiffly to pick up the jammed hose again, we got a damned good chance of still being out here and getting fried to a crisp by the mother-humpin' nuke.

The control center was changed. The same hushed intensity, the same low-key lighting, the same hum of murmuring voices and purring electronic machines. Yet the air crackled now; the very smell of the control center was different: nervous, sweaty. It wasn't fear that Doug sensed from the technicians monitoring their consoles, so much as a focused motivation, anxiety masked by the duties of the moment.

Jinny Anson slipped into an unoccupied chair next to the U-shaped set of communications consoles, while Doug paced slowly through the big chamber, walking behind the seated technicians, glancing at each individual display screen. On one side of the room glowed the huge schematic display of Moonbase's systems. The opposite wall showed camera views of the approaching Peacekeeper armada and the spacecraft hovering around the L-l space station.

Doug completed his circuit of the center and returned to Anson's chair.

"Everything we can do, we're doing," he said.

Anson looked up at him. "It's sweaty palms time now."

Looking at the view of the approaching Peacekeeper vehicles, Doug said, "The longer they take, the better it is for us. Time's on our side."

"For now," said Anson.

He nodded. "Better put out an announcement that all personnel without specific tasks for the defense of the base should meet in The Cave."

Anson hiked her brows. "Not stay in their quarters?" 'No, get them into The Cave. Food's there, and it'll be easier to deal with them if they're all together instead of strung out in their individual quarters. There might be fighting in the corridors; I don't want anybody hurt unnecessarily."

"Collateral damage," Anson muttered, turning to the console keyboard.

The editing booth felt hot and stuffy. Edith sat at the big board, watching the array of display screens half-surrounding her, showing views of the approaching Peacekeepers and the spacecraft at L-l.

"The first shot in this battle has already been fired," she was saying into the microphone that sent her words Earthside. "The U.N. Peacekeepers knocked out a reconnaissance satellite that Moonbase had placed in orbit to observe the Peacekeepers' movements."

She pressed the stud that sent the view from Mount Yeager's camera Earthward. "Now the Peacekeeper assault force is moving across Mare Nubium, approaching Moonbase. What you are seeing now…"

Georges Faure was far from composed as he sat in his office, watching the broadcast of Global News. He fidgeted in his big chair, seething with anger. To think that this woman, this slut of a reporter who had seduced him into allowing her to accompany the original Peacekeeper force to the Moon, to think that she was such a traitor, such a propagandist for the rebels—it exasperated him.

Yet a part of him was thrilled at the sight of the Peacekeeper armada crossing Mare Nubium. These are my troops, Faure told himself, marching under my orders. Let the news media say what they will, in a matter of hours Moonbase will be under my control, as it should be.

And if those rebellious fools attempt the resistance, they will be crushed. As they should be.

Colonel Giap compared the electronic map on the display screen of his tractor's cab with the view of Alphonsus's ringwall mountains looming before him. His tractor cab was pressurized and armored, so he could ride with the visor of his spacesuit helmet open. He could have made this journey in shirtsleeves, had he chosen to, but that would have meant that he would have to don his spacesuit once they arrived at their designated campsite. He had decided to endure the discomfort of forty-three hours in the spacesuit, instead.

Most of the trip he had spent worrying about nanomachines. Moonbase had no weapons to speak of, he knew, but what kind of devilish weaponry could their nanoscientists devise? Nanomachines had driven off the first Peacekeeper attack. Giap had chosen broad daylight to make his assault, but inside the tunnels of Moonbase the purifying effect of solar ultraviolet did not penetrate. That is why Giap had included special teams of civilians with powerful UV lamps to accompany his troops. He did not intend to be run off by invisible, insidious nanoweapons.

Their base camp location had been carefully chosen to position them close to the two easiest passes over the ringwall mountains, while still placing them within the sheltering lee of the mountains themselves. Those solid piles of rock would protect them from the radiation pulse of the nuclear explosion. There was no need to worry about blast effects in the lunar vacuum, but even if there were the mountains would shelter them, just as it will protect us from the radiation and heat pulse, Giap assured himself.

Still, a tendril of worry gnawed at him. The missile must be accurately aimed. And its warhead must be fused at precisely the correct altitude. If it goes off too soon, or its aim is a fraction of a degree off-target, we could be hit by the heat and radiation.

He reached out a gloved hand to touch the armored roof of the tractor's cab. Enough protection against a slightly mis-aimed nuclear warhead? he wondered. More likely the metal would serve as an efficient oven, to roast us all to death.

Shaking his head inside the helmet, he tried to push such fears away by attending to his duties. He established communications contact with L-l, although the link was weak and strained with harsh bursts of static. The tractor comm sets were far from satisfactory and sunspots or some other esoteric phenomena could hash up communications quite maddeningly.

The image of a Peacekeeper junior officer appeared on the little screen, wavering slightly and streaked with electronic snow.

"We are on schedule," Giap informed the junior officer. "All my vehicles will be at their assigned base camp positions within two hours."

"Very well," came the woman's voice, through hissing static. "Missile launch will proceed on schedule unless you order otherwise."

"Yes, launch on schedule," said Giap, wondering how firm a comm link they would have once his vehicle was parked up close to the ringwall mountains.

THE WHITE HOUSE

"Mrs President, you've got real troubles with this Moonbase business."

The President gave her staff chief a chilling look, the kind that had been known to cause lesser men to write out their resignations.

The chief of the White House staff was an old hand at this kind of thing, though; he had been with the President since she had first run for the Senate, many elections earlier.

"I mean," he said, hunching forward in the Kennedy rocker in front of her broad, modern desk,'the poll numbers are changing so fast we can't keep up with them."

"The trend?" she snapped.

"Swinging steadily in favor of Moonbase. Those news broadcasts Global's airing are turning the public's opinion around a hundred eighty degrees."

The President turned her chair away from this man she knew so well, away from his earnest, worried face and the problems that slumped his shoulders. She looked out through the long windows to the flower garden that had soothed both Roosevelts and everyone else who had sat at this apex of power in the Oval Office.

"I mean it, Luce," her staff chief said,'this has turned into real trouble."

"What about the New Morality?" she asked, still without looking at him.

He did the unthinkable. He got up from the rocking chair and walked around her desk, forcing her to face him.

Bending his knees slightly and leaning his liver-spotted hands on them so his eyes were on the same level as hers, he said gently, "They're not going to be enough, Luce. The public's demanding that you do something."

She glared at him and swung back to the desk. He returned to the rocking chair.

"Are you telling me that O'Conner and Previs and all the other New Morality leaders are abandoning me on this?"

"No, not at all," he said, raising his hands. "The hard core of the Faithful are with you as much as they've ever been. They see this fight on the Moon as the battle between the forces of good and the evils of nanotechnology."

"So where's my problem?"

"It's the peripherals," he said with a sigh. "You've got the hard core, they're solidly with you. But the hard core isn't that many votes, Luce! The New Morality's real strength has been in its numbers, yeah, but most of those numbers aren't fanatics. They're ordinary folks who think the New Morality's ideas about cleaning up crime and vice are pretty good."

"And now?"

"Now they're looking at their television screens and seeing the big, bad U.N. attacking poor little Moonbase. And most of those people at Moonbase are Americans."

"Who use nanomachines."

The staff chief shook his head. "The voters don't care that much about the nanomachines. What's getting them worked up is the sight of a bunch of Americans getting attacked by the Peacekeepers—who are mostly foreigners."

"But they elected me because I pushed the nanotech treaty."

"That's not important to them now. As long as the Moon people keep their nanomachines on the Moon, the average American voter doesn't care a gnat's fart about it."

The President glared at her staff chief for long icy moments.

He gave her a weak grin. "Don't blame the messenger for the message," he said.

She huffed at him, then reached out and flicked on her desktop computer. "I want to see these numbers for myself."

The staff chief leaned back in the rocker and watched her face as the data from the constantly ongoing public-opinion poll flickered across her screen.

When she finally looked up at him she asked, "What should I do?"

"Call Faure and tell him to back off, maybe?"

"Don't be ridiculous! It's much too late for that."

"At least tell him that you're concerned about the safety of the American citizens at Moonbase."

"But they've declared their independence! They don't want American citizenship!"

"We don't know if that's just a ploy or not. Either way, there're probably a lot of men and women up there who want to keep their citizenship and come back to the States as soon as they can."

The President shook her head. "I can't weasel on Faure. I've been one of his strongest supporters! If I turn on him now, the word of this Administration will be worthless all around the world. Nobody would trust us again."

"I'm thinking about your re-election campaign."

She waved a hand in the air. "That's next year, for God's sake. By that time Moonbase will be under U.N. control and this whole flap will be forgotten."

Her staff chief still looked worried.

"All right," the President said,'so Yamagata will be running Moonbase and taking over the spacecraft market. If Masterson Corporation goes for it, what am I going to do about it?"

"Once the opposition starts gnawing on that bone . . ."

She shook her head stubbornly.

"They're already starting to make noises in the Senate," he insisted. "Joanna Brudnoy's been talking with half the committee chairmen on the Hill."

"It's a fait accompli," the President said curtly. "In another forty-eight hours or so the Peacekeepers will have taken over Moonbase and this whole problem will resolve itself."

"Maybe," the staff chief said softly. "But what happens if Moonbase drives the Peacekeepers off? They did it once, you know."

She scoffed at him. "That's impossible and you know it."

"Yeah. But still

"Don't you intend to sleep?" Lev Brudnoy asked his wife.

Joanna sat in the exact center of the largest sofa in their living room, her eyes riveted to the big Windowall screen above the dark fireplace.

"I couldn't sleep if I tried, Lev," she replied. "Not with this going on."

The screen showed the view from the cameras atop Mount Yeager. The Peacekeepers' vehicles were slowing to a halt at the base of Alphonsus's ringwall mountains. They were arranging themselves in a single thin, undulating line that snaked along the flank of the mountains, each newly arriving tractor taking its position at the end of the constantly growing line. The cameras' resolution was fine enough to spot individual soldiers, if any appeared, but the vehicles stayed tightly buttoned up. Joanna could see the spokes of their springy wheels and the cleats on the tractors' treads, but no person got out of the vehicles.

They're waiting, Joanna thought. Waiting for the missile that will be launched from L-l. Then they'll attack. They'll storm Moonbase, and Doug will try to stop them and they'll kill my son and destroy everything.

Brudnoy sank his lanky frame onto the sofa next to her, murmuring, "At least we could go upstairs and watch from bed. Nothing is going to happen for another nine or ten hours, at least."

"You go if you're getting sleepy," Joanna said, not moving her eyes from the screen. Edie Elgin had been speaking for nearly an hour, but now her voice had stopped and the screen was silent.

He shrugged and sat beside her for several minutes. "This is like watching ice melt," he grumbled. "It's hypnotic. Don't you feel your eyes growing heavy? Sleepy? Drowsy?"

Joanna poked at him with her elbow. "Stop it, Lev!"

"At least come up to bed," he urged. "The screen up there will show the same picture, I assure you."

"No."

Brudnoy got slowly to his feet, then bent down to put his bearded face in front of Joanna's, noses almost touching.

"My darling wife," he said, blocking her view of the screen. "I have seldom insisted on my rights as your lord and master-"

"My what?"

"But there comes a time when a man must do what a man must do. Either you come up to the bedroom with me or I will be forced to carry you."

"We're not on the Moon, Lev," Joanna said, smiling at him despite herself. "You'll give yourself a hernia."

"That will be entirely your fault, not mine," he said, very seriously. With that, he reached one arm around her shoulders and the other beneath her legs.

"All right!" Joanna yelped. "All right! I'll go upstairs. I'll go with you."

Brudnoy straightened up. "Good," he said, offering her his hand.

And as she allowed her husband to help her up from the sofa and started for the bedroom, Jack Killifer—watching from the dining room door that he had opened a crack—also said, "Good," in a whisper that only he could hear.

Doug was nervously munching a sandwich, sitting on one of the spindly chairs in front of a console in the control center. Like his mother, like the millions of people Earthside watching Global News, like the men and women who had gathered in The Cave to wait out the battle, Doug was watching the camera views from Mount Yeager.

"They're not doing anything," he murmured.

Bam Gordette, standing slightly behind Doug like a bodyguard, said, "That's the army: hurry up and wait."

Doug thought that the thirty-klicks-per-hour pace of the Peacekeepers' vehicles hardly qualified for hurrying up, but they were definitely waiting now.

The control center had settled into a waiting mode also. Everything that could be done to prepare Moonbase's defenses had been done. Nick O'Malley paced nervously a few consoles away, hoping that his dust would work as he had promised. Vince Falcone and his crew had finally come back from Wodjo Pass, grumbling and griping about the foamgel's intractability but satisfied that they had covered as much of the pass as they could.

Wix and his people are still working on the particle gun, Doug knew. They're the key to our defense, the crucial link in the chain. If they can't stop that nuclear missile we might as well surrender. We'll have to surrender.

Nothing had moved out on the Mare Nubium for at least an hour.

"They're waiting for the missile strike," Doug said to no one in particular.

As if in response, one of the comm techs sang out, "They've launched! Rocket flare from L-l. Their missile's heading our way."

MASS DRIVER

Robert T. Wicksen was still outside, checking the wiring connections from the main magnets to the hastily installed switching panel, when the word came from the control center:

"L-l's launched their bird."

By reflex, he looked up. Instead of the sky he saw the inside of his helmet, dark and confining.

"How much time do we have?" he asked calmly.

"Wait one," the comm tech's voice said in his earphones. Then he heard her muttering, "Doppler plot… burn rate…acceleration—looks like… one hundred fifty-six minutes, according to the computer."

"Two and a half hours, plus six minutes."

"If they don't light a second stage."

"Keep me informed."

"Will do."

Switching to the suit-to-suit frequency, Wix told the four volunteers still working with him, "We have two and a half hours. Double check everything."

The spacesuited figures bent to their work.

"That's the nuke," Doug muttered.

"Must be," said Jinny Anson. Like Doug, she was staring at the screen showing the blunt-nosed missile. It seemed to be hanging in space now that its rocket engine had shut down; the stars in the background did not move.

Two and a half hours, Doug thought. What have we forgotten to do? Looking up, he traced the glowing lines on the electronic map of the base that covered one entire wall of the control center. Water factory, environmental control center, electrical power—they're as protected as they'll ever be. Turning to the insect-eye array of screens at the console he had commandeered, Doug saw displays of Wodjohowitcz Pass and the crater floor. Off near the brutally short horizon he could barely make out the ant-like forms of Wix and his volunteers still tinkering at the mass driver.

Another screen showed the crowd in The Cave. They seemed calm enough. They're safe, he told himself. Even if Wix's gun fails and the nuke blasts out the solar farms, they'll be unharmed. We'll have to surrender, I guess, but they'll be safe.

Then a new fear assailed him. If they knock out our electrical power we'll only have a few hours' worth of juice from the backup fuel cells. The Peacekeepers must have emergency power generators with them. They've got to! Otherwise everybody here will die in a couple of hours, asphyxiated from lack of air to breathe.

The Peacekeepers won't want to kill us all, he told himself. They'll have emergency power supplies with them. Otherwise this'll be a slaughter.

"Why aren't you in The Cave?" Kris Cardenas asked.

Zimmerman looked up from the scanning probe microscope's image-intensifier screen at his unexpected visitor. Keiji Inoguchi, on the other side of the room at the processor control board, stared at the sandy-haired, trim-figured Cardenas as if she were a video star.

"And why should I be at The Cave? Am I expected at a party?"

"Everyone who's not assigned to a defense task is supposed to go to The Cave."

"Pah!" Zimmerman snapped his fingers.

"Doug Stavenger's orders," Cardenas said.

"So why are you not in The Cave?" Zimmerman demanded.

She grinned as if she enjoyed fencing with him. "I'm on duty at the infirmary. I just ran up here to see how much of a supply of therapeutic nanobugs you had left for us."

"We are still working on them," Zimmerman said.

Turning her cornflower blue eyes to Inoguchi, Cardenas asked, "And you're helping him?"

Inoguchi bowed deeply, then replied, "It is my privilege to assist Professor Zimmerman, yes."

"But you're one of the U.N. inspectors, aren't you?"

"Yes, that is true. But the medical work we are doing here is beyond the scope of politics."

Zimmerman scowled. "He's learning everything he can in preparation for running the nanolab once Yamagata takes over the base."

Inoguchi looked stricken. "I am assisting you for humanitarian reasons!"

"You are spying on me," Zimmerman grumbled.

"Now Willi," Cardenas intervened, "you can't attack Professor Inoguchi like that! It's not polite and it isn't fair."

"Yah. Of course. Only it is true."

"It's not Professor Inoguchi's fault that we're being attacked," Cardenas said. "I think it's very generous of him to assist us."

Inoguchi said, "I am most honored to work with you both."

"And looking forward to running this lab once the Peacekeepers have driven us out," Zimmerman insisted.

Squaring his shoulders visibly, Inoguchi said, "Yes, that is true. What would you expect me to do, go back to Japan and allow someone else to take over this laboratory?"

Cardenas laughed. "He's right, Willi. Why shouldn't he want to run this facility? It's the most advanced in the world."

"In the solar system!" Zimmerman corrected.

To Cardenas, Inoguchi said, "I have offered a position here to Professor Zimmerman. I would be most honored if you, a Nobel Laureate, would remain here to continue your work."

Cardenas replied, "Assuming that the Peacekeepers actually do take over the base."

"And hand it over to Yamagata Industries," Zimmerman groused.

Inoguchi snapped his chin down in a nod that almost became a little bow.

Her smile fading, Cardenas said, "Would you offer a position to my husband, as well? He's a neurosurgeon. I won't stay here if he can't."

Inoguchi immediately answered, "Yes, of course."

"Most of the work Pete's done has been by virtual reality link Earthside, since we've come up to Moonbase," Cardenas mused, thinking out loud. "If he can continue doing that he'll stay. Otherwise we'll have a problem."

"Perhaps I can obtain an appointment with Tokyo University for him," Inoguchi said. "Or Osaka. He could remain at Moonbase indefinitely and work with his colleagues through electronic links."

"Is your husband at The Cave?" Zimmerman asked sourly.

"No," Cardenas said, turning her attention to the old man. "He's at the infirmary, ready to help the medics with any surgery that might be needed."

"I sincerely hope that it will not come to that," Inoguchi said.

"So do we all," said Cardenas.

Claire Rossi felt as if she were in a nightmare. She moved through the crowd milling around in The Cave with nothing to do, nowhere to go, and the vision of that missile hanging over her head in the big wall screens.

"Can I buy you lunch?"

Whirling, she saw Nick O'Malley, big, lumbering redhead, grinning down at her.

"Nick! Why aren't you in the control center?"

"They let me out to eat now and then," he said, sliding an arm around her waist. "Come on, I'll buy you the best soyburger in town."

He kept up a cheerful patter as they picked up trays and made their selections from the stainless steel dispensers. Once they were seated at a table for two off in a far corner of The Cave, O'Malley dug into his burger.

But Claire found she had no appetite. "I can't eat anything," she said, sliding her plate away from her.

O'Malley pushed it back. "Hey, you're eating for two, you know. Got to keep up your strength."

She looked up at the wall screen, with the missile hanging there like the ringer of death pointed at them.

"They're going to kill us all, aren't they?" she said, her voice choking in her throat.

O'Malley clutched her hand. "Nobody's going to get killed. We're safe and snug in here."

"Don't try to kid me, Nick. Without electrical power we're done."

"If they nuke the solar farms—and that's an if, mind you -Doug will surrender and the Peacekeepers will come in without firing a shot. Nobody's going to die in defense of Moonbase, don't you worry."

"You're certain?"

O'Malley's florid face turned solemn. "Listen, Claire darling. I'm stationed in the control center, running the dust. I'll be right beside Stavenger. If he doesn't surrender I'll clout him on the head and take over. I'll surrender for him, if I have to."

Claire tried to smile for him, but she wondered if her husband really had the strength to do what he promised.

"We've got a second-stage burn!" the comm tech yelped.

Wicksen jerked with surprise. "What?"

"Second-stage burn," she repeated. "They held off on it until they made their midcourse correction. Accelerated by a factor of two, at least. Computer's chewing on the numbers."

"How much time do we have?" Wicksen asked, feeling frightened for the first time.

"Looks like… forty-two minutes."

"By all the saints in heaven," Wicksen muttered. "All right, thanks for the bad news."

Banging the suit-to-suit key on his wrist pad, Wix called out, "New data. We've got forty minutes, max."

The four spacesuited figures all turned toward him.

"I know it's not enough time," Wicksen said. "Power up the magnets. Check out all the connections. I'll slave the pointing system to the control center's radar plot."

"Better warn the base they're gonna get browned out," one of his assistants said.

"Right," said Wicksen, running as fast as he could in the cumbersome spacesuit to the jury-rigged set of pointing magnets.

This has got to work the first time, he said to himself. It's got to! If there's a saint in heaven who can cancel Murphy's Law for a few minutes, now's the time to do it.

It was as close to prayer as Wicksen had ever come.