Ben Bova - Moonwar

Zimmerman took a moment to digest what he heard, then sputtered, “You would allow me to remain at Moonbase and work under you?”

“With me,” Inoguchi corrected.

“We would be working for Yamagata, then?”

“Yes, of course.”

Zimmerman scowled at the younger man.

“You could continue your research unhindered,” Inoguchi promised. “There is no need for you to be sent back to Earth, no need for you to stop your work.”

Coldly, Zimmerman said, “You are assuming that Yamagata will conquer Moonbase.”

With a wan smile, Inoguchi replied, “That is inevitable, Professor. Regretful, perhaps, but inevitable. There is no way that Moonbase can resist the combined strength of the Peacekeepers and Yamagata’s special forces.”

“Even if I can make the entire base invisible to you?”

“What?” Inoguchi’s brows knit with consternation. “What are you saying?”

“Never mind,” Zimmerman replied, shaking his head.

“Invisible? How?”

“I will tell you only this much, young man. Your Peacekeepers and Yamagata forces might be able to destroy Moon-base and kill everyone in it, but they will never take us over. We will not be conquered! I will see to it that every man and woman in this base dies before we surrender to you!”

“You can’t be serious! I’m offering you an opportunity to continue your work as if nothing happened.”

With an angry snort, Zimmerman said, “You think I am a fool? You think I am an amoral egomaniac like your Georges Faure? Or like some renaissance tinkerer, content to work for any prince as long as he gets paid? I’m not a von Braun, I don’t work for any regime that allows me to pursue my goal. Moonbase is my home and I will defend it to the end! Freedom or death!”

Inoguchi had never felt so stunningly surprised in his entire life. The man thinks like a samurai, he realized.

“You can’t go after him,” Edith said. “You can’t even get out of bed!”

Doug smiled at her and hiked a thumb at the monitors over his head. “Look at the screens, Edith. Everything’s in the normal range, isn’t it?”

She glanced upward, then looked back at him. “The doctor told me—”

“The doctor’s playing it by the book. Zimmerman wants to observe how his nanobugs are working. But I’ve got to find Bam and stop him.”

“Why you? Why not a security team?”

“He wouldn’t give up without a fight. I don’t want anybody hurt.”

“After he tried to murder you?”

“It’s my job, Edith,” said Doug calmly. “My responsibility.”

She started to shake her head. “I’m not going to help you risk your butt all over again.”

“I’ve got to, Edith. Go back to our place and get a fresh set of clothes for me.”

“No!”

“You can come with me,” he said, struggling to convince her. “You said you wanted to come outside.”

“Zimmerman won’t allow it.”

“He can’t stop us if nobody tells him about it.”

“Doug, you almost died !”

“But I’m okay now, really I am. What do I have to do, jump your bod to show you I’m in good condition?”

Her green eyes turned thoughtful. “Let’s see if you can get out of bed, first.”

Doug pushed the swivel table with its emptied food tray away from the bed and swung his legs out from under the sheet. He planted his bare feet on the warmed tile floor and stood up. No alarm bells went off. The monitors showed no change in his condition.

“See? No hands.”

She broke into a grin. “That gown looks pretty silly on you.”

“Go get me some clothes while I peel off these sensor patches.”

“You’ll really take me with you? Outside?”

He nodded soberly. “I promise.”

“And they’ll let you out?”

“Hey, I’m the chief administrator of this base. Rank has its privileges.”

“Uh-huh.”

With a furtive glance at the observation window beside his bed, Doug added, “But you’d better get my clothes before Doc Montana comes back for another check.”

“This is absolutely crazy,” Edith said. “I love it!”

She was sitting beside Doug in the open cockpit of a massive lunar tractor, encased in a cumbersome spacesuit, waiting inside the big metal womb of the main airlock while the pumps sucked out the air so they could go outside and track down Bam Gordette. The airlock was suffused with a dull red light, like an old-fashioned darkroom.

She had figured that if Doug was strong enough to make it down to the garage and actually get himself into a spacesuit, maybe she’d go along with him instead of blowing the whistle and getting him shipped back to the infirmary. It was she who needed help, though, when they started to pull on their spacesuits.

Edith was surprised when Doug went to the new cermet suit, standing in a locker marked DO NOT TOUCH: EXPERIMENTAL EQUIPMENT.

“You’re going to use that suit again?”

He grinned at her. “This is the best tested and inspected suit in the whole Earth-Moon system, believe me.”

She took one of the regular suits from the row of lockers, muttering, “I never know if I’m a small or a medium.” Doug was already in his leggings and boots when he saw Edith struggling with hers and clumped over to help her.

At last they got completely suited up, filled the backpack air tanks, and checked out each other’s suits from the safety list Doug called up on their wrist display screens.

Now Edith sat beside him in the tractor’s unpressurized cockpit. In the eerie light of the airlock, all she could see of Doug was this anonymous lump of reddish-tinged white, like the Pillsbury Doughboy by firelight, topped with a helmet and a gold-tinted visor that reflected her own red-tinged helmet and visor.

“Are you sure you’re strong enough to do this?” Edith asked as the noise of the pump faded down to silence.

Doug’s voice said in her earphones, “Listen to me, Edith. My body’s building up my blood supply. I’m a lot stronger now than I was an hour ago.”

“You’re sure?”

He laughed. “Yep, I’m absolutely, positively certain. I might be wrong, but I’m sure.”

Doug had talked their way past the technician on duty at the main airlock, who wondered why the Big Boss was going outside in the middle of the lunar night with the flatlander news reporter and an insulated container big enough to hold a dead body.

“Lunch,” Doug had explained about the container. It held a dozen quarts of fruit juices and soymilk that they had picked up at The Cave on their way to the garage. They had loaded four spare air cylinders onto the tractor’s bed, as well: two at normal room pressure and two at the low pressure Edith’s standard suit required.

The display light on the panel set into the scuffed metal wall of the huge airlock next to the outside hatch abruptly switched from amber to green.

“Here we go,” Doug said as the outer hatch began to slowly slide open. “Once we’re underway I’ll show you how to operate the tractor. That’ll take less than fifteen minutes.”

“Driving lessons?” Edith’s eyes were focused on the growing gap as the hatch opened wider. It was dark out there, even with her vision already dark-adapted from the red lighting inside the airlock.

“Yeah,” he replied. That way, in case anything happens to me you can drive back here.”

“Oh.” Edith realized that beneath his casual demeanor Doug was weighing the risks as carefully as he could.

The airlock hatch opened fully and Doug put the tractor in gear. Edith heard no sound at all in the dead vacuum, but she felt the electric motors’ vibrations as they turned each of the tractor’s wheels individually.