Ben Bova - Moonwar

“How soon, Jinny?” Doug asked.

“Five minutes. No, four-fifty. I’ll get the data wrung out and pipe it to you in half an hour, max.”

“Good.”

It took longer. Doug let Edith drive the tractor while he dug into the food box. There was no way to eat solid food in a spacesuit, but he pumped a quart of milk and three containers of juices through the feeding nipple in his helmet.

“Milk and orange juice?” Edith asked, grimacing. “Chugging them down one right after the other?”

“The last one was beet juice,” Doug said. “Got to thank Lev for that: he likes to make borscht.”

Anson called again. “Got him! He’s ’way past the mass driver, out beyond the central peaks. Still heading north.”

Doug thought a moment. “Jinny, if he’s that far out he couldn’t have stopped for long at the mass driver, could he?”

“Prob’ly not,” she answered. “I doubt that he stopped at all. He’s been truckin’ right along, I betcha.”

“Then he hasn’t tried to sabotage the magnets.”

Anson hesitated, then replied, “Unless he left a bomb there to go off later.”

Doug started to ask where Gordette would get explosives, then realized that a man with his smarts could convert rocket propellants into a bomb easily enough.

“The satellite’ll swing by this way again in sixty-three minutes,” Anson said. I’ll update you then.”

“Okay. Thanks, Jinny.”

“Just doin’ my job, boss.”

They drove past the mass driver. It seemed intact to Doug, but he made a mental note to send a team out to look for booby traps, just to be on the safe side.

Edith rode beside him in silence. She picked a container of fortified dietary supplement and sipped at it unhappily. It tasted somewhere between chalk and sweat socks.

“I’m glad it was Bam.”

After the long silence, Edith wasn’t certain she had heard his muttered words correctly.

“Glad?” she asked.

“Well… not glad, exactly. But…” His voice faded away.

The damned spacesuits took away all the visual clues, Edith realized. All she had to go on was his voice in her earphones. She couldn’t see his face, his eyes.

“You see,” Doug said slowly, as the tractor trundled along the bleak landscape, “we didn’t have any problems with sabotage or attempted assassination until—well, until you came into Moonbase.”

That jolted her. “You thought I was a hit man?”

“No, I didn’t. But the possibility was there. And I hated it.”

“You never -I mean, we were sleeping together! How could you think…”

“I had to consider it,” he said, his voice sounding miserable. “I never really thought you were the one who tampered with my suit, but I had to consider the possibility. And the possibility that I wasn’t thinking straight because I love you.”

“You love me?”

“I had to get my throat slit to finally figure it out. My last conscious thought after Bam cut me was that I was glad it wasn’t you.”

Edith blinked several times inside her helmet. “Douglas Stavenger, that’s got to be the least romantic announcement a man’s ever made to a woman!”

For several moments she heard nothing but her own breathing, magnified inside the helmet. Then Doug burst into laughter.

“You’re right, Edith,” he said, laughing. “That was about as romantic as reading an inventory list. I’m sorry.”

She felt a smile tugging at her lips. “Nothing to be sorry about, I guess.”

“I do love you, Edith. I really do.”

“And I love you, too,” she said, surprising herself.

His laughter only increased. “We picked a great time to bare our souls, sealed up in these suits.”

She began to giggle. “Yep, guess so.”

Doug reached for her gloved hand and pressed it to the visor of his helmet. “That’s the best I can do right now. But we ought to be coming up on a tempo pretty soon.”

“Tempo?”

“One of the old temporary shelters. We keep them stocked with emergency supplies. We can go inside and get out of these damned suits for a while.”

“Uh-huh. And what about Gordette?”

She heard his sharp intake of breath. “Gordette,” Doug said, all the laughter gone. “I had almost forgotten about him.”

“Doug, if we’re going to have to surrender anyway to the Peacekeepers or Yamagata or whoever, why are we chasing after Gordette?”

It took several moments before he answered, “Because I don’t want to surrender to them, Edith. Deep inside me I’m still hoping for a miracle.”

“What kind of a miracle?”

“I wish I knew.”

Grand Cayman Island had been a haven for tax-weary investors for more than a century, the Switzerland of the Caribbean, a home away from home for money that was to be hidden, laundered, or otherwise kept out of the sight of the tax collectors of the world.

Still a Crown Colony of the British Empire, the tiny flat island—a few minutes’ flight from Cuba, less than an hour from Miami—possessed more banks than hotels, more financial offices than brothels, more citizens in business suits than beach wear.

Yet the beaches were lovely, Joanna thought as she and Lev strolled along the concrete walk from her hotel to the restaurant where she had been told the meeting would take place. It’s a shame we won’t have the time to go snorkeling or enjoy the sunshine.

The street was lined with restaurants and shops vending beach wear and souvenirs. They were dressed like tourists, as they had been instructed to be. Joanna was in white shorts and a flowered sleeveless blouse, with a big floppy straw hat; Lev wore comfortable baggy slacks, a loose-fitting mesh shirt hanging over them, and sunglasses.

“I see the string bikini is making a comeback,” Lev said, grinning. “I’ll have to buy a few for you.”

Joanna pretended to grimace. “One woman on the entire beach in a string outfit doesn’t make a fashion trend, Lev. And she’s very young, probably still in her teens.”

Her husband shrugged. “She is a bit on the emaciated side, but still she seems quite attractive.”

“Honestly.”

“You would look much better than she does.”

“I couldn’t wear a skimpy thing like that on the beach!”

“Who said you’d wear it on the beach?” Lev countered. “We have fourteen rooms in Savannah. I could spread a little sand in the sun porch and chase you through the entire house.”

“You would, too, wouldn’t you?” Joanna said, laughing. Lev was trying to lighten her mood, she realized. Ease the tension.

Arranging a meeting with Seigo Yamagata had been easier than getting to see Georges Faure. And more difficult. Yamagata was even more inaccessible than the U.N. secretary-general, but his aides had responded with swift politeness to Joanna’s call. Very indirectly they suggested that a luncheon might be of interest to both parties. Joanna refused to come to Japan; Yamagata’s aides said with deep regret that a meeting elsewhere would probably be impossible.

At Lev’s suggestion, Joanna suggested a neutral territory. Within an hour Yamagata’s twenty-year-old son Saito called back to propose meeting at Grand Cayman. Quietly. Discreetly.

“Many corporations conduct business on Grand Cayman,” the young man said, looking earnest. “It would not be out of the ordinary for a very high officer of this corporation to be present on the island at a certain time and place.”

Joanna nodded at his image on her phone screen. “Yes,” she agreed. “Masterson Corporation does business with several banking establishments there.”

The time and place were set. Now Joanna and Lev walked along the beachfront street in the brilliant late morning sunlight and brisk sea breeze, heading toward the Sunrise Hotel.