Ben Bova - Test of Fire

“But you’d deliberately… knife him?”

Lisa fixed her dark, unblinking eyes on Kobol.

“Don’t make it sound so dramatic, Martin. I married the wrong man. We may have to share this room, even this bed, but that doesn’t mean that I love him or I’ll follow him like a blind little slave.”

“I don’t know,” he said slowly. “I was watching you when he came through that airlock. You looked…” He hesitated.

“Well?”

“You looked happy to see him. Very happy. Almost like a schoolgirl with her first crush of puppy love.”

Her face went red. “Don’t be absurd.”

“That’s what it looked like to me.”

“Nonsense.” But she turned away from Kobol, turned her gaze to the polished metal mirror hung on the opposite wall, over the drawer unit.

“About you and me…” Kobol started to say.

“Nothing’s changed,” Lisa said. “He doesn’t know a thing.”

But Kobol shook his head ruefully. “Something has changed, Lisa. I have. I’m not going to live in his shadow. I want you to leave him.”

She looked genuinely shocked. “I can’t do that! Not now. Not yet, anyway.”

“Why not?”

“How can I, with the whole world turned inside out? Don’t you see what’s happening, Martin? Don’t you understand? The life of this entire settlement is hanging by a thread. The Earth is dead, and we’re on our own. It’s dangerous enough, just as it is, without adding our personal problems to the mix.”

He pointed a long unwavering finger at the growing blue bruise on her cheek. “Don’t you think your personal problems are already out in the open?”

“No,” Lisa said firmly. “I’m putting that behind me. For the time being. I’m going to be his wife, and he’s going to be the head of the new government.”

“You mean you’re going to be the head of the new government and I’m going to be out in the cold.”

She reached out to touch his hand. “Martin, please. You’ve got to understand. We can still be… together. The way we have been.”

Kobol pulled his hand away. “No, Lisa. You’ve got to understand something. I want to be the head of whatever government we put together. I want to have it all for myself. Including you. Especially you.”

“You will,” she said soothingly. “You will. But it will take time, Martin. You must be patient.”

“You’ll leave him for me?”

“In time.”

“You’ll work to make me chief of the council?”

She hesitated. “I’m not sure that they would elect you chief, Martin. They’ll elect Douglas. He’s their hero. We’ll have to work through him.”

Kobol broke into a bitter, barking laughter.

“What you mean is, you’ll run the council through him. You intend to be boss, one way or the other.”

Lisa pressed back against the stone again, feeling its strength along her spine. “Is that what you think?”

Kobol’s laughter choked off. “No matter who wins, you want to come out on top. You want to be queen bee.”

“And what do you want, Martin?” she asked icily. “Isn’t your interest in me based at least partially on jealousy of Douglas? Don’t you want to be the top man, to have everything for yourself?”

Kobol’s laughter choked off. His face went grim.

“Christ, Lisa, we’re two of a kind. If we don’t tear each other to pieces we can make one hell of a great team.”

“I’ll keep my claws sheathed, Martin, as long as you don’t get in my way.”

“And you’re staying with him.”

“For the time being.”

“Do you think he’ll have you?”

Lisa smiled. “Oh yes. Douglas has one glaring weakness. He wants to do the right thing. He wants to be good.”

“Not like us.”

Lisa’s smile faded. She swung her legs off the bed, got to her feet. “We’ll have to start making arrangements for a permanent council— a schedule of meetings, official titles, things like that.”

Kobol nodded agreement.

The intercom phone by the bed buzzed. Lisa picked it up, listened briefly, then thanked the caller and hung up. Turning to Kobol, she said:

“He’s come back to the airlock. He’ll probably be here soon. Time for you to be on your way, Martin.”

Living space was at a premium in the lunar community.

The original airlock and storage chamber had been a natural cave eroded into the terraced side of Alphonsus’ ringwall. The living and working quarters below had been blasted and carved out of the lunar rock by the miners, down at a depth that would assure full protection against radiation and the wild swings of temperature during the 648-hour-long lunar day/night cycle.

The staff psychologists and mining crew foremen had agreed, though, that the living quarters needed more than just dormitory rooms. So despite the cost and labor, they had carved out a few social rooms as well. Before the Sun had devastated Earth, the lunar community boasted a recreation room, complete with a billiard table and extra-sized (for lunar gravity) ping-pong table; a library stocked with real books and video viewers that could access the tapes in most of the libraries on Earth, and a small conference room with a real wood table.

The self-appointed governing council chose the conference room as their meeting place. Nine department heads arranged themselves around the walnut table. Douglas unconsciously took the chair at the head of the table. Lisa sat at his right.

Kobol slouched in a chair halfway down the table.

Their first order of business was to elect a chairman pro-tem. Douglas was unanimously chosen.

Standing at the head of the group, smiling at them boyishly, he said, “Thank you. I appreciate the confidence you’ve shown in me, and I respect the responsibilities of the job. Now I think we’ve got to work out an agenda for this committee…”

“Council,” corrected James Blair, down at the far end of the table. “This is a governing council, not a committee.”

Douglas shrugged. “Council. We need to agree on an agenda for action. As I see it, the most important thing is to ensure the survival of our community. The next thing, and it’s closely coupled to the first, is to re-establish our links with Earth. The two…”

“Our links with Earth?” William Demain asked, his high-domed babyish face wrinkled into a puzzled frown. “What Earth? Earth’s gone.”

“Not entirely,” Douglas said. “Not by a long shot.”

“As head of life support systems,” LaStrande interrupted, his voice as strong as an operatic baritone’s despite his frail frame, “I think that the most important issue before us—the only issue that really matters—is the one you mentioned first, Doug. We’ve got to make ab-so-lutely certain that we can support ourselves. Food, air, water, electrical power, medicine… all the things that we need for survival. We’ve got to make certain that we can provide these things for ourselves. Without any connections Earthside. We can’t depend on Earth for anything! To do that is absolute nonsense.”

A murmur of agreement went around the table.

“Now wait a minute,” Douglas said. “I’ve been Earthside. The planet isn’t dead.”

“No, just half dead,” LaStrande stage-whispered.

“There are people on Earth who need our help,”

Douglas insisted. “And there are supplies on Earth that we need: medicines, replacement parts, equipment…”

“We can’t bring more people up here!”

Catherine Demain blurted, her voice pleading.

“We just can’t! We don’t have the room, the medical facilities, the supplies for them. It wouldn’t be fair to the people who live here.”

They argued back and forth for nearly an hour as Douglas stood helplessly at the head of the table, looking confused and frustrated. Kobol said nothing. Lisa said nothing. They carefully avoided each others’ eyes as the debate dragged on.