speak to any of the news reporters. You will be held incommunicado until we decide what to do with you.”
He turned on his heel and stamped away, followed by Hideshi and the slim young man, all of them walking in military lockstep.
Grant swung his legs off the bed and pulled back the partition separating him from Karlstad. Egon was sitting up in his bed, a palmcomp and headset resting on the sheets. He looked normal, no obvious signs of injury.
“Incommunicado,” Grant said. “I guess they’re pretty upset about what I did.”
Karlstad grinned at him. “If he thinks he can keep the reporters away from you, he’s living in dreamland.”
“You think so?”
Chuckling, Karlstad nodded. “You’re going to be the news media’s darling, kid. The brilliant young scientist who saved his fellow crew members deep in the boiling sea of Jupiter. It’ll be great!”
“Fellow crew members,” Grant repeated. “What happened to them? Zeb? Lane?”
“Lainie’s okay.”
“But she collapsed.”
“They haven’t found any permanent physical trauma. They’re keeping her in the women’s ward for observation.” He tapped a knuckle against the wall behind the head of his bed.
“And Zeb?”
Karlstad’s face turned more serious. “Bleeding in his lungs. Tissue must’ve been ruptured by the pressure.”
“Is he all right?”
“They stabilized him and shipped him to Selene. He should pull through, they think.”
“And what about Krebs?”
Egon laughed again. “That old bird’s too tough to keep down. She got a concussion from slamming into the bulkhead. She’s in the women’s ward, too, but she’s already busy helping Old Woeful to write reports back to the IAA.”
“How long have we been here?” Grant wondered.
“Three days. Like Christ rising from the sepulcher, you’ve come back to consciousness three days after going under.”
Grant frowned at Karlstad’s derisive impiety.
“For what it’s worth,” Egon continued, “neither of us suffered any major trauma, aside from having our hearing temporarily blotted out.”
Grant still heard that annoying metallic ringing echo to each word Karlstad spoke. Maybe my hearing is permanently damaged, he thought. That’s not so bad, considering what might have happened.
“If we’re okay, then why are they keeping us here?”
“Two reasons. The medics want to make sure we get a complete rest. And your friend Beech wants us kept away from the rest of the station personnel.”
“But that’s ridiculous,” Grant said.
“Tell that to your Mr. Beech. None of us is allowed to speak to the news media. By the time the reporters get here, Beech will probably have us shipped off the station. He wants us under wraps. Permanently.”
“But you said—”
“The reporters will find you, Grant. No matter where Beech puts you, they’ll ferret you out. Trust me, I know how they work.”
Grant sank back onto his upraised bed, thinking hard. They can’t keep the news secret. I blared it out to the whole world. But Beech and his team can punish us, all of us. He was furious with me, and he’s going to do his damnedest to prevent us from seeing the media in person. I hope Egon’s right. It’s not going to be easy for any of us, though.
He spent the rest of the day catching up on the messages that had accumulated. There were half a dozen from Marjorie and almost as many from his parents.
He stared at Marjorie’s face in the tiny screen of the palmcomp one of the nurses had lent him. She was smiling radiantly at him.
“I’m so proud of you, Grant,” Marjorie said in the headset’s earphone. “You’ve made an enormous discovery and you saved the lives of your crew…”
She’s acting as if I did it all by myself, Grant thought. He found that he didn’t mind that at all. In fact, he basked in the warmth of her smiling admiration.
“I love you, Grant darling,” his wife said. “And I miss you terribly. I hope you can come home soon. Sooner. Soonest.”
Grant adjusted the microphone of the palmcomp’s headset so close to his lips that they almost touched it, then whispered a long, rambling, heartfelt message to Marjorie, telling her how he yearned to be with her, how he would take the first vessel heading Earthward as soon as the authorities gave him permission to leave But when he tried to transmit the message, the screen glared: ACCESS TO UPLINK DENIED. NO OUTGOING MESSAGES PERMITTED.
Incommunicado. Maybe the news media would be able to get to him, once they arrived at the station, Grant thought, but probably Beech and his people will have moved us by then. It’s not going to be as easy as Egon thinks.
There were more messages, Grant found, hundreds of messages from total strangers that radiated hatred and fury at his “godless humanist blasphemy.” None of them were from people he actually knew; all strangers, most of them did not even speak their names. More than one contained a death threat. “It is the duty of God’s disciples to strike you dead,” said one particularly chilling ascetic-looking young man.
There was also a long list of incoming messages from the news media—but the messages themselves were all blanked out, censored, except for the name and affiliation of the sender.
Startled by the hate mail, smoldering at the censorship, Grant composed a long and upbeat message for his parents, keeping it totally personal, assuring them that he was fine, carefully avoiding any hint of scientific information. Still, when he commanded the palmcomp to transmit, the screen again answered: ACCESS TO UPLINK DENIED.
If I ever get back to Earth, he began to realize, it will probably be Siberia—if some Zealot fanatic doesn’t kill me first.
Karlstad seemed unworried, though, confident that the news media would find a way past the New Morality’s stone walls. Grant was not so certain. He tried to put in a call to Dr. Wo, but even that access was denied him.
I’m a prisoner here, he told himself. Egon and I are being held prisoners. But what about Zeb? Once he’s up and around at Selene he can tell everyone about what we did. Unless he dies there. Unless some Zealot gets to him in the lunar hospital.
The hours dragged by. Grant felt strong enough to get up and go back to his own quarters, but the nurse on duty told him that he was to remain in the infirmary. Grant at least got to walk the length of the ward, noticing that his and Karlstad’s were the only beds occupied. Through the window in the infirmary door he could see two hefty security guards outside in the corridor.
We’re in prison.
Sleep would not come that night. Grant lay in his bed, wide awake, wondering what would happen to him. The New Morality was deciding his fate. Ellis Beech was determining the course of his life.
He had to get away, had to break out of this trap. But how?
It was almost 6 a.m. when someone entered the still-darkened infirmary. More than one person, Grant realized, listening to their footsteps approaching his bed.
Assassins? Grant’s heart clutched in his chest. He was completely defenseless. There was no place to hide in the infirmary; he couldn’t even run away, there was only the one entrance to the ward.
It was two men, walking quietly past the empty beds, guided by the pencil-beam of a small flashlight.
“Which one?” he heard a man whisper.
A hesitation. Grant slipped out of bed, fists balled at his sides, legs trembling. Despite his fear he felt slightly ridiculous, ready to fight for his life in a flimsy knee-length, open-back hospital gown.
“Archer… here’s his bed.”
