Part 26 (1/2)

He thanked the physicist and climbed back onto the tractor, wondering if there was some way to delay the attack that Faure was undoubtedly planning. Maybe Mom can get the World Court to hear our case before November. Or negotiate with Faure and try to settle this without another military confrontation.

His mind was filled with possibilities, alternatives, strategies as he steered the tractor back across the twenty-kilometer distance to Moonbase's main airlock.

He had only gone a few kilometers, though, when his suit's emergency alarm shrilled in his earphones.

”What...?”

Doug glanced down at the telltales on his wrist display. Air supply below safety minimum! Impossible, he told himself. I checked the suit out when I put it on. The air tank was full.

Must be a malfunction in the electrical circuitry, he told himself. Still, he jammed the tractor's throttle to its highest pitch. The ponderous machine lurched forward. There was no speedometer on the control panel; the tractor's electrical motors could not move the machine more than thirty klicks per hour, Doug knew.

Half an hour to the base, Doug thought. Better top off the backpack.

With his left hand on the T-stick, Doug fumbled for the tractor's oxygen hose, nested between the two front seats. He located it by feel and pulled it out of its housing. But when he tried to unscrew the cap of his backpack's emergency fill-up, it would not move.

How could it be frozen? Doug wondered, his mind racing. He could not remember if he'd tested it when he'd checked out the suit. I should have, he told himself. But he doubted that he did. Too G.o.dd.a.m.ned complacent. Taking shortcuts in the checkout routine.

”Air level approaching redline for life support,” the suit's automatic emergency system warned. ”Replenish air supply or change to another suit.”

Good advice, Doug grumbled silently, out here at least fifteen klicks from the airlock.

I can't can't be running out of air, he insisted to himself. But he coughed. be running out of air, he insisted to himself. But he coughed.

Desperately, he flicked to the base frequency and called, ”This is Stavenger. I'm almost out of air! Need help!”

”Got your beacon, Doug,” said the technician from the control center. ”Hang on, we'll send a team out for you.”

Won't do any good, he knew. They'll be riding tractors, too. They can't get to me any faster than I can get to them.

His breath caught in his throat. He felt as if he were gagging.

”No... air...”

An incredibly searing pain flamed through his chest. Christ almighty, my lungs are collapsing!

Yet he remained conscious, acutely aware of everything happening to him.

Can't breathe! He was gasping, his right hand clawing at the collar of his helmet. Can't breathe! The pain in his chest was excruciating, yet he did not pa.s.s out. His mind was still alert, still functioning.

This is what drowning must be like. You try to breath but there's no air.

Deliberately, he turned off his suit radio. They've got the tractor's beacon to track me. Don't want them to hear me screaming.

But he could not scream. There was no air in his lungs, no air in his throat. Nothing but pain and pain and more pain.

And he could not collapse into oblivion. His legs, his gut, even his hands and arms were flaming with agony now, but the mercy of unconsciousness was not allowed him. Doggedly, tears blurring his vision, pain racking his body, he slumped over the tractor's controls, too weak to sit upright. But still conscious.

Time lost all meaning. Doug knew he was in h.e.l.l: endless, eternal suffering. d.a.m.ned, d.a.m.ned, d.a.m.ned to torment forever. The silent, stark lunar landscape trundled past slowly, maddeningly slowly. Doug felt as if he were mired in quicksand, already sucked down into it, unable to catch a breath, impossible to breathe, to move, to do anything but suffer.

He wanted to faint, he wanted to die and get it over with. He thought deliriously that he must already be dead. Why, this is h.e.l.l nor am I out of it.

He could not breathe. He could not cough or gasp or cry or beg for mercy. Yet he could not end the pain. It went on and on, endlessly, while his mind shrieked and gibbered with horrified terror.

Something banged into his helmet. He felt himself jerked back against the seat.

Slowly the pain eased away. His last touch with the world drifted away from him, leaving him floating in darkness, alone, silent, free of pain and desire and fear.

I'm dead, he thought. At last it's over. I'm dead.

He was breathing. He opened his eyes but saw nothing but mist, a gray fog.

”... had his suit radio off.”

”Visor's fogged over. Turn up his fans, for chrissake.”

”How the h.e.l.l did he get into this fix?”

”Never mind that! Is he coming around?”

The voices were urgent, frightened; to Doug they sounded like a chorus of angels.

”Can't tell-”

”I can hear you,” Doug said, coughing. ”I can hear you.”

”He's alive!”

”Barely.”

Their frightened, urgent voices faded and Doug sank into blessed black oblivion.

DAY EIGHTEEN.

”You are awake now, yes?”

Doug opened his eyes to see Zimmerman looming over him like a rumpled mountain, his fleshy face deathly serious, his eyes burning with inner fire.

The infirmary, Doug realized. I'm in the infirmary. He could smell the antiseptic, feel the crisp sheets on his skin. The little cubicle was clean and cool, walls and ceiling pastel. Electronic monitoring equipment hummed and beeped softly somewhere behind Doug's head.

”So,” said Zimmerman quietly, ”my little machines have saved your life again.”

The old man's face wore an expression Doug had never seen before. Not tenderness, not from Zimmerman. But he seemed-concerned. He was standing over Doug's infirmary bed like a worried uncle or grandfather, looking faintly ridiculous in his disheveled, wrinkled, old-fas.h.i.+oned, three-piece gray suit.

”When are you...' Doug asked, his voice little more than a faint whisper, ”When are you going to program nan.o.bugs to keep your clothes pressed?”

”Jokes?” Zimmerman's s.h.a.ggy brows shot up. ”You almost die and now you make jokes at me?”

”What happened?”

The old man ran a hand across his bald pate. ”You had no oxygen for breathing. My nanomachines extracted oxygen from the cells of your body and fed it to your brain, to keep you alive.”