by Ben Bova
“What about people coming up to the house in cars?”
“You don’t have to worry about that. The two inside guys take care of that. And the butler.”
One of the inside ‘guys’ was a terrific-looking redhead, Killifer had already discovered. Hard as nails, though.
“What’s she need all this security for?” he asked, probing for weak spots in the security system. “You don’t need six people and machine pistols for burglars.”
The chief shrugged carelessly. “I don’t ask and they don’t bother to let me in on their secrets. It’s a cushy job, so don’t knock it.”
Killifer shrugged back at him. “Yeah, okay, but I’d kinda like to know what I’m supposed to be looking out for.”
Eying the display screens, the chief muttered, “Religious fanatics.”
“What?”
“She’s worried about fanatics from the New Morality trying to kill her.”
“No shit?”
The chief’s tic of displeasure told Killifer that he was probably a Believer himself.
“If some religious nutcase wanted to kill her, why not just drive a car bomb into the house?”
“Not their style,” said the chief. “The fanatics do their killing face-to-face, and they don’t believe in taking out innocent people when they hit somebody. Besides, she’s in and out so much—travels all the time, really—you can’t be sure she’s home unless you actually see her.”
“Yeah,” said Killifer. “I guess that’s right.”
“Listen,” the chief said, suddenly intense, leaning across his desk to stare directly into Killifer’s eyes. “Don’t judge the New Morality movement by the actions of a few crazies. Most of those assassins are foreigners, not Americans. Fanatics.”
Killifer nodded, knowing that the chief was certainly a Believer. Wonder what he’d say if I told him I worked for the Urban Corps. And that General O’Conner his own God-almighty self has sanctioned the assassination of Joanna Brudnoy.
It had been ridiculously easy to get hired onto the Masterson security team that guarded Joanna’s house. New Morality adherents had faked his employment record in the corporation’s computer files and provided a lucrative transfer to one of the women employed in the house guard detail. Killifer had miraculously popped out of the personnel files and been taken on within two days.
The weakest link in the security system is the system itself, Killifer knew. Manipulate the system and make it work for you.
The next step is to get into the house, on the night detail, when the butler’s asleep and Joanna’s in her bedroom where there are no cameras watching.
MOONBASE
“Well, how much of the stuff can you make?” Vince Falcone asked, his patience obviously fraying.
“How much time do I have?” asked the head of the chemistry lab.
“I don’t know.”
“Then I don’t know, either.”
“Days,” said Doug, stepping between them. “Maybe only two days, maybe a few more.”
“Two days?” the chemist gasped. She pushed back a strand of dark blonde hair from her forehead. “Only two days?”
Doug wondered where she’d been all this time. “We’re expecting the Peacekeepers’ attack before this week is out,” he said.
She looked past Doug to Falcone. “How much do you need?”
“Four tons.”
She blinked, swallowed. Then, straightening her back, she said, “We’ll have to get the processing plant devoted completely to the job.”
Falcone’s frowning, swarthy face relaxed slightly. “Maybe three tons’ll do.”
The chemist shook her head. “Still, that’s impossible to produce in two days. We don’t have any time to lose.”
“Can you come close?” Doug asked.
She was a petite wisp of a woman, her orange coveralls stained and faded from hard use. “We generate the foamgel as part of the process for making the insulation tiles we use for flooring and wall covering and all.”
The insulating tiles were a small but consistent export to the space stations in Earth orbit, Doug knew. Moonbase also exported an even smaller but growing trickle of them to building contracting firms on Earth.
“We’ll have to shut down the back end of the production line,” the chemist was musing, “and rev up the foamgel production end.”
She looked up at Falcone again. To Doug they seemed like a dark lumpy storm cloud and a light graceful swirl of cirrus.
“I can put all the raw stock we have on hand into producing foamgel, but I’ll need more raw materials. Every tractor you can get scooping regolith.”
“You got it!” Falcone promised.
Doug left them huddled together over her phone console and hurried down the corridor to Zimmerman’s nanolab. One of the base’s best tractor teleoperators, Nick O’Malley, had been assigned to work with the professor. But if we need every tractor scooping outside, I’ll have to shift Nick back to his regular job.
He could hear their arguing voices from fifty meters down the corridor. Zimmerman’s heavy rumbling and O’Malley’s higher-pitched yells. Nick’s not taking any guff from the professor, Doug thought as he pushed through the door marked NANOTECHNOLOGY LABORATORY—PROF. ZIMMERMAN—AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY.
“So you are the expert here and not me?” Zimmerman was bellowing angrily.
“I know more about it than you do, damned right I do!” shouted O’Malley, red-faced.
“Stop it!” Doug commanded. “Shut up, both of you!”
Zimmerman whirled on Doug, his loose jacket and vest flapping like sails with the wind taken out of them.
“An assistant you gave me? A führer you gave me! A dictator!”
“What’s the problem?” Doug asked as calmly as he could.
“He thinks he is the professor and I am his student!” Zimmerman complained loudly.
“I only said—”
“You are not to say!” Zimmerman roared. “You are to do. You are my assistant, not my colleague!”
“Professor, please!” Doug insisted. “What is the problem?”
Gesturing with both hands, Zimmerman grumbled, “He thinks to tell me what I should do. He thinks he is the expert here.”
“All right, all right,” Doug said, trying to be soothing. He turned toward O’Malley. “Nick?”
“I just said that if he needs nanobugs to act like dust, why doesn’t he just use the flaming dust itself?”
“You see!” Zimmerman snapped.
“Wait a minute,” said Doug. “Nick, what do you mean?”
O’Malley sucked in a deep, deep breath. Doug realized he was trying to hold onto his own temper. He was a big man, and if he got truly angry there could be real trouble.
“What I mean,” he said slowly, “is that we don’t need to invent nanomachines that behave like dust particles. We can pump the corridor sections full of regular lunar dust. Run ’em through an electrostatic grid so they’ll stick to the Peacekeepers’ suits and visors just like you want ’em to.”
“An electrostatic grid?”
“We can rig that up easy; just need to connect some electricity to the air filter screens in the corridors.”
“We, he keeps saying,” Zimmerman muttered.
Doug put a hand on the old man’s shoulder. “Professor, I think he’s right.”
“And I am wrong?”
Forcing a smile, Doug said, “No, but we don’t have time to produce your specialized nanomachines. Nick’s worked out on the surface; he knows how the dust clings to suits.”
“So I must sit back and retire like a useless old man?”
“No, not at all,” Doug said. “You can work with Kris Cardenas on the medical side. We’re going to need your nanomachines to take care of the injured and wounded.”
Zimmerman huffed out an enormous sigh. “You expect injured and wounded? How many?”
“I have no idea,” Doug answered truthfully.
The professor turned away and w
alked a few steps deeper into his lab. Then he spun around and pointed a trembling finger at O’Malley. “Very well! Go play with your verdammt dust! I will stay here and do important work!”
O’Malley started to reply, but one glance at Doug and he shut his mouth with an audible click of teeth.
“We need you, professor,” Doug said softly. “You know that. I need you. Moonbase needs you.”
“Yah. While you and this young lummox here go out to fight, I sit here like a dreamer.”
“It’s your dreams that we’re fighting for,” said Doug. Then he took O’Malley by the arm and led him out of the nanotechnology laboratory.
Harry Clemens seldom showed tension. Word around Moon-base was that he didn’t have any bones, that’s why he always looked so relaxed.
But he was sitting rigidly in one of the little swivel chairs in front of a console in the control center, eyes riveted on the screen that showed the little tubular rocket vehicle, as the launch computer counted aloud: “…four… three… two… one… zero.”
Clemens saw a flash of smoke and dust. The rocket was gone when it cleared.
“Radar track on the line,” said the technician sitting to his right. He saw the radar display on the screen just above his view of the now empty launch pad.
“Looks good.”
He swivelled slightly to see Jinny Anson standing behind him.
“Now we’ll see if they try to shoot it down,” Anson said tightly.
“L-1’s painting it,” the radar tech called out.
“I launched it retrograde,” Clemens said to Anson,’so L-1 won’t have more than a few minutes to calculate its trajectory.”
The Moon rotates on its axis so slowly that very little momentum was lost by launching a rocket in the direction opposite to its spin. On Earth, a launch westward could cost four kilometers per second of precious velocity, or more, depending on the launch site’s latitude.
“They won’t need more than a few seconds to nail your orbit,” Anson said flatly. “Besides, they know goddamned well it’s gonna pass over Copernicus. They got lots of time to focus a laser on it.”
Clemens’ high forehead wrinkled. “You think they’ll zap it?”
“If the Peacekeepers’ve put a big enough laser at L-1, yeah, they will.”
“Do you think they’ve put weapons-strength lasers in Nippon One?”
Anson gripped Clemens’ shoulders and grinned down at him. “We’ll find out pretty soon, won’t we?”
Edith was reviewing her day’s shooting in the video editing booth at the lunar university’s studio facility. The studio itself was dark and empty; no lectures or demonstrations, no interactions with Earthside students had taken place since the U.N. had cut off regular communications. The editing booth felt almost like home to Edith, though. Even though she was alone in it, she enjoyed working the big control console. When she had first started in television news, sitting at the console with all its switches and keypads made her feel like the captain of a starship in some futuristic drama. Now it just felt like a familiar, comfortable place where she could edit her work until it was a finished, polished piece of TV journalism. The fact that she was doing the work on the Moon no longer impressed her.
She was splicing together scenes from three separate shoots, trying to put together a coherent report on the preparations that Moonbase was undertaking to face the impending Peacekeeper attack—without betraying any of the steps that might tip off the U.N. about what to expect. Her footage dealt almost entirely with the human side of the coming battle: the tiny medical staff getting ready to handle wounded men and women; the highly-trained technicians and engineers and scientists moping in The Cave, their work, their careers, their lives in limbo until this war was settled one way or the other; the silent emptiness of the construction pit where the grand plaza was going to be built. Nothing was moving there now, not even a teleoperated tractor. All work on Moonbase’s future had been stopped.
She had scrupulously avoided the nanotech labs and the plastics processing center where Falcone was driving the chemists to produce tons of foamgel. She had done a long interview with Claire Rossi, already known to TV viewers Earthside as Moonbase’s first bride. Now Edith revealed that Claire was pregnant, but could not return Earthside because of the impending battle.
Good, human interest stuff, Edith thought as she edited Claire’s interview. It’s a shame I couldn’t get her to cry, though.
The phone’s chime startled her out of her concentration. She swivelled her chair from the editing screens to the phone screen and tapped the ANSWER keypad.
A young male comm tech’s face appeared on the screen. “A call for you, Ms Elgin. From Earthside.”
“Earthside? I thought all links were shut down.”
“This is coming in on a special laser tight beam, from Atlanta: a Mr Edan McGrath.”
Edith felt her eyes go wide. “McGrath? Put him on!”
Someone had once called McGrath the sexiest bald-headed man on Earth. Looking at his image in the phone screen, Edith thought he wasn’t really sexy, but he sure radiated energy and power.
“Mr McGrath,” she said, surprised at how humble she sounded.
Three seconds later he said, “Edie, I wanted to tell you that I think you’re doing a fine job up there. An excellent job! I’m proud of you.”
She blinked with surprise. The top boss doesn’t break a U.N. blackout just to praise one of his reporters, Edith told herself, even if I am his number one on-screen personality.
“Thank you,” she said. Again, timidly.
McGrath hadn’t waited for her response. He kept on talking. “After this is all over and you get back here, I’m going to personally see that you get a regular prime-time slot for yourself. No co-host, all yours. And a fulL-1ength documentary on your experiences up there. And a book deal, too. The only reporter at Moonbase. I’ve got to hand it to you, kid. You’re the greatest.”
It was the ‘kid’ that broke Edith’s spell. He wants something, she realized. Of course he does! He wouldn’t go to the trouble of establishing a clandestine laser link unless he wanted something from me.
“I’m glad that you like what I’m doing,” she said. “Now what’s the reason for your call?”
When her words reached him, McGrath’s brows hiked. Then he broke into a big, boyish grin.
“Can’t fool you, can I?” he said, brushing at his moustache. Edith thought it had been considerably grayer the last time she’d seen him. He must be coloring it.
“The Peacekeepers’ attack is imminent,” he went on. “From what I’ve been able to find out, they’ll come at you in another few days. A week, at most.”
He stopped, waiting for her reply. Edith nodded and said, “That’s the way it looks here.”
“Okay,” he said after the delay. “Here’s my question. Can you cover the battle for us?”
“Cover the battle?”
He hadn’t stopped for her reply. He was saying, “I know you’re only one person, Edie, but I’ve been thinking maybe you could get some of the Moonbase people to handle cameras, give us a blow-by-blow, minute-by-minute eyewitness account of the fight. Like Ed Murrow did in London during the Blitz.”
Edith knew who Edward R. Murrow was, but she wasn’t certain of what the Blitz might be. She didn’t fret over it. McGrath wants real-time coverage of the battle! I’ve got to tell Doug. This could be the biggest publicity break of all for Moonbase, showing the brave unarmed Lunatics desperately trying to hold off an army of U.N. Peacekeepers with their missiles and guns and all. Wow!
“Can you do it?” McGrath asked, almost plaintively.
“Mr McGrath,” Edith said, slowly, feeling the strength welling up inside her,’do you realize that if we show the battle in real-time it’s going to give Faure and the U.N. a terrible black eye? I mean, they’ll look like monsters, attacking these unarmed people.”
The three seconds were agony now. At last McGrath nodded grimly. “That’s right. I�
�m fully aware of it. I was wrong to back Faure against Moonbase. It may be too late to save the base, but I want the Global’s viewers to see what the little shit is doing to you. I want the world to see it!”
“Okay!” Edith said happily. “You’ve got it!”
He broke into a fleshy grin when her acceptance reached him. “Can you do it? How much of the battle can you actually show?”
Grinning back at him, Edith replied, “Moonbase has security cameras in every corridor, in every lab and workshop. And outside, too. I can show you the crater floor outside the base and even a view of the Mare Nubium, on the other side of the ringwall mountains. We’ll get it all, don’t worry.”
Three seconds ticked by, then McGrath said, “Great! Do it. Don’t worry about expenses.”
She signed off, almost delirious with joy. But as she hurried down the corridors to find Doug and tell him that Global News was now on his side, she realized that what she would really be showing the world was how the Peacekeepers marched into Moonbase and either accepted a surrender or blew the place apart.
BASE DIRECTOR’S OFFICE
“Take a look,” said Jinny Anson.
She touched the keyboard on her desk and the wallscreen lit up to show a satellite view of the beautiful crater Copernicus.
Doug paid no attention to the crater’s symmetry, however. He stared at the array of tractors and other vehicles parked on the plain of Mare Imbrium, just outside Yamagata’s base, Nippon One.
“No wonder they’re not flying here on Jobbers,” Anson muttered. “There aren’t enough rockets on the whole Moon to lift that much equipment.”
Doug felt almost breathless. “There must be enough transport there for a thousand troops.”
Bam Gordette, sitting on the other side of the table that butted Anson’s desk, said quietly, “Not that many. More than half those vehicles’ll be carrying food, water, air, ammo, missiles—logistics.”
Doug sank back in his chair. “How many troops do you estimate, then?”
Gordette waggled a hand. “Three hundred, three-fifty, tops.”
