Moonbase - Moonwar Part 45

"I tried, Jo," said Jill. "I went all-out, but I got outvoted, ten to five."

Joanna toyed absently with the salad in front of her. "Is that how they'll vote in November, do you think?"

"No, not at all. They just didn't want to go to the trouble of a special session, that's all.' Before Joanna could comment, Jill added, "And they're waiting to see if Moonbase can last until November. If Moonbase survives that long, it'll be a strong indication that they really can be independent."

Joanna let go of her fork and it clinked against the gla.s.s dish. "Faure's going to attack them again any day now."

Nodding, Jill agreed, "That's what I hear, too."

"Isn't there anything anything you can do?" you can do?"

"I talked with the President. She's not going to lift a finger."

"We've been putting as much pressure on our Senators as we can," Joanna said. "But Moonbase is a private operation, not part of the government."

"There's not much they can do about it," Jill said.

"But there must be something!"

"Wait," Jill said gently. "Wait and pray."

Joanna eyed her. "You sound like a New Morality convert."

Jill took it with a smile. "You don't have to be a New Morality fanatic to believe in the power of prayer, Jo."

Several miles away, in the riverfront headquarters of Masterson Corporation, Jack Killifer sat tensely in one of the tight little stalls that pa.s.sed for offices among the corporation's personnel department employees.

"I'm taking an awful chance, Mr Killifer," said the young woman sitting at the desk. She spoke in a near whisper; the padded part.i.tions that marked off her tiny s.p.a.ce did not extend all the way to the ceiling. Soft music purred from the hand-sized radio on her desk next to her computer monitor screen.

"Like I'm not?" Killifer snapped, low enough to avoid eavesdroppers, he hoped. His appearance had changed: his gray pony tail was gone; now his hair was dark and clipped short, military style. He had also grown a bushy moustache that he had darkened to match his hair.

"I found your personnel record," she said, looking worried, "but, lord's sake, it's almost nine years old!"

"I don't want my old record," he almost snarled. "I want you to generate a new one."

"But that would be a total fabrication."

"So what?"

"What if my supervisor checks on it? What could I say?"

Killifer had thought it all out beforehand. "I won't be around long enough for anybody to notice. A week, maybe less."

"It's an awful risk," she repeated. "For both of us."

"No risk at all for you," Killifer said, getting fed up with her fears. "If anybody complains you just tell 'em I showed you doc.u.mentation."

"Doc.u.mentation?"

Killifer pulled a thin sheaf of papers from his jacket pocket. They were not forged, since they were written by a bona fide personnel executive from the Urban Corps' headquarters in Atlanta. The information in them, however, was completely false.

"Here, scan these into your records before you p.i.s.s yourself."

"Sir!"

Killifer sighed. These d.a.m.ned New Morality uptights. Can't even spit without them getting wired over it.

"Forgive me," he said.

"Forgiveness is the Lord's work," she chanted. Then she turned to her keyboard and activated the scanner.

Good, Killifer thought as he handed her the falsified personnel doc.u.ments. By the time I walk out of here I'll be on the payroll as a member of the Masterson security staff. If this uptight little broad doesn't faint on me first.

Ma.s.s DRIVER.

"Everything takes longer to do in these suits.' Wicksen's voice was calm, not complaining, not making excuses; it was as if he were reading a report aloud.

Doug watched the men working at the end of the ma.s.s driver. While those who worked on the surface regularly had personalized their s.p.a.cesuits one way or another, Wicksen's physicists and technicians were in unmarked, anonymous suits straight off the standby racks.

At Doug's insistence, a team of construction engineers was building a makes.h.i.+ft shelter for Wicksen's people a few dozen meters from where they were busily putting together the equipment for the beam gun. Like one of the old tempos, the shelter was dug into the ground and would be covered with loose rubble from the regolith. Wicksen and his a.s.sistants could run the beam gun from there. Maybe the shelter would protect them from the radiation of a nuclear explosion, if the gun didn't work.

"How's it going?" Doug asked.

"Slowly," said Wix. "But we're making progress. We connected the beam collimator this morning. By tomorrow the aiming circuitry should be functional. Day after tomorrow, at the latest."

"And then you're ready to shoot?"

Wicksen's flat, unruffled voice came through Doug's helmet earphones, "Then we'll be ready to see if anything really works. After testing the a.s.sembly we can power up the magnets and see if the circuitry can handle the load without shorting out."

"But your calculations-"

"Mathematics doesn't necessarily reflect the real world," Wicksen said. "Physics is more than numbers in a computer."

"Oh. I see."

"I remember when I was a kid in high school, we had a volunteer teacher's aide come in and help us in our science cla.s.s. He was retired, used to be a big-time physicist. His daughter was a famous folk singer."

Doug wondered what this had to do with the defense of Moonbase, but hesitated to interrupt Wicksen.

"He took us out to the gym and attached a bowling ball to one of the climbing ropes. The rope was hanging from a beam 'way up on the ceiling. Then he carried the bowling ball up to the top tier of the benches where we sat during the basketball games."

"What was he doing?" Doug asked, curious despite himself.

"Teaching us physics. The law of pendulums. He held that big old bowling ball a centimeter in front of his nose, and then let it go."

"And?"

"It swung on that rope all the way across the gym, like a cannonball, then swung right back toward him again. We all started to yell to him to duck, to get out of the way. But he just stood there and grinned at us."

Wicksen paused dramatically. Doug waited for him to finish the story.

"The bowling ball stopped a centimeter in front of his nose, then started swinging back again. And he said, "See? It works that way every time. That's physics!" And I was hooked for life."

Doug thought he understood. "The demonstration was a lot more convincing than reading the equations about pendulums, right?"

"Right," said Wicksen. "Of course, you've got to know what you're doing. You've got to release the bowling ball without pus.h.i.+ng it even the slightest little bit. If you push it, it'll come back and smash your head in."

"Is the gun going to work?" Doug asked.

He could sense Wicksen trying to shrug inside his suit. "We don't know. All the equations check out, but we won't know until we try it."

"And you probably won't get a chance to try it until a nuclear warhead is falling on our heads."

"Probably.' If that thought perturbed Wicksen in the slightest, it didn't show in his voice.

He's actually happy about this, Doug realized. He's running an experiment that might get himself and all his people killed, but the whole project excites him. Like a hunter tracking down a lion in thick underbrush: dangerous, but what an adrenaline rus.h.!.+

Doug took his leave of the physicist, wis.h.i.+ng he could be as fatalistic as Wicksen. As he climbed into his tractor and trundled away from the ma.s.s driver, heading back toward Moonbase, he tried to see things the way Wicksen did. Either the experiment works or we all get killed. Is that the way he really thinks? Or is it that he's so absorbed in the experiment itself that he's not thinking at all about the consequences.

Doug's first stop after getting out of his s.p.a.cesuit and cleaning it was the control center. Everything looked normal in the big, dimly lit room. The quiet hum of electronics. Rows of consoles monitored by men and women staring at the screens, pin mikes at their lips and earphones clamped to their heads. A controlled intensity, with the big electronic wall displays that showed schematics of the entire base looming over all of them.

He saw Jinny Anson bending over the shoulder of the chief communications technician.

Walking over to her, he asked, "What's up, Jinny?"

She straightened up and Doug saw that her face was somber. "Lot of activity at L-l," she said, gesturing toward the comm tech's center screen.

Doug saw a radar plot of the s.p.a.ce station that hovered nearly sixty thousand kilometers above them. Several additional blips cl.u.s.tered around the red dot marking the station.

"Resupply?" Doug mused.

"Not likely," said Anson. "Their regular resupply run took place on schedule last week. No, they're delivering something to the station, but it's not life support supplies or propellant."

Doug took in a deep breath. "The nuclear missile?"

"Maybe more than one."

For a moment Doug was silent, thinking. Then he said, "I'm going to call Harry Clemens. It's time to pop an observation satellite so we can keep an eye on Nippon One."

Anson nodded, then grinned ruefully. "You might not like what you see, boss."

Gordette was sitting in The Cave, nursing a mug of the stuff that pa.s.sed for coffee at Moonbase. It was midday, and the cafeteria was filling up with the lunchtime crowd. But no one sat at Gordette's table. No one came near it; a ring of empty tables surrounded him.

Pariah, he said to himself. That's the word. For days he's been trying to recall the term. At last it came swimming up from his subconscious. Pariah. Outcast. Murderer. a.s.sa.s.sin. That's me and they all know it.

It would've been better if Doug had let me die, Gordette told himself. He says he trusts me, but none of these others do. They all know about me now, or they think they do. And they all hate me.

Then he saw Paula Liebowitz carrying a tray in both hands, making her way through the crowded tables, heading straight toward him. She walked with a determined stride and an odd, tenacious expression on her face, right up to Gordette's table.

"Do you mind if I sit here?" she asked, almost truculently.

Gordette spread his arms to take in all the empty chairs. "Be my guest."

Liebowitz plopped her laden tray on the table and took the chair next to Gordette.

"Is it true? Did you really try to kill Doug Stavenger?"

Gordette couldn't make out what was in her eyes. It wasn't anger, exactly. But it wasn't tenderness, either.

"It's true," he said flatly.

"You're a hired a.s.sa.s.sin? A hit man?"

He puffed out a sigh. "When I first met you I was trying to sabotage Doug's suit."

"Son of a b.i.t.c.h," Liebowitz said. She wasn't calling Gordette a name, he realized; merely expressing her emotions.

He tried to shrug. "That's what I was sent here to do."

"And when you invited me to dinner, that was part of it? You were going to try to use me to help you kill Stavenger?"

"No," he answered slowly. "I invited you to dinner because I liked you."

"Yeah. Sure."

"Even trained a.s.sa.s.sins need some human companions.h.i.+p now and then," Gordette told her.

"Don't try to make a joke out of this!"

"It's no joke, believe me."

"Why should I believe anything you say?"

"Why do you ask me, then?"

"I liked liked you," Liebowitz said. "I was even thinking about going to bed with you." you," Liebowitz said. "I was even thinking about going to bed with you."

"Get your kicks with a black man, huh?"

She frowned with puzzlement. "What?"

"I'm black."

"And I'm a Jew. What's that got to do with anything?"

Gordette thought it over for a moment. "Nothing. Nothing's got anything to do with anything."

"What's that supposed to mean?"