by Ben Bova
Chapter 14
Alec forced himself to breathe deeply several times before answering.
"You think he deliberately cleared out this place?"
Kobol's eyes were glaring. "Who else? Barbarians couldn't organize the men and machines you'd need for this. They wouldn't even know what all this was. They're scared as hell of this place."
Gianelli kicked at the wall. "Chrissake! We came all this way for nothing."
"Your father," Kobol made it sound as if he were accusing Alec, "knew we need the fissionables. So he's taken them away. He's trying to kill the whole settlement."
Alec asked levelly, "How long can we go on what's left in the settlement?"
"A year. Maybe eighteen months. What difference does it make?"
"By that time we'll have the fissionables. If I have to tear this planet apart, I'll find them."
Kobol didn't reply. He merely made a derisive, snorting sound.
They trudged slowly back out of the vaults and through the empty processing building, heading for the entrance they had come through. The tired march of defeated men, Alec said to himself. But somehow he did not feel defeated. He was excited, almost happy. Father's forcing me to seek him out.
His first mistake.
They were halfway through the connector tunnel when Alec's earphone crackled: "There's somebody . . . toward us . . ." The radio voice was weak and masked by heavy sizzling interference.
"What?"
" . . . lone person . . . walk ... us here on the truck . . ."
Alec hurried through the tunnel and got out of the metal-walled area in time to hear, "Hey, it's a girl!"
They quickened their pace. Once outside, Alec could see a lone, slim figure heading for the truck, walking slowly but deliberately from the distant woods toward them. By the time he and his men reached the truck, she was almost in hailing distance.
"She's unarmed," Kobol observed.
"And good to look at," said Gianelli.
Small and slim, wearing a stained white blouse and long slacks that fitted the curve of her hips snugly. Longish, serious, big-eyed face. Long blonde hair wisping in the breeze. She shrugged it back away from her face as she came up to the truck.
Alec said, "Looks like she's got a definite reason for coming here."
"Maybe she's lonesome," Gianelli snickered.
"Not for you, big nose," one of the other men said.
"Can't see anyone else around," Kobol said, scanning the woods with binoculars. "But there could be an army out there among those trees."
Like Hannibal's army at Lake Trasimene, Alec thought.
He watched the girl as she calmly approached them. A stubborn face, frowning slightly in the sun. Strong jaw, prominent cheekbones, thin patrician nose. Mouth set in a determined line.
But the eyes were searching, a bit uncertain, perhaps a bit frightened.
He could feel the tension among the men as she walked closer. Ridiculous! A dozen men armed to the teeth, staring nervously at a lone unarmed girl.
The firing bolt of a rifle snicked mechanically.
Scared to death of one girl! Alec almost smiled.
"Gianelli," he said softly, "keep an eye on the buildings. She might be a decoy."
"Watch the flanks, too," Kobol said to no one in particular.
"I'd rather watch her flanks," Gianelli muttered.
The girl raised her right hand, palm open, and stopped some twenty paces from the truck. Alec walked out toward her. He knew without looking over his shoulder that Kobol was right behind him.
"My name is Angela," she said. No smile. Her voice was unemotional, matter-of-fact.
"I'm Alec, and this is . . ."
"Alexander Morgan and Martin Kobol," she said.
"You know my father." Alec wasn't surprised.
"He sent me here. To warn you."
For an instant Alec felt as if the entire world hung suspended in time. He could feel the sun on his shoulders and neck, see the bright sky and the new green woods in the distance, hear the girl's soft, wary voice. But it was all as if he were really somewhere else, far more distant than the Moon, watching the scene remotely.
"We're not frightened by warnings," Kobol said.
"Wait," Alec snapped. To the girl, "Warn us about what?"
She pushed a strand of hair from her face.
"There's a raider band heading for the airport. They saw your ships land . . ."
"Why would they head for us? Aren't they frightened . . .?"
A smile toyed at Angela's lips. "Scared of a few dozen men? You know how many men the raiders can put together?"
"We have enough firepower . . ."
"I know," she interrupted. "They know, too. It's your weapons they're after."
Kobol stepped up to her. "You're lying. We would have detected a large group of men moving through this territory. We have sensors . . ."
"No shit?" She turned back to Alec. "Look, your father told me all about the platform you've got up in the sky. They can't see the raiders—not down under the trees. There's at least a couple hundred of them linking up together a few klicks from the airport. We're trying to keep them off balance . . ."
"It's a trick," Kobol insisted.
She scowled at him.
"Where is my father?" Alec asked her.
Angela waved a hand. "Up north . . . seven, eight hundred klicks from here."
"And the fissionables?"
"The what?"
So he hasn't told her everything. "The machines and things that were in these buildings. My father has them up north with him?"
She shrugged. "I don't know. These buildings have been empty for years."
I'll bet. "Come on," Alec said to Kobol, "we've got to get back to the airport. If there really are several hundred ..."
"There can't be," Kobol said.
"I don't like being called a liar," Angela snapped. "Especially by a fughead who doesn't know a tree from a turd."
Alec bit his lip to keep from laughing. Kobol staggered a step backward; a lanky, helmeted, booted, armed man retreating from this tiny girl.
"Come on," Alec said, forcing his voice to remain serious. "We can't afford to ignore her warning. And there's nothing left here for us. Let's move out." He reached for Angela's wrist. "You can come with us."
She pulled back slightly. "I can make it on my own."
Holding onto her wrist, Alec said, "We've got the truck here. It's faster than walking."
She stopped arguing.
Once they piled aboard the truck and got rolling, Alec radioed Jameson. "Everything's peaceful here," his calm voice replied. No sign of movement except for a few birds."
"Check with the satellite," Alec ordered. "Have them make the most intensive scan of this area that they can."
"They're halfway on the other side of the globe now," Jameson answered. "Won't be back over here for another four hours."
"Damn," Alec muttered. "Well, keep a sharp watch. Protect those ships."
"You betcha," Jameson said.
Ferret quivered with a mixture of excitement and fear as they crouched in the brush, watching the strange ships sitting on the airfield runway and the handful of men guarding them.
"Now remember," Billy-Joe whispered, fingering the scar across his chin the way he always did just before a fight started, "once we knock off all them guys, we got to grab their weapons fast. There's a dozen other gangs spread around this-here airport and they're all lickin' their chops over them fancy guns."
Ferret nodded and bared his teeth in what passed for a smile. But inwardly he was sick with fear. It was one thing to overrun the men standing around those weird flying machines. But the real battle would be among the rival gangs once the strangers had been wiped out.
Grab a gun as quick as you can, he told himself, and then hide in the woods. Stay hidden until Billy-Joe gives the word to get back to camp.
The first sounds of battle came to Alec's ears while they were still several kilometers from
the airfield.
"What's that?"
It was an odd, muffled sound coming from beyond the ridge ahead of them. Soft thumps, almost like an airlock hatch slamming in a distant corridor.
Alec was sitting up on the laser mount, his legs dangling over the edge of the turntable platform.
Angela sat beside him.
She tensed at the sound. "Mortars. Will must've made contact . . ."
Alec yelled down at the driver, "Top speed! Get this truck back to the ships!"
The electric motors whined and strained, but the overloaded vehicle did not seem to move any faster as it labored up the grade to the crest of the ridge.
Angela said over the rushing wind and another trio of distant explosions, "Will Russo . . . he's one of your father's friends. He's got a small group of us here, trying to tie up the raiders long enough to give you a chance to take off."
"William Russo," Kobol snapped. He'd been squatting cross-legged behind them. "So he didn't die after all; he turned traitor along with Doug."
Alec twisted around and squinted up into the noon sun to see Kobol. "We ought to put out flankers," he said. "These woods could be swarming with barbarians."
"No, not on this side of the airfield," Angela said.
It was a tense ride. The truck was agonizingly slow, and it seemed to take forever to get through the spots where the tangled trees and undergrowth crowded up to the very edge of the highway.
The men kept their weapons in their grips, straining their eyes on the foliage. Alec saw that they were sweating despite the cool shadows of the trees and the wind blowing against them.
He kept watching Angela. She seemed concerned, but not frightened. She's not expecting trouble here, he reasoned, so neither should we.
But his palms still felt cold and slippery.
Kobol stayed in constant touch with the ships by radio. Alec had taken his helmet off and hung it by its chin strap on the platform railing.
"Do you know my father well?" he asked Angela.
She nodded. "He's my father, too."
Alec felt as if she had kicked him in the stomach.
There was no air left in his lungs. He could not speak.
"Stepfather," she added, oblivious to his plight.
"He and my mother, before she died ..." Her voice trailed off and she looked away, into the distance.
With a struggle, Alec sucked air into his lungs.
He realized that his teeth were clenched together so hard the pain shot to the top of his head.
Angela turned back to face him. "He loved my mother very much," she said. "It wasn't just a man taking a woman. They were like man and wife. And he's taken good care of me ever since I was a little girl."
Alec said nothing. The knot inside him tightened with every heartbeat.
"You really live on the Moon?" she asked.
"Yes." His voice sounded like a dying croak, even to himself.
"Did I say something wrong?"
"No. Nothing." He shook his head. "I . . . it's just that ... I didn't expect to meet a stepsister. My mother will be very interested."
"Oh. Yeah, I guess so. I see."
"Do you?"
"Yes, I do." Her chin went up a notch.
Alec shook his head. "I think not."
"There's the airfield," Gianelli's voice rang out.
"Hot damn, those ships look beautiful!"
Alec scrambled to his feet just as an explosion erupted in the trees on the far side of the airfield, billowing black, flame-streaked smoke into the sky. The thundering roar reached his ears a splitsecond later. It felt almost like a physical blow.
"They're getting closer," Angela said. For the first time her voice sounded tinged with fear.
"Will won't be able to hold them back much longer."
The truck was plummeting down the highway now, descending from the ridge crest and racing full tilt for the ships. They were still parked together, gleaming silvery in the glaring sunlight, looking strangely out of place in this land of soft greens and gray-brown concrete.
The other laser trucks were gathered in a semicircle on the far side of the shuttles. But as far as Alec could see, no weapons were being fired.
Alec turned to follow a trooper's outstretched arm and saw three men who had just emerged from the woods off to the right side of the ships.
Even without binoculars he could make out the angular shapes of guns slung over their shoulders.
They stopped and waved their arms over their heads.
"Wait!" Angela yelled as the men on the truck swung their weapons toward the trio. "That's Will! Don't shoot!"
Before anyone could stop her she jumped off the truck and ran toward the three men.
"Hold your fire," Alec snapped. He pushed up to the driver's cab and rapped on its roof. "Get over there, where those men are." Turning to the troopers, he commanded, "All of you except Kobol, off the truck and get to the ships. Now!"
Their faces showed they didn't like what was going on, especially trotting a kilometer or two in the open, with those dark woods nearby. But they obeyed Alec's order.
The truck pulled up alongside Angela. She stopped running and the three men walked easily toward her. They wore nondescript, ragtag clothes: cut-off shorts, ancient gray shirts, one wore a vest, only one had boots. But their weapons were clean and each of them was laden with bulging cases of ammunition slung on straps across their shoulders.
Alec clambered down from the truck to meet them. Kobol stayed up on the laser mount, with the heavy copper mirror of the weapon pointing its shining face at Alec's back. He could fry us all in half a second, Alec knew.
Angela was smiling like a child. She reached for Alec's arm, as if to drag him an extra step or two toward the advancing men.
One of them had already stepped ahead of the other two. Angela said, "Alec, this is Will Russo . . . Will, Alec Morgan."
"Oh-ho! So you're Doug's boy!"
There had never been a dog or a puppy in the lunar settlement. Alec had seen tapes of children's shows, though, years before. Suddenly the image of a huge, friendly St. Bernard puppy flashed into his mind: he remembered how it had overpowered everyone else in the story with well-meaning enthusiasm that knocked down grown men and destroyed furniture. Will Russo was a big, shambling, grinning, happy St. Bernard pup. Like many truly big men, he was slightly stooped at the shoulders, from leaning over to deal with men smaller than himself. His face was round, with slightly protruding eyes, ruddy cheeks, reddish curly hair that was matted down with perspiration, an easy soft chuckling grin.
"It's a pleasure to meet you," he said. His voice was the velvet tenor of a balladeer. But he grabbed Alec's hand in a massive paw and pumped it heartily. "Sorry we have to be so brief, but there's a lot more of them than there are of us. We can hold them off for you for maybe another half-hour . . ."
Another explosion punctuated his words.
"The woods are swarming with them. Those weapons of yours are really a prize they want."
"Casualties?" Angela asked.
Russo frowned. "Some. It's been mostly hit and run until just now. Just starting to get serious."
Another explosion. Closer. Alec's ears rang.
"Wait a minute," Alec said to Russo. "I've got to know a lot more about what's going on here ..."
"Good Lord, this is no time for explanations. You've only got ..."
Alec planted his fists on his hips. "I'm not budging until I find out ..."
A high, sighing noise like the rushing of air through a punctured bulkhead.
"Incoming!" one of the men yelled.
Russo dove into Alec, knocking him down.
Before Alec could say or do anything a series of explosions blasted the universe into flame and unbearable noise and shock. The ground heaved beneath him. Clods of earth pattered down. Alec could taste acrid smoke.
He was on his belly, face down in the damp grass. Head buzzing, he slowly looked up. Angela was on her knees, a trickle of blood wend
ing a thin red line down her arm. Russo was squatting on his heels alongside her.
"Looks like you're right," he said, without the slightest sign of fear or anger. "You're not leaving."
He pointed, and Alec saw that one of the shuttles was in flames.
Chapter 15
It had turned into a bloody mess. Ferret scrambled up the steep side of the ridge, trying to get away from the screams of the dying.
Billy-Joe was down there, along with most of the rest of the band, blown into bleeding twisted blobs of blackened flesh by the explosions. Ferret himself was almost untouched; just a few scratches here and there, and a long painful gash down his left leg.
Something had gone very wrong. Instead of the usual rush, where all the gangs attacked the strangers, fighting had broken out among the gangs themselves. First. Right at the beginning. It had never happened that way before. He didn't understand it.
Now Billy-Joe and the others were all dead.
Somebody had blown them into little pieces. The noise of the explosions still rang in Ferret's ears.
But he was still alive. That was the important thing. Still alive. Bleeding, but still alive. He could stand the pain. That didn't matter. The thing he had to do was to get away. Hide as far away from the fighting as he could. If one of the other gangs found him alone, they'd spend the whole night making him die. Slow. Not like Billy-Joe. Not like the others.
Choking, his eyes blurred with tears, the ringing blast of the explosions still echoing inside his head, his bleeding leg going numb, Ferret clawed at the foliage along the steep slope of the ridge, dragging himself away from the fighting, anyplace, anyplace except where the others could find him alone and helpless.
He reached the top of the ridge, gasping and too weak to move further. He rolled over onto his back, panting and blinking into the bright blue sky.
"Well lookey what we got here," a voice said from somewhere behind him.
"Looks like dead meat t' me," another voice said.
"Not yet. But he will be. He will be."
Ferret closed his eyes and waited for the agony to begin.
