Ben Bova - Moonwar

“Didn’t you ever want to kick anybody?”

“I go outside,” he said.

“Huh?”

“When I’m really ticked off, when it gets too heavy, I suit up and go outside. That usually makes me feel better.”

“Then let’s go outside,” Edith said, propping herself up on one elbow.

“Not now,” Doug said. “It won’t help.”

“But you said—”

“Get some sleep, Edith. The problems I’m facing aren’t going to be solved by a walk outside.”

“Come on,” she urged. “You’ve never taken me outside. We could—”

“Not now,” he repeated. “Go to sleep.”

She gave up with a reluctant sigh and curled next to him. Neither of them closed their eyes.

When he tried to reach Tamara Bonai in the morning, her phone relayed a message that she had gone to her private island and was waiting for him to make VR contact with her.

Tiredly, Doug trudged down to the virtual reality studio, pulled on a full-body sensor suit and let a technician help him insert the contact TV lenses. Within minutes he was standing on the sandy beach, surprised that it was night on Tarawa atoll.

“I’m a working woman,” Bonai told him, smiling brightly in the starlit night. “I have responsibilities that keep me at my desk most of the day.”

Doug forced a grin. “Here I thought you had nothing to do but swim in the lagoon and go fishing.”

Bonai was wearing a wraparound pareo, Doug was in his usual sky-blue coveralls. The night was magnificent: a warm salt breeze blew across the beach and thousands of stars sparkled in the great dome of the heavens. Doug searched the sky for the Moon but could not find it. Of course, he realized. We’re in the nighttime part of our cycle; from Earth it’s a new moon, invisible.

“Have you thought about my offer?” Bonai asked, almost shyly.

For a moment Doug felt puzzled. “Offer?”

“Asylum here in Kiribati,” she said. “For you and as many of your people as you want to bring with you.”

Doug took a deep breath. It was one place where the VR simulation failed. Instead of soft tropical sea air he tasted the flat, canned, slightly metallic mixture of Moonbase.

“I need to know more about what the Peacekeepers are planning,” he said.

“I’ve told you as much as Rashid told me,” Bonai said. “Several hundred troops, equipped with missiles, are being assembled at the Yamagata base in Copernicus. They plan to attack Moonbase within a month.”

“Do you know anything about how they plan to attack?”

She shook her head.

Doug hesitated, then asked, “Tamara, can you find out anything more?”

In the starlit shadows he could not make out the expression on her face. But her voice sounded strained as she replied, “Doug, I don’t want to see Rashid again. Once is a fling; twice… he’ll either get suspicious or begin to think he owns me.”

“Oh,” he said, suddenly embarrassed. “I see. I understand.”

“Do you?”

“I tried to talk with the director of Nippon One,” he said, almost mumbling the words. “He won’t take my calls.”

Tamara touched his sleeve with her virtual hand. “Doug, I know it’s terribly difficult for you, but you’ve got to face the fact that Moonbase is lost. You’ve got to start thinking about your own safety.”

He nodded, feeling miserable. “I know you’re right. And yet—”

He stopped. Out in the shadows beneath the palm trees that fringed the beach he saw something move.

Killifer was delighted. About time I caught a break, he said to himself.

He had bought an inflatable boat, barely big enough for himself and the box of food and drink he had brought with him, and chugged out into the lagoon at sunset. The beach boys who watched the hotel’s rental outriggers paid him scant attention: a tourist going out for a little night fishing.

As soon as it got fully dark Killifer set out for the private little islet on the far end of the atoll where Tamara Bonai sometimes went. Alone.

It wasn’t easy, out on the lagoon all by himself in the dark. The lights from the hotel and casino soon sank below the watery horizon. His eyes grew accustomed to the starlight, but each of the flat, palm-fringed islets looked pretty much alike to him. Bonai’s private little isle was the last one in the chain, he knew. Still, he almost missed the islet and drifted out to the reef in a sudden swirl of current between islands.

Finally he got to ‘her’ islet, the farthest one from Betio and Bonriki. Sooner or later she’ll come here, he told himself as he beached the inflatable boat. Once he had pulled the boat safely out of sight, into the bushes beneath the palms, he took a quick swig of beer from the cooler and settled down to wait for her. Could be days, he knew. What the hell.

And there she was! Killifer could hardly believe his eyes. The woman steered her outrigger up onto the beach just as pretty as you please and stepped out for a walk under the stars. Alone.

Grinning to himself, Killifer thought that maybe General O’Conner’s god was looking out for him, after all.

“Somebody’s out there,” Doug said, pointing toward the palm trees and low shrubbery beneath them.

Bonai followed his gaze. There couldn’t be. Not at this time of night. The canoe rental closes at sundown.”

“He’s coming toward us,” Doug said.

“Yes. I see him.”

Doug started to wave the man off, then realized that he was on the Moon, and the approaching man couldn’t see him.

“Damn, we’ll have to put up NO TRESPASSING signs,” Bonai said, staring at the man striding toward her.

“Or guards,” Doug muttered.

She looked up at Doug. “I wanted us to be alone.”

“Me too. Why don’t you tell him he’s not allowed here.”

With a sigh, she said, “I suppose I’ll have to.”

Starting up the beach toward the intruder, Bonai called out to him, “I’m sorry, sir, but you’re not allowed onto these islets. You’ll have to go back to Bonriki.” She pointed toward the faint glow on the horizon from the high-rise hotels.

The man showed no sign of understanding. Bonai repeated her warning in German, then Japanese.

“He doesn’t look Japanese,” Doug said, squinting through the shadows at him.

“You’re not allowed here,” Tamara said, louder, in English.

The man came closer and smiled maliciously at her. With a sudden cold hand clutching his heart, Doug recognized Jack Killifer.

“Tamara, stay away from him,” he said, grabbing for her arm.

“Why…”

“I know him,” Doug said. “He almost killed me, once.”

Bonai’s eyes went wide. She turned from Doug to Killifer, close enough now almost to reach her, and back to Doug again.

“Keep away from him!” Doug urged. “Call for help!”

Bonai raised her arm to speak into her wristphone. But before she could, Killifer lunged at her.

She looked weird to Jack Killifer, covered from neck to feet in some kind of scuba suit. Then he realized that she was wearing a virtual reality full-body sensor suit. She’s out here on this empty little island making out with somebody in VR, Killifer said to himself. Hot little tramp.

He grinned at her. No helmet, though. Probably got contact lenses instead.

He grasped her by the wrist and pulled her toward him.

“Don’t give me any trouble, doll,” he said.

Doug reached for Killifer but it was useless. The man was real and solid, Doug was nothing more than an electronic ghost. He started shouting for the technicians to call the police in Kiribati.

Tamara clawed at Killifer’s face with her free hand, but he blocked it, then knocked her to the sand with a backhand slap across her face.

Doug howled and leaped at Killifer but went right through him onto the sand.