by Ben Bova
Quickly she detached the cart and slipped into the tractor’s cab. She put it in gear and headed for the nearest ramp, up to the top level.
HABITAT CHRYSALIS
Big George scowled at the display splashed across his wall screen as he sat in his favorite recliner, feet up, a frosty mug of beer at his side. Solar storm, he said to himself. Big one.
The IAA forecasters were predicting that the storm would not reach Ceres. The cloud of ionized particles followed the interplanetary magnetic field, and the field’s loops and knots were guiding it across the other side of the solar system, far from Ceres’s position. George felt grateful. Chrysalis was protected by electromagnetic shielding, just as most spacecraft were, but George had no great ambition to ride out a storm.
Poor bastards on Vesta are gonna get it, he noted. Hope they’ve got the sense to get their arses underground in time. George shrugged and reached for his beer. At least they’ve got plenty of warning.
The display showed spacecraft traffic. Elsinore was the only vessel George was interested in. Edith Elgin was aboard, coming to Ceres to do a video report on the war out here. About fookin’ time somebody in the news media paid attention, George thought.
Elsinore was swinging clear of the radiation cloud, he saw. She’ll be here in four days and some, George said to himself. Good. We’ll be waitin’ for her.
He took a long swallow of beer. There was nothing else for him to do, except wait.
HUMPHRIES MANSION
Fuchs crouched behind the makeshift barricade jammed at the top of the stairs, peering into the shadows. Some light from the garden outside was leaking through the grills covering the upstairs windows. He could hear movement downstairs, but it was almost impossible to see anything with all the indoor lights off. Nodon has a hand torch, he knew, but to turn it on would simply give the guards a target to shoot at.
“Nodon,” he whispered, “pull down some of the drapes on the windows.”
The crewman scuttled away, and Fuchs heard ripping noises, then a muffled thud.
A strong voice called from the first floor, “Whoever you are, you can’t get out of here. You’re trapped. Better give yourselves up and let us turn you over to the authorities.”
Fuchs bit back the snarling reply he wanted to make. Nodon slithered up and pushed some bunched-up fabric into his hands. “Will this do, Captain?” he asked.
“We’ll see,” Fuchs whispered back.
A light flashed momentarily in the darkness and a man yowled with pain. Amarjagal, halfway across the landing, had fired her gun at someone creeping silently up the steps. But not silently enough. The Mongol woman had heard him and shot him with her laser pistol. Its beam was invisible, but the fabric of the guard’s clothing flashed when it was hit. Fuchs heard the man tumbling down the carpeted stairs.
We need some light, Fuchs said to himself. If I can set this drapery afire we can use it as a torch.
Another spark of light splashed against the table, just past Fuchs’s ear. He smelled burning wood.
“Behind us!” Sanja screamed in his native Mongol dialect.
Fuchs turned as both Sanja and Nodon fired blindly down the hallway. There’s another staircase! he realized. Fool! Fool! You should have thought of that, should have—
Nodon screamed with pain as a bolt struck him and grabbed his shoulder. Fuchs snatched the gun from Nodon’s fingers and fired blindly down the hall. In the corner of his eye he saw Amarjagal shooting at a pair of figures crawling up the steps.
Dropping Nodon’s gun, Fuchs bunched the drapery fabric in one hand and fired his gun into it. The stuff smoldered. He fired again, and it burst into flame. So much for fire-retardant materials, he thought. Put a hot enough source on it and it will burn.
“Shoot at them,” he ordered Sanja. “Keep their heads down.”
Sanja obediently fired down the hallway, even picking up Nodon’s gun and shooting with both hands.
Fuchs scrambled to his feet and plunged down the hall, bellowing like a charging bull, firing his own gun with one hand and waving the blazing drapery over his head with the other. Whoever was down there was still ducking, not firing back. Fuchs saw the back stairwell, skidded to a stop and threw the fiery fabric down the steps. For good measure he sprayed the stairwell with his gun.
He saw several men backing down the stairs as the drapery tumbled down. The carpeting on the steps began to smoke and an alarm started screeching in the flickering shadows.
Humphries had gone from his office into his adjoining bedroom, eyes wide with fright. He could feel his heart pounding beneath his ribs, hear the pulse thundering in his ears so loudly he barely heard Ferrer shouting at him.
Somebody’s broken into my house, screeched a voice in his head. Somebody’s gotten into my home!
The emergency lights were on and the cermet shutters had sealed off the bedroom from the office and the hallway beyond it. Nobody can get to me, Humphries told himself. There’s two fireproof doors between me and them. I’m safe. They can’t reach me. The guards will round them up. I’m safe in here.
Still in her white terrycloth robe, Ferrer grabbed him by both shoulders. “It’s Fuchs!” she shouted at him. “Look at the display!”
The wall screen showed a stubby miniature bear of a man charging down the hallway outside, swinging a blazing length of drapery.
“Fuchs?” Humphries gasped. It was difficult to make out the man’s face in the false-color image of the infrared camera. “It can’t be!”
Ferrer looked angry and disgusted. “It is! The computer’s matched his image and his voice. It’s Fuchs and three of his henchmen.”
“Here?”
“He’s come to kill you!” she snapped.
“No! He can’t! They’ll—”
“FIRE!” the computer’s emergency warning sounded. “FIRE IN THE REAR STAIRWELL.”
Humphries froze, staring at the wall screen, which now showed the rear stairs blazing.
“Why don’t the sprinklers come on?” he demanded.
“The water’s off,” she reminded him.
“No water?” Humphries bleated.
“The building’s concrete,” Ferrer said. “Seal off the burning area and let the fire consume all the oxygen and kill itself. And anybody in the burning section.”
Humphries felt the panic in him subside a little. She’s right, he thought. Let the fire burn itself out. He stood up straighter, watching the wallscreen’s display.
“Anybody caught in there,” he said, pointing shakily, “is going to get burned to death. Fuchs is going to roast, just as if he were in hell.”
Hurrying back to the makeshift barricade at the top of the main staircase, Fuchs could smell smoke wafting up from the rear stairs.
“FIRE!” said a synthesized voice, calm and flat but heavily amplified. “FIRE IN THE REAR STAIRWELL.”
“We’ve got to get out of here,” Sanja hissed in his ear.
“No!” Fuchs snapped. “Not till we get Humphries.”
Amarjagal crawled to them. “More guards down there,” she said. “They will charge up the stairs.”
From the corner of his eye Fuchs could see the flickering light of the flames in the rear stairwell. They can’t attack us from that direction, he thought. Then he realized, And we can’t retreat that way, either.
Laser bolts sizzled against the upturned table and scorched the wall behind them.
“Here they come!”
Even in the shadowy light Fuchs could see a team of guards charging up the stairs, firing their handguns as others down in the entryway also fired up at them.
Fuchs rolled to one side of the table, where his crew had laid a heavy marble bust from one of the tables down the hall. He noticed that one of the laser blasts had ignited a painting on the wall behind them. Grunting with the effort, he lifted the bust with both hands, raised it above the edge of the upturned table, and hurled it down the stairs. It bounced down the steps, scattering the approaching guards like a
bowling ball. Sanja and Amargjagal fired at them. Fuchs heard screams of pain.
“We must get out of here,” Amarjagal said flatly. There was no panic in her voice, not even fear. It was simply a statement of fact.
And Fuchs knew she was right. But they were surrounded, trapped. And Humphries was untouched.
SHINING MOUNTAIN BASE
Been a long time since I drove a tractor, Pancho said to herself as she puttered up the ramp toward the base’s topmost level. They haven’t changed much since my astronaut days, she thought. Haven’t improved them.
The fact that the Nairobi base was so big was an advantage to her. They’re scurrying all over the place looking for me; got a lot of territory to search. I’ll be in good shape until those three blind mice down there start talking.
The tractor reached the top of the ramp and Pancho steered past a knot of blue-coveralled construction workers, heading for a quiet, empty spot along the base of the dome. She figured it would take the better part of half an hour to get the laser going and cut a reasonably sized hole in the dome’s metal wall. Better get into the softsuit before then, she told herself. Unless you want to breathe vacuum.
Nobuhiko felt sorry for Daniel Tsavo. The man sat in a little folding chair in the base’s infirmary, hunched almost into a fetal position, his fists balled up on his lap, his unseeing eyes aimed at the floor. It must be terrible to be blind, Nobu thought, even if it’s only temporary.
A pair of doctors and three nurses were finishing their ministrations, taping a bandage across Tsavo’s eyes while the man kept up a low angry mumble about what Pancho had done to him.
Keeping his face impassive as he listened to Tsavo’s muttered story, Nobu couldn’t help feeling some admiration for Pancho. She walked into the lion’s den knowingly, he realized. She came here to learn what Nairobi is doing. I wonder if she understands now that Nairobi is a tool of Yamagata Corporation? And if she does, what should I do about it?
I should call my father, Nobuhiko thought. But not here. Not now. Not in front of these aliens. Wait. Have patience. You’ve come all the way to the Moon, be patient enough to wait until they capture Pancho. Then we’ll find out how much she knows. Once we determine that, it will be time to decide what to do with her.
Pancho was thinking of Yamagata as she toted the laser from the back of the minitractor to the base of the dome’s curving metal wall. This topmost level of the base was quieter than the lower levels. Construction here was nearly complete, except for small groups scattered across the dome’s floor, painting and setting up partitions. There were guards at all the airlocks, though, and more guards stationed along the lockers where space suits were stored.
She kept low and stayed behind the tractor, hoping that anyone searching for her up at this level would see nothing more than a tractor parked near an empty section of the wall. Until the laser starts flashing sparks of molten metal, and by then it’ll be too late to stop me. I hope.
Why is Yamagata backing Nairobi? she asked herself as she plugged the power cable into the tractor’s thermionic generator. Nobuhiko told me Yamagata’s not involved in space operations, they’re concentrating all their efforts on Earth. Yeah, sure. What was it Dan Randolph used to say: “And rain makes applesauce.” Nobu was lying through his teeth at me. Sumbitch is using Nairobi to get established on the Moon. But why?
It wasn’t until she had the laser ready to go and was pulling the soft-suit out of her travel bag that the answer hit Pancho. Yamagata’s getting ready to take over the Belt! They’re letting Astro and Humphries slaughter each other and they’ll step over the bloody corpses and take control of everything! They’re even helping us to fight this damned stupid war! Suddenly Pancho felt angry. At herself. I should’ve seen this, she fumed silently. If I had half the smarts god gave a warty toad I would have figured this out months ago. Damn! Double damn it all to hell and back! I’ve been just as blind as I made those people downstairs.
Okay, she told herself. So you’ve been outsmarted. Just don’t go and kill yourself. Check out this suit carefully.
The softsuit was easy to put on. You just stepped into it the same way you stepped into a pair of coveralls, put your arms through the sleeves, and sealed up the front like it was Velcro. The nanomachines are activated by the body’s heat, she knew. Wriggling her fingers inside the skin-thin gloves, she wondered all over again how the virus-sized nanobugs could keep her safe from the vacuum of space without stiffening up the way normal gloves and fabric suits did.
She had never worn a nanotech helmet before. It hung limply in her gloved hands, like an empty plastic sack. Reading the illustrated instructions off her palmcomp, Pancho blew it up like a kid’s balloon. It puffed out to a rigid fishbowl shape. It felt a little spongy to her, but Pancho pulled the helmet over her head and sealed it to the suit’s collar by running two fingers along the seam. Same as sealing a freezer bag, she thought.
No life-support pack; only a slim green cylinder of oxygen, good for an hour. Or so the instructions said.
Okay, she told herself. You got one hour.
It was difficult for the Nairobi security woman to understand what the nearly hysterical Japanese woman was saying. She kept pawing at her eyes and sobbing uncontrollably. The two African guards, both men, were still sprawled on the concrete floor, unconscious.
She called her boss on her handheld and reported her finding: one tractor driver and two guards, all three of them incapacitated, blinded.
“Where’s the tractor?” Her boss’s face, even in the handheld’s minute screen, scowled implacably at her.
“Not here,” she replied.
The boss almost smiled. “Good. All tractors have radio beacons. Get the number of the tractor out of the driver, then we can track its beacon and find out where the fugitive is.”
“Assuming the fugitive is with the tractor,” she said, before thinking.
His scowl deepened. “Yes, assuming that,” he growled.
It wasn’t wise to second-guess the boss, she remembered too late.
Pancho hesitated as she held the laser’s cutting head next to the curving metal wall. I cut a hole and the air whooshes out. None of the people up here are in suits. They could get killed.
Then she shook her head. This dome’s too big for that. The air starts leaking out, they’ll pop some emergency sheets that’ll get carried to the hole and plug it up long enough for them to get a repair crew to fix it. Nobody’s going to get hurt except you, she said to herself, if you don’t get your butt in gear.
She thumbed the laser’s control switch. Its infrared beam was invisible, but a thin spot of cherry-red instantly began glowing on the metal wall. Holding the laser head in both her gloved hands like an old-fashioned power drill, Pancho slowly lifted it in an arc-like shape. She felt nothing inside the softsuit, but noticed that dust was swirling along the floor and disappearing into the thin, red-hot cut. Punched through, she thought. Nothing but vacuum outside.
The wall was thick, and the work went slowly, but finally Pancho cut a hole big enough for her to crawl through. Dust and scraps of litter were rushing through it now. But as she turned off the laser and ducked the hole, she saw there was another wall beyond it. Drat-damn it! Meteor shield.
It was a flimsy wall of honeycomb metal set up outside the actual dome structure to absorb the constant hail of micrometers that rained down on the Moon’s surface. Grumbling to herself, Pancho took up the laser again and started cutting once more. This one’ll go a lot faster, she told herself.
She heard a voice bellowing in Japanese, very close, but ignored it, sawing frantically with the laser to cut through the meteor shield and get outside.
“You there!” a man’s voice yelled in English. “Stop that or I’ll shoot!”
ORE CARRIER CROMWELL
Despite his outward show of confidence as he sat in the command chair on the bridge, Cromwell’s skipper felt decidedly nervous as the creaking old ore ship cruised toward Vesta inside the radiation
cloud. As surreptitiously as he could, he kept an eye on the console that monitored the radiation levels inside and outside his ship. A glaring red light showed that the sensors outside were reporting lethally high radiation, enough to kill a man in minutes. Next to that baleful red glow on the control panel a string of peaceful pale green lights reported that radiation levels inside the ship were close to normal.
Good enough, the captain said to himself. So far. We still have a long way to go.
He had worked out with the special weapons tech how close they would have to be to Vesta before releasing the twin missiles that contained the nanomachines. They had developed three possible scenarios. The first one was the basic plan of attack, the flight path they would follow if everything went as planned and they were not detected by Humphries’s people. That was the trajectory they were following now, sneaking along inside the radiation cloud until they reached the predetermined release point.
If they were detected on their way in to Vesta, or if the ship developed some critical malfunction such as a breakdown of its radiation shielding (a possibility that made the skipper shudder) then they would release the missiles early and hope that they would not be seen or intercepted by Vesta’s defense systems. The skipper and the weapons tech had worked out a release point for that contingency. It was only six hours from where they now were.
Their third option was to call off the attack altogether. That decision would be entirely—and solely—up to the captain. Only a major disaster would justify abandoning the attack, such as a serious malfunction of the ship’s systems or an interception by HSS vessels.
Cruising blind and deaf inside the radiation cloud, watching the sensor readings on the control panel, the skipper thought that of the three options before him he much preferred number two. Let’s get to the early release point, fire the damned missiles at Vesta, and get the hell out of here before something goes wrong.
