by Ben Bova
“That’s it,” one of the spacesuited figures said. “The first set of nanomachines for construction—”
Suddenly the picture on the screen wavered, distorted into wild zig-zags of color, and then broke up completely. The screen dissolved into hissing streaks of black and gray.
“Switch to backup,” said the tech on the operator’s right.
The screen showed the figures in spacesuits for the briefest flicker of an instant, then broke up into electronic hash.
“Three? Four?”
The technician shook her head. “All gone.”
“Five and six?”
“All of ’em.”
Greg asked, “Can’t you regain contact?”
She pointed to a hash-streaked screen. “Not now. The satellite links are down.”
“But there were six satellites, weren’t there?”
“Yessir, but the storm’s knocked all six of them out. Bing, bing, bing, one right after another. All six gone.”
“I have to go to the toilet,” said Bianca Rhee.
She whispered the words to Doug, leaning the helmet of her spacesuit against his so she wouldn’t have to use the suit radio.
They had been sitting in the half-covered shelter for several hours with nothing much to do except stare at the blank curving walls. Doug knew that the plumbing in the suits was different for women, and the suits were not meant to be worn for more than twelve hours at a time. From what he knew about solar flares, they would be in their suits for at least another twenty-four hours, perhaps considerably longer.
“If your urine collector is full you can void it into the chemical toilet,” Doug said to heir, “without getting out of the suit.”
“That’s not my problem,” Rhee said.
“Aren’t you wearing—”
“No,” she said. “Are you?”
Wonderful, Doug thought. People have been using space-suits for a century and still nobody’s come up with anything better than a plastic bag you stick on your bare butt What do they call it? FC-something: fecal containment system? Some system. And you have to slap it in place before you zip up your suit, of course.
“It’s not safe to get out of your suit,” he said.
“But I’ve got to!”
“The radiation level’s still too high.”
“I can’t do it in my pants.”
Why not? Doug thought. But from the sound of Bianca’s voice, even muffled through the helmets, there was no debating the issue.
He turned to Brennart and clicked on his suit radio. “Sir, do we have anything that we can rig up as temporary shielding in the John?”
“What are you talking about?” Irritated.
“Rhee’s got to get out of her suit for a few minutes. Can we put up some temporary shielding in the toilet compartment for her?”
For a long moment Brennart didn’t reply, and Doug could only guess what was going through his mind. At last he said gruffly, “Pull off the leggings of your suit and hold them on your lap.”
This has happened before, Doug realized, almost smiling. Bianca’s not the first one with the problem.
“And be quick about it,” Brennart added. “Every minute you’re out of the suit you’re exposed to ten times the radiation you’d get in a year Earthside.”
There’s no problem of depressurization, Doug knew. They were already breathing the shelter’s air. The suits were just for protection from the radiation.
Rhee headed for the toilet compartment, too embarrassed to say anything. Doug thought about asking her if she needed help getting her boots and leggings off, then thought better of it. Funny, she’d rather risk the radiation exposure than mess her pants. She’d rather die of radiation poisoning than embarrassment.
Then Doug realized that before the radiation died down they’d all have to use the toilet.”
“Sir, have you been in this kind of situation before?” he asked Brennart.
“Have I?” The expedition leader’s voice took on a new tone: lighter, almost eager. “This is a piece of cake compared to the fix we were in back when we were digging the first shelters in Alphonsus. The first time we were hit by a solar storm…”
A quarter-hour later Rhee returned from the toilet. Brennart was still spinning out yarns about the old days. Greenberg slinked to the compartment while Brennart kept on talking. And talking. And talking.
“… so we started vacuum breathing contests; you know, opening the visor of your helmet out on the surface to see how many seconds you could go before you closed it again. See what kind of guts you had. When you felt your eyes starting to pop you sealed up again. Well, one night there were just three of us out there, Jerry Stiles, Wodjohowitcz and me…”
Slowly, Doug realized what Brennart was doing. He’s not just helping to pass the time away; he’s calming us down, making us realize that he’s been through this kind of thing lots of times, telling us that we’ll live through it. Doug looked at his spacesuited leader with new respect. That’s what leadership is really all about, he thought: keeping the fear at arm’s length.
After making certain that communications with Earth were still intact, Greg went to his quarters and called his mother.
His quarters were a standard single cell, no bigger than a third-class stateroom on an ocean liner, since there had been so little time for the Moonbase staff to prepare for his arrival. Once Anson left, Greg would be moved to the director’s more spacious suite: two whole rooms, with a private toilet and shower stall.
For now, Greg slouched on his bunk and watched his mother’s face in the slightly grainy image on the screen built into the compartment›s smoothed stone wall.
“Has all communication with Brennart’s team been cut off?” Joanna was asking.
Nodding, Greg assured her, “For the time being. But they’re all safe inside their own shelters. They had plenty of time to dig in.”
“Yes,” she said once she heard his response. “Of course.” But her face belied her words.
She’s looking at me, Greg thought, she’s talking to me. But she’s thinking about Doug.
“How is Anson treating you? Is she being friendly?”
Almost laughing, Greg answered, “She danced with me.”
Before his mother received his reply, the phone chimed. Greg tapped his keyboard and the display screen split. Jinny Anson’s face appeared on the second half, her brows knit with concern.
“Danced with you?” Joanna started to say. “What do you mean?”
But Greg’s attention was on Anson. “What’s happened?”
“Thought you ought to know. Nippon One’s just launched a ballistic lobber toward the south polar region. Must be a crewed vehicle, I betcha.”
“Now? With the radiation storm at its peak?”
“Now,” Anson replied flatly.
“Where are you?”
“In my office.”
I’ll be right down there.” He clicked Anson’s image off his screen.
“What is it, Greg?” Joanna was demanding. “What’s going on?”
“Yamagata’s just launched a vehicle toward the pole. We don’t know if it’s manned or unmanned.”
It took three seconds for the news to reach Joanna. When it did, she flinched with shock. “What are they up to?”
“That’s what I intend to find out,” Greg said. I’ll call you when I’ve learned something.”
Brennart was running out of tall tales. Doug wondered if he’d start in on camp songs next. He remembered a counselor, when he’d been six or seven, who knew only a half dozen songs and repeated them endlessly every night around their gas-fed campfire.
“I wonder how the other shelters are doing?” Doug asked when Brennart took a breath.
“They’re all right,” Brennart said. “One and two are better off than we are; they’ve got more room and they can sit in their shirtsleeves.”
Getting to his feet carefully inside the cumbersome suit, Doug stepped over to the airlock hatch and the c
luster of instruments built into its metal frame.
“Radiation level’s down slightly,” he said. “We might be past the worst of it.”
He could sense Brennart shaking his head inside his helmet. “Don’t kid yourself, son. The radiation levels will fluctuate up and down for hours. When it starts to tail off you’ll see a pretty rapid drop, not those little jiggles.”
The voice of experience, Doug said to himself.
“As soon as we can get through to Moonbase,” Greenberg said, “we’ve got to request another shipment of machines.”
“Another?” said Brennart.
“You mean more nanomachines?” Rhee asked. “Why?”
“The ones we left on the mountain are all dead by now.”
“What?”
The nanotechnician’s voice was flat, as unemotional as a surgeon discussing a patient who had died on the table. “Don’t you understand? The nanomachines are the size of viruses. They’re being bombarded with high-energy protons. At their scale, it’s like you or me being clobbered by an avalanche of bowling balls.”
“They’ll be deactivated,” Doug said, feeling suddenly hollow inside, as if he had scaled a rugged mountain only to find higher and steeper peaks ahead of him.
“All of them?” Brennart askett…
“All the ones we exposed on the mountaintop,” Greenberg replied calmly. “The ones still in the canister might be okay; the canister’s pretty good shielding for them.”
“Why didn’t you tell me this before we went up there?” Brennart demanded, his voice rising.
Without a flutter, Greenberg answered, “You wanted to get our legal claim in, didn’t you? So we got there and did it Nobody told me we were going to be hit by a radiation storm.”
“But don’t you understand? The legal claim isn’t worth a termite fart if the goddamned bugs aren’t doing anything!”
“Huh?”
Doug said, “The legal claim is based on utilization of the area. If the bugs are dead, inactive, then we’re not using the area and our claim is null and void.”
Greenberg was silent for a moment. Then he mumbled, “I’m an engineer, not a lawyer.”
“Christ on a surfboard,” Brennart growled. “We’ve got to go up there again and start the other bugs working.”
“That’s not possible,” said Greenberg. For the first time Doug detected a slight nervous waver in his voice.
“What d’you mean, not possible?”
Greenberg took a breath, then explained, “There are nine different sets of nanomachines in the mix, each programmed to do its own part of the job. We put out the first set. If they’re dead, the second set won’t have the substrate it needs to build on. And the third set, and so on.”
“You mean none of them will work?”
“Not until we get replacements for the first set.”
“We brought backups with us.”
“The backup canister was on the cargo rocket that crashed. The canister split open and the bugs spilled out I deactivated them.”
Brennart was close to exploding. “Deactivated our backup?”
“Standard operating procedure, Once they’re loose you can’t get ’em back in their containers again. And you don’t want them chewing up the equipment around them. So I sprayed the area with the UV laser. Standard procedure.”
“That’s what you were doing,” Rhee said. “I thought you were looking for something that you’d lost.”
“Nope. Killing loose bugs. You can’t see the ultraviolet light from the laser, of course.”
Rhee seemed unconvinced. “You mean the bugs can take unfiltered sunlight but a little UV laser can kill them?”
“It’s not the power of the beam, it’s the intensity. That little laser’s ten times brighter than the Sun in that one ultraviolet wavelength.”
“Douglas,” Brennart asked, “does this really nullify our legal claim?”
Doug let several heartbeats pass before he answered. “I’m afraid it does. I’ll check with the corporate legal experts in Savannah as soon as communications are restored, but from what I know of the legalities, if we’re not actively using the site we have no valid claim to it”
“Christ on a surfboard,” Brennart muttered again. Thinking hard, Doug said, “The only other way to establish a claim is for at least two Masterson employees to be actively working at the site.” ’Two?” Brennart pounced on the information. “For how long”
“Length of stay doesn’t matter, as long as they’re actively engaged in utilizing the site’s natural resources — and there’s a working device of some sort running at the site when they leave. Either that, or more human employees replace them.”
“Two of us,” Brennart muttered.
“We’ve got to be doing something that leads to useful utilization of the area,” Doug warned. “We can’t just be camping there.”
“What in the world could we be doing up there?”
Rhee blurted, “We’re not going up to the summit again?”
Two of us are,” said Brennart, with no hesitation whatsoever. “As soon as the radiation begins to the down.”
“But won’t that be risky?”
Brennart chuckled quietly, then said, “Sure it’s risky. Like the man said, working out on the frontier is nothing more than inventing new ways to get killed.”
RAYBURN HOUSE OFFICE BUILDING
Representative Ray Underwood steepled his fingers in front of his face as he studied the earnest young man sitting on the other side of his desk.
“I’m afraid I don’t understand, Mr. Eldridge,” he said.
Eldridge smiled pleasantly. “Are we being recorded?”
Underwood feigned indignation. “Certainly not! I wouldn’t stand for that kind of thing. It’s not only illegal, it’s immoral.”
“Yes, of course,” said Eldridge. He was a bland young man, his sandy hair already receding, his eyes a pale blue. He was dressed casually: lightweight Madras jacket over an open-necked white shirt; inexpensive dark blue slacks; black athletic shoes.
Underwood was twenty years older, but still looked trim and fit in his tan sports jacket and darker brown slacks. There was a touch of gray at his temples, but otherwise his hair was dark, his face taut and tanned from ski vacations back home in Colorado.
“Our conversation will be strictly between us,” Underwood assured his visitor. “Absolutely private.”
“Good. For your sake, as well as mine.”
That took Underwood aback somewhat. “Just what is it that you’re after?” he asked. “In plain language, please.”
Eldridge hunched forward a little in his chair. “As you know, Congressman, I represent a coalition of religious organizations—”
“The Christian Brethren, I know.”
“Not merely the Brethren,” said Eldridge. “Not anymore. We have several Orthodox Jewish groups with us now. And the Muslims, as well.”
Underwood suppressed a gasp of surprise. Instead, he let himself chuckle. “Well, if you can keep those people together you’re a better politician than I am.”
“The Lord moves in mysterious ways, Congressman.”
“I suppose he does. But what is it that you want?”
“Your support on the nanotech bill.”
There. It was finally out in the open. Now I can deal with it, Underwood thought.
“What nanotech bill?” he parried. “I’m not aware of any such bill being considered—”
“There will be, in the next session. After our vice president is elected President of the United States.”
Underwood leaned back in his swivel chair and steepled his “fingers again, a tactic he used to gain time. “He’s not in my party,” he said mildly.
“But he will win the election in November,” said Eldridge flatly. “One of his campaign promises is to introduce legislation that will ban all nanotechnology. That’s one promise he will keep.”
“I’m not against nanotechnology,” Underwood said carefully.
“From what my aides tell me, a lot of good can come from it.”
“I’m sure you know more than your aides tell you,” said Eldridge mildly.
Underwood smiled to cover the slight pang of alarm that tingled through him. “And what do you mean by that, Mr. Eldridge?”
“Carter. My first name is Carter.”
“Carter.”
“You’re in remarkably good health for a man who suffered a heart attack just a year ago,” said Eldridge.
Damn! Does he know or is he just fishing?
“It was only a mild cardiac arrest. And I’ve had excellent medical care.”
“The best in the world, from what I hear.”
“Those people in Bethesda…”
“Don’t you mean Basel?”
“Basel?”
“In Switzerland. And your attack was a massive infarction that would have left you a cardiac cripple.”
Forcing himself to grin, Underwood waggled a finger at the younger man. “Carter, you’ve been watching the tabloids! They exaggerate everything.”
“You were flown to Basel and operated on by Dr. Wilhehn Zimmerman, one of the few doctors left who still deals with nanotherapy.”
“That’s not so!”
With a patient sigh, Eldridge asked, “Do you want me to recite the flight number to you? Your room number at the Basel Marriott? The date and hour on which Zimmerman operated on you?”
Underwood growled, “You have no proof of that.”
“What further proof do we need? The people who leaked this information to us will be happy to speak to the news media — anonymously, of course.”
Underwood could feel his insides sinking.
Leaning forward, Eldridge said, “You had nanomachines injected into your body. They repaired your damaged heart muscle and scrubbed out the plaque in your coronary arteries. Very likely you also had some cosmetic touches done, didn’t you?”
The Congressman said nothing.
“You used your position of influence and power to cover up the fact that you obtained for yourself nanotherapy that is illegal in the United States.”
“It’s not illegal in Switzerland.”
