by Ben Bova
The personnel list in her notebook gave only his name and place of residence: Boston, Massachusetts. Well, that’s a starting point, Edith thought. She went hunting through the background database that she had put together before leaving Atlanta. And soon she found his history, in the material that her source in the Masterson Corporation had given her.
Killifer had been a Masterson employee, she saw. Worked for eighteen years at Moonbase, coming back to Earth only long enough for the mandatory health checks and then shipping back to the Moon immediately. Then, seven years ago, he had abruptly taken early retirement and never went back to Moonbase again. Until now.
Digging deeper, Edith found that Killifer had become an executive in the New Morality movement, one of the key pressure groups that pushed the nanotech treaty through the U.K. and got the U.S. Senate to ratify it.
He’s anti-nanotechnology, Edith realized. But, glancing at him across the aisle, she thought he looked as if he had personal demons driving him. There’s more to it than a religious conviction, she thought. I wonder what’s really itching him?
It was boring as hell sitting in the damned Clippership with nothing to do but listen to Munasinghe’s nitpicking worries. Killifer had spent as much time as he could roaming through the ship, but it only took ten minutes to see everything there was to see: The passenger cabin, filled with a mongrel lot of Peacekeeper troops, most of whom couldn’t even speak English. The galley where their tasteless prepacked meals were microwaved. The cargo bays, stuffed with enough weapons to blow Moonbase into orbit. The head, with the seatbelt and stirrups on the unisex toilet.
He thought about popping into the cockpit, but he figured that the astronauts up there weren’t looking for company, and there wouldn’t be all that much to see, anyway. It’s crowded enough here in the passenger cabin, Killifer told himself, friggin’ cockpit’s about the size of a shoe box.
There was only one bright spot in the whole mess, and that was the good-looking blonde reporter sitting across the aisle from him. Killifer had tried to strike up a conversation with her, but she didn’t seem interested.
Yet now, as he sat wedged in beside the ever whining Munasinghe, she seemed to be giving him the once-over. Killifer laughed to himself. After four days in this sardine can she must be getting horny.
Only about four hours to go, Edith thought. I can handle Killifer for that long. So she smiled the next time he looked her way and, sure enough, as soon as Munasinghe left his seat to see to some problem, Jack Killifer unstrapped and floated out into the aisle beside her.
“Boring trip, isn’t it?” he said, grinning down at her wolfishly.
Edith turned up the wattage on her smile a little. “I’d rather be bored than scared to death.”
Without asking, Killifer pulled himself into the empty seat beside her. “It won’t be long now,” he said.
“You’ve been to Moonbase before, haven’t you?” Edith prompted, as she quietly clicked on the audio recorder built into her electronic notebook.
Killifer huffed. “Spent the better part of eighteen years there.”
“Eighteen years?” she said, wide-eyed. “Wow! You must have been there right at the very beginning.”
“I sure was. Lemme tell you…”
That was all it took to get Killifer talking about himself and Moonbase. But as he talked, the dark brooding anger that simmered inside him started to rise to the surface.
“Joanna Stavenger,” he growled. “She’s the bitch that runs the whole thing up there.”
“I thought Douglas Stavenger was in charge of Moonbase,” Edith said innocently.
“Hah! Maybe he thinks he’s in charge, but it’s his Mama who’s the real boss. The spider woman.”
“Isn’t her name Brudnoy now?”
“Sure,” Killifer answered. “He’s her third husband, you know. The first two died on her.”
“Really?”
He chuckled unpleasantly. “I wonder how long this one’ll last.”
Edith asked, “Douglas Stavenger… isn’t he the one who has the nanomachines in his body? He nearly was killed on the Brennart expedition to the south lunar pole, wasn’t he?”
“I was on that expedition,” Killifer said. “I was Brennart’s right-hand man.”
“Really? Wow!”
For nearly four hours Killifer gabbled away and Edith realized that his nanoluddite leanings were merely the surface manifestation of a deep hatred for Joanna Brudnoy and her son, Doug Stavenger.
TOUCHDOWN MINUS 2 HOURS 38 MINUTES
Sitting alone in his office, Doug watched the smart wall’s view of the crater floor, where teams of spacesuited men and women were desperately setting up microwave transmission equipment to back up the hard-wire system that carried electrical power from the solar farms to the base’s electrical distribution center.
The microwave transmitters were dark, flat plates, innocuous looking. They were aimed at relay transceivers being set up atop the ringwall mountains, a circuitous route that Doug and his cohorts hoped would fool the Peacekeepers. They can blow the wires, he told himself, but they won’t recognize the backup equipment for what it is.
For maybe half an hour, a sardonic voice in his head sneered. They’re not dummies. They’ll figure it out soon enough.
It’s the best we can do, Doug admitted silently. It’s the best we can do.
Nervously, a feeling of dread gripping him like the freezing hand of death itself, Doug programmed the smart walls to show him every square centimeter of Moonbase. He inspected each of the corridors, the water factory, the environmental control center, the rocket port, the solar farms and the mass driver out on the crater floor, the labs, the workshops, The Cave, where a handful of people were taking a meal in desultory silence, the control center, where tense men and women monitored every part of the base.
“Hold there,” he said.
The walls froze on a panoramic view of the garage. It had been a natural cave in the mountainside, enlarged and smoothed over by Moonbase construction crews. Now it served as a shelter for the tractors that worked out on the surface, a storage area, even a playing arena for the annual low-gee basketball matches. It also served as a buffer between the corridors that housed the living and working areas and the airless lunar surface, outside.
Doug leaned back in his swivel chair and stared at the main airlock. Big enough to let tractors through, its heavy metal surface was dulled and scratched from years of constant use. On the other side of the airlock was the open crater floor. On the opposite side of the garage were the smaller airlocks that led to the individual corridors of Moonbase.
A buffer zone.
“Phone!” Doug called out. “Find Jinny Anson, Professor Cardenas, Lev Brudnoy and Leroy Gordette. Urgent priority. Tell them to report to my office immediately.”
TOUCHDOWN MINUS 1 HOUR 57 MINUTES
“But it’s crazy,” Anson snapped.
Doug sat straight up in his chair and stared across his desk into her steel-gray eyes. “Jinny, a very smart man once said, “Just because an idea is crazy doesn’t mean it’s wrong.”
“Doesn’t mean it’s right, either.”
“Do you have something better in mind?”
“If we’re going to do anything,” Brudnoy said, “it should be done out on the crater floor, as far away from us as possible.”
“What can we do out there, Lev?”
The Russian thought a moment, then shrugged his shoulders.
Doug looked at Cardenas for support, but she merely sat silently in the sling chair in front of his desk, looking thoughtful. I’m putting a lot on her shoulders, he thought. She doesn’t want to commit herself, one way or the other.
He turned to Gordette, sitting off to the side of his desk, slightly separated from the others. “Bam, you’re the only one here with any military experience. What do you think?”
Gordette’s dark face looked utterly serious. “What do I think? I think you’re blowing smoke. All of you. There’s no way in hell yo
u can keep those Peacekeeper troops out of here.”
Doug broke into a grin, his automatic reaction to a challenge. “We’ll see,” he said.
“You’re going to do it?” Anson asked.
“Yep,” said Doug. “We’ve got less than two hours and we’ve got to do something.”
“But it won’t work! It’ll backfire and—”
“Jinny,” Doug interrupted, “I understand that the four of you are against it. But like Lincoln said when his whole cabinet voted against the Emancipation Proclamation and he was the only one in favor: The ayes have it.”
TOUCHDOWN MINUS 32 MINUTES
In his cermet spacesuit Doug stood on the rock floor of the garage as the last of the tractors trundled through the open hatch of the main airlock.
“Only thirty-two minutes left,” Brudnoy said.
Doug had to turn his whole body to see his stepfather’s cardinal red spacesuit standing beside him.
“We’ll make it,” he said. “Cardenas is ready to start laying down the bugs.”
“For what it’s worth, commander, I wish you wouldn’t do this. It’s too risky.” Brudnoy’s voice sounded more morose than usual, in Doug’s earphones.
“I wish I didn’t have to do this,” Doug admitted, “but I can’t see what else gives us a chance to get the Peacekeepers off our backs.”
“It won’t work.”
“Come on, Lev! It’s worked for Mother Russia all through history.”
Brudnoy was silent for a moment, then he replied, “May I point out that Mother Russia had thousands of kilometers of territory to absorb the invader’s armies. We have—what? Ten thousand square meters?”
“Forty-three thousand and sixteen,” Doug answered promptly. “I checked it in the base plans.”
“I should have known you would.”
Encased in his bulky spacesuit, Captain Munasinghe had to squeeze through the hatch to get into the cockpit. His eyes widened with sudden terror as he looked past the two astronauts through the narrow forward window. The rugged, bare rock surface of the Moon was hurtling up to meet him.
He swallowed hard, not wanting to show the two astronauts that he was afraid.
Before he could speak, the pilot—in the left seat—told him, “We’re programmed to rotate in twelve minutes, so take a good look at the view while you’ve got the chance.”
Munasinghe would rather not. It looked as if they were going to crash and kill everyone aboard.
Forcing his voice to remain even, he asked, “Are you still receiving transmissions from Moonbase?”
“Yeah,” said the copilot. “They say all four of their landing pads are occupied and there’s no place for us to put down.”
“Is that believable?”
“Sure,” the pilot said. “Why the hell not?”
The astronauts were both civilians from the transport line that had provided the Clippership to the U.K. For a fat fee, of course. Munasinghe resented their informality with him. True military personnel would have been preferable. And properly respectful.
“Then how will you land?” Munasinghe asked.
“We’re coming down on a trajectory that’ll put us on their landing pad number three. At T minus fifteen we’ll start scanning the Alphonsus crater floor. If all of their pads really are occupied we’ll pick out a smooth area to set down.”
“You can do this in fifteen minutes’ time?” Munasinghe demanded.
The copilot chuckled. “Don’t you fret none. We can do it in fifteen seconds if we have to.”
“Fifteen seconds!” Munasinghe’s knees went weak at the thought.
The pilot explained, “What he means is, we can hover over the crater floor and pick out our landing site, then jink over to it and sit her down. Nothing to it.”
“Piece of cake,” said the copilot.
“Ten minutes to rotation,” said a synthesized voice from the speaker overhead.
“Enjoy the view while you can,” the pilot said to Munasinghe.
“I must get my troops ready,” he replied. He thought he heard the astronauts laughing at him as he closed the cockpit hatch behind him.
Edith Elgin felt as if she’d been swallowed by some weird creature made of plastic and metal. The spacesuit helmet smelled kind of like a new car, and she could hear the tiny buzz of air fans from inside the suit, as if there were some gnats droning in there with her.
She had been relieved when Munasinghe’s order for everyone to suit up had finally interrupted Killifer’s nonstop monologue of hate. With a smirking grin, Killifer had offered to help Edith get into her spacesuit, but she declined as politely as she could manage, unwilling to give the man a chance to play grab-ass with her. Instead, Edith asked two of the women troopers to help her worm into the spacesuit and check out all the seals and connections.
Killifer did not suit up, she saw. He was going to remain aboard the Clippership with the two astronauts in the cockpit.
Looking through the open visor of her helmet, she saw what appeared to be a collection of fat, bulbous snow monsters, all in white, with human faces peeping out at their tops. Funny, she thought: all the times I’ve been to space stations I’ve never had to get into a spacesuit. Good thing, too. I must look like a roly-poly eskimo in this outfit.
She knew from her Earthside briefings that the backpack she now wore massed fifty-two kilos. One hundred and fourteen point four pounds. In zero gravity it weighed nothing, but Edith was surprised at how difficult it was to move, once the backpack was loaded onto her.
She saw that she was one of the last people still hovering weightlessly in the cabin’s central aisle. Most of the troopers were back in their seats, spacesuits and backpacks and all. And weapons. Each trooper carried a rifle and a bandolier of various types of grenades strung around their shoulders. One of the women had explained the different types: concussion, fragmentation, smoke, and—what was the other one?
Oh, yes: flare. It made a brilliant light that blinded people temporarily.
Slowly, feeling as if she were pregnant with an elephant, Edith pushed herself back into her seat. The backpack forced her to sit on the front few centimeters of the chair.
Munasinghe came through the hatch up forward, from the cockpit. He looked at the watch set into the left cuff of his suit.
“Touchdown in twenty-three minutes,” he announced.
TOUCHDOWN MINUS 15 MINUTES
“All buttoned up,” said the chief of the monitoring crew.
Standing behind him, Doug turned his glance from the chief’s set of display screens to the giant electronic wall schematic of the entire base. Every system was functioning within normal limits, every section of the base was secure, almost all the personnel were in their quarters instead of at work, every airtight hatch along each corridor was closed, all the airlocks sealed shut.
Except the main airlock in the now-empty garage.
“They’ve rotated,” said the controller’s voice, from the rocket port. “Coming down the pipe.”
Doug stared at the radar plot that was displayed on the chief’s center screen. Eight smaller screens were arrayed around it, like the compound eye of some strange electronic insect. Each showed a different view.
Leaning over the seated chief’s shoulder, Doug said as calmly as he could, “I want to talk to the controller, please.”
Wordlessly, the chief touched a keypad on the board of his console and the controller’s face suddenly appeared in the upper leftmost of his set of display screens, replacing a view of the crater floor outside.
“I want you to get out of there as soon as they touch down,” Doug reminded the controller. “Shut down all your equipment and get back here as fast as you can.”
“Don’t worry, boss,” she said, with a nervous grin, “I’m not gonna hang out here until they barge in, believe it.”
The rocket port was more than a kilometer away from the base proper. Its underground chambers were connected to the base by a long, straight tunnel. The plan wa
s for the lone controller to drive the old tractor that was used as a taxi to the base, after shutting down all her systems and sealing the two airlocks that opened onto the crater floor. Once she was safely through the airtight hatch at the Moonbase end of the tunnel, the technicians in the control center would pump the air out of the rocket port facility and the connecting tunnel.
“There they are,” said the chief, pointing to a screen on the upper right corner of his complex.
Doug saw a speck of light against the darkness of space, a glint of sunshine reflecting off the curved diamond surface of the Clippership. That ship was built here at Moonbase, he realized. It’s returning home.
Swiftly the glimmer took shape. Doug could see the spacecraft was coming down tail-first.
“Still heading for pad three,” the controller’s voice said, a hint of nervous excitement in her normally laconic tone.
Doug glanced at the screen that showed pad three. A pair of empty tractors sat on it. No way a ship could land there.
“Hovering.”
The spacecraft’s rocket exhaust glittered bright and hot. The ship hung in emptiness, as if thinking over the whole business.
Translating.”
It moved sideways in a quick series of jerky little bursts. Then it slowly descended on tongues of silent flame, blowing a fair-sized blizzard of dust and grit from the crater floor as it settled.
“Show me the map of their landing site,” Doug said to the chief monitor.
“Checking the coordinates… there you are.”
The geological map of the area where the spacecraft was landing came up on the chief’s center screen. It was half a kilometer from the quartet of landing pads. A sinuous rille ran off to the left, like a dry stream bed. The ground looked strong enough to hold the spacecraft’s weight; no problem there. A few minor craterlets scattered around the area, and the ubiquitous rocks strewn across the ground.
“They’re down,” came the controller’s voice. “I’m splitting.”