Ben Bova - The Silent War

Within hours, before Wanamaker or anyone in the Astro security office could even begin to clamp down a lid on the story, Selene was buzzing with the rumor that Pancho was either off on a love tryst or kidnapped and probably dead.

Nodon heard the story during his first hours of work as a maintenance technician in the big, echoing garage that housed the tractors and tour busses that went out onto the surface of Alphonsus’s crater floor. He went through the motions of his new job and, as soon as his shift ended, hurried up into the “basement” to find Fuchs.

Fuchs was not at the stacks of shelving where Nodon and the others had met him before. Nodon fidgeted nervously, not knowing whether he should start searching through the dimly lit walkways or wait where he was for Fuchs to return. A maintenance robot came trundling along the walkway, its red dome light blinking. Nodon froze, plastering his back against the storeroom shelves. The robot rolled past, squeaking slightly. The maintenance robot needs maintenance, Nodon thought.

Half a minute behind the robot came Lars Fuchs, in his usual black pullover and slacks, and the usual dark scowl on his face.

“Kidnapped?” Fuchs gasped when Nodon told him the tale.

“Perhaps dead,” the Mongol added.

“Humphries did this?”

To his credit, Nodon admitted, “I don’t know. No one seems to know.”

“It couldn’t be anybody else,” Fuchs growled.

Nodon agreed with a nod.

“Down at the south pole, you say? They captured her down there?”

“That is the story. Some say she has run off with a lover.”

“Pancho wouldn’t do that. She wouldn’t have to. If she wanted a lover she’d do it right here in Selene, where she’s safe.”

Nodon said nothing.

“It’s got to be Humphries,” Fuchs muttered, as much to himself as his companion. “He’s probably having her taken to his mansion, down below.”

“Do you think so?”

“Even if he hasn’t, that’s where he is. We’ve got to get in there. And quickly.”

Daniel Tsavo tried to hide his nervousness as he toured Pancho through the construction areas and finally down into the finished section of the Nairobi base, where he and the other corporate executives resided. It was blessedly quiet down at this lowest level; the constant battering noise of the twenty-four-hour-a-day construction was muffled by thick airtight hatches and acoustical insulation. As they walked along the carpeted corridor toward the executive dining room, Tsavo kept Pancho on his right, as he had done all through the brief tour, so that he could hear the microreceiver embedded in his left ear without being obvious about it.

It troubled him that Nobuhiko Yamagata himself was speeding to the base on a high-g rocket from Japan. The interrogation team had already arrived, but their work was suspended until Yamagata arrived.

Pancho, meanwhile, was trying to sort out in her mind everything she had seen in this brief tour of the unfinished base. It’s enormous! she thought. They’re not just building a phase-one facility here, they’re putting up a whole city, all in one shot. This place’ll be just as big as Selene.

Tsavo tried hard not to hold his left hand up to his ear. He was waiting for news that Yamagata had arrived, waiting for his instructions on what to do with Pancho.

“Pretty fancy setup you guys have for yourselves,” Pancho teased as they walked along the corridor. Its walls were painted in soothing pastels. The noise of construction was far behind them. “Nice thick carpets on the floor and acoustic paneling on the walls.”

“Rank has its privileges,” Tsavo replied, making himself smile back at her.

“Guess so.” Where are they getting the capital for all this, Pancho wondered. Nairobi Industries doesn’t have this kind of financial muscle. Somebody’s pouring a helluva lot of money into this. Humphries? Why would the Humper spend money on Nairobi? Why invest in a competitor? ’Specially when he’s sinking so much into this goddamn war. I wouldn’t be able to divert this much of Astro’s funding; we’d go broke.

“Actually,” Tsavo said, scratching at his left ear, “all this was not as expensive as you might think. Most of it was manufactured at Selene.”

“Really?”

“Truly.”

Pancho seemed impressed. “Y’know, back in the early days of Moonbase they thought seriously about putting grass down in all the corridors.”

“Grass?”

“Yep. Life-support people said it’d help make oxygen, and the psychologists thought it’d make people happier ’bout having to live underground.”

“Did they ever do it?”

“Naw. The accountants ran the numbers for how much electricity they’d need to provide light for the grass. And the maintenance people complained about the groundskeeping they’d have to do. That killed it.”

“No grass.”

“Except up in the Main Plaza, of course.”

Tsavo said, “We plan to sod our central plaza, too. And plant trees.”

“Uh-huh,” said Pancho. But she was thinking, If Humphries isn’t bankrolling Nairobi, who is? And why?

The receiver in Tsavo’s ear buzzed. “Mr. Yamagata is expected in two hours. There is to be no interrogation of Ms. Lane until after he has arrived. Proceed with dinner as originally planned.”

At that precise moment, Pancho asked, “Say, when’s dinner? I haven’t had anything to eat since breakfast.”

“Perfect timing,” Tsavo murmured, stopping at a set of double doors. Using both hands, he pushed them open. Pancho saw a conference room that had been transformed into a dining room. The central table was set for eight, and there were six people standing around the sideboard at the far end of the oblong room, where drinks had been set up. Two of them were women, all of them dark-skinned Africans.

Tsavo introduced Pancho to his Nairobi Industries colleagues, then excused himself to go to the next room for a moment, where the servers waited with a group of six Japanese men and women.

“No drugs,” Tsavo told their chief. “We’ll have a normal dinner. We can sedate her later.”

Doug Stavenger rode with Edith all the way up to the torch ship, waiting in a tight orbit around the Moon. He went with her through Elsinore’s airlock as the ship’s captain personally escorted his passenger to her quarters, a comfortable little cabin halfway down the passageway that led to the bridge.

Once the captain had left them alone and had slid the passageway door shut, Stavenger took his wife in his arms.

“You don’t have to do this, Edie,” he said.

“Yes I do,” she replied. She was smiling, but her eyes were steady with firm resolve.

“You could send someone else and have him report what he finds to you. You could stay here at Selene and produce the news show or documentary or whatever—”

“Doug,” she said, sliding her arms around his neck, “I love you, darling, but you have no idea of how the news business works.”

“I don’t want you risking your neck out there.”

“But that’s the only way to get the story!”

“And there’s a solar storm approaching, too,” he said.

“The ship’s shielded, darling.” She nuzzled his nose lightly, then said, “You’d better be getting back to Selene before the radiation starts building up.”

He frowned unhappily. “If something should happen to you…”

“What a story it would make!” She smiled as she said it.

“Be serious.”

Her smile faded, but only a little. “I’m being serious, Doug. The only way to break this conspiracy of silence is for a major news figure to go to Ceres and report on the situation firsthand. If Selene broadcasts my story it’ll be picked up by independents on Earth. Then the Earth-side nets will have to cover it. They’ll have no choice.”