Part 4 (1/2)
He clambered up onto the cafeteria table and raised his arms over his head. ”Hey!” he shouted to the murmuring, scattering crowd. ”Hold on! I've got a few words to say.”
The crowd stopped heading for the exit and turned toward him, some looking expectant, others puzzled.
”You Lunatics so eager to get back to work that you can't hang in here a couple minutes more?” Doug asked, grinning at them.
”h.e.l.l, boss, we'll stay all day if you want us to,” hollered one of the men in the rear.
”If you serve some drinks,” another voice chipped in.
Doug kept his grin in place. ”No drinks. And this is only going to take a few minutes.”
Someone groaned theatrically. A few people laughed at it.
”I want you to know,” Doug said, scanning their faces, ”that we declared Moonbase's independence a few hours ago. We had to do it, so that as an independent nation we can refuse to sign the nanotech treaty and continue to work here the way we always have.”
”You mean we're citizens of Moonbase now?” a woman asked.
”I have to give up my American citizens.h.i.+p?” another voice from the crowd.
”That's all to be ironed out in negotiations with the US government and other governments,” Doug said. ”We're not going to ask any of you to give up your original citizens.h.i.+p, not if you don't want to.”
”What about those Peacekeeper troops Faure's sending here?”
”We'll tell them we're an independent nation now and they have no authority here,” Doug answered.
”They gonna accept that?”
”We'll see,” said Doug.
”Don't give up your day job,” somebody said. Everyone laughed-nervously, Doug thought. But when he looked down at his mother, still seated at the table on which he was standing, she was not laughing at all. Not even smiling.
”We'll deal with the Peacekeepers when they get here,” Doug promised. ”They're not looking for a fight and neither are we.”
”Yeah, but they got guns and we don't.”
Doug had no rejoinder for that.
TOUCHDOWN MINUS 110 HOURS 7 MINUTES.
If anyone noticed that Claire Rossi and Nick O'Malley left The Cave together, with equally somber expressions on their faces, no one made a fuss about it.
Almost everyone in Moonbase knew that Claire and Nick were lovers. She was the base personnel chief, a pet.i.te brunette with video-star looks and a figure that men wanted to howl after. He was a big, lumbering, easy-going redhead who ran a set of tractors up on the surface from the snug confines of a teleoperator's console down in the control center.
Nick was happy-go-lucky, and counted the most fortunate moment in his young life as the instant he saw Claire walking down one of Moonbase's corridors. He smiled at her and she smiled back. Electricity crackled. He stopped looking at other women and she had thoughts only for him. It was like magic.
But as they walked slowly out of The Cave, neither of them was smiling.
”We could be stuck here for months,” Claire said as they shouldered their way through the dispersing crowd, heading for her quarters.
Nick was somber, deep in thought. ”My work contract runs out in three weeks. What happens then?”
”I guess we won't be heading back Earthside until Doug and the politicians back home settle this thing.”
”Yeah, but how do I get paid when my contract term ends? What happens then?”
She tried to smile up at him. ”Well, we didn't want to be separated, did we? Maybe you'll have to stay here until my my tour ends and we can go back home together.” tour ends and we can go back home together.”
Looking down at her, Nick saw that her smile was forced. ”You don't seem so happy about it.”
”It's not that,” she said. ”It's...' She fell silent.
”What?”
”Wait until we get to my place,” Claire said, so solemnly that it worried Nick.
Once she shut the door of her one-room compartment, Nick asked almost desperately, ”What is it? What's wrong?”
”It's not wrong, exactly,” she said, going to the bunk and sitting on its edge.
”Well, what?”
”I'm pregnant,” she said.
He blinked. ”You're going to have a baby?” His voice came out half an octave higher than usual.
”Yes,” she answered, almost shyly.
For a moment he didn't know what to say, what to do. Then the reality of it burst on him and he broke into an ear-to-ear grin. ”A baby! That's great! That's wonderful!' wonderful!'
But Claire shook her head. ”Not if we can't get off Moonbase, it isn't.”
TOUCHDOWN MINUS 109 HOURS.
Aboard the Clippers.h.i.+p Max f.a.get, Max f.a.get, Captain Jagath Munasinghe stared suspiciously at the schematic displayed on his notebook screen. Captain Jagath Munasinghe stared suspiciously at the schematic displayed on his notebook screen.
”And this is the control center? Here?” he pointed with a blunt finger.
”That's it,” said Jack Killifer. ”Take that and you've got the whole base under your thumb.”
Munasinghe wore the uniform of the U.N.'s Peacekeeping Force: sky blue, with white trim at the cuffs and along the front of his tunic. Captain's bars on his collar and a slim line of ribbons on his chest below his name tag. He was of slight build, almost delicate, but his large dark eyes radiated a distrust that always bordered on rage. Born in Sri Lanka, he had seen warfare from childhood and only accepted a commission in the Peacekeepers when Sri Lanka had agreed to disarmament after its third civil war in a century had killed two million men, women and children with a man-made plague virus.
Behind him, forty specially-picked Peacekeepers sat uneasily in weightlessness as the s.p.a.cecraft coasted toward the Moon. None of them had ever been in s.p.a.ce before, not even Captain Munasinghe. Despite the full week of autogenic-feedback adaptation training they had been rushed through, and the slow-release anti-nausea patches they were required to wear behind their ears, several of the troops had vomited miserably during the first few hours of zero-gee flight. Munasinghe himself had managed to fight down the bile that burned in his throat, but just barely.
Sitting beside the captain, Killifer wore standard civilian's coveralls, slate gray and undecorated except for his name tag over his left breast pocket. He was more than twenty years older than the dark-skinned captain and almost a head taller: lean, lantern-jawed, his face hard and flinty. Once his light brown hair had been shaved down almost to his scalp, but now it was graying and he wore it long enough to tie into a ponytail that bobbed weightlessly at the back of his neck. The sight of it made Munasinghe queasy.
”Forty men to take and hold the entire base,” Munasinghe muttered unhappily.
”It's not that big a place,” Killifer replied. ”And like I told you, take the command center and you control their air, water, heat-everything.”
Munasinghe nodded but his eyes showed that he had his doubts.