by Ben Bova
“Right,” said the chief into his lip mike. “Give me a positive call when you close the tunnel airlock behind you”
“Will do.”
Doug took a deep breath. Okay, he said to himself. They’re down. They’re here. Now the fight starts.
TOUCHDOWN
The descent was so smooth that Captain Munasinghe could not tell the precise instant when the ship’s landing pads actually touched the ground. He realized that he could feel weight again; after nearly five days in zero gravity it felt almost odd.
As he slowly got up from his seat, awkward in the cumbersome spacesuit, he realized that it was odd. He felt weight, yes, but it was very slight. Almost negligible.
The moon’s gravity is only one-sixth that of Earth, he reminded himself. That is why our boots are studded with weights, to keep us from jumping and stumbling when we try to walk.
“Good luck,” Killifer said, still sitting in his chair. Munasinghe barely heard his words, muffled by the spacesuit helmet. He nodded at Killifer, who had a strange, tight smile on his face. Was he pleased that the troops were going out to take Moonbase? Or pleased that he didn’t have to go with them? Probably both, Munasinghe thought.
Sergeants barked commands and his platoon got to their feet and lined up in the central aisle. The newswoman got up too, and stood beside Munasinghe. He glanced at her. She seemed calm enough.
“You must stay by me at all times,” Munasinghe reminded her.
“You bet I will,” Edith promised. No smile. No glamour now, inside the spacesuit. She was entirely serious.
His two lieutenants stood at the head of the aisle and saluted. “The troops are ready for debarkation, sir,” said the senior of them, the Norwegian. The other was a short, squat, dour-faced mestizo woman from Peru.
“Visors down,” Munasinghe said, “Check the suits for leaks.”
“What’re they doing in there?” Jinny Anson demanded.
A small cluster of people had gathered around Doug and the chief controller: Anson, Lev Brudnoy, Professor Cardenas, even Zimmerman had come out of his lair and found his way to the control center. Doug also saw Gordette hanging on the fringe of the little crowd, watching everything the way an eagle glares out at the world from its aerie.
The controller’s central screen showed a telescopic view of the Clippership standing out on the crater floor. The other screens showed interior views of the base: corridors, labs, workshops, the rocket port’s underground chambers, the garage—all empty, silent, still.
Brudnoy answered, “I doubt that many of those Peacekeepers have been in space before. They must be checking out their suits very carefully.”
They don’t seem very scared of us,” Doug muttered.
“Yeah,” Anson agreed. “They’re not worried we’re going to zap their ship.”
“Is anything happening?”
They all turned to see Joanna striding into the control center, looking radiant in a clinging metallic gold dress and silk scarf decorated with colorful butterflies.
Zimmerman grunted. He was wearing his usual baggy gray suit; the others were in coveralls or jeans and pullovers.
“You look as if you are going to a party,” Zimmerman grumbled.
Joanna gave him a frosty look. “If I’m going to be taken prisoner by Faure’s troops, I at least want to look presentable.”
Doug almost laughed.
“Hey!” Anson snapped. “Lookit! Both hatches are opening!”
Edith had covered enough military operations to know that all armies operated in the same way: hurry up and wait. Munasinghe’s platoon was in the hurry-up mode now.
“Go! Go!” she heard a sergeant’s grating yell in her helmet earphones.
The troopers were clumping into the twin airlocks down at the end of the passenger cabin. They could go through the airlocks only one at a time, no matter how loudly their sergeants screamed at them. They moved awkwardly in the spacesuits, and once through the outer airlock hatch they had to negotiate their way down the ladders that led to the ground. Not easy to do, encased in the cumbersome suits and carrying rifle, grenades and ammunition belts.
She and Munasinghe were at the end of the line, the last to go outside. Edith’s nose twitched at the metallic tang of the air she was now breathing. It was supposed to be the same mix of oxygen and nitrogen that the ship had been using for the past five days, but somehow it felt drier and colder. It made her nostrils feel raw.
She clumped down the aisle behind Munasinghe in her weighted boots, reaching up to check the minicam she had attached to her helmet. It would show whatever she looked at. If it worked right.
When at last the outer airlock hatch opened, Edith could see that it was brilliant daylight out there. Harsh unfiltered sunshine glared off the rocks and Alphonsus’s dusty floor. The Peacekeeper troops were spreading out across the pockmarked floor of the huge crater, moving slowly, cautiously toward the tractors that seemed to be scattered haphazardly across the ground. She noticed a partially-built Clippership sitting out there, too.
“They thought that they would prevent us from landing by placing their machines on the landing pads,” Munasinghe said, his voice sounding higher-pitched in her earphones than it had previously. “All they have done is to give us cover from any fire they might aim at us.”
Indeed, the farthest troopers had stopped at the parked tractors, huddling behind them as if expecting to be shot at.
“Your troops are afraid of being fired on?” Edith asked, flicking on the backup recorder at her waist. It was patched in to her suit radio’s circuitry.
“We are taking all the necessary precautions,” Munasinghe said. “There is no sense taking chances when we face an enemy of unknown capabilities.”
“But I thought there weren’t any weapons in Moonbase,” she prodded.
That is what our intelligence reports have indicated,” Munasinghe admitted. “But nevertheless, it is better to be cautious than surprised.”
“What on earth are they doing?” Brudnoy asked, genuine puzzlement in his voice.
Doug turned to Gordette and motioned the black man to his side.
“They’re acting as if they expect us to shoot at them, aren’t they?” Doug said, half-questioningly.
Gordette nodded solemnly. “They’re also setting up fields of fire so they can sweep the area if they have to.”
“Absolute nonsense,” Joanna huffed.
“They know we don’t even have spitballs to throw at ’em,” said Anson.
With a tight smile, Gordette replied, “They think you don’t have anything to throw at them. But they’re not taking any chances. Standard operating procedure.”
“Their guns can fire in vacuum?” Zimmerman asked.
“No problem. Cartridges’ powder is like a solid rocket propellant. They’ll fire in vacuum, all right.”
“And their impact velocity will be higher than on Earth,” Doug added, “because there’s no air resistance to slow down the bullet.”
“H’mph,” Zimmerman grumped.
“Well, are they gonna come in here or just stand outside and have a cookout?” Anson asked.
“They’ll be here,” Gordette said. “Don’t think they won’t be.”
TOUCHDOWN PLUS 23 MINUTES
Munasinghe saw that his troops were well positioned. Better still, there had been no sign of opposition from Moonbase. The base might just as well be abandoned and empty, for all the resistance they had offered so far.
Good, he thought. The troops had been most vulnerable when they were coming out of the spacecraft. If Moonbase could do us any real harm, that was the moment for it. Now we are on the ground, deployed well, and ready to advance.
He was standing behind a massive bulldozer, its heavy metal body a comforting shield between him and the unknown. The machine had been anodized a brilliant Day-Glo orange, but years of use had dulled its finish and spattered it with gray lunar dust. Munasinghe had been warned about the dust; it clung to everything
and got into the hinges of spacesuits, it even clouded spacesuit visors, if you weren’t careful. But he estimated that they wouldn’t be out in the open long enough for the dust to be a problem.
Off to one side there was an enormous hole in the ground, a deliberate excavation. Some kind of a trap the Moonbasers were trying to build? he wondered. It looked empty, abandoned, whatever it was supposed to be. He decided it could be ignored—and avoided.
His two lieutanants crouched behind him, although they could only bend partway down in their suits. The newswoman had stayed at his elbow all the way from the spacecraft hatch to their present position.
“Very well,” he said into his helmet microphone, “our forward command post is established. Now we start the advance to their main airlock.”
Peering over the back of the bulldozer, he fumbled for the binoculars clipped to his equipment belt. Even the simplest tasks were troublesome in the bulky gloves. Finally he got the binoculars free, only to bump them jarringly against his visor when he tried to put them up to his eyes.
Hoping that neither his lieutenants nor the newswoman noticed his clumsiness, he held the binoculars steady while their rangefinder automatically focused the optics. Munasinghe made the fine adjustment with a gloved finger and…
The airlock hatch was open!
Munasinghe blinked and stared, not quite believing his eyes. The massive metal outer hatch had been swung open. And the inner hatch, as well. He could see the area inside, it was brightly lit. It looked entirely empty.
Of course, he thought. They took all their equipment out of the garage area to place it on the landing pads, hoping to prevent us from landing.
But why would they leave the airlock hatch open? That means the entire garage area must be in vacuum. Is this some sort of trap?
With the press of a thumb he activated the binoculars’ rangefinder. Its readout appeared in the lower left of his view in red alphanumerics: one point six-six kilometers.
Munasinghe put the binoculars down and studied the ground between him and the open airlock hatch. Not much cover in the area, only a few small rocks, not enough to shelter a man from enemy fire. But there was no other way to reach the main airlock.
The open hatch bothered Munasinghe.
He pressed the stud on his forearm that opened the comm channel back to the ship and asked for Killifer.
“Killifer here.”
“Can you see the main airlock?” Munasinghe asked.
“Yeah. I’m in the cockpit; I can see it on the panel display screen.”
“The hatch is open!”
“Yeah. It is.”
“What does this mean?” Munasinghe demanded.
“Damned if I know.”
“Is it a trap?”
Killifer’s voice sounded exasperated. “How the hell should I know? It sure ain’t normal operating procedure, I can tell you that much.”
Munasinghe thought over the situation for a few moments, wishing he had more information, more options, more time to make a decision. At last he turned to the Norwegian, obviously the taller of his two lieutenants, even in the impersonal spacesuits.
“Move your squad up to the airlock hatch,” Munasinghe commanded. “Second squad will cover you.”
The lieutenant hesitated only the slightest fraction of a second, then replied, “Yessir.”
It looked to Edith as if the airlock hatch was open. She hadn’t thought to bring binoculars with her, and she knew Munasinghe wouldn’t loan his even if she asked. It was a little hard to see in the glare of the lunar daylight, but she could make out the brightly-lit interior of the base against the dark rock face of the mountainside.
Some of the troops were moving up, hip-hopping in the low gravity when they tried to run, despite their weighted boots.
“Is the airlock open?” she asked Munasinghe.
No answer. He was probably on a different frequency, talking to his troops.
Edith thought it over for half a second, then moved away from Munasinghe, around the corner of the bulldozer, and headed across the crater floor, following the advancing troops to the airlock hatch.
It was open. She could see it clearly now. The first of the troopers had reached the open hatch and stopped, dodging around to its sides where they had some protection if anyone inside the big empty chamber tried to shoot at them.
“Where are you going?” she heard Munasinghe’s voice yelling in her earphones. “Stop! I command you to stop!”
Edith grinned and kept on going toward the open airlock hatch.
TOUCHDOWN PLUS 38 MINUTES
The control center felt hot and stuffy to Doug. Everyone was watching the chief controller’s main screen, which showed the spacesuited Peacekeeper troops lumbering warily from the tractors scattered across the crater floor to the edge of the open main airlock.
“They won’t go in until their commanding officer comes up and looks around for himself,” said Gordette.
Doug licked his lips. “Are you ready?” he asked Kris Cardenas.
Sitting at one of the control center’s consoles, she nodded slowly.
“Okay then,” Doug told her. “Start the bugs.”
“This had better work,” Jinny Anson muttered.
“It’ll work,” Cardenas said as her fingers moved carefully across the console keyboard. But to Doug she sounded a trifle defensive, as if she weren’t entirely certain.
Brudnoy quipped, “If it doesn’t work we can always surrender.”
Joanna gave her husband a disapproving frown.
It was a big empty chamber carved into the mountain, Edith saw. Glareless strip lights ran across the rough rock ceiling. The floor was stained here and there; probably some sort of garage, she figured. But now it’s empty and all their vehicles are parked outside.
Not a soul in sight.
And painted on the floor in bright blood-red letters she saw:
WELCOME TO MOONBASE
PLEASE DO NOT ENTER
ROUTINE CLEAN-UP PROCEDURE IN PROGRESS
DANGER! NANOMACHINES IN OPERATION
She stared at the words, neatly stencilled on the smooth rock floor.
Munasinghe’s angry voice grated in her earphones. “You were to stay behind me! You had no right to run up here on your own!”
Turning, she saw the captain galumphing awkwardly toward her. Edith grinned inside her helmet: the leader of the troop has to run hard to stay abreast of his troopers.
Ignoring his pique, Edith pointed to the lettering on the garage floor. “Look,” she said.
She could not see the captain’s face behind his gold-tinted visor, but she imagined his red-rimmed eyes bugging out.
“What does this mean?” Munasinghe was panting from the exertion of running.
“They don’t want us to go in.”
“Of course! But—nanomachines? What nanomachines? Where is the danger?”
His voice sounded frightened to Edith. Nanomachines had such a bad reputation virtually everywhere on Earth that the mere mention of them was enough to worry almost anyone.
The tall Norwegian, recognizable by the lieutenant’s insignia on his nametag, pointed a gloved finger.
“Look!” he said, his voice shaking slightly.
A big grease stain on the garage floor was noticeably shrinking.
And then the stencilled letters of the warning sign started to get ragged around the edges, as if something was chewing on them.
“My God,” Munasinghe breathed.
“They’re not going into the garage,” Brudnoy said. “Not yet,” Gordette replied. “Do you think they will?” Doug asked him.
Gordette nodded. “They’ll fuss around a bit, but they’re not going to be stopped by some paint and a few grease stains.”
“You don’t think so?”
“They’ll come in. And once they’re past the garage, we’ve got nothing to stop them.”
Munasinghe had to make a decision. Instead of a trap, this was starting to look like a ruse
to him. Yes, nanomachines had killed people, he knew, but what danger could nanomachines pose to armed troops encased in spacesuits? This is nothing but a ruse, a desperate attempt to keep us from entering Moonbase.
Still, he switched from the suit-to-suit frequency to call Killifer, back at the ship.
“Nanobugs, huh,” Killifer said.
“Can they truly be dangerous to us?” Munasinghe demanded.
No answer for several heartbeats. Then, “Well, yeah, if they’re programmed to gobble organic molecules.”
“What do you mean?”
“If they’ve spread nanobugs across the garage floor to eat up oil stains and paint and stuff like that, the same bugs might be able to eat up the rubber and plastic materials in your spacesuits.”
“Nothing but the soles of our boots will touch the garage floor,” Munasinghe said.
“Uh-huh. And what’re the soles of your boots made of? Plastics, aren’t they? Organic molecules.”
“But there is a layer of metal mesh inside the plastic sole.”
“Sure. That mesh’ll look like a gang of wide-open doorways to the nanobugs. They’re the size of viruses, y’know.”
“They can rupture our suits, then?”
“Right. And then start chewing on the organic molecules of your bodies.”
Munasinghe shuddered involuntarily.
TOUCHDOWN PLUS 51 MINUTES
“They’re not coming in!” said Jinny Anson, almost exultant.
“They’ll come in,” Gordette assured her. “Soon’s they work up the nerve.”
Doug agreed with him. Sooner or later they would try to get past the garage. He pulled up a wheeled chair and sat beside the chief tech.
“Have you figured out their suit frequency?”
“Yep. Wanna listen to ’em?”
“No. I want to talk to them. Patch me in.”
Munasinghe was in an agony of indecision. To come all this way, nearly half a million kilometers, and be stopped by what may be a clever trick—it was intolerable. Worse still, his superiors back at headquarters would never stand for it. Munasinghe saw himself broken, perhaps even cashiered from the Peacekeepers altogether and sent home to rot in shame the rest of his life.