THE SILENT WAR Page 29

  "Eighteen minutes," said the physicist, "and counting."

  "Is there any reason why we shouldn't release the missiles then?"

  The physicist's pale blond brows rose questioningly. "The plan calls—"

  "I know what the plan calls for," the captain interrupted impatiently. "What I'm asking is, are the missiles ready to be released?"

  "Yessir, they are. I checked them less than an hour ago."

  The captain looked into the youngster's cool blue eyes. I can fire off the missiles and get us the hell out of here, he told himself.

  "But if we wait until the final release point their chances of getting to Vesta without being detected or intercepted are a whole lot better," said the younger man.

  "I understand that."

  "There's no reason I can see for releasing them early."

  The captain said nothing, thinking that this kid was a typical scientist. As long as all the displays on the consoles were in the green he thought everything was fine. On the other hand, if I fire the missiles early and something goes wrong, he'll tell his superiors that it was my fault.

  "Very well," he said at last. "I want you to calculate interim release points—"

  "Interim?"

  "Give me three more points along our approach path to Vesta where I can release those birds."

  "Three points short of the predetermined release point?"

  "That's right."

  The kid broke into a grin. "Oh, that's easy. I can do that right here." And he pulled his handheld from the breast pocket of his coveralls.

  SELENE: LEVEL SEVEN

  It's getting warmer in here, Humphries thought. Then he told himself, No, it's just your imagination. This space is insulated, fireproof. He pushed through a row of suits hanging neatly in the closet and touched one hand to the nearest of the three green tanks of oxygen standing in a row against the back wall. I've got everything I need. They can't burn me out.

  Slowly he edged past the suits and slacks and jackets and shirts, all precisely arranged, all facing the same direction on their hangers, silent and waiting for him to decide on using them. He brushed their fabrics with his shoulder, was tempted to finger their sleeves, even rub them soothingly on his cheek. Like a baby with its blanket, he thought. Comforting.

  Instead he went to the door, still sealed with the cermet partition. Tentatively, he touched it with his fingertips. It wasn't hot. Not even very warm. Maybe the fire's out, he supposed. Ferrer wasn't pounding on the door anymore. She gave up on that. I wonder if she made it out of the house? She's tough and smart; could she survive this fire? He suddenly felt alarmed. If she lives through it, she'll tell everybody I panicked! She'll tell them I crawled into my emergency shelter and left her outside to die!

  Humphries felt his fists clenching so hard his fingernails were cutting painfully into his palms. No, the little bitch will threaten to tell everything and hang that threat over my head for the rest of her life. I'll have to get rid of her. Permanently. Pretend to give her whatever she wants and then get Harbin or some other animal to put her away.

  His mind decided, Humphries paced the length of his clothes closet once more, wondering how he would know when it was safe to leave his airtight shelter.

  At least the flames aren't advancing as fast as they were, Fuchs thought as he lay sprawled on the brick pathway in front of the airlock. The grotto was a mass of flames and smoke that seemed to get thicker every second. Their heat burned against his face. Nodon had lapsed into unconsciousness again; Amarjagal and Sanja lay on the grass beside him, unmoving, their dark almond-shaped eyes staring at the fire that was inching closer. The black-clad security guards sprawled everywhere, coughing, their guns thrown away, their responsibilities to Humphries forgotten.

  One of the women guards asked, "How long..." She broke into a racking cough.

  As if in answer to her unfinished question, the voice from the other side of the hatch boomed, "We've got the airlock set up. In thirty seconds we'll open the hatch. We can take two people at a time. Get your first two ready."

  Fuchs pawed at his burning eyes and said, "Amarjagal and Nodon."

  The woman slung Nodon's good arm around her bulky shoulders and struggled up to her feet, with Sanja helping her. Some of the security guards stirred, and Fuchs reached for the laser pistol on the ground next to him.

  "We'll all get through," he said sternly. "Two at a time."

  The guards stared sullenly back at him.

  "Which of you is in charge?" Fuchs asked.

  A big-shouldered man with his gray hair cut flat and short rolled over to a sitting position. Fuchs noted that his belly hung over the waistband of his trousers.

  "I am," he said, then coughed.

  "You will decide the order in which your people go through the hatch," said Fuchs, in a tone that brooked no argument. "You and I will be the last two."

  The man nodded once, as the heavy steel hatch clicked and slowly swung open.

  Stavenger stood out in the corridor beyond the emergency airlock and watched the survivors of the fire come out, two by two.

  Like Noah's Ark, he thought.

  Most of them were Humphries security people, their faces smudged with soot as black as their uniforms. There were three Asians, one of them in the gray coveralls of Selene's maintenance department.

  "The last two coming through," said one of the emergency team.

  An odd couple, Stavenger thought. One tall and broad-shouldered, the other short and thickset. Both in black outfits. Then he recognized the dour face of the shorter man. Lars Fuchs! Stavenger realized. That's Lars Fuchs!

  "Anybody else in there?" the emergency team's chief asked.

  "Nobody alive," said the Humphries' security chief.

  "Okay," the chief called to his team. "Seal the hatch and let the fire burn itself out."

  Stavenger was already speaking into his handheld, calling for a security team to arrest Lars Fuchs. There's only one reason for him to be here in Humphries's private preserve, Stavenger knew. He's killed Martin Humphries.

  If it weren't so infuriating it would almost be funny, Humphries thought as he sat huddled in his closet.

  The idiotic architect who designed this for me never bothered to install a phone inside the shelter because everybody carries handhelds or even implants. I don't have an implant and I hate those damned handhelds beeping at me. So now I'm sitting here with no goddamned way to let anybody know I'm alive. And I don't dare go outside because the fire might still be burning. Even if it isn't, it's probably used up all the oxygen out there and I'd suffocate.

  Damn! Nothing to do but wait.

  Humphries detested waiting. For anything, even his own rescue.

  CRASH LANDING

  Ground's coming up awful fast, Pancho said to herself. She had allowed the little hopper to follow its ballistic trajectory, knowing it was going to come down way short of the Astro base in the Malapert Mountains. How short she didn't really care anymore. Her main concern—her only concern now—was to get this bird down without killing herself.

  Any landing you can walk away from is a good landing, she told herself as the bare, rock-strewn ground rushed up at her. Find a flat, open spot. Just like Armstrong in the old Apollo 11 Eagle. Find a flat, open spot.

  Easier said than done. The rolling, hilly ground sliding past her was pitted with craters of all sizes and covered so thickly with rocks and boulders that Pancho thought of a teenaged boy she had dated whose face was covered with acne.

  Funny what the mind dredges up, she thought.

  "Pay attention to the real world," she muttered.

  She fought down a wave of nausea as the ground rushed up at her. It would be sooo good to just lay down and go to sleep. Her legs felt like rubber, her whole body ached. Without thinking of it consciously she ran her tongue across her teeth, testing for a taste of blood. Bad sign if your gums start bleeding, she knew. Symptom of radiation sickness, big time.

  "Pay attention!" she screamed at
herself.

  "Say again?" came the voice of the flight controller at Malapert.

  "Nothin'," Pancho replied, apologetically. They've still got me on their radar, she thought. Good. They'll know where the body's buried.

  There! Coming up on the right. A fairly flat area with only a few dinky little rocks. It's sloping, though. On a hillside. Not so bad. If I can reach it.

  Pancho nudged the tee-shaped control yoke and the hopper's maneuvering thrusters squirted out a few puffs of cold gas, enough to jink the ungainly little craft toward the open area she had spotted.

  Shit! More rocks than I thought. Well, beggars can't be choosers. Only enough juice for one landing.

  She tapped the keyboard for the automatic landing sequence, not trusting herself to do the job manually. The hopper shuddered as its main engine fired, killed its velocity, and the little craft dropped like a child's toy onto the stony, sloping ground. All in total silence.

  Pancho remembered enough from her old astronaut training to flex her knees and brace her arms against the control podium. The hopper thumped into the ground, one flat landing foot banging into a rock big enough to tip the whole craft dangerously. For a wild moment Pancho thought the hopper was going to tumble over onto its side. It didn't, but the crash landing was violent enough to tear away the loop that held her right foot to the platform grillwork. Her leg flew up, knocking her so badly off balance that her left leg, still firmly anchored in its foot loop, snapped at the ankle.

  Pancho gritted her teeth in the sudden pain of the broken bone as she thudded in lunar slow motion to the grillwork platform.

  Feeling cold sweat breaking out of every pore of her body, she thought, Well, I ain't dead yet.

  Then she added, Won't be long before I am, though.

  ASTRO CORPORATION COMMAND CENTER

  I might as well move a cot in here, thought Jake Wanamaker as he paced along the row of consoles. A technician sat at each of them, monitoring display screens that linked the command center with Astro ships and bases from the Moon to the Belt. Lit only by the ghostly glow of the screens, the room felt hot and stuffy, taut with the hum of electrical equipment and the nervous tension of apprehensive men and women.

  There were only two displays that Wanamaker was interested in: Malapert base, near the lunar south pole, and Cromwell, about to start its runup to the asteroid Vesta.

  Wanamaker hunched over the technician monitoring the link with Cromwell. Deep inside the cloud of high-energy particles, radio contact was impossible. But the ship's captain had sent a tight-beam laser message more than half an hour earlier. It was just arriving at the Astro receiving telescope up on the surface of the Moon.

  The screen showed nothing but a jumbled hash of colors.

  "Decoding, sir," the seated technician murmured, feeling the admiral's breath on the back of her neck.

  The streaks dissolved to reveal the apprehensive-looking face of Cromwell's skipper. The man's eyes looked wary, evasive.

  "We have started the final run to target," he stated tersely. "The radiation cloud is dissipating faster than predicted, so we will release our payload at the point halfway between the start of the run and the planned release point."

  The screen went blank.

  Turning her face toward Wanamaker, the technician said, "That's the entire message, sir."

  His immediate reaction was to fire a message back to Cromwell ordering the captain to stick to the plan and carry the nanomachines all the way to the predecided release point. But he realized that it would take the better part of an hour for a message to reach the ship. Nothing I can do, he told himself, straightening up. He stretched his arms over his head, thinking, The captain's on the scene. If he feels he needs to let the package go early it's for a good reason. But Wanamaker couldn't convince himself. The captain's taking the easiest course for himself, he realized. He's not pressing his attack home.

  Turning slowly, he scanned the shadowy room for Tashkajian. She was at her desk on the other side of the quietly intense command center. This is her plan, Wanamaker thought. She worked it out with the captain. If there's anything wrong with his releasing the package early, she'll be the one to tell me.

  But what good will it do? I can't get the word to him in time to straighten him out.

  Tashkajian got up from her little wheeled chair as he approached her desk.

  "You saw the report from Cromwell?" Wanamaker asked.

  "Yes, sir."

  "And?"

  She hesitated a moment. "It's probably all right. The missiles are small and Vesta's radars will still be jammed by the radiation."

  "But he said the cloud was breaking up."

  "Our reports from the IAA monitors—"

  A whoop from one of the consoles interrupted them. "They found her!" a male technician hollered, his face beaming. "They found Pancho! She's alive!"

  The first that Pancho realized she'd passed out was when the excruciating pain woke her up. She blinked her gummy eyes and saw that somebody in a bulbous hard-shell space suit was lifting her off her back, broken ankle and all.

  "Jesus Christ on a Harley!" she moaned. "Take it easy, for chrissakes."

  "Sorry," the space-suited figure said. Pancho heard his words in her helmet earphones.

  "That leg's broken," she said. Nearly sobbed, actually, it hurt so badly.

  "Easy does it," the guy in the space suit said. Through a haze of agony Pancho realized there were three of them. One holding her shoulders, another her legs, and the third hovering at her side as they carried her away from the wreck of the hopper.

  "I'll immobilize the ankle as soon as we get you to our hopper," the guy said. "I'm a medic, Ms. Lane."

  "I can tell," she groused. "Total indifference to pain. Other people's pain."

  "We didn't know your ankle was broken, ma'am. You were unconscious when we reached you. Almost out of air, too."

  Screw you, Pancho thought. But she kept silent. I oughtta be pretty damn grateful to these turkeys for coming out and finding me. Each step they took, though, shot a fresh lance of pain through her leg.

  "We had to land more than a kilometer from your crash site," the medic said. "Not many places around here to put down a hopper safely."

  "Tell me about it."

  "We'll be there in ten-fifteen minutes. Then I can set your ankle properly."

  "Just don't drop me," Pancho growled.

  "The ground is very stony, very uneven. We're doing the best we can."

  "Just don't drop me," she repeated.

  They only dropped her once.

  When the Selene emergency team brought Fuchs, his three crew, and the Humphries security people to the hospital, Fuchs had the presence of mind to give his name as Karl Manstein. Medical personnel put each survivor of the fire onto a gurney and wheeled them to beds separated by plastic curtains.

  Fuchs knew he had to get out of the hospital as quickly as possible, with his crew. He lay on the crisp white sheets staring at the cream-colored ceiling, wondering how far away from him the others were. Nodon's wounded, he remembered. That's going to make an escape more difficult.

  It's only a matter of time before they realize Manstein is an alias, a fiction. Then what?

  But a new thought struck him and suddenly he smiled up at the ceiling, alone in his curtained cubicle.

  When he and the Humphries security chief finally staggered through the hatch and the temporary airlock that the Selene emergency crew had erected, the head of the emergency team had asked them, "Anybody else in there?"

  The security chief had shaken his head gravely. "Nobody alive," he had said.

  Humphries is dead! Fuchs exulted. Lying on his hospital bed, his eyes still stinging and his lungs raw from the smoke, he wanted to laugh with glee. I did it! I killed the murdering swine! Martin Humphries is dead.

  Martin Humphries was quite alive, but gnawingly hungry. He had never in his life known hunger before, but as he paced, or sat, or stretched out on the thick carpeting of his
closet hideaway, his empty stomach growled at him. It hurt, this hollow feeling in his belly. It stretched the minutes and hours and drove his mind into an endless need for food. Even when he tried to sleep his dreams were filled with steaming banquets that he somehow could not reach.

  Thirst was even worse. His throat grew dry, his tongue seemed to get thicker in his mouth, his eyes felt gritty.

  I could die in here! he realized. A hundred times he went to the airtight panel, touched it gingerly with his fingertips. It felt cool. He pressed both hands on it. Flattened his cheek against it. The fire must be out by now, he thought. His wristwatch told him that more than twenty hours had gone by. The fire's got to be out by now. But what about the air? Is there any air to breathe on the other side of the panel?

  Somebody will come, he assured himself. My security chief knows about this shelter. If he wasn't killed in the fire. If he didn't suffocate from lack of oxygen. Ferrer. Victoria might have gotten out. She'll tell them I'm here. But then he wondered, Will she? I wouldn't let her in here with me; she could be sore enough to let me rot in here, even if she got out okay. But even so, somebody will send people to go through the house, assess the damage. The Selene safety inspectors. The goddamned insurance people will be here sooner or later.

  Later, a sardonic voice in his mind told him. Don't expect the insurance adjusters to break their butts getting here.

  It's all that motherless architect's fault, Humphries fumed. Idiot! Builds this emergency shelter without a phone to make contact with the outside. Without sensors to tell me if there's air on the other side of the door. I'll see to it that he never gets another commission. Never! He'll be panhandling on street corners by the time I get finished with him.

  There's not even a water fountain in here. I could die of thirst before anybody finds me.

  He slumped to the floor and wanted to cry, but his body was too dehydrated to produce tears.