by Ben Bova
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 cohost, all yours. And a full-length 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 mustache. 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 wall-screen 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 lobbers,” 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.”
“That’s enough to do the job,” Anson said. To Doug. She pointedly kept from looking at Gordette.
Staring at the mass of vehicles parked out on the open mare, Doug muttered, “What we need is a good solar flare to knock them out.”
“That would only postpone the inevitable,” Anson said.
Doug looked at her, sitting behind her desk. “Jinny, you used to be a lot of fun to talk to. You’re getting morose.”
“Yeah, I’ve noticed that, too,” she answered, straight-faced. “Wonder why?”
“How old is this information?” Doug asked, pointing at the wallscreen.
“This is real-time,” she said. “The bird’s made four passes over the region, so far.”
“And they haven’t tried to blind it or knock it off the air?”
“Why bother?” Gordette said. “If I was running their operation, I’d want you to see how much stuff we got.”
“It is kinda depressing,” Anson agreed—again, without looking Gordette’s way.
“Who else has seen this?” Doug asked.
“Nobody,” she replied sharply. �
�The bits are transmitted from the satellite to our computer and straight to my office. That’s why I asked you to come here and see it. Not even Harry Clemens is getting this data.”
“Good,” Doug said. “It certainly is depressing.”
“Three hundred troopers,” Anson mused. “With missiles and all the other goodies.”
“Well,” Doug said, trying to brighten the mood, “at least we know they’re still at Copernicus. They’re not on their way here yet.”
“Take ’em about two days to cover the distance?” Gordette asked.
“Just about,” Doug replied.
“Two Earth days,” Anson said. “Forty-eight hours. Maybe a little less if they push it.”
Steepling his fingers almost as if in prayer, Gordette said, “Well, if they’re gonna knock out your satellite, it’ll be just before they haul ass and start on their way here.”
“Why bother?”
“Standard operating procedure. No commander wants the enemy watching his route of march, if he can help it.”
Anson looked from Gordette to the wallscreen and back again. “So if our bird goes off the air …”
“That means they’re starting on their way here,” Doug finished for her.
As if on cue, the wallscreen display broke into wild jagged streaks and then went blank.
The three of them rushed down to the control center, once they were certain that the reconnaissance satellite had actually been knocked out, and the dead wallscreen wasn’t merely a malfunction somewhere in the communications system.
“You want to launch another recce bird?” Anson asked as they dashed along the corridor, hurrying past startled people.
“Not much sense to’ that,” Doug said over his shoulder.
“Yeah,” Gordette agreed. “Just be target practice for them.”
The control center was calm, with its usual air of controlled intensity, the quiet hum of consoles, the flickering of display screens in the dimly lit chamber. Doug automatically glanced at the big wallscreen that displayed a schematic of the entire base. The usual scattering of red and yellow lights, but otherwise everything was operating normally.
Doug knew from hours of studying the ballistics that a nuclear-tipped missile could be launched from the L-1 station and reach Moonbase in less than an hour. Even faster if the Peacekeepers wanted to goose it, but Doug thought that they would want to take at least an hour so that they would have time to make pinpoint mid-course corrections. If his reasoning was correct, they would want the nuke to go off over the solar farms inside Alphonsus’ ringwall after the Peacekeeper assault force had arrived on the other side of the mountains, shielded from the nuke’s radiation pulse, and ready to cross Wodjohowitcz Pass as soon as the explosion had knocked out Moonbase’s main electrical power supply.
The radar view of L-1 showed the same cluster of spacecraft hovering around the space station that Doug had seen the last time he’d looked.
“Can we get a visual?” he asked Jinny. “Turn one of the astronomical ’scopes on it?”
She nodded and walked off toward the technician who was monitoring the automated astronomical equipment sitting out by the central peak in the middle of Alphonsus.
Edith came tearing into the control center, breathless.
“Doug,” she said, puffing as she skidded to a stop next to him, “McGrath wants me to pipe the battle Earthside in real time!”
“Who’s McGrath?”
“The top boss! He owns Global News!”
Doug shifted mental gears as fast as he could; still, it took a few moments for him to realize what Edith was telling him.
“You’ll show what’s happening here when the Peacekeepers attack?”
“To the whole blazin’ world!” Edith said, exultant.
For the first time in what seemed like years, Doug felt a genuine smile curving his lips. “Faure’s not going to like that … not at all.”
Through her sitting room window, Joanna could see a soft twilight descending on the garden and the woods beyond it. The trees had been planted there to cover up the view of Savannah’s skyline and give the occupants of her house the feeling that they were truly out in the countryside rather than half a mile from the interstate.
“Global’s going to broadcast the confrontation?” she asked Doug’s image, grinning at her from the Windowall screen above the fireplace. She could not bear to use the word battle or attack. She knew that Moonbase could not win a battle or survive an attack.
“Edan McGrath himself called Edith and asked her to do it,” Doug said after the three-second lag. “Real-time coverage; blow by blow.”
“I’ve already got a pocketful of senators demanding an investigation of the president’s handling of the Moonbase crisis,” Joanna mused. “Coverage of the confrontation will show the voting public how you’re being attacked by the U.N.’s Peacekeepers.”
“This has got to stay confidential,” Doug was saying, not waiting for her response. “We don’t want Faure to know about it beforehand.”
Joanna’s brows knit. “But, Doug, maybe if we leaked the information Faure would call off the attack.”
She watched her son’s image in the display screen. Once he heard her words he shook his head. “The Peacekeepers are already on their way here, Mom. No one’s going to call off the attack. Not now.”
Alarm tingled through Joanna like an electric current. “You’re certain?”
“In forty-eight hours or less we’ll be able to see them coming across Mare Nubium.”
Joanna suddenly felt as if someone had ripped out her insides. All these weeks she had known it would come to this, yet she realized now that she had desperately clung to an unconscious hope that it could all be averted.
“You’ll have to surrender to them, then,” she said dully.
Three seconds passed. Doug replied, “Maybe.”
“You can’t fight them! You don’t have any weapons.”
Again the agonizing wait. Doug said, “We don’t have any guns, that’s true enough. But we’re not beaten yet.”
“Doug, what are you thinking of? You can’t fight an armed battalion of trained Peacekeeper troops! You’ll get yourself killed! You’ll destroy Moonbase!”
He hadn’t waited for her response. He was saying, in a calm, carefully measured tone, “I can’t tell you what we’re planning, Mom, because even a tight-laser link spreads enough for some snooper to eavesdrop. But we’re not going to obediently open our hatches and let the Peacekeepers take over Moonbase.”
“Doug, they’ll kill you!”
He smiled at her words. “If we surrender and have to return Earthside, I’m a dead man anyway.”
Joanna started to reply, then realized that her son was right. He had nothing to lose by fighting for Moonbase.
* * *
“Naw, I don’t mind working the night shift,” Killifer was saying. “At least I’ll be indoors, under the roof, if it rains.”
The security chief looked slightly uneasy. “I don’t usually put newcomers inside the house,” he said, “but Jonesie’s come down with some virus and we need a replacement for him right away.”
“It’s okay,” Killifer repeated, trying hard not to sound eager. “I’ll take his shift.”
“You already did your regular shift; I don’t like asking you to double up.”
Killifer shrugged as carelessly as he could. “Four to midnight is easy. I wouldn’t go to sleep until after midnight, anyway.”
The chief swivelled back and forth slowly in his desk chair, making it squeak slightly, eying Killifer as if he weren’t certain he was doing the right thing. Killifer sat in front of the little desk, doing his best to appear nonchalant.
Then he got an inspiration. “I get overtime pay for this, don’t I?”
The chief visibly relaxed. “Yeah, sure. Time and a half.”
Killifer nodded as if the money was his reason for agreeing to the extra shift so readily. “Double shift isn’t so bad,” he said,
“It’s only for a few days, right?”
“Yeah,” said the chief. “Until Jonesie comes back.”
“I’d just be spending my pay in some bar or someplace,” Killifer said. “This way I make plastic instead of spending it.”
“All right,” the chief said, still uneasy. “Go downstairs and change into a regular uniform. You work with Rodriguez. He monitors the screens, in here, and you sit in the kitchen until she and her husband go to bed. Then you patrol the rooms once every half hour. Check all the windows and doors. Except the master bedroom; just make sure their door’s shut tight. Pay particular attention to the sliders that go out to the pool deck.”
“Right.” Killifer nodded.
“Remember, she doesn’t like to see us. Stay in the kitchen until they go up to the master bedroom.”
“What about the butler?”
“He’ll go to bed after they do,” said the chief.
“Okay. Good.”
Again the chief hesitated. Killifer could feel his pulse throbbing in his ears as he sat facing the man across the pathetic little metal desk.
At last the chief said, “All right. Go downstairs and get into your uniform.”
Killifer got up from his chair slowly, turned and went to the office door.
“And thanks for filling in,” the chief said. Reluctantly.
“Nothing to it,” Killifer replied over his shoulder. He pulled the door open, then added, “I can use the extra plastic.”
The bastard suspects something, Killifer said to himself as he stepped out into the hallway. Not enough to turn me down, but this doesn’t sit right with him.
Then he grinned as he clattered down the metal spiral staircase. What the hell! Let him worry all he wants to. I’m in the house for two-three nights and she’s home with her creaky old man. Once the butler goes to bed, I’ll scope out the house and figure out the best way to get to her and then get away. Shit, they’ll be paying me to do it. Overtime.
NANOLAB
