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
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
