by Paul Kenyon
A strange thing was happening to the technician's body. It was growing flatter, as if, within the clothes, the tissues were slumping like jelly. A cavity suddenly appeared in the chest, like a footprint stamped in slushy snow. The face collapsed and began to run like melted wax.
Penelope gripped her arm rests. "There's no disease process that works that fast," she whispered.
The technicians around the body were looking frightened. They moved away from it. Other men began clutching at themselves — their throats, their eyes, their groins. One man stared in horror at his abdomen, which was ballooning like a pregnant woman's. The balloon burst and his guts spilled out. He stared stupidly at them, lurching, his feet getting tangled before he collapsed writhing to the floor.
Here and there in the auditorium, people were being sick. There was a confused babble of everyone talking at once.
Some of the technicians were beating at the sealed doors. One of them evidently had triggered an alarm.
The cameraman focused on a face seen through the outer glass port. It was staring at the hell inside, transfixed with horror. A man whose entire skin was oozing a thick fluid was hammering on the port.
"The entire Receiving Laboratory is divided into concentric zones of negative pressure," the voice said. "The opposite of a modern hospital operating room. Air presses in, not out. No microorganism is supposed to be able to escape."
The face at the port suddenly developed a runny nose.
"But it did. The Moonstone Virus broke through into Zone Two, then Zone Three. Thank God we were able to confine it within the building itself!"
There was a scene showing a ring of chemical fire surrounding the entire vast installation. Within the ring, men in sealed airsuits with fishbowl helmets and respirators were spraying the walls and applying some sort of sealant from pressurized tanks. The sealant hardened into a glistening coat over the walls and windows.
"We got the cooperation of the Atomic Energy Commission in disposing of the bodies — what was left of them," the voice said.
On the screen, men in space suits were directing robot handlers that looked like miniature tracked vehicles with claw arms. The robots were loading their horrible burdens, encased in body-size plastic bass, into airtight vans.
"The vans were escorted by armed convoy to the site in Colorado," another voice broke in over the loudspeaker. It was the President's Man again.
Penelope watched the screen. Mobile cranes were lowering the vans on steel cables into what looked like a mine shaft. The robot handlers, encased in plastic shrouds, were dumped in after them.
"The shaft is a mile deep," the President's Man said. "The AEC had dug it previously for an underground nuclear experiment."
Farnsworth leaned over toward Penelope. "You remember that? Project Plowboy. It was a scheme to extract natural gas from underground sources by setting off a hydrogen bomb. The AEC awarded a contract to a private corporation called General Tectonics. The ecologists raised hell. Said it might trigger earthquakes, contaminate water supplies with radioactivity — even contaminate the oil-bearing shale above the gas pockets. They got up a study showing that the whole thing wasn't economically feasible anyway. There was a lot of public pressure. The whole thing had to be called off."
Penelope wrinkled her brow under the plastic flesh. "Yes. And then they suddenly announced they were going ahead anyway. Now we know why."
The screen showed men in shielded lead suits lowering something that looked like a length of sewer pipe into a small shaft parallel to the big one. It was about eight inches in diameter and some thirty feet long.
It was the hydrogen bomb.
The next scene was taken from a distance, through a telephoto lens. The entire surface of the earth suddenly bulged. The flat Colorado desert turned into a shallow dome that must have been a half-mile across. There was a network of cracks. A thin spume of glowing vapor shot high into the air.
"There was a radioactive leak," the President's Man said sorrowfully. "The environmentalists gave the Administration a hard time. The Russians complained that we'd violated the nuclear test ban."
The lights went on. The President's Man stood there, blinking. He looked around the audience.
"But," he continued, "the moon virus was destroyed. Every trace of it. Until the Russians went back to the same site and got another sample."
A hand went up. It was the chairman of the Joint Congressional Science and Astronautics Committee.
"Can I ask a question?" he said. "Since we're being frank today? Is that the reason manned lunar exploration was curtailed after Apollo 17?"
"Yes," the President's Man said. He looked uncomfortable.
The Senator shook his head. "I'll be damned. They trotted out a lot of budgetary reasons. They never even told me!"
Another hand went up. "You've been describing the disease agent as a virus," he said belligerently. "Every first-year biology student knows you can't grow viruses in a culture medium. Bacteria, yes. But viruses can only multiply in living cells."
Dr. Barth stood up, his face weary. "It's a virus. Or something of that order. Maybe a viroid, like the one that causes potato spindle tuber disease. No protein envelope. Possibly no more than a single molecule of free DNA."
"But how can you tell?" the man persisted. "If every trace of this — disease agent — was destroyed, as we just heard. Is this another government lie? Are you secretly working on something as dangerous as this in some government laboratory?"
"We've made computer models based on all available data," Dr. Barth explained patiently. "We reconstructed what we believe to be a mathematical analogue of the moon virus shortly after the Houston Disaster. We've been carrying on intensive research on it ever since."
"But…"
"Mathematical equations and computer programs can't infect anybody," Dr. Barth said dryly.
Another hand shot up. "What information about the virus have you developed, Dr. Barth?"
Dr. Barth faced the new questioner gratefully. "We believe it evolved from an ordinary adenovirus. One of our astronauts sneezed. There's a lot of radiation on the moon. By some fantastic chance, a particle of radiation may have knocked a single hydrogen atom out of kilter. We theorize that it was one of the hydrogen bonds between an adenine-thymine base pair. But it was enough."
"The audience may not be familiar with the chemistry of DNA," the President's Man broke in.
"I'll put it in layman's language," Dr. Barth said. "What we've got is a renegade molecule. It probably attacked its own protein coat — the protective skin that all viruses have. It raids everything in its environment for the stuff it needs to assemble replicas of itself. Everything. Ordinary viruses take over the genetic machinery of a living cell. They steal the cell's free-floating nucleotides to make viruses instead of new cells. But the moon virus finds what it needs anywhere." He paused. "And that's why — the previous gentleman to the contrary — those samples of lunar rocks, with their potassium and phosphorus and the energy and warmth of the radioactivity to help cook the stew along, are able to act as a culture medium."
Hans Kolbe, the epidemiologist, took Dr. Barth's place. He was a large man with a round face, dressed in a rumpled blue suit.
"Once the virus encounters living tissue," he said, "a new phase takes place. It's like a man on a starvation diet who's suddenly been invited to a feast. It explodes into a riot of reproduction. It increases by geometric progression — every eight seconds, according to our computer model."
There was a buzz from the scientific members of the audience.
"Just so you all can understand what that means," Kolbe said, blinking behind his thick glasses, "a single molecule of this renegade DNA, once it invades a 150-pound man, can change 150 pounds of man into 150 pounds of virus in something like three hours."
This time it was the laymen in the audience who buzzed.
"Of course," Kolbe went on dryly, "the man is dead after only a few ounces or pounds of himself has been converted
to virus, depending on what vital organ systems the virus happens to attack. But the virus keeps feeding, and releasing itself into the atmosphere."
A man stood up, looking shaky. "So if the Russians open that capsule and let the virus loose, it will spread itself around the world. How long will it take, Dr. Kolbe?"
"We estimate," Kolbe said, "that with favorable wind currents and animal vectors such as birds and insects, every speck of organic matter on this planet could convert itself into moon virus within fifty days."
Penelope shuddered, remembering the jellied masses at the Lunar Receiving lab in Houston.
"I'm going to the men's room, John," she said.
She stood up. No one noticed. Here and there throughout the auditorium, other men and women were getting up to go through the doors that led to the rest rooms. The briefing had become technical. And some of the audience were looking queasy.
"He's getting up too," Farnsworth said.
"I know. I spotted him a few minutes ago. He's been watching us. I think he's been taking pictures with a Minox."
"Be careful, Coin."
She rubbed her shovel chin. "Careful? I'm going to take a shave and a leak."
She lumbered down the aisle, a heavy-set man in a double-breasted suit. The weight wasn't an illusion. She was carrying fifty extra pounds in molded plastic and electronic equipment under the body mask. Her superb musculature and the pep pills made it possible for her to move without apparent effort. But she was going to pay a price in fatigue and sore muscles when she finally shucked the rig off.
The CIA man — if that's what he was — followed her down the aisle a little too closely. He was eager. She toyed with the idea that he might be a Russian or Chinese plant. It was possible. The Russians had sleeper agents in the CIA, FBI, DIA, just as the U.S. had double agents working for the KGB and the GRU. She smiled thinly under her false face, remembering the Chinese-American Annapolis graduate, a few years back, who had actually managed to become special assistant to K'ang Sheng, then director of Peking's spy network.
The passage to the men's room was cordoned off with ropes. Marine sentries were stationed on both sides to make sure that people didn't stray. There was another guard outside the rest room door.
Inside, a half-dozen men were lined up at the urinals. A few more were at the sinks, washing hands, combing hair, splashing water into bleary faces.
She stepped up to one of the urinals and unzipped her fly. The motorman's friend installed in the body mask had been adapted from the space suit plumbing that NASA had designed for possible female astronauts. But the external genitalia had been sculpted by a noted artist and molded realistically in plastic.
Somebody stepped up to the urinal next to her. It was her CIA tail. He pressed close to the porcelain fixture, pretending to tinkle, while he leaned over sideways until their shoulders touched. Penelope was amused. If she hadn't known better, she would have assumed he was a homosexual.
There was a tingling on her midriff from one of the sensors taped to her skin. The CIA man was using some kind of microwave generator. She moved her elbow and encountered something bulky and hard under his jacket. He didn't notice the gesture.
She zipped up her trousers and went over to the sinks to wash her hands. The situation was unfortunate. She'd expected the CIA to assume that Coin was disguised. Even brilliantly disguised. But a disguised man. When they got around to analyzing the microwave configuration, it would show that under the body mask was a woman.
She reached into her side jacket pocket and took out a razor and a little tube of shaving cream. She could see the CIA man in the mirror. He was loitering over near the far wall, keeping her under surveillance.
She studied his face in the mirror. He was a tall, fair man with wheat-colored hair, very midwestern American. But the shape of the skull was a little too brachycephalic. And there was something about the eyelids. Could they once have had epicanthic folds, altered by surgery? The Russians did such things at the mock American village near Kiev, where they trained their agents to think, act and look like authentic small-town Americans.
The Baroness sighed. She hoped the CIA man was a double agent. It would make it easier to do what she was going to have to do.
She took a swipe at her plastic jowls with the razor. The nylon whiskers came off smoothly, leaving a realistic-looking freshly shaven cheek. It was a good show. Too bad the CIA man wouldn't live to appreciate it.
He was taking more pictures with the Minox. It was under his necktie, the lens operating through a stupid-looking glass stickpin. No doubt he also had a specimen box in his pocket, to collect any whisker samples she might leave behind in the drain.
She dawdled over her shaving, waiting until the lavatory emptied out. She and the blond man were alone. She didn't know for how long. A minute, five minutes. It would have to be very quick.
The blond man was coming over. He stopped at the sink next to hers, though all the others were unused. There was another tingle on her abdomen as one of the sensors taped there went off. This one was an infrared camera detector. The CIA man was monitoring her body heat, getting an image on special film. The body mask would give off a different pattern from the normal human carcass. And there would be two telltale round patches where her breasts were.
She turned to the CIA man and smiled. The voice alteration device that changed her speech to a gravelly baritone was switched off.
"Do you have a cigarette, lover?" she said in her sexiest contralto.
The CIA man looked startled. His eyes widened in sudden surprise.
While he gawked, she brought her hand up in a sidewise swipe, the edge held stiff and fiat and straight.
His reflexes were good. He knew the right defensive move. His arm flashed up to protect his throat. The striking edge of the Baroness' hand crunched into his wrist instead of his throat. There was a dry snapping sound as the CIA man's ulna broke in two.
His face had gone white with pain. But he was a pro. He moved back out of reach, his left hand dangling uselessly. His other hand was already scrambling for a weapon inside his jacket.
But the Baroness' reflexes were quicker. Her foot began to move, almost automatically, in the split second when it became apparent that his arm was going to intercept her death blow. Her entire body spun like a top, pivoting on the ball of one foot, the other leg held stiffly out at an angle.
Her heavy brogan with its steel plate in the sole smashed into his outer thigh. It had the speed and force of a sledgehammer blow. His femur broke like a stick of kindling wood. He crashed heavily to the tile floor.
He was a tough customer. His good hand was out of the jacket now with a gun in it. It was an official Browning .380 automatic with a very unofficial silencer on it.
There was a pop and a hiss and a streak of warmth past Penelope's ear. She dove, landing heavily on top of him with all the extra weight of her plastic shell and its equipment. Her right hand shot out and imprisoned his wrist. The momentum carried his gun hand to the floor, where it was instantly pinned by Penelope's knee. He flopped like a gasping fish, the broken wrist and thigh bones grating, while she got her two thumbs into his throat. They were broad, square thumbs with dirty nails and hair curling down to the joint. But inside them were Penelope's own strong elegant thumbs — thumbs that despite their slender grace could crack walnuts.
Now they cracked a human larynx. Her fingers hooked at the sides of his neck, she pressed sharply inward with her thumbs and felt the box of cartilage crunch and collapse into the top of his wind pipe. She kept her grip until he stopped thrashing. It took about a minute.
She got to her feet and looked for the bullet. It had gone up into the ceiling plaster above the sink. The hole wasn't conspicuous.
The whole episode had taken far too long. It was a miracle that no one had entered. She dragged the body over to the row of pay toilets. She didn't have a dime. She fished in the CIA man's pocket and found one.
The Baroness propped the corpse in a sitt
ing position on the toilet lid. The feet, visible under the door, were placed normally. There was no blood anywhere. She found the little infrared detector in his jacket lining and removed the exposed plates. She pocketed the tapes from his microwave generator. There was a third, unfamiliar device — possibly ultrasound — that had an FM transmitter instead of a recording device. She didn't think he'd had time to use it; that was probably what he'd been about to do at the sinks. She smashed it under her heel anyway.
She clicked the door of the booth shut and left him sitting there. The little red flag read Occupied. She hoped it would remain Occupied for a long time.
A couple of dark-suited men came into the men's room just as she was leaving. They were talking about the briefing.
"Dictatorship," one of them said. "That's what they're talking about in there, dictatorship."
"The question's academic," the other said. "This country will cease to exist in fifty days, after the Russians crack that capsule. So will the world. At least this way, maybe a few people will survive to start the human race all over again. Maybe."
They walked over to the urinals together. "At least all of us here today are in the goddamn survival lottery," the first man said, opening his fly.
The briefing was still going on when Penelope re-entered the auditorium. An earnest young man was using maps to explain how the interstate highway system could be used to transport people and materials to the underground survival centers without alerting the general populace.
She slid into the seat beside John Farnsworth. "We'd better go," she said.
They got up together and went quickly to the Marine officer at the rear door. Farnsworth whispered a few words to him. The officer nodded and spoke into his walkie-talkie. He listened, looking surprised.
"All right, gentlemen," he said. "You can proceed to the Director's office. I'll have to send a man with you."
The Director was waiting for them. "Heard enough?" he said.
"How long does the government think it can keep this Doomsday thing under wraps?" Farnsworth said.