by Ben Bova
“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 trick, 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.
On the other hand, nanomachines could kill. Wasn’t that why the U.N. banned them? Wasn’t that why they had been sent here to Moonbase in the first place, to stop these renegades from developing deadly nanomachines? How could he order his troopers into such danger?
Munasinghe had been in firefights. He had been shelled by rocket artillery and bombed by smart missiles. He was not a coward. But nanomachines! The thought made him shudder. Invisible, insidious. If they got inside his suit and started eating his flesh …
“What are your orders, sir?” the Norwegian lieutenant asked, his voice low and earnest. “We can’t stand out here forever,” he added, needlessly.
Suppressing a reflex to snap at his arrogant criticism, Munasinghe made up his mind. After all, he had sent men into battle before. Soldiers took risks, deadly risks. It was part of the profession.
“Take your squad through the open area to those airlock hatches on the far wall. Get those hatches open as quickly as you can. Don’t waste time; use the grenades.”
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.” A strange voice sounded in Munasinghe’s earphones. From the way the lieutenant’s spacesuited form twitched, he must have heard it too.
“Who said that?” Munasinghe demanded.
“This is Douglas Stavenger, of Moonbase. The floor of our garage is covered with nanomachines that will devour the materials of your spacesuits. The airlock hatches are coated with them, too.”
“You are bluffing,” Munasinghe said.
“No, I’m not. We use the nanobugs routinely to clean up grease and oil stains that accumulate on the garage floor. You happened to pick a time when our semiannual cleanup is just starting.”
“I don’t believe you!” Munasinghe snapped.
“Don’t send your troops to their deaths. The nanomachines will destroy them before you can get our airlock hatches open.”
Hot boiling anger replaced Munasinghe’s indecision. Hatred welled up inside him. This smug upstart is trying to bluff me into ruining my career!
“Surrender your base!” he rage
d. “Now! You have fifteen seconds to surrender!”
More than ten seconds passed before the voice in his earphones said, “You’re sending your troops to their deaths needlessly. We have no quarrel with you. Return to Earth and leave us in peace.”
Practically quivering with fury, Munasinghe jabbed the Norwegian lieutenant’s shoulder with a gloved finger.
“Get your squad moving! If you go fast enough the nanomachines won’t have a chance to harm you.”
“That’s not true,” Doug said.
“Go!” Munasinghe screamed. “That’s an order!”
The Norwegian scuttled away, gathered his squad, and started them into the garage. The warning sign was almost completely gone, Munasinghe saw; nothing left but a few streaks of red.
“You’re making a serious mistake,” Doug said in the captain’s earphones.
“No,” Munasinghe snapped. “You are. I will destroy Moonbase and everyone in it before I leave here.”
TOUCHDOWN PLUS 59 MINUTES
Edith was getting it all on her digital recorder and minicams. In addition to the camera fastened to the top of her helmet, which saw whatever she looked at, she held another in her gloved hands, almost forgotten in the excitement of the moment.
She watched, wide-eyed, as the squad of troopers thumped in their heavy boots and spacesuits across the wide expanse of the empty garage.
It would have been funny if it weren’t so scary. The Moonbase guy who spoke to them was Douglas Stavenger, the one who carried swarms of nanomachines inside his body. Was he telling the truth? Were the bugs on the garage floor capable of ruining spacesuits? Killing people?
She remembered that Stavenger’s father had died on the Moon a quarter-century ago, killed by runaway nanobugs.
This could get hairy, she thought.
Two troopers had outraced the others and reached one of the dulled metal hatches of the airlocks that led into the base proper. They rested their rifles against the wall and started to unpack the grenades they carried on their equipment vests.
“Look at your boots,” Doug Stavenger’s voice said, with just a touch of urgency in it. “Your boots are being digested by nanomachines.”
One of the troopers awkwardly lifted one foot and tried to bend over far enough in his spacesuit to see the sole. His buddy looked down, and dropped the set of grenades she’d been handling.
Edith heard a panicky jabbering in a language she didn’t understand.
“Speak English!” Munasinghe’s voice demanded.
“The boots … they’re coming apart!”
“My glove!”
The other troopers in the garage stopped in their tracks. For an idiotic moment, each of them tried to inspect his or her boots.
“The nanomachines!”
“They’ll kill us all!”
Stavenger’s voice came through again, strong and calm. “Get out of the garage. Ultraviolet light deactivates the nanobugs. Get out in the sunlight where the solar UV can save your lives.”
Munasinghe screamed, “No! No!”
“If you don’t get out now,” Stavenger’s voice urged, “the nanobugs will eat through your boots and start digesting your flesh. Once that begins there’s no way to stop them.”
“I order you to blow those hatches!” Munasinghe screeched.
Military discipline is often a fragile thing. For several seconds the troopers stood immobile, torn between the ingrained reflexes of their training and the hard-wired drive for self-protection. One trooper, in the middle of the garage, threw down his rifle and ran out into the sunshine.
That was all it took.
The entire squad bolted like green soldiers facing enemy fire for the first time. The troopers stomped and stumbled back across the garage floor, streamed past their raging captain, and flung themselves down on the dusty regolith, raising their legs high so the sunlight could get to the soles of their boots.
“I’ll have you court-martialled for this!” Munasinghe raged. “Cowardice in the face of the enemy! You’ll be shot! Each and every one of you!”
“Why don’t you go in?” Stavenger’s voice asked calmly.
Edith turned to face the captain squarely, so that her helmet-mounted camera would capture this moment in its entirety. Munasinghe was shaking, visibly shaking even with the cumbersome spacesuit enveloping him. Whether he quaked with fear or fury, Edith could not tell.
“I’ll show you!” Munasinghe screeched, fumbling on his equipment vest for one of his grenades. “I’ll show you all!”
The Norwegian lieutenant, last to leave the garage, reached a hand toward him. “Captain, wait—”
Edith watched, wide-eyed, as the lieutenant tried to calm Munasinghe. But the captain struggled free of the taller man’s grasp and ran a staggering few steps to the entrance of the garage, the grenade in his gloved hand.
“I’ll destroy you all!” Munasinghe screamed, tugging at the grenade’s firing pin.
“Don’t!” the lieutenant was saying. “You can’t reach the hatches from here. It’s too far—”
But Munasinghe stumbled on, into the garage, and tried to throw the grenade. Encumbered by his spacesuit and the clumsy gloves, his throw went only a few yards. The grenade bumped on the garage floor, rolled once, then exploded.
The lieutenant had thrown himself down on the ground, a curiously slow, dreamlike fall. Edith involuntarily ducked behind the rock face at the side of the airlock hatch. She saw a flash but heard nothing.
She looked out into the garage again. Munasinghe was still standing, turning slowly to face her. The lieutenant was clambering to his feet.
Edith saw that the front of Munasinghe’s spacesuit was shredded. The man took a faltering step, then another, and pitched face-forward, slowly, slowly falling to the smooth rock floor of the garage.
The lieutenant did not hesitate for an instant. He raced into the garage, grabbed his captain’s inert form under the shoulders, and dragged him outside into the sunlight.
TOUCHDOWN PLUS 1 HOUR 11 MINUTES
Doug stared at the display screen. “He killed himself,” he whispered.
No one in the control center moved or said a word.
“He went crazy and killed himself,” Doug said, his voice still hollow with shock.
“He was trying to blow one of the hatches,” Joanna said.
“And fragged himself instead,” Anson added.
Doug shook his head. “I don’t know if he meant to, but he committed suicide.”
“That tall guy did a gutsy thing,” Gordette said, “dragging him out of the garage like that.”
“But I never meant for anybody to get killed,” Doug said.
“It’s not your fault,” said Joanna firmly. “The idiot went berserk.”
“He was trying to kill us,” Brudnoy pointed out.
“But I never meant for anybody to get killed,” Doug repeated.
* * *
The Norwegian lieutenant assumed command of the mission and sent a radio report Earthside.
“What happens now?” Edith asked him.
“We wait for orders from Peacekeeper headquarters,” said the Norwegian, his voice low but even.
“I didn’t get your name,” Edith said.
His spacesuited shoulders moved slightly in what might have been an attempt at a shrug. “What difference does that make?”
Edith hefted her minicam. “I’ll have to know.”
“Hansen,” he said bleakly. “Lieutenant Frederik Hansen, from Kristiansand.”
“Thank you,” she said.
Lieutenant Hansen looked down at the body of Captain Munasinghe, lying stiffly in his torn spacesuit on the dusty lunar ground. “What a waste,” he muttered. “What a waste.”
TOUCHDOWN PLUS 1 HOUR 24 MINUTES
“Mexican standoff,” Jinny Anson said. “They’re not coming in, but they’re not going away, either.”
“We can sit tight inside the base longer than they can stay out on the crater floor,” said
Brudnoy, the slightest hint of optimism in his low voice.
“This won’t do us any good,” Joanna said. “We’ve got to get them to leave, go back to Earth.”
Still sitting on the wheeled chair, Doug turned it around to face them.
“They’re waiting for instructions from Earthside,” he said. “This might take some time.”
“How much oxygen can they be carrying with them?” Anson wondered.
Doug said, “They’ve suffered a casualty. That changes everything. We’ve got to give them an honorable way out, something that they can take back Earthside with them to show that their mission hasn’t been a complete failure.”
“Why bother?” Joanna scoffed.
“Because otherwise, even if this troop leaves, Faure will just send another force, bigger and better prepared. Or maybe he’ll drop a few missiles on the solar farm, just to get our attention.”
“They’ll be out for blood next time.” Gordette agreed.
“Like they weren’t this time?” Anson shot back.
“What do you suggest, Doug?” Kris Cardenas asked.
Doug took a deep breath. He had been thinking about this for more than four days now. The first part of his plan had been accomplished: the Peacekeeper troops had been kept out of Moonbase. But it had cost the life of their captain. That raised the risks for all of them.
“When I read about the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, I saw that the American president was willing to make some concessions, as long as he achieved his major objective, getting the Soviet missiles out of Cuba.”
“Ancient history!” Anson complained. “What’s that got to do with anything?”
Doug looked up at her and refrained from quoting Santayana. He saw that Brudnoy understood.
“We should be willing to give up something that we can do without, if the Peacekeepers agree to leave,” Doug said.
“But what do we have that we can give up?” Cardenas asked. “We can’t give up the nanomachines, and that’s what Faure’s after, isn’t it?”
“No,” said Doug. “From what he told you, Mom, he wants Moonbase to continue using nanomachines—under Yamagata’s control.”