Ben Bova - Moonwar

“Search me.”

Anson said, “Somebody could’ve put it there.”

Doug turned his head toward her. “Somebody? You mean sabotage?”

She nodded silently.

“I can’t believe that, Jinny.”

“The suit didn’t fail,” she said. “Somebody tampered with it.”

Doug looked back at Clemens. “Harry?”

“I can’t see how it could’ve failed by itself. I even thought maybe a micrometeorite hit the air tank, but when I started figuring out the angle it would’ve had to come in, it would’ve had to come up out of the ground!”

“So it wasn’t a micrometeorite.”

“Somebody dug out a pinhole in the insulation,” Anson insisted. “Somebody who knows enough about suits to understand that the oxygen pressure inside the tank would break through the weak spot in half an hour or so after the tank was pressurized.”

“Nobody here at Moonbase would do something like that,” Doug insisted.

“Oh no?” Clemens countered. “Whoever it was covered up the pinhole with a smidge of foamgel insulation, so the leak wouldn’t start until you’d been out on the surface for a half hour or so.”

“The kind of foamgel the construction crew uses?” Doug asked.

Clemens nodded. “For stiffening temporary walls and stuff like that, right.”

“The foamgel held the pressure in your air tank until it got brittle from exposure to vacuum,” said Anson.

“If your tank had been down at a regular suit’s pressure you would’ve been okay, I think,” Clemens said. “But at fourteen-point-seven p.s.i., it blew out.”

“And what about the emergency fill valve?” Anson added.

Clemens looked almost sheepish as he said, “The threads were smeared with dust. Froze the valve shut just as effectively as if they’d soldered it.”

The realization made Doug’s insides feel hollow. “We’ve got a saboteur among us?”

“A traitor,” Anson snapped.

“But who? Why?”

“That’s what we’ve got to find out. And fast.”

Doug looked at Gordette, standing slightly behind Clemens, silent, taking in every word.

“Bam, I want you to look into this.”

His eyes went wide. “Me?”

“Jinny and Harry have plenty of responsibilities to keep them busy. I want you to devote full time to this.”

Gordette seemed startled. “But I don’t know enough about spacesuits or any of that stuff. I’m not a cop. That’s what your security department is for.”

Doug shook his head. “Security doesn’t have the personnel for this kind of investigation.”

“But I’m just a glorified plumber.”

“Jinny and Harry will give you all the help they can. You can call on anybody in Moonbase for technical assistance. And I’ll tell security to cooperate with you fully.”

Gordette’s brows knit. It was clear to Doug that the man didn’t want the job, but he couldn’t refuse it.

“Another reason for you to do it, Bam,” Doug added. “I don’t want anybody outside this cubicle to know we’re hunting for a saboteur. No sense stirring up everybody. And it might be easier to catch our traitor if he doesn’t know he’s being tracked down.”

“Or she,” Anson said.

Doug stared at her. Who did she have in mind? “Or she,” he conceded. “Now get out of here and back to work.”

“When are you going back to work?” Anson jibed.

“I’ll be out of here as soon as the medics run one more set of tests. But I can work from this bed, don’t worry.”

“Me worry?” She laughed. “What have I got to worry about?”

“Someone tried to kill you?”

Her son’s revelation shocked Joanna to her roots. She had taken his call in the comfortable little upstairs sitting room of her home outside Savannah. It was early summer beyond her windows: trees were in leaf, birds chirping in the afternoon sunlight. And there was an assassin stalking the confines of Moonbase’s underground corridors.

“That’s what Jinny and the others think,” Doug said. He seemed cheerful and healthy enough, although now Joanna realized that he was sitting up in an infirmary bed.

He assured her that he was all right. “And I’m not completely convinced this wasn’t just a freak accident, Mom.”

Joanna realized she was biting her lip. “No,” she said. “It wasn’t an accident. It’s just the kind of thing that Faure would do, the little sneak.”

Doug smiled when he heard her words. “But how could he get an assassin smuggled in here?”

“That dance troupe,” Joanna replied. “Faure timed all this so that the dance troupe would be stranded up there with you.”

This time Doug actually broke into laughter. “You think one of the ballet dancers tampered with my spacesuit? They don’t even know how to put one on.”

“What about that reporter?”

She saw his eyes go wide once he heard her words. “Edith? She—it couldn’t be her. It couldn’t be!”

“Why not?” Joanna persisted. “You didn’t have this kind of trouble before she talked her way into the base, did you?”

“It’s not her,” Doug said firmly. “It can’t be.”

Joanna did not reply, but her suspicions did not fade an iota.

“What’s happening down there?” Doug asked, changing the subject.

“Lev’s in New York, talking to Faure’s flunkies. I’ve finally gotten Rashid to convene an emergency meeting of the board in two weeks. I have an item on the agenda calling for the board to urge the White House to recognize Moonbase’s independence.”

Doug’s brows rose when he heard her. “Do you think you can carry that?”

“I’ve been counting noses. Tamara will be the swing vote, I’m certain of it.”

“She’ll vote on our side,” Doug said.

“I want you to do everything you can to make sure of that.”

She watched his face closely as he listened to her and digested her meaning.

“Mom,” said Doug,’there’s not much I can do from this distance except talk to her.”

“Use the virtual reality link,” Joanna urged. “Take her for a walk on the beach. Or a swim. She likes you, I’m certain of it.”

From his infirmary bed, Doug stared at his mother’s intense image on the little screen he had propped up on his lap. Good thing we’re not living in the days when families arranged their children’s marriages, he thought.

Then he wondered when he should tell his mother about Edith. And what do I really have to tell her? How serious is our relationship?

Do I love her? The question stunned him. Is this what love is, wanting to share your life with somebody. It’s all happened so quickly, like falling off the edge of a cliff.

Does she love me? Will she want to share her life with me after this war is finished and she can go back Earthside again?

Yet in the back of his mind he realized that there had never been any hint of a traitor in Moonbase before Edith Elgin had arrived.

He heard his mother’s voice, You didn’t have this kind of trouble before she talked her way into the base, did you?

Doug ignored the voice. Or tried to.

Jack Killifer found that he was enjoying his visit to Tarawa. Despite his orders.

Outwardly, he was an American tourist taking in the beaches and fishing excursions by day, the gambling casino and musical shows by night. There were plenty of women, especially in the casino, most of them Asian, although he saw a couple of terrific tall blondes that must have been from Sweden or Germany or maybe even the States. Funny that there were hardly any island women in the casino, he thought. But he preferred big broads, anyway, not the dark little wahines.

There was one particular island woman that he had to find, though: Tamara Bonai.