Moonwar

by Ben Bova

  “And Global News and the White House,” he added.

  Meyers gave him a disdainful look. “You know what I mean, Edan.”

  “Okay, okay,” he said, raising his hands in mock surrender. “But what more can I do? Global’s been airing Edie Elgin’s reports from Moonbase. Faure’s pissed as hell with me over that.”

  “You could start by showing what a ghost town this space station has become,” Meyers said. “American jobs are down the tubes because of Faure.”

  “And the New Morality’s insistence that the nanotech treaty be enforced even on the Moon.”

  “Right.”

  “You want me to take on the New Morality?”

  She hesitated, studying the expression on his face. McGrath had been handsome before he’d let himself start going to fat. He still looked pretty good. But is he strong enough? Meyers wondered.

  Carefully, she said, “I want you to show the American public—the world public, really—how much this war against Moonbase is really costing.”

  The waiter brought McGrath’s first course. Once he left, McGrath lifted his soup spoon, but instead of digging in he jabbed it in Meyers’ direction.

  “You know,” he said, “there’s nothing like a really good controversy to boost ratings.”

  Meyers grinned at him.

  MOONBASE

  “What on Earth are you doing?” Claire Rossi blurted.

  Nick O’Malley was dragging a bulky container into their one-room quarters. It looked like an oversized piece of soft-sided luggage, and it made their little compartment crowded.

  “Emergency procedure,” O’Malley said, pushing the container into the corner between the bunk and the desk. Still it took up almost half the floor space.

  Rossi watched impatiently as her husband knelt on one knee and began to rip open the Velcro seams of the container. She leaned over his broad shoulder and looked inside.

  “A spacesuit!”

  “Right,” O’Malley said. “I’m going to show you how to get into it, in case you need to while I’m not here.”

  “Why would I—oh.”

  As he hauled the torso and leggings of the suit out and spread them on the bunk, O’Malley said, “When the attack comes we might lose air pressure. This gadget here will yowl when the pressure drops below a safe minimum.”

  He put a small gray box on the shelf carved into the stone wall above the bunk.

  “When you hear this go off, you get into the suit as fast as you can. Here, I’ll show you how.”

  “But suppose I’m in the personnel office when it happens?” she asked.

  O’Malley shook his head. “When the Peacekeepers start their attack everybody not on essential duty will go to their quarters. That’s orders from management.”

  She almost started to twit him about her personnel job being considered nonessential, but the dead-serious expression on her husband’s face stopped her.

  Instead she asked, “Is everybody getting a spacesuit?”

  “Not enough to go around,” he answered, shaking his head.

  “Then why do I get special treatment?”

  He smiled bleakly at her. “Because you’re a special person. You’re married to me. And you’re pregnant.”

  “But that means somebody else will have to go without a suit.”

  His lips were a grim, pinched line. “Claire, hundreds of people here are going to go without a suit. But you’re not. Now let me show you how to put it on properly.”

  She knew better than to argue with him. He’s trying to protect me, she told herself. And the baby. But if the air pressure goes down, lots of people will die here. And how long will the suit keep me?

  Aloud, as she struggled into the clumsy leggings, she asked, “Where will you be when the shooting starts? Not operating the tractors, of course.”

  He scowled. “No. I’ve been assigned to help Professor Zimmerman, for the sake of St. Ignatius.”

  “Zimmerman?”

  “I think Doug Stavenger wants me to be the old man’s bodyguard.”

  “Is the professor getting a suit?” Rossi asked as she tugged on the boots.

  “There isn’t one in the base that’d fit him.”

  “Oh dear.”

  As he knelt at her feet and helped her zip the boots and leggings together, O’Malley said, “After just half a day with the old bugger, I almost wish somebody would knock him off.”

  “That’s no way to talk, Nick.”

  “He’s impossible.”

  “He’s a genius and geniuses have their quirks.”

  O’Malley made a sour face. “You know what I’ve been doing for him all morning? Collecting dust!”

  “What?”

  “I’ve been teleoperating a tractor all damned morning, scooping up dust off the regolith for him to experiment with.”

  “That sounds crazy.”

  “Tell me about it. He wants to build nanomachines that behave like dust particles, so he tells me he needs samples of dust to work with.”

  Rossi wormed her arms into the suit’s torso, then popped her head through the neck ring.

  “Why does he want to make nanomachines that behave like dust particles?” she asked.

  “Because he’s way beyond quirky, that’s why. He’s outright daft.”

  SAVANNAH

  “It’s easy duty,” said the security chief. “Four men outside, two inside. Pretty soft, really.”

  Jack Killifer sat in the stiff little plastic chair in front of the chief’s metal desk, trying hard to keep his face from showing what he was feeling inside. I’m in Joanna Brudnoy’s house! he exulted. Okay, it’s just the servants’ wing of the house, but still—here I am.

  The security chief wore a tan summerweight uniform with epaulets and shoulder patches and even a couple of medals pinned above his left breast pocket. Tin soldiers, Killifer thought.

  He himself was in a baggy shirt and Levis, the “uniform of the day,” as instructed.

  The security chief kept glancing at the array of display screens that made up one whole wall of the bare little office. They showed security camera views of the grounds around the house, the garage, the pool area, and every room inside except the master bedroom.

  “The only thing you’ve got to remember,” the chief said, swivelling his attention back and forth between the screens and Killifer, “is that she doesn’t like to see uniformed guards around the place.”

  “So we dress like gardeners,” Killifer said, putting just a hint of disdain in it

  “Yeah. Both chauffeurs are on the team, of course, and the butler’s supposed to be a black belt. He carries a nine-millimeter, too. All the time.”

  They had issued Killifer a brand-new Browning machine pistol: fifty rounds, either semi-or full-automatic. It still smelled of packing grease.

  “But the butler only works the day shift, doesn’t he?” Killifer asked.

  The chief hiked an eyebrow. “The butler works until they both go to bed. He don’t sleep until they do.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “So all you’ve got to do is patrol outside, make yourself look like a gardener, and keep an eye out for strangers.”

  “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.”

&
nbsp; “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 blond 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 walked 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 Moonbase 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-l’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 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.