by Ben Bova
“You are prepared to fight Peacekeeper troops?” she asked.
“We’re not going to surrender Moonbase to them.”
She seemed genuinely worried. “But they will have guns … other weapons. What weapons do you have?”
“There isn’t even a target pistol in all of Moonbase,” Doug admitted. “But we’ve got some pretty good brains here.”
Once she heard his words, she shook her head slightly. “You can’t stop bullets with words.”
“Maybe we can,” Doug said. Not waiting for a response from her, he went on, “We’re going to declare our independence and apply to the General Assembly for admission to the U.N.”
Her delay in responding to him was longer than three seconds. At last Bonai said, “It’s my fault, isn’t it? You’re in this trouble because I bowed to the U.N.’s pressure and signed the nanotech treaty.”
“You did what was best for your people,” Doug replied. “You did what you had to do.”
Masterson Corporation had owned and operated Moonbase from its beginning as a set of half-buried shelters huddled near the mountain ringwall of the giant crater Alphonsus. Nanotechnology made it possible for the base to grow and begin to prosper.
Virus-sized nanomachines scoured the regolith of Alphonsus’ crater floor, extracting oxygen and the scant atoms of hydrogen that blew in on the solar wind. Once ice fields were discovered in the south polar region, nanomachines built and maintained the pipeline that fed water across more than a thousand kilometers of mountains and craters. Nanomachines built solar cells out of the regolith’s silicon, to supply the growing base with constantly increasing electrical power. Nanomachines had built the mass driver that launched payloads of lunar ores to factories in Earth orbit.
And nanomachines took carbon atoms from near-Earth asteroids and built Clipperships of pure diamond, Moonbase’s newest export and already its principal source of cash flow. Diamond Clipperships were not only the world’s best spacecraft; they were starting to take over the market for long-range commercial air flight on Earth.
The United Nations’ nanotechnology treaty banned all nanotech operations, research and teaching in the nations that signed the treaty. Seven years earlier, when it became clear that the United States would sign the treaty—indeed, American nanoluddites had drafted the treaty—Masterson Corporation had set up a dummy company on the island nation of Kiribati and transferred Moonbase to the straw-man corporation. As long as Kiribati did not sign the treaty, Moonbase could legally continue using nanomachines, which were as vital to Moonbase as air.
But the day after Tamara Bonai, chief of the Kiribati council, reluctantly signed the nanotech treaty, the U.N.’s secretary-general—Georges Faure—personally called Joanna Stavenger and told her that Moonbase had two weeks to shut down all nanotech operations, research and teaching.
Exactly two weeks later, to the very minute, all communications links from Earth to Moonbase were cut. And now a spacecraft carrying U.N. Peacekeeper troops had lifted from Corsica on a leisurely five-day course for Moonbase.
“You have no idea of how much pressure they put on us,” Bonai said, her lovely face downcast. “They even stopped tourist flights from coming to our resorts. It was an economic blockade. They would have strangled us.”
“I’m not blaming you for this,” Doug said. “I only called to let you know that we’re declaring our independence. As an independent nation that hasn’t signed the nanotech treaty, we’ll be able to keep on as we have been, despite Faure and his Peacekeepers.”
She almost smiled. “Does that mean that you will continue to honor your contracts with Kiribati Corporation?”
Moonbase marketed its diamond Clipperships and other exports to transportation companies on Earth through Kiribati Corporation.
“Yes, certainly,” Doug said. Then he added, “As soon as this situation is cleared up.”
“I understand,” she said. “We will certainly not object to your independence.”
Doug smiled back at her. “Thanks, Tamara. I knew I could count on you.”
The three seconds ticked. “Good luck, Doug,” she said at last.
“Thanks again. I think we’re going to need all the luck we can get.”
TOUCHDOWN MINUS 114 HOURS
The word spread through Moonbase’s corridors with the speed of sound. In workshops and offices, in living quarters and laboratories, out at the spaceport, at the mass driver, even among the handful of spacesuited men and women working on the surface, the word flashed: We’re at war. U.N. troops are on their way here.
It’s about time, said the mercenary to himself. Years of diplomats in their fancy suits and their evasive language, farting around, trying to talk the problem to death, and now at last they’re taking action.
He looked up from the work he was doing; he took pride in his work. No one suspected that he was a deep agent, a trained killer who had been inserted into Moonbase more than a year earlier to work his way into the community and wait for the right moment. He had been without contact from his superiors ever since he first set foot in Moonbase. He would operate now without orders.
Cripple Moonbase. That was his mission. For a year he had studied all of Moonbase’s systems and personnel. The underground base was pathetically vulnerable to sabotage. Every breath of air, every molecule of water, depended on complex machinery, all of it run by sophisticated computer programs. Sophisticated meant fragile, the mercenary knew. A computer virus could bring Moonbase to its knees in a matter of hours, maybe less.
There was another part of his mission. Decapitate the leadership. His superiors used words such as incapacitate and immobilize. What they meant was kill.
Kind of a shame, the mercenary thought. They’re pretty nice people, these guys I work with. The women, too. But I won’t be hurting them. It’s the leaders I’m after. The Brudnoys and Jinny Anson and the Stavenger kid.
Nodding as if reaffirming his mission, he went back to his work. Got to finish this job, he told himself. Can’t leave anything undone. No loose ends; no mistakes.
TOUCHDOWN MINUS 113 HOURS 22 MINUTES
Doug sat alone in his quarters, staring at his blank wall-screen. Declare our independence, he thought. Just like that. Tell the flatlanders down there that we no longer belong to Kiribati Corporation or any company or government on Earth. What words do I use to get that across?
His quarters were larger than his office, one of the new “suites” big enough to partition into a sitting room and a separate bedroom. It even had its own bathroom.
Leaning back in his comfortable chair of yielding plastic foam, Doug asked the computer to call up the American Declaration of Independence from his history program. Jefferson’s powerful, eloquent words filled the wallscreen. Doug reduced the display to a less imposing size, then spent several minutes studying it. Finally he shook his head. That was fine for 1776, he told himself, but this is nearly three hundred years later. They’d sound pretty stilted now.
Besides, he thought, everybody’d recognize the source. I’d be accused of plagiarism. That’s no way to start a new nation.
He thought back to his studies of military history. The American general who had commanded the Allied armies in Europe during World War II—what was his name? Ike something.
A few touches of his laser pointer and he had Dwight Eisenhower’s multimedia biography on the screen. He muted the sound and scrolled slowly through it, searching for the terse statement that Eisenhower had written back to Washington when the Nazis surrendered. His aides had wanted a long, flowery announcement filled with stirring phrases and fulsome praise for the various generals. Eisenhower had tossed their suggestions aside and written—ah! There it is: “The mission of this Allied force was fulfilled at 0241 local time, May 7, 1945.”
That’s what I want, Doug said to himself. Short, strong, direct.
He cleared his throat and called to the computer, “Dictation.” Then, after a moment’s thought, he said slowly and clearly:
“Moonbase hereby declares its independence from Earth and asks for admission to the United Nations.”
He stared at the words for a long moment, then decided they said what he intended to say. Briefly he thought of running them past his mother and Lev Brudnoy, but he shook his head at the idea. They’d want to tinker with the statement, maybe hedge it or decorate it with reasons and arguments. Ear candy. I’m in command, we’ve all agreed to that, and we’ve all agreed to declaring our independence. This is the message we send to Faure and the rest of Earth.
Doug called up the communications desk at the command center.
“Beam this message to U.N. headquarters in New York,” he said, “and spray it to every antenna on Earth. All the commsats, too. Send it by laser to Kiribati and to Masterson Corporation’s headquarters in Savannah.”
The chief comm tech on duty was a young man that Doug had played against in Moonbase’s annual low-gravity olympic games. He grinned as he scanned Doug’s message.
“Right away, boss,” he said.
Doug blanked his screen and leaned back in his foam chair. Okay, it’s done. Now to see if it has any effect.
TOUCHDOWN MINUS 112 HOURS 17 MINUTES
Although Lunar University had no real campus, its heart was the plushly equipped studio where teaching was done through electronic links to Earth and virtual reality programs.
Wilhelm Zimmerman liked his creature comforts. He demanded them. He had come to Moonbase because the “verdammt treaty” had closed his university department in Basel. He had given up cigars and strudel and even beer, but he still managed to overeat, underexercise, and drive Moonbase’s supply and maintenance staffs into frenzies with his demands for couches and padded chairs big enough to take his girth comfortably.
He still dressed in the gray, old-fashioned three-piece suits he had brought to Moonbase with him seven years earlier. He had personally designed a set of nanomachines to keep the suits in perfect repair, renewing fraying cuffs and worn spots—atom by atom. The nanomachines even kept his clothes clean.
Still, as he sat sprawled in his favorite sofa, he looked like a rumpled mess, his jacket unbuttoned and flapping loose, his vest stretched tight across his ample stomach, tie loose from shirt collar, the halo of stringy gray hair surrounding his bald pate as dishevelled as King Lear in the storm scene.
“A direct trajectory here?” he was asking Doug. “It is customary first to go to a space station, yah?”
“I think they might be worried that most of the people in the space stations are on our side,” Doug said.
Doug was sitting in one of the oversized, overpadded armchairs facing the sofa. Built by nanomachines that Zimmerman himself had programmed, the furniture looked ludicrously out of place in this vast, echoing electronics studio carved out of the lunar rock. No one else was in the studio. The lights had been turned off, except for the lamps on the end tables that flanked the sofa: slender graceful stalks of lunar aluminum; the tables were built of lightweight but sturdy honeycomb “sandwich” metal, also produced by nanomachines.
Zimmerman nodded as if Doug’s answer satisfied him. “And you have notified the U.N. that we are now an independent nation?”
Nodding, Doug replied, “The U.N., and as much of the news media as we could reach.”
“Still the troopship has not turned around?” Zimmerman’s accent seemed to get thicker each year.
“Not yet.”
“And there is no reaction from the U.N. to your declaration of independence?”
“Not yet,” Doug repeated.
“So,” the professor stretched out his short arms, “now we have nothing to do except wait, yah?”
“And prepare.”
Zimmerman’s shaggy brows shot up. “Prepare for what? Either they accept our independence or the Peacekeepers come in here and close everything.”
“I don’t intend to allow them to close Moonbase,” Doug said evenly.
Zimmerman snorted. “And how do you intend to stop them? With prayer, maybe?”
“That’s why I’ve come here to you, Professor,” said Doug. “We need your help.”
“To do what? Make a magic wand for you out of nanomachines? A death ray, maybe you want?”
Doug was accustomed to the old man’s blustering. “I was thinking more along the lines of medical help,” he said. “We may need—”
“I thought I’d find you here, Willi.”
Kris Cardenas came striding out of the shadows. Despite her years on the Moon she still kept a deep tan, thanks to ultraviolet lamps. To Doug she looked like a California surfer: broad shoulders, trim build, sparkling blue eyes. She kept her sandy hair clipped short and wore a loose, comfortable jumpsuit of pastel yellow. No jewelry, no decorations of any kind. From the easygoing, no-fuss look of her, you would never suspect she was a Nobel laureate nanotech researcher.
“Our young friend here wants me to make everyone bulletproof,” Zimmerman said, grudgingly dragging his bulk to one side of the sofa so Cardenas could sit beside him. Even on the Moon, Zimmerman did not move fast.
“No,” Doug protested. “All I’m asking—”
“You think perhaps that the nanomachines you carry inside you will protect you against machine guns? They saved your life twice before, but they don’t make you a superman.”
“Willi,” said Cardenas, with a charmer’s smile, “why don’t you let Doug tell you what he wants?”
“Medical supplies,” Doug blurted before Zimmerman could say another word. “If we’re cut off from Earth for more than a couple of months we’re going to run short of medical supplies. I was wondering if nanomachines could be developed to replace or augment some of the pharmaceuticals we use.”
“How can I do that? Your own silly rules prevent me from using nanomachines anywhere inside Moonbase, except in my laboratory,” Zimmerman grumbled:
“The safety rules; yes, I know,” said Doug.
“Even my furniture I had to make in my lab and then get a crew to schlep into here.”
“We can’t take the chance of having nanomachines propagate inside the base.”
“Nonsense,” Zimmerman muttered. “Superstition.”
Cardenas stepped in again. “So you’re ready to bend the safety rules, Doug?”
“We’ll have to, at least a little.”
“And you need help with medical supplies, right?”
“Right.”
“Aspirin maybe?” Zimmerman grumbled suspiciously.
“More than aspirin,” said Doug.
“Specifically?”
“I don’t know, specifically. You’ll have to talk to the medical staff.”
“I will have to? These are your orders? You are the field marshal now and I am under your command?”
“That’s exactly right,” said Cardenas, still smiling sweetly. “That’s the situation we’re in, Willi, and we’ve all got to do everything we can to help.”
Zimmerman mumbled something in German.
“Otherwise,” Cardenas warned, “we’ll all be sent back to Earth—and never allowed to work on nanotechnology again.”
For a long moment the old man said nothing. Then, with an enormous groaning sigh, he nodded unhappily. It made his cheeks wobble.
“Yah,” he said at last. “I will speak with your medical staff. I might as well. There is nothing else for me to do, now that Kiribati no longer takes our transmissions.”
Lunar University’s courses had been beamed to Kiribati for distribution to students around the world. That had worked well enough for the engineering and humanities curricula. But since most nations forbade teaching nanotechnology openly, the nanotech courses had to be packaged separately and delivered in clandestine ways. Cardenas often complained that she felt as if she were dealing in pornographic videos, “shipping them out in plain brown wrappers.”
“When this is over you can start teaching again,” Doug said.
“You think we will win?” Zimmerman’s tone made it clear
that he had no such illusions.
“We’ll try,” said Doug, getting to his feet.
“And we’ll do everything we can to help,” Cardenas said. “Won’t we, Willi?”
“Yah.” Without enthusiasm.
“Thanks,” Doug said. “I appreciate whatever you can do.”
He started off toward the door, threading his way through the equipment standing idle in the shadows of the unlit studio. Behind his retreating back, Cardenas leaned toward Zimmerman and whispered a suggestion to him. The old man frowned, then shrugged.
“Maybe we can make you invisible,” Zimmerman called after Doug, his voice echoing through the darkened studio.
Doug looked back over his shoulder and suppressed the urge to laugh. “That’d be great,” he said, thinking that bulletproof would be a lot better.
Back in his quarters, Doug lit up his wallscreen, scanning the computer’s personnel files for anyone who had military experience. It was a fruitless search. Moonbase’s employees were scientists and engineers, technicians and medical doctors, computer analysts, nurses, construction specialists, agrotechnicians, managers and administrators. They had all been hired through Masterson Corporation’s personnel office, back Earthside. The only military veterans were a handful among the astronauts who piloted the transfer spacecraft from Earth, and none of them were at Moonbase at the present time.
Faure picked his timing very carefully, Doug realized. Halfway through the first phase of building the main plaza, with dozens of extra construction workers on hand and not a single spacecraft at the rocket port. We’ve even got that dance troupe from Canada visiting; another thirty-five mouths to feed.
He sat up straight and raised his arms over his head, stretching until he felt his vertebrae pop. Well, he said to himself, at least the dancers don’t eat much. I guess.
