Ben Bova - Moonwar

She could not see the captain’s face behind his gold-tinted visor, but she imagined his red-rimmed eyes bugging out.

“What does this mean?” Munasinghe was panting from the exertion of running.

“They don’t want us to go in.”

“Of course! But—nanomachines? What nanomachines? Where is the danger?”

His voice sounded frightened to Edith. Nanomachines had such a bad reputation virtually everywhere on Earth that the mere mention of them was enough to worry almost anyone.

The tall Norwegian, recognizable by the lieutenant’s insignia on his nametag, pointed a gloved finger.

“Look!” he said, his voice shaking slightly.

A big grease stain on the garage floor was noticeably shrinking.

And then the stencilled letters of the warning sign started to get ragged around the edges, as if something was chewing on them.

“My God,” Munasinghe breathed.

“They’re not going into the garage,” Brudnoy said. “Not yet,” Gordette replied. “Do you think they will?” Doug asked him.

Gordette nodded. “They’ll fuss around a bit, but they’re not going to be stopped by some paint and a few grease stains.”

“You don’t think so?”

“They’ll come in. And once they’re past the garage, we’ve got nothing to stop them.”

Munasinghe had to make a decision. Instead of a trap, this was starting to look like a ruse to him. Yes, nanomachines had killed people, he knew, but what danger could nanomachines pose to armed troops encased in spacesuits? This is nothing but a ruse, a desperate attempt to keep us from entering Moonbase.

Still, he switched from the suit-to-suit frequency to call Killifer, back at the ship.

“Nanobugs, huh,” Killifer said.

“Can they truly be dangerous to us?” Munasinghe demanded.

No answer for several heartbeats. Then, “Well, yeah, if they’re programmed to gobble organic molecules.”

“What do you mean?”

“If they’ve spread nanobugs across the garage floor to eat up oil stains and paint and stuff like that, the same bugs might be able to eat up the rubber and plastic materials in your spacesuits.”

“Nothing but the soles of our boots will touch the garage floor,” Munasinghe said.

“Uh-huh. And what’re the soles of your boots made of? Plastics, aren’t they? Organic molecules.”

“But there is a layer of metal mesh inside the plastic sole.”

“Sure. That mesh’ll look like a gang of wide-open doorways to the nanobugs. They’re the size of viruses, y’know.”

“They can rupture our suits, then?”

“Right. And then start chewing on the organic molecules of your bodies.”

Munasinghe shuddered involuntarily.

“They’re not coming in!” said Jinny Anson, almost exultant.

“They’ll come in,” Gordette assured her. “Soon’s they work up the nerve.”

Doug agreed with him. Sooner or later they would try to get past the garage. He pulled up a wheeled chair and sat beside the chief tech.

“Have you figured out their suit frequency?”

“Yep. Wanna listen to ’em?”

“No. I want to talk to them. Patch me in.”

Munasinghe was in an agony of indecision. To come all this way, nearly half a million kilometers, and be stopped by what may be a clever trick—it was intolerable. Worse still, his superiors back at headquarters would never stand for it. Munasinghe saw himself broken, perhaps even cashiered from the Peacekeepers altogether and sent home to rot in shame the rest of his life.

On the other hand, nanomachines could kill. Wasn’t that why the U.N. banned them? Wasn’t that why they had been sent here to Moonbase in the first place, to stop these renegades from developing deadly nanomachines? How could he order his troopers into such danger?

Munasinghe had been in firefights. He had been shelled by rocket artillery and bombed by smart missiles. He was not a coward. But nanomachines! The thought made him shudder. Invisible, insidious. If they got inside his suit and started eating his flesh…

“What are your orders, sir?” the Norwegian lieutenant asked, his voice low and earnest. “We can’t stand out here forever,” he added, needlessly.

Suppressing a reflex to snap at his arrogant criticism, Munasinghe made up his mind. After all, he had sent men into battle before. Soldiers took risks, deadly risks. It was part of the profession.

“Take your squad through the open area to those airlock hatches on the far wall. Get those hatches open as quickly as you can. Don’t waste time; use the grenades.”

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.” A strange voice sounded in Munasinghe’s earphones. From the way the lieutenant’s spacesuited form twitched, he must have heard it too.

“Who said that?” Munasinghe demanded.

“This is Douglas Stavenger, of Moonbase. The floor of our garage is covered with nanomachines that will devour the materials of your spacesuits. The airlock hatches are coated with them, too.”

“You are bluffing,” Munasinghe snapped.

“No, I’m not. We use the nanobugs routinely to clean up grease and oil stains that accumulate on the garage floor. You happened to pick a time when our semiannual cleanup is just starting.”

“I don’t believe you!” Munasinghe snapped.

“Don’t send your troops to their deaths. The nanomachines will destroy them before you can get our airlock hatches open.”

Hot boiling anger replaced Munasinghe’s indecision. Hatred welled up inside him. This smug upstart is trying to bluff me into ruining my career!

“Surrender your base!” he raged. “Now! You have fifteen seconds to surrender!”

More than ten seconds passed before the voice in his earphones said, “You’re sending your troops to their deaths needlessly. We have no quarrel with you. Return to Earth and leave us in peace.”

Practically quivering with fury, Munasinghe jabbed the Norwegian lieutenant’s shoulder with a gloved finger. “Get your squad moving! If you go fast enough the nanomachines won’t have a chance to harm you.”

“That’s not true,” Doug said.

“Go!” Munasinghe screamed. “That’s an order!”

The Norwegian scuttled away, gathered his squad, and started them into the garage. The warning sign was almost completely gone, Munasinghe saw; nothing left but a few streaks of red.

“You’re making a serious mistake,” Doug said in the captain’s earphones.

“No,” Munasinghe snapped. “You are. I will destroy Moonbase and everyone in it before I leave here.”

Edith was getting it all on her digital recorder and minicams. In addition to the camera fastened to the top of her helmet, which saw whatever she looked at, she held another in her gloved hands, almost forgotten in the excitement of the moment.

She watched, wide-eyed, as the squad of troopers thumped in their heavy boots and spacesuits across the wide expanse of the empty garage.

It would have been funny if it weren’t so scary. The Moonbase guy who spoke to them was Douglas Stavenger, the one who carried swarms of nanomachines inside his body. Was he telling the truth? Were the bugs on the garage floor capable of ruining spacesuits? Killing people?

She remembered that Stavenger’s father had died on the Moon a quarter-century ago, killed by runaway nanobugs.

This could get hairy, she thought.

Two troopers had outraced the others and reached one of the dulled metal hatches of the airlocks that led into the base proper. They rested their rifles against the wall and started to unpack the grenades they carried on their equipment vests.

“Look at your boots,” Doug Stavenger’s voice said, with just a touch of urgency in it. “Your boots are being digested by nanomachines.”