by Ben Bova
“…so you’ve actually brought us the LTV we’re going to use for our asteroid mission,” he was saying.
Melissa paid scant attention to his words. She saw Paul again. And the whole sorry mess of twenty years ago played itself out in her mind. All the pain and rejection and fury boiled up inside her, burning worse than the bile she had vomited on the way to the Moon.
“Your brother is the director of Moonbase, isn’t he?” she asked, struggling to keep her voice from shaking.
“Greg. That’s right”
“And your mother lives here, now, doesn’t she?”
Doug nodded eagerly. “In fact, there she is now.” He stood up and waved.
Melissa turned in her chair and saw Joanna: older, a bit thicker in the middle, her hair more gray than ash-blonde now, but unmistakably Joanna. While the other women in The Cave wore mostly coveralls, Joanna was in a midnight blue pantsuit set off by a flowered silk scarf at her throat. She doesn’t need weighted boots to hold her down, Melissa thought; those bracelets and necklaces must be heavy enough to do the job.
Doug saw that his mother had spotted him and pulled up a third chair for her. Joanna smiled as she approached their table, but her smile froze once she recognized who was sitting with her son.
It’s Melissa Hart! Joanna realized as she neared Doug’s table. She looks as if she’s been through hell and back. Painfully thin. And her eyes — as if she hasn’t slept in years. What’s she doing up here?
“Melissa,” she said as she put her tray on the table. “Whatever brings you here?”
“She came up on the LTV you’re buying,” said Doug.
“Really?” Joanna sat down between them.
“I’m here as the representative of the new corporation’s COO,” Melissa said coolly.
“Omar? You’re working for him?”
“For Mr. Rashid, yes.”
Doug sensed their mutual hostility. It was as obvious as the snarling of a pair of lionesses arguing over a bleeding chunk of fresh meat.
“I didn’t know you were still with the corporation,” Joanna said.
“I dropped out,” Melissa replied, “but I’m back now.”
“And in such a key position, too.”
Melissa said, “Mr. Rashid seems pleased with my work.”
“I’m sure,” Joanna murmured-
Doug broke in, “Just what are you doing here, Melissa? Why’ve you come to Moonbase?”
Before she could think of a reply, Joanna said, “Rashid is pushing the idea of developing nuclear fusion power.”
“Using helium-three?” Doug asked.
“You know about it,” said Melissa, impressed.
“I’ve looked into it. Power conversion is the key to its economic success.”
Turning to Joanna, Melissa lied, “I was hoping to get your support for the fusion development.” This isn’t the time or place to confront her, she told herself. I want to see Greg. He’s the one I’ve come for.
“I suppose we could program nanomachines to glean helium-three out of the regolith,” said Joanna.
“You don’t really need nanomachines to do that,” Melissa said.
“We’re fully committed to nanotechnology here,” Joanna replied icily.
“But the U.N. treaty—”
“Won’t be signed by Kiribati. You know that.”
“Still,” Melissa said, “the fusion program shouldn’t be dependent on nanotechnology.”
Doug said, “We want to show the world that nanomachines aren’t harmful, despite all the hysteria down there.”
Melissa kept herself from replying.
“After all,” Doug went on, “nanomachines can do a lot more than scour the regolith for raw materials. The medical applications of nanotech are the greatest thing they’ve got going for them.”
“Are they?” Melissa countered. “Nanomachines killed your father, didn’t they?”
Doug felt as if she had slapped his face. He saw that his mother had gone white, too.
“That was twenty years ago,” Joanna said stiffly. “Nothing like that has happened again.”
“Are you sure?”
“Positive.”
“Nanomachines saved my life,” Doug said, recovering somewhat ’If it weren’t for nanotech I’d have died of radiation poisoning.”
“And now you can live forever, is that it?”
“Really,” Joanna started.
But Doug silenced her with a gesture. “I don’t know how long I’ll be able to live. But wouldn’t you want to extend your lifespan, if you had the chance?’”
“That’s just it, isn’t it?” Melissa retorted. “Of all the billions of human beings on Earth, how many of them will get the chance to live forever?”
“Answer the question,” Doug insisted. “If you, yourself, had the chance to extend your lifespan indefinitely, would you take it?”
“No,” Melissa said honestly. “I don’t want to extend this misery one minute longer than I have to. Life is pain, don’t you understand that? The sooner we’re out of it, the better off we are.”
DIRECTOR’S OFFICE
“Melissa? Here?” Greg stiffened at the news. “What does she want?”
Joanna was too nervous to sit down. “She wants to see you.”
“But why?”
“Who knows? She says she’s here to ask our support for Rashid’s fusion program.”
“You don’t think that’s the truth?”
Joanna glared at her son. “Do you?”
Greg leaned back in his desk chair and stared at the ceiling. The bare rock seemed lower than usual, heavier, inching down to crush him.
“You’re going to have to see her,” Joanna said.
“Yes,” he said, feeling the desperation creeping into his bones. “Yes, I suppose I will.”
“Would you like me to be with you when you do?”
What to answer? Greg wondered. I can’t tell my mother that I’m afraid to see Melissa by myself. But I am! I don’t want to see her, I don’t want to be anywhere near her. She’s bringing me nothing but pain, I know it, I can feel it.
“Well?” Joanna insisted.
“Yes,” Greg blurted. “I think it would be better if you were present when I talked with her.”
“Good. I do too.”
Doug didn’t forget about Melissa, but he relegated her presence at Moonbase to a corner of his mind. He had more important things to do.
He brought Bianca and Lev Brudnoy to his room and imaged on his Windowall the LTV sitting on its pad.
“She’s a beauty,” Doug said, beaming at the picture on the screen. “Only been used for seventy-two flights; practically new.”
Brudnoy scratched at his beard. “I’ve always wondered why Americans tend to personalize their machinery. It looks like any other LTV, to me.”
Bianca was more practical. “Okay, how long are we going to let it sit out there?”
“I’ve requisitioned a dome for it,” said Doug. “The machine shop’s putting it together now.”
“So we put up the dome over the landing pad?”
“No, that’d interfere with the rocket port operation too much. We put up the dome a half-mile away from the pad and tow the LTV to it.”
“We’re going to work on the ship in spacesuits?” Brudnoy asked.
“No, the dome will be pressurized.”
“But we’ll need suits to get to and from, won’t we?” asked Bianca.
Doug admitted it with a shrug. “Can’t be helped. There’s no space inside the base to work on it”
“The main garage? Is the ceiling high enough?”
“I checked. Ceiling’s okay, we can just about squeeze her in, but there’s not enough room for the LTV when all the tractors are inside.”
“But at least half of them are left outside, usually,” said Brudnoy.
Shaking his head, Doug told them, “I know. I asked Greg about it, but he just scrolled up the regulations on his screen. The main garage’s
got to be able to house all the tractors in an emergency.”
“What kind of emergency?” Brudnoy asked.
“Solar flare,” Bianca and Doug answered in unison.
“So your technicians will have to spend an hour getting into spacesuits and then walk or ride half a mile past the rocket port to work on our LTV,” said Brudnoy.
— ’They can work in their shirtsleeves once they’re inside the dome, “Doug pointed out.
Brudnoy sighed. “And then spend another hour getting back into their suits to go home again.”
Doug spread his hands helplessly. “What else can we do, Lev? You know how much work it takes to carve out extra space underground. We can’t blast out the space we need with plasma torches; it’d take too long and too much effort. The dome’s our best bet.”
“I presume you’ve run all the numbers through your computer,” Brudnoy said drily.
“Frontwards and backwards,” said Doug. “I’ve gone through every option I could think of. The dome’s our best choice.”
“I just hate all that extra work of getting into the suits,” the Russian muttered.
“It’s the prebreathing that takes most of the time,” Bianca said. “If the suits ran at the same pressure that the base does we could zip into them in half the time.”
“Well, they don’t,” said Doug, “and it takes time to breathe the excess nitrogen out of your system.”
Brudnoy’s pouchy eyes looked even sadder than usual.
With a grin, Doug added, “When I’m director of Moonbase I’ll start our people working on suits that run at normal base pressure, so you’ll be able to hop into them in a couple of minutes.”
Bianca shook her head. “You’d think after all these years somebody would’ve already done that.”
“Not much need for it,” said Doug. “What kind of an emergency could come up so suddenly that you need to jump into a suit in a few minutes?”
Brudnoy nodded. “True enough. I’ve been here more than twenty years and I’ve never seen such an emergency.”
Doug nodded.
“On the other hand,” the Russian went on, “it’s going to slow down our work tremendously. Isn’t there some way we can put up a pressurized access tube to the dome?”
“A mile-long tube?” Bianca asked.
“Wait!” said Doug. “Why don’t we pressurize one of the tractors? Couldn’t we put the crew module from the LTV itself onto a tractor? That way we can take three or four people at a time out to the dome in their shirtsleeves.” ’Yeah!” Bianca cheered. “That could work.” Brudnoy was more reserved. “Check it out on your computer, my friend. Don’t celebrate until the engineering program tells us it can be done.”
“It’s good to see you again, Greg,” said Melissa.
“It’s been a long time,” he said, staring at her from behind his desk. She looks awful, Greg thought. Her face is still beautiful, but it’s like a death mask, a skull, her skin is stretched so tight over the bones it’s a wonder she can open her mouth. And she’s so thin! As if she’s been a prisoner of war all these years.
She wore a shapeless gray pants suit, its jacket falling halfway to her knees. When she sat in front of Greg’s desk and crossed her long legs, he saw that the trousers ended in stirrups that looped under her weighted boots.
It was Melissa’s eyes that frightened Greg. He saw fury in them, hot red rage. He remembered the last time he had been with Melissa, when he had told her they were through. Her eyes were red then, too, but with tears and pleading. I turned my back on her and she’s never forgiven me for it, Greg realized. All these years she’s been hating me.
He turned to his mother, sitting beside Melissa. Joanna was outwardly cool and controlled, but Greg knew that she was just as tense as he was. He could see it in the way Joanna was nervously fingering the ends of the flowered silk scarf she was wearing.
Greg had to swallow before he could bring his voice back. “I understand that you’re working for Rashid now, with the new corporation.”
Melissa’s chin dipped a bare centimeter. “That’s right”
Greg opened his mouth again but no words came out He didn’t know what to say. He looked up at the ceiling, menacingly low.
Joanna prompted, “Rashid’s pushing the fusion program, isn’t he?”
“I’m not here to talk to you-two about Rashid or his programs or anything like that.’Melissa said, her eyes flaring.
“Then what?” asked Joanna.
She focused those laser-beam eyes on Greg. This is the man who abandoned me, she thought, staring at him. The man I begged to stay with me. The man I thought I loved. The man whose child I was going to have. A wave of self-loathing swept over her, made her shudder visibly. I pleaded with him! I got down on my knees and begged him! And he turned his back on me. He walked away, the cold-hearted sonofabitch. He knew I was pregnant with his baby and he just walked away from both of us.
“Murder,” she whispered.
I murdered my own baby. You made me do it, the two of you. You threw me out like so much garbage. I aborted the baby. I committed murder.
“What are you talking about?” Joanna demanded.
Greg knew.
Melissa pointed a skeletal finger at him. “You murdered Paul Stavenger. You used nanomachines to kill him.”
“That’s nonsense!” Joanna snapped.
“Is it?”
Greg couldn’t answer. He couldn’t speak. He gripped the armrests of his swivel chair and stared in growing horror at Melissa. It’s all coming back. It’s all rising up again, all around me, walling me in, smothering me.
“I have Jack Killifer’s sworn statement,” Melissa was saying, her voice cold and hard as ice. “He gave you a sample of nanomachines that attacked long-chain carbon molecules. Gobblers, he called them.”
Joanna blustered, “That doesn’t mean—”
“You put them in with the nanomachines that Paul was using up here on the Moon, didn’t you, Greg? They killed Paul and two other men.”
“My husband died in an accident,” Joanna insisted.
“He was murdered. By your son. And I can prove it.”
“That…’ Greg choked out the words, “… that was, for god’s sake, that was twenty years ago, almost.”
Melissa smiled thinly. “There’s no statute of limitations on murder.”
“You haven’t got a shred of evidence,” Joanna said. “Even if this Killifer person gave Greg a set of nanomachines, what of it? You can’t prove murder in a court of law.”
“Can’t I? Criminal courts have become much tougher over the past few years.”
“We’ll have the best lawyers in the world.”
“Fine. Hire all the lawyers you want. A big, scandalous trial will be perfect. The public will love to watch the two of you, week after week. It’ll be the entertainment highlight of the year.”
Two of us?” Joanna asked.
“You aided and abetted your son, Mrs. Stavenger. Didn’t you? Accessory after the fact.”
“Now wait…’ Greg started.
Melissa silenced him with a glance. “Mrs. Stavenger, it was you who covered up the evidence of the murders. It was you who sent Jack Killifer to Moonbase, so he wouldn’t be available to tell anyone what he’d done until nearly twenty years afterward.”
“You can’t be serious,” Joanna said.
“I’ve never been more serious in my life,” Melissa replied. “The murderer son and his accomplice mother. Think how that’s going to look on video back home.”
Greg stared at her. The bitch is trying to ruin my life. She’s trying to ruin both our lives. He thought how easy it would be to get up from this chair, walk around the desk, and snap her neck like a brittle stick.
Then he gasped with the sudden realization that Doug had ordered Killifer out of Moonbase. And I let him do it! Greg raged at himself. Doug knew exactly what he was doing. He knew Killifer would testify against me once he got back to Earth! He’s been against me fr
om the very beginning. Doug, Melissa — all of them!
Joanna took a deep breath, then asked Melissa, “What do you want?”
“Justice,” said Melissa.
“And what do you think would be just, in this case?”
Melissa turned away from Joanna’s cool gray-green eyes to look squarely at Greg once again. “Shut down Moonbase,” she said flatly. “Put an end to all the nanotechnology you’re using here.”
Greg blinked at her. “And what else?”
Melissa shook her head. “First things first. I want an end to this evil of nanotechnology. An end to this place where rich people can escape the problems of Earth.”
With a shaky laugh, Greg asked, “That’s all? Just shut down Moonbase?”
“And any nanotech operations you might have elsewhere,” Melissa said.
“And for that, you’ll forget about this murder business?” He couldn’t believe it.
Melissa smiled again, this time showing teeth. “Oh no, Greg. You misunderstood me. Moonbase has to be shut down. But you’ll still have to stand trial for murder. In Atlanta, I imagine. In the federal court in Atlanta.”
“You little bitch! You want to destroy me!”
“That’s right,” Melissa said calmly. “I’m going to destroy you. And Moonbase with you. And the nanotechnology that you’re protecting.”
For the first time, Joanna looked alarmed. “My son’s life was saved by nanotherapy. He can’t return to Earth.”
“He’ll have to. He’ll have no other choice.”
“But they’ll murder him! One of your fanatics will kill him just the way they killed Carlos Quintana.”
Melissa replied coolly, “Surely, Mrs. Stavenger, you have enough money to protect your son. Even if you go to prison, the family fortune will still be there for him.”
“To live behind walls all his life?” Joanna said, her voice almost pleading. “To live separated from the rest of civilization?”
“What’s he doing here?” Melissa retorted. “A quarter-million miles from civilization.”