Part 62 (1/2)
A shadow fell across him and he looked up. Gordette was standing over him with an a.s.sault rifle held across his chest.
Before Doug could ask, Gordette smiled grimly and said, ”I'm guarding the control center. Security's sent teams out to the other areas to guard them. They told me to stay here with you; they didn't want me with them.”
Doug didn't have time to worry about Gordette's feelings.
Blinking with a sudden idea, he said, as much to himself as to Gordette, ”If we open all all the plasma vents we might flush out any of the kamikazes crawling through them.” the plasma vents we might flush out any of the kamikazes crawling through them.”
Gordette's brows rose a half-centimeter, but he said nothing.
”Especially if we start pumping high-pressure air into the far end of each of the vents,” Doug muttered. ”We'll turn those old vents into wind tunnels!”
He called Vince Falcone over to him, hurriedly explained what he wanted, and then hunched over his keypad and began banging away at it.
PLASMA VENT TUNNEL.
It was easy to become disoriented in the dark, empty plasma vent tunnels. Crawling along inside a s.p.a.cesuit with a hundred kilos of explosive strapped to your waist did not make the job any simpler.
But I'll get there, Amos Yerkes told himself. I have the most difficult a.s.signment, but I'll carry it out. They gave me the farthest target, the hardest one to reach, because they know I'm the best of the batch. The others needed drugs to buck up their courage but I've never touched them. I'm better than they are and they know it. That's why they've entrusted me with the most demanding task: blowing up their environmental control center.
Yerkes was twenty-two and considered himself a failure as a son and as a man. But this is one thing I will not fail at. ”Nothing in my life,” he slightly misquoted Shakespeare, ”will so become me as my leaving of it.”
In the light of his helmet lamp he saw another of those dreadful part.i.tions. It had taken him far longer to open the last few than he had thought it would. Hours, it seemed. They were all stuck fast, and he had been sweating inside his s.p.a.cesuit before he could pull them down on their creaking hinges. Then, once he had crawled over them, they had each snapped shut again with a startling clang that could probably be heard over the length and breadth of the base.
This part.i.tion was no different: a thin baffle of metal, hinged on the bottom. Stuck fast with caked dust. Yerkes brushed doggedly at the dust with his gloved fingers, wis.h.i.+ng he could open his visor and blow the stuff out of his way. But he had been ordered to keep his s.p.a.cesuit sealed, just in case the vent tunnels did not hold air as they believed.
As he worked, sweat stinging his eyes, he pictured the services that would be held in his honor back in Atlanta. General O'Conner himself will give the eulogy, he thought. My parents will cry and wish they had treated me better.
Vince Falcone was grateful for the Moon's low gravity as he and six other men trundled heavy cylinders of oxygen down the corridor toward the environmental control center.
Doug's idea was wild, Falcone thought, but he couldn't think of anything better.
This had better work, he told himself. Otherwise we'll all be dead in another half-hour or so.
”You will take me to the control center,” the s.p.a.cesuited j.a.panese said.
”I can't,” Edith blurted.
He grabbed her wrist hard. ”Why not?”
Thinking as swiftly as she ever had, Edith lied, The corridors are guarded. We'd both be shot the minute we stepped outside.”
He glared at her.
”And we're so far away from the control center,” Edith quickly added,'that your bomb wouldn't touch it if you set it off in here.”
Still glaring, he looked around at the studio's cameras and fake-bookcase sets. Not a worthy target.
”You're hurting my wrist,” Edith said.
He let go. ”You are my hostage,” he said.
”Okay,” she said, looking around the empty, spa.r.s.ely lit studio. Nowhere to hide, nothing here but video and VR equipment. Even if I grabbed a camera or tripod or something and tried to bash him, he's protected by his helmet. And he might set off his bomb.
”You will call the control center and tell them to surrender to me,” the young man said, his voice harsh, guttural. ”If you refuse I will kill us both.”
”Oh, I'll call them, don't worry about that.”
Doug fidgeted on his chair, waiting for Falcone to report he was ready to pump high-pressure oxygen into the plasma vents.
”We're clear of the factory,” Jinny Anson reported from a corridor wall phone. ”Had to seal the whole section of corridor, ”cause the door to the factory's been damaged by the blast.”
”Okay, fine,” Doug said. ”We ought to open the vents to vacuum in a few minutes.' Silently he added, Come on, Vince!
”Call from the university studio,” a comm tech's voice said in his earphone.
Edith, he knew. Doug nodded and touched the proper keypad.
Edith's face appeared on his central screen. She looked strained, worried. Then Doug saw, behind her, the face of an oriental in a s.p.a.cesuit helmet.
”Doug, I'm a hostage-”
The intruder pushed her aside. ”You must surrender to me immediately! If you don't, I will blow up this chamber with this woman in it!”
Doug felt as if someone had pushed him off a cliff. His mouth went dry. It took him two swallows to work up enough moisture to reply, ”Hold on. I'll surrender. Just don't do anything foolish.”
”I must speak to the commander of Moonbase!” the suicide bomber insisted. ”No underlings!”
”I'm Douglas Stavenger, the chief administrator of Moon-base.”
The j.a.panese's eyes widened momentarily. ”Douglas Stavenger? The one whose body is filled with nanomachines?”
”Yes, that's me.' Doug felt Bam Gordette's presence behind him, strong, protective.
”You must come here and surrender to me personally!”
”I understand.”
”Now! Quickly! Otherwise I kill her!”
”Okay, I'm on my way,” Doug said. He cut the connection and jumped up from his chair.
Gordette stood in his way. ”You go in there, he's gonna set off his explosives.”
”If I don't go, he's going to kill Edith.”
ENVIRONMENTAL CONTROL CENTER.
Falcone and his team threaded their way through the maze of piping and pumps that recycled and circulated air through Moonbase, dragging the cylinders of high-pressure oxygen clunking loudly along the narrow metal mesh walkways that twined through the throbbing equipment.
”There it is!” one of his men shouted, pointing to a metal hatch set into the rock ceiling.