He grabbed at his stump as the nose began to climb and the G came on steadily, increasing.
He forced himself to lift his damaged appendage and hold it straight up so the G would help stanch the flow of blood.
He kept the nose rising and the juice full on. Ahead through the canopy he could see stars. And the earth.
17
Pierre Artois had stationed a man on top of the lunar base in a space suit to radio him firsthand reports of the saucer battle. Each suit had a radio in the helmet; the transmissions were picked up by a small antenna mounted on the top of the base air lock. With the base radio tower in pieces, these transmissions were not automatically rebroad-cast to earth, nor could Pierre talk to or hear Mission Control in France on the com center radios. The man outside spotted the exhaust plume of the saucer leaving the moon. He reported it to Pierre.
'Which one is it?' Pierre asked, a question that revealed the depths of his despair, because even he knew that there was no way to tell one saucer from the other from a distance. And the distance was great, at least twenty miles.
'I don't know.'
'Keep watching,' Pierre ordered, trying to calm himself. He made a transmission on the handheld, calling Jean-Paul Lalouette.
There was no answer.
Julie strummed her fingers on top of one of the useless large radio transmitters, which didn't help the emperor's mood. He called several more times on the small radio before he finally gave up and laid it on the plastic counter. Henri Salmon, Fry One and Claudine Courbet were also in the com center, so he weighed his words before he spoke.
'It must have been Charley Pine,' he said. 'Lalouette probably frightened her.'
Julie said nothing as Pierre recalled his contacts with the American pilot. She never struck him as a woman who would frighten easily. He cursed under his breath.
Of course, Jean-Paul Lalouette wasn't a person who would turn tail and run from a fight either. He was French, after all, and he believed body and soul in the glory of Pierre's crusade.
'Or something went tragically wrong,' he admitted aloud.
'Newton Chadwick,' Julie said bitterly.
Ah, yes, Pierre thought. Chadwick, a man without a shred of honor. If something happened to Lalouette, Chadwick would abandon the fight, abandon the people on the lunar base, abandon the dream of world conquest, abandon everything to save his own skin. If something happened to Lalouette, Chadwick would run like a rabbit. He was that kind of man.
'Without a saucer, how are we going to get back to earth?' Claudine Courbet asked rhetorically. Pierre and the other two men stared at her.
'Putting Chadwick in the saucer with Lalouette was a mistake,' Julie said, unable to resist a dig at Pierre's decision to send them both to shoot down Pine. 'You fool!' she continued shrilly, addressing the emperor and unable to control the timbre of her voice. 'You taught Pine to fly the space-planes, you allowed her to come to the moon when she knew nothing of our plans, you failed to prevent her escape with the spaceplane, and you sent a person of dubious loyalty with Lalouette in our only possible transport off this miserable rock.'
Pierre sat frozen, unable to think, unable to analyze the situation. Never in his worst nightmares had he envisioned a situation like this. Marooned on the moon!
Julie unconsciously brushed the hair back from her forehead and eyes. In times past Pierre had thought the habitual gesture captivating, but he didn't now.
He watched mesmerized as Julie took several deep breaths and by sheer force of will brought herself back under icy control. 'Fortunately all is not lost,' she said. 'We still have Egg Cantrell. Pine and her boy-toy will undoubtedly try to rescue him. They will land their saucer somewhere nearby. We
She scrutinized the faces of her listeners, ignoring Pierre. Then she looked directly into the eyes of Henri Salmon and began issuing orders.
When she finished, Julie Artois sent everyone off to make preparations. Pierre remained, listlessly staring at the useless radios.
She waited for him to meet her eyes, but he didn't. After a moment she walked out. Salmon was heading into the mess hall to address the assembled base personnel when she saw him. She caught his eye and motioned for him to follow her. They ducked into the Artois living compartment and shut the door.
'You saw him. Do you think he is still capable of leading us?' Julie asked bluntly.
Salmon considered carefully. He wasn't sure where she was going with this and didn't want to make a mistake. They needed the saucer, which had a limited carrying capacity.
Regardless of how the cake was cut, many of the base personnel would have to be left behind. Henri Salmon didn't want to be one of them.
'I don't know,' he said after a pause.
'Oh, you know,' she said, 'and you are hedging.' She moved closer, reached for his hand and placed it on her breast. 'That's what you want, isn't it? I've seen the way you look at me.'
'You are a beautiful woman,' Salmon admitted.
'The conquest of earth was my idea,' Julie said, holding his hand in place and staring into his eyes. 'I thought Pierre was the man who could do it, but when major difficulties arose, he folded. You, I think, are made of sterner stuff.'
Salmon said nothing. He was very aware of the ripe firmness of her breast. The rumors weren't true, he decided. She had not had surgical enhancement.
'If we take the saucer to earth, negotiate, then return, the antigravity beam generator will still be here. We can still force the world's governments to yield. Honor, power, glory, wealth — it can all be ours. You and I — we can rule a united earth!'
Salmon felt the power of her personality. And he wanted off the moon. He swept her into his arms and kissed her.
Rip Cantrell and Charley Pine stared through the canopy of their saucer at the lunar base, which was about two miles away. The saucer was behind a ridge northwest of the base, with just the canopy protruding above the bare rock ledge. The only sign of man that they could see was the pile of rubble that had been the radio tower — and the tiny figure of an individual in a space suit standing near it. The sun reflecting off his silver space suit made him readily visible.
'So what do you think?' Rip asked.
'I dunno.'
'We are going to have to go in there after Egg.'
'I suppose.'
'Can you think of another way?'
'Make them send him out.'
'How?'
'That's the problem,' she admitted, and inadvertently glanced upward. The other saucer had left an hour ago in a plume of rocket exhaust, on its way into orbit or back to earth. Or, perhaps, leaving the area so that it could reenter later and try to ambush her and Rip, one more time. She wished she knew which of the three possibilities was the fact.
Rip seemed to read her thoughts. 'You must have hurt him badly,' he said.
'Umm.'
'Flying across the antimatter stream at point-blank range — something must have popped in that saucer. Telling the saucer to pull up and fire the rocket engines may have been Lalouette's last conscious thought. He might
