by Ben Bova
I’m dead, Wicksen thought. The nuclear warhead went off and it killed me. But why does my head hurt?
Doug and the others in the control center had been sitting tensely, waiting for Wicksen’s beam gun to disable the nuclear warhead.
The main overhead lights came on.
“What the hell?” Anson muttered loudly enough for Doug to hear.
“They’ve powered down the beam gun,” a technician’s voice said.
“Did they hit the warhead?” Doug wondered aloud.
“How could they know whether they’ve knocked it out or not?” Anson demanded. “They oughtta be shooting at it until it hits the frickin’ ground.”
Getting up from his chair, Doug called to the chief communications technician, several seats way from his own, “Can you get Wicksen for me?”
She nodded and worked her keyboard. All eyes in the control center focused on her—or on the screens showing the missile warhead streaking toward them.
“No joy,” said the comm tech.
The whole chamber shuddered. Doug felt the solid rock floor beneath his feet vibrate as if a major moonquake had struck.
“The missile hit!” a technician’s voice rang out. “Dove straight into the friggin’ ground.”
“But there wasn’t any flash,” someone said.
“Radiation counters are quiet.”
“Our nuclear reactor just went off-line,” said another technician, his voice high and quavering. “Backup power system is down.”
Doug looked from one screen to another in the insect-eye array on the console before him. It took him a few moments to realize what had happened.
“It wasn’t the nuke!” Jinny Anson’s voice sounded exultant. “They sent the conventional bomb first!”
“To check their guidance accuracy,” Doug said, his breath shuddering. He half-collapsed back onto the wheeled chair.
“And to see what we had to throw against it,” Gordette added.
Doug looked across to O’Malley. Sweat was trickling down his beefy cheeks.
“It wasn’t the nuke,” O’Malley echoed, sounding relieved, grateful.
“Yeah, okay, but they got our backup generator,” Anson said. “Now if they knock out the solar farms we’re out of it.”
“Another launch from L-1,” a comm tech announced.
’That’s the nuke,” said almost everyone in the control center, simultaneously.
MASS DRIVER
Slowly, Wicksen pulled himself up to a sitting position. If I’m not dead yet I soon will be, he thought. Radiation poisoning.
Except for the throbbing pain in the back of his head, though, he felt all right. He tried to rub his eyes but his gloved hands bumped into the visor of his helmet. Feeling sheepish, he looked around. His assistant was on his knees, getting slowly to his feet.
“You okay?” Wicksen asked.
Before the man could answer, Wicksen’s helmet earphones buzzed with an incoming message. He punched the proper key on his wristpad, noting with a bit of a shock that his radiation dose patch was still a pale chartreuse.
“Wicksen here,” he said, surprised that his voice sounded so calm.
“This is Doug Stavenger,” he heard in his earphones. “What happened?”
“We didn’t have time to fix-wait a minute! Are you running on auxiliary power or not?”
“The missile took out our nuclear generator. It was a conventional warhead. Their nuke is on its way, launched four minutes ago.”
“You mean we’ve still got two hours to get this kloodge working?” Wicksen felt elated.
“Can you do it?”
Despite his cumbersome spacesuit Wicksen jumped to his feet, not so difficult a trick in the low lunar gravity. “We’ll do our best,” he cried, overjoyed at still being alive.
Killifer checked his wristwatch before starting out on his regular rounds through the house. With Rodriguez watching everything through the security cameras, Killifer wanted to make it all seem normal, dull routine. Don’t give the dumb spic any reason to think anything’s out of the ordinary.
It was a big house, and Killifer didn’t want to look hurried. He made his way from the kitchen through the dining room and living room, then into the foyer, where he carefully checked the front door to see that it was properly locked. Across the front hall and into the library, then the entertainment room, checking each of the French windows that opened onto the patio.
Unconsciously licking his lips, he started up the back stairs, past the monstrosity of a grandfather’s clock where the security team kept a pair of submachine guns stashed away. Maybe I should take one of them, he mused. But he decided against it. His pistol held fifty rounds, plenty to do the job. Besides, taking one of the stutter guns from the clock would alert Rodriguez—if he was watching the screens instead of his favorite video show. Be just my luck to have him spot me.
So Killifer passed the loudly-ticking clock on the landing and went on up to the second floor. All the bedrooms up there were unoccupied, he knew, except the master bedroom, but his job was to enter each one and check each window.
His palms felt slippery with sweat as he neared the master bedroom. Rodriguez can see me go in there, if he’s watching the screens like he’s supposed to. I’ll have to do it fast and then duck out before he figures out what’s going down. Quite deliberately, Killifer switched off the palm-sized two-way radio he kept in his shirt pocket.
At last he stood before the master bedroom’s double doors. He had memorized the electronic lock’s combination from the list kept in the security office.
Okay, he told himself, licking his lips once again. Don’t just stand around. Do it!
Swiftly he tapped on the miniature keyboard and saw its light turn green. He pushed the door open.
It was a spacious room. Lev Brudnoy law sprawled on the oversized bed, stark naked. Nothing but gray mottled skin and bones, Killifer saw, and that ratty little beard. The wall screen on the other side of the room showed a view from the Moon, the crater floor of Alphonsus, it looked like. No sound; either it was muted or nobody was saying anything from Moonbase.
“What is it?” Brudnoy said, sitting up, frowning, reaching for the bedsheet to cover himself.
Joanna was nowhere in sight. Killifer looked across the room: chaise longue, little desk and chair, a couple of upholstered chairs, bookcases, bureaus, mirrors—but no Joanna Brudnoy.
“Where is she?” Killifer hissed, sliding the pistol from his holster.
Brudnoy’s eyes widened. Killifer saw several doors: closets, all closed. And one other door, half ajar. The bathroom.
“Get out of here!” Brudnoy shouted, reaching for the phone console on the night table.
“Where is she?” Killifer yelled back, heading for the half-open bathroom door.
Brudnoy banged the red emergency button on the phone console as Killifer strode swiftly cross the bedroom carpeting.
“Joanna!” Brudnoy hollered. “Look out!”
And Killifer felt something thump against his shoulder. Whirling, he saw Brudnoy reaching for another book to throw at him, a skinny naked old man trying to stop him by throwing books.
With a wild laugh, Killifer fired twice. Brudnoy’s chest erupted in blood and he jerked back against the bed’s headboard, arms and legs flailing like a rag doll. Killifer pumped another two shots into him for good measure.
Joanna screamed. Killifer turned and saw her standing naked, frozen, in the bathroom doorway.
“Remember me?” Killifer taunted, levelling his gun at her. For a moment he thought how much fun it would be to rape her, to make her kneel to him, turn herself inside out for him, before he blew her head off. But there wasn’t time.
In that moment Joanna slammed the bathroom door. Killifer heard its lock click.
Laughing even louder, he fired three shots into the lock, then kicked the door open. He stepped into the bathroom-
And Joanna, standing beside the door, drove the point of her hair-styling scissors into his wri
st with every molecule of strength in her. Killifer’s hand went numb and he nearly dropped the gun. Her face white with fury, Joanna snatched a hairbrush and whacked it as hard as she could against his bleeding wrist.
Killifer felt pain flaming up his arm. The gun fell from his fingers. He staggered back, but not before Joanna grabbed the end of the scissors still sticking in his wrist.
“Bastard,” she snarled, working the scissors back and forth. “Murdering bastard!”
Pain searing his whole arm, Killifer cuffed her with his free hand, driving her back against the marble sink. But she held firmly onto the scissors, yanking it from his bleeding wrist.
The gun was on the tiled floor. Killifer bent to reach for it but Joanna kicked it away.
That’s not going to help you, bitch,” he growled at her. “I’m not leaving here until you’re dead.”
He lunged at her, but Joanna raked the point of the scissors up his chest and throat and lodged the blades in the underside of his jaw.
Yowling with pain, Killifer staggered back into the bedroom.
Rodriguez was at the hallway door, submachine gun levelled at Killifer’s waist.
“You killed them!” Rodriguez shouted, eyes wide.
“No…” Killifer choked. “No, wait…”
“General’s orders,” Rodriguez said. He fired half a dozen rounds into Killifer’s midsection.
Killifer felt nothing. The bedroom tilted and he was staring at the ceiling. It faded, though, slowly turning dark. He thought of General O’Conner telling him, ‘The fewer people know about this, the better off we are.’
Rodriguez is one of them, Killifer realized. That sonofabitch O’Conner planted him here to get rid of me once the job’s done.
It was his last thought.
CONTROL CENTER
“When we power up,” Wicksen was telling Doug, “you’re going to be totally blacked out.”
There was no video from the mass driver; Doug spoke to a blank screen.
“We’re plugging in the fuel cells,” he said. “They can keep us going for the few minutes your gun will be running.”
He sensed Wicksen nodding. “Well, we’re doing everything we can here. That missile blast shook half our connections loose and the other half aren’t all that sound, either.”
Doug grimaced, then recalled, “I remember a professor of mine saying that if something scratches or bites, it’s biology; if it stinks or pops, it’s chemistry; and if—”
“If it doesn’t work,” Wicksen finished with him, “it’s physics.”
Neither of them laughed.
“We’re going to power up in fifteen minutes,” Wicksen said. “Will you have the fuel cells on line by then?”
“If we don’t I’ll call you.”
That only leaves us six minutes to fire at the nuke,” the physicist said, “assuming they hold off detonation until the warhead’s only three hundred meters above the crater floor.”
“If they detonate higher they’ll shower the Peacekeeper troops with radiation.”
They’re not digging in?”
Doug shook his head. “No, they’re staying buttoned up tight inside their vehicles, as far as we can see.”
I’ll bet they’re praying for a low-altitude detonation even more than we are.”
“Probably so,” Doug agreed.
“All right,” said Wicksen. “I’ve got work to do. Call me if you can’t get the fuel cells patched in.”
“Will do.”
Jinny Anson leaned over Doug’s shoulder. The fuel cells are up and ready, no sweat.”
“Good,” he said, wondering if Wicksen heard her before he clicked off.
For the thousandth time Doug checked out every corner of Moonbase through the screens on the console before him. It felt as if the wheeled typist’s chair on which he sat had welded itself to his butt and spine. The level of tension in the control center was palpable, but it had been so electrically high for so long that it seemed almost normal. People went about their duties mechanically, studying their screens or fingering their keyboards. Hardly a word was spoken now, and no voice rose above an edgy, tightly-controlled murmur.
Doug saw that The Cave was almost filled with men and women milling about aimlessly, sitting huddled in small groups, staring up at the wall screens. Must be really tough on them, Doug thought, waiting with nothing to do. Then he looked at the camera view from Mount Yeager; the Peacekeeper troops were also waiting, and the nuclear missile that would end everyone’s suspense was hurtling toward Alphonsus now.
They’ve won the first round, Doug realized. They aimed at our nuclear generator and hit it. Our backup power system is gone. There must be a considerable amount of radioactive debris splattered across the far side of the crater floor.
But they don’t suspect we’ve got a beam gun to knock out their nuke, he told himself. Almost bitterly, Doug admitted that their big success so far had been that Wicksen’s beam gun hadn’t worked. Our ace in the hole, he thought wryly. They don’t know we might be able to prevent their nuclear warhead from going off.
He leaned back in the squeaking little chair, trying to ease the stress that was knotting the muscles of his neck and shoulders. Nanomachines can’t relieve anxiety, he thought.
Staring up at the dimly-lit rock of the ceiling, Doug asked himself, Who am I trying to kid? There are at least three hundred armed and trained troops on the other side of the ringwall. A nuclear bomb is heading toward us. Not a nation in the world has lifted a finger to help us. How on earth can I pretend that we can stand up to the Peacekeepers? We don’t have a chance, not a prayer, against the force of the United Nations.
Why not just let them walk in here and take over? Why risk the lives of two thousand people? Over what? My own ego? My own fear that once they ship me Earthside some New Morality fanatic’s going to murder me? So what? I’m dead either way. They can kill me here, trying to defend Moonbase or kill me back on Earth. At least if I surrender to them the rest of the people here will live.
And Moonbase dies. Yamagata takes over and turns it into his private clinic instead of using it as a springboard to push the frontier outward.
He shook his head. You’re debating philosophy when a couple of thousand lives are hanging in the balance. That’s not fair. It’s stupid.
The phone light at the bottom right corner of his set of screens began winking yellow. Shaking himself from his inner misgivings, Doug reached for his headset and slipped it on.
“Incoming call from Savannah,” a comm tech’s voice said. “Urgent top priority.”
“Put it through.”
Doug saw his mother’s face on the lower right screen: hair dishevelled, eyes red and swollen, skin ashen, a silk robe pulled tight around her.
“What’s wrong?” he blurted.
But Joanna was already telling him, “Lev’s been killed. Murdered. He was trying to kill me but I’m all right. But your stepfather’s dead.”
“Killed? Who did it? Why? Are you really all right?”
The three seconds it took for her reply stretched like hours.
“We don’t know who it was. The security guard got him.
We’re checking it out. It all happened just a few minutes ago…” Joanna seemed to be gasping, her words barely getting out of her mouth.
“Are you hurt? Do you have a doctor there?”
She’s holding back tears, Doug realized, watching his mother’s agonized face. She won’t let herself cry.
“Paramedics are here and my personal physician’s on his way,” she said, seeming to pull herself up straighter. “I’m not hurt. But Lev…”
Joanna turned away from the screen. A man’s face slid into view, square jaw unshaved, narrow eyes hard and bitter. “This is Captain Ingersoll, I’m with Masterson security. Your mother’s physically unharmed, sir, although she’s had a tremendous psychological shock. I’ll see to it that she calls you back as soon as her doctor’s looked her over and we’ve had a chance to sort thin
gs out a bit. Thank you.”
The screen went blank.
Doug sat there in stunned silence. If anyone overheard his phone conversation, if anyone tried to talk to him or question him, he didn’t know it. He merely sat staring blankly at the array of screens, his thoughts spinning.
They tried to kill her. Who was it? Part of Faure’s scheme? Or maybe Yamagata, trying to get her out of their way so they can take control of Masterson Corporation more easily. No, not even Yamagata would go that far. Would they? New Morality zealots, more likely. Fanatics who knew that Mom was backing Moonbase and nanotechnology. Maybe they even knew she’d had a few nanotech treatments herself, over the years.
She’s all right, though. Lev’s dead but she’s all right. They murdered Lev. Killed him.
Jinny Anson was shaking his shoulder. “Wix is ready to power up.”
He looked up at her. “Okay,” he said dully. “Okay.”
Anson peered at him. “Are you all right, Doug?”
He nodded. “Yeah. I’m okay. Don’t worry about me. Tell Wicksen to shoot the hell out of that missile.”
Anson looked surprised, but she said merely, “Right.”
Claire Rossi looked up as the overhead loudpseakers blared through The Cave:
“WE’RE GOING TO AUXILIARY POWER IN SIXTY SECONDS. LIGHTS WILL GO DOWN TO EMERGENCY LEVELS. ALL UNNECESSARY EQUIPMENT WILL BE POWERED DOWN. THIS SHOULD LAST APPROXIMATELY TEN TO FIFTEEN MINUTES.”
The Cave buzzed with conversations. When the lights suddenly turned down, a chorus of ‘ooohs’ surged through the crowded cafeteria.
Then somebody called out, “The lights are low! Time for an orgy!”
Claire didn’t laugh. Neither did anyone else.
The lights flickered briefly in the nanolaboratory, then steadied and returned to their normal brightness.
“See?” Zimmerman said to Inoguchi. “We are essential. We stay at full power.”
Inoguchi looked up from his work. “I am afraid that the power surge has knocked out the timing circuitry in the assembly feeder,” he said apologetically.
“What?” Zimmerman bellowed, rushing across the lab to the Japanese scientist’s side.
