by Paul Kenyon
"He was a Chinese albino. They micro-tattooed him all over to add enough pigment so he could pass as Caucasian. They injected the irises of his eyes with a blue dye."
"Whew!" Paul said.
Key continued. "He had a woven microphone in his necktie. Got past the security guards with it. And a surgically embedded transmitter with a range of a half-mile."
Paul said, "So the Chinese know all about what went on at the Doomsday briefing, right?"
"That's about the size of it."
"What's the other thing you've got to tell us?"
"Our ELINT teams have been monitoring some interesting transmissions from Peking. And the Arctic Ocean. And one very suggestive high-speed code blast from Cheshskaya Gulf, two hundred miles east of the Kanin Peninsula. They fed it all to the 7090 computer at Fort Meade. And the computer came up with a very interesting answer."
"What?" Paul said, his voice tense.
The Chinese have landed some kind of an expeditionary force in Russia. They're after the moon virus too."
Paul, Yvette and Fiona all looked at one another in silence.
Key went on, "So you'd better get on the stick right away and warn Coin. She's got more problems than she bargained for."
Paul said nothing.
"Do you hear me?" the mascara box said. "The Baroness is on a collision course with the Chinese army. You've got to warn her."
Paul spoke, despair thick in his voice. "We can't. She's out of communication. Something happened to her radio."
Chapter 11
She was in a womb. A warm, soft, yielding womb that rocked gently in a vast mother sea.
It was an illusion, she knew. If the rubbery bag that enclosed her were to puncture, the Arctic water rushing in would shock her to numbness in seconds, kill her in minutes. Her present comfort depended upon the frail magic of technology.
The Baroness put her eyes to the little periscope and squinted. The black waters stretched before her, an unknowable vastness. She thumbed the serrated wheel of the little control in her hand, and felt the reassuring tug of the nylon line connecting the bag to the electrically controlled aqua-wing ahead. She veered, bobbing, a little to the left, avoiding the small ice floe she'd seen through the scope. There was another tug from behind, as slack was taken up on the line hauling Skytop and the others, spaced out in a long chain behind her.
Something bumped against her feet, and she stiffened.
She waited, but nothing more happened. She'd never know what it had been. She didn't particularly want to speculate. The Arctic waters teemed with life: fish and seals and whales and basking polar bears — all of them looking for a meal. If a thirty-foot killer whale chanced along and thought the wriggling sack hanging just under the surface was a tempting piece of bait, there wouldn't be much she could do about it.
She took another look through the periscope. There! She could see it now! A long streak of chalky white against the western horizon!
She grabbed a handful of white plastic and felt around for the hard shape of the ring holding the trailing nylon line. She tugged three times to signal Skytop, then turned her attention to the shoreline ahead.
Cape Kanin. A godforsaken finger of ice sticking into the Barents Sea. An infected finger, bearing the mutated germs that could rot an entire world. She thought of the films from Houston and shivered.
The shoreline moved visibly closer, as the aqua-wing chugged on at its steady ten knots. It was going to be tricky, making landfall here. A sharp boulder and a wave to scrape her against it, and it would all be over. There was another ice floe ahead. She thumbed the little control, and the electric propellers pulled her on a sidewise course. Not good enough! There was another ice floe. She couldn't risk going through the forty-foot gap between them. She might make it, but if the nylon line snagged, Skytop and Wharton, Sumo and Inga and Eric, might be left adrift in the cruel icy-cold sea.
Icy cold? No, it was colder than that. The dissolved brine dragged the temperature of these Arctic waters well below the freezing point.
She hung in the waterproof bag, drifting parallel to shore, until she saw a clear expanse of open water, then moved in closer.
She could hear it now: the terrifying sound of ice grinding in the frigid surf. Through the scope she could see the tumbled white blocks, some as big as barns, and beyond them, unbelievably, bare glistening rock. An iceberg drifted by, sculpted into fantastic pillared shapes by the spring thaw. Through its white arches the midnight sun winked at her, an inflamed red eye that cast streaks of light over the black water.
She moved in closer. There was something that looked like a beach ahead. She'd have to chance it. She cut speed to five knots and headed toward a stretch that looked less foamy than its surroundings.
The surf caught her thirty yards from shore. It tossed her around like an inflated beach toy. She shifted her feet as if she were on a trampoline, trying to keep her balance. The side of the bag bulged inward, and something hard struck her a glancing blow on the shoulder. A piece of floating ice. She hoped there weren't any bigger ones nearby.
She couldn't use the scope any more. It was jumping around too violently. She tumbled in blindly, holding her breath.
There was a brief warning: she felt the cessation of pull that meant that the aqua-wing had struck bottom. Now it was her turn. A wave picked her up and hurled her forward. She landed on her hands and knees inside the bag. Before she could do anything, she was picked up again. This time she came down harder. She wriggled like an eel inside her rubbery membrane. She could feel a sharp pebbly bottom under her hands and knees.
She dared not delay any longer. Filling her lungs, she pulled the drawstring and burst through the mouth of the bag. She emerged, blinded and choking, into a punishing spray. The frozen brine stung her cheeks. She struggled into the waist-deep water, trying to keep her footing.
The aqua-wing was in front of her, jumping around in the surf. She picked it up as she passed, hoping it hadn't been damaged. Slinging it over her shoulder, she staggered with it to the safety of the shore ice.
She paused a moment to catch her breath, then dug her heels into the ice and hauled at the line, pulling Skytop in. She was able to drag him halfway clear of the water's edge before he popped out of his bag, looking like a newly hatched sea monster in his wetsuit. He helped her pull in Wharton; then she let go and let them do the rest of the work.
One of the supply bags had been lost. "Mostly food," Wharton said.
Skytop grinned. "I'll shoot us a seal to make up for it."
They packed the rest of the gear on the inflatable toboggans and pulled everything a few hundred yards inland, away from the dangerous exposure of the shore.
"Any radar, Tommy?" the Baroness said.
He peered at his detector. "I'm getting some bounce from a shore installation — probably about twenty miles south. Nothing that'll pick us up."
A look of cheer spread over Skytop's face. "We can break out the snowmobiles, then?" he said hopefully.
The Baroness shook her head sweetly. "We walk," she said.
* * *
The delegation from Peking arrived unannounced. By the time the staff was able to locate the Director in Laboratory Three of the botulism section, and he'd spent the necessary half-hour undergoing decontamination procedures, they were shuffling around impatiently in the reception area.
There were five of them. Someone already had fitted them out with smocks and rubber gloves and surgical masks. The masks were about as much protection against the deadly microorganisms bred in the laboratories as a paper shield would be against a bullet. But the Institute always issued them to visiting VIPs to make them feel better.
The Director hurried forward, a smile on his lips. "Welcome, comrades," he said. "The Ten Beautiful Thoughts Biological Research Institute is honored by your presence."
The delegation's leader limped toward him. The Director recognized him despite the white mask. It was old Hsing, a People's Congress deputy. Party Cen
tral sent him out about twice a year to check on the Institute.
"Greetings, comrade," Hsing said, more brusquely than usual. He indicated the other four with an abrupt gesture. "You are directed to show the comrades from Peking the preparations you are making to receive the yueh shih virus from the moon."
The Director's face grew stiff beneath the smile. He studied the other four as casually as he could manage, and realized with a shock that the man with the thick shock of black hair was Vice Chairman Wang Hung-Wen, the youngest member of the Politburo. He was not yet forty, but he ranked third in the Party structure. It was speculated that one day Wang himself would become Chairman.
"Certainly, comrades," the Director said. "Follow me."
He led them through the airlock into the vast dome of the pulmonary anthrax section. The five men from Peking gaped with visible unease at the glassed-in cubicles spread out below the catwalk. Workmen in protective clothing were installing new seals and erecting a new partition that ran the length of the laboratory.
One of the Peking men was shaking his head, his hands up at his ears.
The Director smiled at him. "It's nothing, comrade," he said. "The negative pressure is affecting your ears, that's all. Just swallow hard to clear them."
Vice Chairman Wang spoke. "The depressurization is to keep the germs from escaping, is it not?" He'd done his homework.
"Correct, comrade. Anthrax spores, to be exact. We are adapting an area within the pulmonary anthrax section for the moon virus because the decontamination facilities are most advanced here."
"But we are inside the depressurized zone," Wang said. His eyes were studying the man with the ear problems with evident amusement.
"There's no real danger, unless we were to enter one of the individual cubicles. The agar badges you're all wearing would warn us almost immediately if you were exposed to any drifting spores."
The other four Peking men glanced down instinctively at their badges. Vice Chairman Wang still looked amused behind his mask.
"How soon is immediately?" he said.
"Less than a minute. There's a special chemical stain in the agar medium. The first thing you'd see would be a spreading blue dot. Plenty of time to get you out of here and treat you."
The Vice Chairman advanced a dozen steps along the catwalk. His companions followed unwillingly in his wake. The man with the ear problem stared fearfully at his badge.
Emboldened by the Vice Chairman's matter-of-fact attitude, the Director said: "I'm told that this new germ from the moon is more dangerous even than pulmonary anthrax, comrade. Is it true?"
"It's true that the Americans are trying to frighten the Russians with fairy tales about it," Wang said. "But China is not frightened, eh, comrade?"
"We will take all reasonable precautions," the Director said.
"Good. China needs this weapon. We cannot allow the Russians to get ahead of us. Or the Americans."
The Director risked another degree of intimacy. "You are right when you say fairy tales, comrade," he said. "I am told that the Americans describe the moon germ as a virus. But a virus cannot grow and reproduce without the free nucleotides it steals from a living cell. So the moon germ must be a bacterium, or perhaps some sort of fungus."
"But you are preparing for both possibilities, are you not?"
"Indeed we are." The Director snorted. "The moon organism might be able to get through an American wall! But not a Chinese wall!"
The Vice Chairman fixed him with a penetrating glance. "I'm glad you're so confident, comrade," he said. "When the germ is delivered to you, you must proceed as quickly as possible. You must find a way to grow it in quantity, keep it stable in an aerosol spray… and develop a vaccine with which we can immunize the entire population of China."
The Director quailed behind his frozen smile. Eight hundred million doses of vaccine! The Vice Chairman couldn't possibly understand the vastness of the program that would be needed to grow the quantities of killed or attenuated germs required.
"How long?" the Director said shakily.
"A year."
"A year?" the Director's knees went weak. "But…"
The Vice Chairman's voice was stern. "The Central Committee is aware of the difficulties. You will be given everything you need in the way of materials and people. China will strain every resource to develop this weapon." His eyes glittered with fervor above the mask. "When all of China is immune to this new germ, the rest of the world will have to listen to what we say, eh, comrade? The Americans and Russians will have to accede to our demands, whatever they are. Their nuclear weapons won't help them if they're dead, will they, comrade?"
"How… how soon will I have the samples I need for seed stock?"
"Very soon, comrade," the Vice Chairman said jovially. "We will snatch the moon germ from under the noses of the Russians in no more than a day or two."
* * *
The Senior Pathologist looked frightened.
He was a weedy, carrot-topped man named McWhirter, and his freckles were stark against his blanched skin as he hurried toward the Secretary of Defense.
"Thank God you're here, Mr. Secretary, but they wouldn't let me talk about it on the phone!"
"I've established a command center in Denver," the Secretary said. "I'm sticking close by Operation Doomsday until the crisis is over."
"Come this way, sir," McWhirter said. "The lab director is waiting for us in the computer room with Dr. Barth."
There was a cluster of technicians waiting outside the computer room, peering through the glass windows. Evidently they'd been sent outside. It wasn't certain they'd been cleared for the data they'd helped develop.
They moved out of the way as McWhirter and the Secretary went through the door into the hermetically sealed room. Dr. Barth and the lab director, a big round-faced man with colonel's rank, whose name was Dr. Lovejoy, were over by a row of color CRT displays near the wall. The displays were generating a related series of what looked like schematic views of molecular diagrams. One computer was moving a continuous series of equations across its screen while a teleprinter chattered away, spewing out a permanent record.
"What's this all about?" the Secretary said.
Dr. Barth turned to face him. The lean saintly face was lined with sleeplessness and worry.
"Nitrogen," he said.
"Nitrogen? What about nitrogen?"
Dr. Barth drew a deep breath. "The Russians are storing the moon virus in a capsule containing an inert gas. The gas is nitrogen, isn't it?"
"That's the assumption, yes."
"Assumption?"
The Secretary of Defense shrugged impatiently. "All right, certainty. At least that's what our analysts infer from the factory markings on the capsule we saw on TV. Now what in hell is all this about?"
Dr. Barth turned to the nearest computer console and punched the keys. A three-dimensional tinkertoy began to rotate on the screen. New components began to hook themselves into the diagram as the Secretary watched, while a flow of meaningless symbols marched across the bottom of the screen.
"We've got a pretty good computer model of the way the moon virus reproduces itself," Dr. Barth said. "More than twenty-thousand man-hours went into the programming alone, not counting all the preliminary work done by the biological and mathematical teams."
A chill went down the Secretary's spine. "The way the virus reproduces itself?" he said. "Does it have something to do with nitrogen?"
"The moon vims is made of DNA," Dr. Barth said. "The four nucleotides that compose DNA all have nitrogenous bases."
A dreadful comprehension began to dawn on the Secretary. "Go on," he said.
"Unlike ordinary viruses, the moon virus is able to use free nitrogen to assemble the purines and pyrimidines that the bases are composed of."
"Let me get this straight," the Secretary said. "The virus can feed on the inert gas that's supposed to keep it from reproducing?"
Dr. Lovejoy spoke for the first time. "Like letting a ra
t into a grain silo," he said.
Dr. Barth's face twitched. "It goes exploring," he said. "It eats its way through to the outside, picking up whatever trace elements it can find."
"How long?" the Secretary whispered. "How long before the virus eats its way through the Russians' capsule?"
"That's what we needed you for, Mr. Secretary," Dr. Lovejoy said. "We need information on the construction of the Russian capsule — thickness of the wall, and so forth."
The Secretary picked up a phone. He got through to his assistant in less than two minutes. He spoke rapidly into the mouthpiece, then listened for a moment "I'll wait," he said.
He listened for another ten minutes, taking notes on a pad. When he was through, he handed the pad to Dr. Barth. "Here it is," he said.
"We've already got a program on tape," Dr. Barth said, taking the pad. He punched the console of a peripheral. The teleprinter began rolling out paper before he finished. He studied it and frowned.
"How long?" the Secretary said.
Dr. Barth glanced at the big clock on the wall. "The moon virus should eat its way through the capsule in something like forty-eight hours," he said.
The Secretary whirled and picked up the phone again. "Put me through to the director of the National Security Agency," he said.
There was a brief interval, and the Secretary's face suddenly went raw with anger. "Don't give me that crap, soldier!" he said. "Get me through to him, now, or you'll be breaking rock at a federal prison for the next twenty years!"
There was another wait. The Secretary's color slowly subsided. He nodded, and said:
"Hello, Sam. I've got some bad news. Your agent on the Kanin Peninsula has a deadline."
* * *
John Farnsworth nodded politely as his television set spoke to him. Marshal Dillon's face filled the screen, but the voice was the voice of the director of the NSA.
"…so you see, Coin has a time limit," the set said. "If that capsule isn't destroyed inside of forty-eight hours, it's the end of the world anyway. It'll all have been for nothing."