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MOONWAR

Book II of The Moonbase Saga

Ben Bova

CONTENTS

Part I Skirmish

Part II Siege

Part III Battle

War is an evil thing, but to submit to the dictation of other states is worse

. . . Freedom, if we hold fast to it, will ultimately restore our losses, but

submission will mean permanent loss of all that we value ... To you who call

yourselves men of peace, I say: You are not safe unless you have men of action

on your side.

-Thucydides

Once we have lived through the rapid changes that are now marking our

transition from the third to the fourth phase of history, from a period of

diversification to one of unification, we shall be squarely faced with a

number of serious problems . . .

It has been shown by many social experiments that man cannot control every

facet of life. All we can do is to try to isolate the factors that are the

keys to the entire structure, and to work on them. These are basically: the

conservation of natural resources; power-production; population-control; the

full utilization of brainpower; and education. The details of the social

structure will fall into place automatically as the end product of all these

forces; as they always have done . . .

Political unification of the world is not the first necessary step. By the

time it has become possible without turmoil, it will also have become

unnecessary.

-Carleton S. Coon

PROLOGUE: MOONBASE CONTROL CENTER

'L-l's out.'

The chief communications technician looked up sharply from her keyboard. 'Try

the backup.'

'Already did,' said the man at the console beside her. 'No joy. Every

frequency's dead.'

The third comm tech, seated at the console on the chief's other side, tapped

one keypad after another. His display screen showed nothing but streaks of

meaningless hash.

'They did it,' he confirmed. 'They pulled the plug.'

The other controllers and technicians left their own stations and drifted

tensely, expectantly toward the communications consoles. Their consoles

flickered and glowed, untended. The big electronic wall screen that displayed

all of Moonbase's systems hung above them as if nothing unusual was happening.

The chief pushed back her little wheeled chair slightly. 'They did it right

when they said they would, didn't they?'

'That's it, then,' said the male comm tech. 'We're at war.'

No one replied. No one knew what to say. The knot of men and women stood there

in uneasy silence. The only sounds were the low humming of the electronics

consoles and the soft whisper of the air-circulation fans.

'I'd better pipe the word up to the boss,' the chief technician muttered,

reaching toward her keyboard. She started to peck at the keys.

'Shit!' she snapped. 'I broke a fingernail.'

TOUCHDOWN MINUS 116 HOURS 30 MINUTES

Douglas Stavenger stood at the crest of Wodjohowitcz Pass, listening to the

silence. Inside the base there were always voices, human or synthesized, and

the constant background hum of electrical machinery. Out here, up on the

mountains that ringed the giant crater Alphonsus, he heard nothing but his own

breathing - and the faint, comforting whir of the spacesuit's air circulation

fans.

Good noise, he thought, smiling to himself. When that noise stops, so does

your breathing.

He had climbed down from the tractor near the spot where the plaque was, a

small square of gold riveted onto the rock face, dedicated to his father:

On this spot Paul Stavenger chose to die,

in order to save the men and women of

Moonbase.

Doug had not driven up to the pass for the sake of nostalgia, however. He

wanted to take a long, hard look at Moonbase. Not the schematic diagrams or

electronic charts, but the real thing, the actual base as it stood beneath the

uncompromising stars.

Everyone in the base thought they were safe and snug, dug into the side of the

ringwall mountain they had named Yeager. Sheltered by solid rock, they had

little fear of the dangers up on the airless surface, where the crater floor

was bathed in hard radiation and the temperature could swing four hundred

degrees between daylight and night, between sunshine and shadow.

But Doug saw how terribly vulnerable they all were. They had protected

themselves against the forces of nature, true enough. But now they were

threatened with destruction by the hand of war.

Doug looked out at the solar farm, thousands of acres of dark solar cells that

greedily drank in sunlight and converted it noiselessly into the electricity

the base needed the way a man needs blood. They could be blown to dust by

conventional explosives or blasted into uselessness by the radiation pulse

from a nuclear warhead.

Even easier, he realized, an enemy could knock out the radiators and we'd all

stew underground in our own waste heat until we either surrendered or

collapsed from heat exhaustion.

His eyes travelled to the rocket pads. They were empty now that the morning's

lunar transfer vehicle had loaded up and departed. Beyond, he saw the geodesic

dome that sheltered the construction pad; inside it, a half-built Clippership

was being built by virus-sized nanomachines that converted meteoric carbon

dust into the hard, strong structure of pure diamond. How could we protect

spacecraft sitting out on the pads? We can't shelter them and we don't have

the facilities to bring them underground. That dome is no protection against

missiles or even bullets.

He looked farther out across the crater floor, to where the mass launcher

stretched its lean dark metallic finger to the horizon. A single warhead could

wreck it forever, Doug knew.

Well, we can't beat them in a shooting war, he told himself. That's certain.

Turning his gaze back to the edge of the solar farm, Doug saw the dark

slick-looking film on the ground where the nanomachines were busily converting

the silicon and metals of the lunar regolith into more solar cells.

That's what this war is all about, he knew. Nanomachines. And he thought he

could feel the trillions of nanos inside his own body. If I go back to Earth

I'll be a marked man. Some crackpot nanoluddite will murder me, just the way

they've killed so many others. But if the only way to avert this war is to

close Moonbase, where else can I go?

His mind churning, he turned again and looked down at the deep pit that would

one day be Moonbase's grand plaza. If we ever get to finish it.

All construction jobs begin by digging a hole in the ground, he said to

himself. It doesn't make any difference if you're on the Moon or the Earth.

Under the brilliant illumination of powerful lamps spaced around the edge of

the pit, front-loaders were working soundlessly in the lunar vacuum, scooping

up dirt and dumping their loads onto the waiting trucks. Clouds of fine lunar

dust hung over the machines, scattering the lamp light like fog. The first

time I've seen mist on the Moon, Doug mused. Not a molecule of water in that

haze, though.

All of the machinery was controlled by operators sitting safely inside their

stations at the control center. Only a handful of construction workers were

actually out on the floor of the crater Alphonsus.

I should be inside, too, Doug told himself. The deadline comes up right about

now. I ought to be inside facing the music instead of out here, trying to

avoid it all.

In the seven years of his exile on the Moon, Doug had always come out to the

lunar surface when he had a problem that ached in him. The Moon's harsh,

airless other-worldliness concentrated his mind on the essentials: life or

death, survival or extinction. He never failed to be thrilled by the stark

grandeur of the lunar landscape. But now he felt fear, instead. Fear that

Moonbase would be closed, its potential for opening the space frontier forever

lost. Fear that he would have to return to Earth, where fanatic assassins

awaited him.

And anger, deep smoldering anger that men would threaten war and destruction

in their ignorant, blind zeal to eradicate Moonbase.

Simmering inside, Doug turned back to the tractor and climbed up to its bare

metal driver's seat. The ground here along the pass was rutted by years of

tractors' cleats clawing through the dusty lunar regolith. He himself had

driven all the way around these softly rounded mountains, circumnavigating the

crater; not an easy trek, even in a tractor. Alphonsus was so big its ringwall

mountains disappeared beyond the short lunar horizon. The jaunt had taken

almost a week, all of it spent inside a spacesuit that smelled very ripe by

the time he came home again. But Doug had found the peace and inner

tranquility he had sought, all alone up on the mountaintops.

Not today. Even out here there was no peace or tranquility for him.

Once he reached the crater floor he looked beyond the uncompromising slash of

the horizon and saw the Earth hanging in the dark sky, glowing blue and decked

with streams of pure white clouds. He felt no yearning, no sense of loss, not

even curiosity. Only deep resentment, anger. Burning rage. The Moon was his

true home, not that distant deceitful world where violence and treachery

lurked behind every smile.

And he realized that the anger was at himself, not the distant faceless people

of Earth. I should have known it would come to this. For seven years they've

been putting the pressure on us. I should have seen this coming. I should have

figured out a way to avoid an outright conflict.

He parked the tractor and walked along the side of the construction pit,

gliding in the dreamlike, floating strides of the Moon's low gravity. Turning

his attention back to the work at hand, Doug saw that the digging was almost

finished. They were nearly ready to start the next phase of the job. The

tractors were best for the heavy work, moving large masses of dirt and rock.

Now the finer tasks would begin, and for that the labs were producing

specialized nanomachines.

He wondered if they would ever reach that stage. Or would the entire base be

abandoned and left suspended in time, frozen in the airless emptiness of

infinity? Worse yet, the base might be blasted, bombed into rubble, destroyed

for all time.

It can't come to that! I won't let that happen. No matter what, I won't give

them an excuse to use force against us.

'Greetings and felicitations!' Lev Brudnoy's voice boomed though Doug's helmet

earphones.

Startled out of his thoughts, Doug looked up and saw Brudnoy's tall figure

approaching, his spacesuit a brilliant cardinal red. The bulky suits smothered

individual recognition, so long-time Lunatics tended to personalize their

suits for easy identification. Even inside his suit, though, Brudnoy seemed to

stride along in the same gangly, loose-jointed manner he did in shirtsleeves.

'Lev - what are you doing here?'

'A heart-warming greeting for your stepfather.'

'I mean ... oh, you know what I mean!'

'Your mother and I decided to come up now, in case there's trouble later on.'

Nodding inside his helmet, Doug agreed, 'Good thinking. They might shut down

flights here for a while.'

'How is the suit?' Brudnoy asked.

Doug had forgotten that he was wearing the new design. 'Fine,' he said

absently, his attention still on the digging.

'Do the gloves work as well as my engineers promised me they would?' Brudnoy

asked, coming up beside Doug.

Holding out a hand for the Russian to see, Doug slowly closed his fingers. He

could feel the vibration of the tiny servomotors as they moved the alloy

'bones' of the exoskeleton on the back of his hand.

'I haven't tried to crush any rocks with them,' Doug said, half in jest.

'But the pressure is not uncomfortable?' Brudnoy asked. 'You can flex your

fingers easily?'

Nodding again, Doug replied, 'About as easily as you can in regular gloves.'

'Ahh,' Brudnoy sighed. 'I had hoped for much better.'

'This is just the first shot, Lev. You can improve it, I'm sure.'

'Yes, there is always room for improvement.'

The suit Doug wore was a cermet hard shell from boots to helmet; even the

joints at the ankles, knees, hips, shoulders, elbows and wrists were

overlapping circles of cermet. The ceramic-metal material was strong enough to

hold normal shirtsleeve-pressure air inside the suit even though the pressure

outside was nothing but hard vacuum. Thus the suit operated at normal air

pressure, instead of the low-pressure mix of oxygen and nitrogen that the

standard spacesuits required. No prebreathing was needed with the new design;

you could climb into it and button up immediately.

The gloves were always a problem. They tended to balloon even in the

low-pressure suits. Doug's gloves were fitted with spidery exoskeleton struts

and tiny servomotors that amplified his natural strength, so he could grasp

and work even though the gloves would have been too stiff for him use without

their aid.

'Maybe we could lower the pressure in the gloves,' Doug suggested.

'We would have to put a cuff around your wrist to seal-'

'Priority message.' The words crackled in their earphones. 'Priority message

for Douglas Stavenger.'

Tapping at the keypad built into the wrist of his spacesuit, Doug said, 'This

is Stavenger.' He was surprised at how dry his throat suddenly felt. He knew

what the message would be.

'All frequencies from the L-l commsat have been cut off,' said the chief

communications technician. 'Communications directly from Earth have also been

stopped.'

Doug's heart began hammering inside him. He looked at Brudnoy, but all he

could see was the reflection of his own faceless helmet in the gold tint of

the Russian's visor.

Swallowing hard, Doug said, 'Okay. Message received. Thank you.'

He waited a beat, then added, 'Please find Jinny Anson for me.'

'Will do.'

An instant later the former base director's voice chirped in his earphones,

'Anson here.'

'Jinny, it's Doug. I need to talk with you, right away.'

'I know,' she said, her voice sobering.

'Where are you?'

'In the university office.'

'Please meet me in my place in fifteen minutes.'

'Right.'

Doug turned and started along the edge of the construction pit, heading for

the airlock in swift, gliding strides. Brudnoy kept pace beside him.

'It's started,' he said.

I'll inform your mother,' said the Russian.

With a bitter smile, Doug replied, 'She already knows, I'm sure. They couldn't

declare war on us without her knowing about it.'

TOUCHDOWN MINUS 115 HOURS 55 MINUTES

'So they've done it,' said Jinny Anson, with a challenging grin. 'Damn

flatheads.'

Anson, Brudnoy and Doug's mother Joanna were sitting before Doug's desk. Anson

was leaning back in her webbed chair almost casually. Wearing comfortable

faded denim jeans and an open-collar velour blouse, she looked vigorous and

feisty, her short-cropped hair still golden blonde, her steel-gray eyes

snapping with barely suppressed anger.

Joanna seemed calm, but Doug knew that her composed expression masked an inner

tension. She had let her shoulder-length hair go from ash blonde to silver

gray, but otherwise she looked no more than forty. She was dressed elegantly,

as usual: a patterned coral skirt, its hem slightly weighted to make it drape

properly in the soft lunar gravity, and a crisply tailored white blouse

buttoned at the throat and wrists, where jewelry sparkled.

Seated between the two women was Brudnoy, his long face with its untidy gray

beard looking somber, his baggy eyes on Doug. Brudnoy's dark turtleneck and

unpressed denims seemed almost shabby, next to his wife's impeccable ensemble.

His gray lunar softboots were faded and shiny from long use.

Although Doug's office was little larger than a cubbyhole carved out of the

ringwall mountain's flank, its walls were smart screens from padded tile floor

to smoothed rock ceiling; flat, high-definition, digital display screens that

could be activated by voice or by the pencil-sized laser pointer resting on

Doug's desk.

Doug kept one eye on the screen covering the wall to the left of his desk; it

was scrolling a complete checkout of Moonbase's entire systems. He needed to

reassure himself that everything was operating normally. The other two walls

could have been showing videos of any scenery he wanted, but Doug had them

displaying the security camera views of the base, switching every ten seconds

from one tunnel to another and then to the outside, where the teleoperated

tractors were still working in the pit as if nothing had happened. The wall

behind him was blank.

Feeling uneasy as he sat behind his desk, Doug said, 'Now I don't want people

getting twitchy about this. The base should run as normally as possible.'

'Even though Faure's declared war on us?' Anson cracked.

'It's not that kind of a war,' Doug snapped back. "There's not going to be any

shooting.'

'Not from our side, anyway,' said Anson. "The best we could do is throw rocks

at 'em.'

'At whom?' Doug's mother asked testily.

'Peacekeeper troops,' said Doug.

Everyone in the office looked startled at the thought.

'You don't think they'd really go that far, do you?' Anson asked, looking

worried for the first time.

Doug picked up his laser pointer and aimed its red spot at one of the icons

lining the top of the wall screen on his left. The wall became a schematic

display of the Earth-Moon system, with clouds of satellites orbiting the

Earth. A dozen navigational satellites clung to low orbits around the Moon,

and the big crewed station at the L-l position still showed as a single green

dot.

'No traffic,' Doug said. "This morning's LTV's stopped at L-l. Nothing at all

moving between LEO and here.'

'Not yet,' muttered Brudnoy.

'They wouldn't invade us,' Joanna said firmly. 'That little Quebecer hasn't

got the guts.'

Brudnoy ran a bony finger across his short gray beard. No matter how carefully

he trimmed it, the beard somehow looked shaggy all the time.

'That little Quebecer,' he reminded his wife, 'has fought his way to the top

of the United Nations. And now he's gotten the U.N. to declare us in violation

of the nanotech treaty.'

Joanna frowned impatiently. 'We've been violating that treaty since it was

written.'

'But now your little Quebecer has obtained the authority to send Peacekeeper

troops here to enforce the treaty on us,' Brudnoy continued.

'You really think it'll come to that?' Anson asked again, edging forward

slightly in her chair.

'Sooner or later,' Doug said.

'They know we can't stop using nanomachines,' Joanna said bitterly. 'They know

they'll be destroying Moonbase if they prevent us from using them.'

'That's what they're going to do, though,' said Brudnoy, growing more gloomy

with each word.

'Then we'll have to resist them,' Doug said.

'Fight the Peacekeepers?' Anson seemed startled at the thought. 'But-'

'I didn't say fight,' Doug corrected. 'I said resist.'

'How?'

'I've been studying the legal situation,' Doug said. 'We could declare our

independence.'

His mother looked more irked than puzzled. 'What good would that do?'

'As an independent nation, we wouldn't sign the nanotech treaty, so it

wouldn't apply to us.'

Brudnoy raised his brows. 'But would the U.N. recognize us as an independent

nation? Would they admit us to membership?'

'Faure would never allow it,' Joanna said. 'The little Quebecer's got the

whole U.N. wrapped around his manicured finger.'

'How would the corporation react if we declared independence?' Jinny Anson

asked.

'Kiribati couldn't do anything about it,' said Doug.

Brudnoy sighed painfully. 'If they hadn't knuckled under to Faure and signed

the treaty-'

'They didn't have much choice, really,' said Doug. Looking straight at his

mother, he went on, 'But what about Masterson? How's your board going to react

to our independence?'

'I'll handle the board of directors,' Joanna replied flatly.

'And Rashid?'

She smiled slightly. 'He'll go up in a cloud of purple smoke. But don't worry;

even though he's the board chairman now I can keep him in his place.'

'Independence,' Anson murmured.

Doug said, 'We're pretty much self-sufficient, as far as energy and food are

concerned.'

'How long is "pretty much?"' Joanna asked.

'We can go for months without importing anything from Earth, I betcha,' Anson

replied.

'Really?' Doug asked.

She shrugged. 'Condiments might be a problem. Ketchup, seasonings, salt.'

'We can manufacture salt with nanomachines,' Doug said. 'Ought to be simple

enough.'

'Where can you get the sodium and chlorine?' Anson retorted. 'Not out of the

regolith.'

Doug smiled a little. 'Out of the reprocessors. Recycle the garbage.'

Anson made a sour face.

'Could we really get along for months without importing anything from Earth?'

Joanna asked.

'Maybe a year,' Anson said. 'If you don't mind eating your soyburgers without

mustard.'

Brudnoy flexed his gnarled fingers. 'Aren't you glad that I insisted on

planting onions and garlic, along with my flowers?'

'Do you have any jalapeno peppers out at the farm?' Anson asked.

Brudnoy shook his head.

'A year,' Joanna mused. 'This ought to be settled long before that.'

'One way or another,' said Brudnoy morosely.

'Pharmaceuticals might be a problem,' Doug said, turning to the wall screen on

his right. With the laser he changed the display from a camera view of the

empty rocket launching pads to an inventory of the base's pharmaceutical

supplies. 'We've been bringing them up on a monthly schedule. Got a . . .' he

studied the display screen briefly, '. . . three-month supply on hand.'

'Maybe we can use nanomachines instead,' Joanna suggested. It was an open

secret that her youthful appearance was due to nanotherapy that tightened

sagging muscles and kept her skin tone smooth.

'I can talk to Cardenas about that,' Anson replied.

'And Professor Zimmerman,' Doug said.

'You talk to Zimmerman,' she snapped. 'He always tries to bully me.'

Brudnoy volunteered, I'll see Zimmerman.'

'You?'

With a guilty smile, the Russian said, 'He and I have been working on a little

project together: using nanomachines to make beer.'

'Lev!' Joanna glared at her husband.

Brudnoy raised a placating hand. 'Don't worry. So far, we've accomplished less

than nothing. The stuff is so bad not even Zimmerman will drink it.'

Doug chuckled at his stepfather's self-deprecating manner. Then he said,

'Okay. Our first move is to declare independence and-'

'How can we let anyone on Earth know we're applying for U.N. membership if all

the communications links are cut off?' Joanna asked.

'We can talk to Earth,' Anson assured her. 'Radio, TV, even laser beams if we

need 'em. We don't need the commsats; just. squirt our messages straight to

the ground antennas.'

'The question is,' said Brudnoy, 'will anyone on Earth respond to us?'

'They will,' Doug said. 'Once they learn what we're doing. And there's always

the news media.'

'Ugh!' said Joanna.

'Don't knock them,' Doug insisted. 'They might turn out to be our best ally in

this.'

'Our only ally,' said Brudnoy.

'Okay, okay, so we declare independence,' Anson cut in. 'Then what?'

'If Faure refuses to recognize us we appeal to the World Court,' said Doug.

Joanna agreed. 'Tie him up legally and wait for world opinion to come over to

our side.'

'Lots of luck,' Brudnoy mumbled.

'Do you think it'll work?' Anson wondered.

'It's got to,' said Joanna.

'Jinny,' said Doug, pointing a finger in her direction, 'I want you to take

over as base director.'

'Me? Why? I haven't been behind that desk in almost eight years!'

Grinning at her, Doug said, 'You know more about what's going on in these

tunnels than I do. Don't try to deny it.'

'But I've got the university to run,' she protested. 'And what're you going to

be doing?'

'The university's going to be in hibernation as long as Earthside isn't

allowed to communicate with us. Your students won't be able to talk to you.'

'But you . . . ?'

'I've been studying military history ever since Faure was elected

secretary-general,' Doug said. 'One thing I've learned is that we're going to

need somebody to give his undivided attention to this crisis. I can't be

running the day-to-day operation of Moonbase and handle the war at the same

time.'

'You said it's not a war,' Joanna said sharply.

'Not a shooting war,' Doug admitted. 'Not yet. But we've got to be prepared

for that possibility.'

'You can't-'

'He's right,' Brudnoy said, interrupting his wife. 'Doug should devote his

full attention to this situation.'

'And I'm gonna be base director again,' Anson said. She did not seem

displeased with the idea.

'So you will be our generalissimo,' said Brudnoy, pointing at Doug. 'Jinny

becomes base director once again. And you, dear wife,' he turned to face

Joanna, 'must serve as our foreign secretary, in charge of diplomatic

relations with Masterson and the other corporations.'

'And what will you be doing, Lev?' Joanna asked her husband.

'Me?' Brudnoy's shaggy brows climbed halfway to his scalp. 'I will remain as

usual: nothing but a peasant.'

'Yeah, sure,' Anson chirped.

Brudnoy shrugged. 'I have no delusions of grandeur. But I think it will be

important to keep the major corporations on our side.'

'I'll handle relations with Masterson Corporation,' Joanna agreed. 'We'll try

to put some pressure on the government in Washington to oppose this U.N.

takeover.'

'If you can keep the board on our side,' Doug said.

His mother raised an imperious brow. 'I told you, don't worry about the

board.'

'Or Rashid?'

'Or Rashid either,' Joanna riposted. Turning slightly toward her husband, she

added, ' Rashid's a man with real delusions of grandeur.'

'Okay,' said Jinny Anson. 'Then I'll run the base and you, Doug, you can run

the war.'

'Thanks a lot.'

'Somebody's got to-'

'Hold it!' Doug snapped. The message icon on his left screen was blinking.

Urgent message. And he saw that a cardinal red dot had cleared the swarm of

low-orbit satellites around the Earth and was heading outward.

'Message,' Doug called out in the tone that the computer recognized. His voice

trembled only slightly.

'A crewed spacecraft just lifted from the military base on Corsica,' a comm

tech's voice said. 'It's on a direct lunar trajectory.'

'Peacekeeper troops,' Doug said.

'Must be.'

They all turned toward Doug.

'So what do we do now, boss?' Jinny Anson asked.

TOUCHDOWN MINUS 114 HOURS 35 MINUTES

'Five days,' Doug said to the woman's image on his screen. 'They'll be here in

a little less than five days.'

Tamara Bonai frowned slightly, nothing more than a faint pair of lines between

her brows. But on her ethereally beautiful face it seemed a gross

disfigurement. Her face was a sculptor's dream, high cheekbones and almond

eyes; her skin a light clear teak; her long hair a tumbling cascade as

lustrous and black as the infinity of space.

Like Doug, she was seated behind a desk. Her life-sized image on the wall in

front of him made it look as if Doug's office opened onto her office on

Tarawa: lunar rock and smart walls suddenly giving way to Micronesian ironwood

and bamboo.

'When I visited Moonbase,' she said, 'the trip took only one day.'

'We brought you up on a high-energy burn,' said Doug. 'The Peacekeepers are

coming on a minimum-energy trajectory.'

It took almost three seconds for his words to reach Earth and her reply to get

back to his office at Moonbase. Usually Doug relaxed during the interval but

now he sat tensely in his padded swivel chair.

Bonai smiled slightly. 'The Peacekeepers are trying to save money by taking

the low-energy route?'

Doug forced a laugh. 'I doubt it. I think they want to give us as much time as

possible to think things over and then surrender.'

Her lips still curved deliciously, Bonai asked, 'Is that what you will do:

surrender?'

'No,' said Doug. 'We're just about self-sufficient now. We can get along

without Earth for a long while.'

If she was surprised by Doug's answer, it did not show on her face. Doug

wondered if anyone was eavesdropping on their conversation. It was being

carried by a tight laser beam, but still the tightest beam spread a few

kilometers across over the four-hundred-thousand-kilometer distance between

the Earth and the Moon. The island of Tarawa was tiny, but still big enough

for Rashid or someone else to pick up the beamed signal.

'You are prepared to fight Peacekeeper troops?' she asked.

'We're not going to surrender Moonbase to them.'

She seemed genuinely worried. 'But they will have guns . . . other weapons.

What weapons do you have?'

"There isn't even a target pistol in all of Moonbase,' Doug admitted. 'But

we've got some pretty good brains here.'

Once she heard his words, she shook her head slightly. 'You can't stop bullets

with words.'

'Maybe we can,' Doug said. Not waiting for a response from her, he went on,

'We're going to declare our independence and apply to the General Assembly for

admission to the U.N.'

Her delay in responding to him was longer than three seconds. At last Bonai

said, 'It's my fault, isn't it? You're in this trouble because I bowed to the

U.N.'s pressure and signed the nanotech treaty.'

'You did what was best for your people,' Doug replied. 'You did what you had

to do.'

Masterson Corporation had owned and operated Moonbase from its beginning as a

set of half-buried shelters huddled near the mountain ringwall of the giant

crater Alphonsus. Nanotechnology made it possible for the base to grow, and

begin to prosper.

Virus-sized nanomachines scoured the regolith of Alphonsus' crater floor,

extracting oxygen and the scant atoms of hydrogen that blew in on the solar

wind. Once ice fields were discovered in the south polar region, nanomachines

built and maintained the pipeline that fed water across more than a thousand

kilometers of mountains and craters. Nanomachines built solar cells out of the

regolith's silicon, to supply the growing base with constantly increasing

electrical power. Nanomachines had built the mass driver that launched

payloads of lunar ores to factories in Earth orbit.

And nanomachines took carbon atoms from near-Earth asteroids and built

Clipperships of pure diamond, Moonbase's newest export and already its

principal source of cash flow. Diamond Clipperships were not only the world's

best spacecraft; they were starting to take over the market for long-range

commercial air flight on Earth.

The United Nations' nanotechnology treaty banned all nanotech operations,

research and teaching in the nations that signed the treaty. Seven years

earlier, when it became clear that the United States would sign the treaty -

indeed, American nanoluddites had drafted the treaty - Masterson Corporation

had set up a dummy company on the island nation of Kiribati and transferred

Moonbase to the straw-man corporation. As long as Kiribati did not sign the

treaty, Moonbase could legally continue using nanomachines, which were as

vital to Moonbase as air.

But the day after Tamara Bonai, chief of the Kiribati council, reluctantly

signed the nanotech treaty, the U.N.'s secretary general - Georges Faure -

personally called Joanna Stavenger and told her that Moonbase had two weeks to

shut down all nanotech operations, research and teaching.

Exactly two weeks later, to the very minute, all communications links from

Earth to Moonbase were cut. And now a spacecraft carrying U.N. Peacekeeper

troops had lifted from Corsica on a leisurely five-day course for Moonbase.

'You have no idea of how much pressure they put on us,' Bonai said, her lovely

face downcast. 'They even stopped tourist flights from coming to our resorts.

It was an economic blockade. They would have strangled us.'

'I'm not blaming you for this,' Doug said. 'I only called to let you know that

we're declaring our independence. As an independent nation that hasn't signed

the nanotech treaty, we'll be able to keep on as we have been, despite Faure

and his Peacekeepers.'

She almost smiled. 'Does that mean that you will continue to honor your

contracts with Kiribati Corporation?'

Moonbase marketed its diamond Clipperships and other exports to transportation

companies on Earth through Kiribati Corporation.

'Yes, certainly,' Doug said. Then he added, 'As soon as this situation is

cleared up.'

'I understand,' she said. 'We will certainly not object to your independence.'

Doug smiled back at her. 'Thanks, Tamara. I knew I could count on you.'

The three seconds ticked. 'Good luck, Doug,' she said at last.

Thanks again. I think we're going to need all the luck we can get.'

TOUCHDOWN MINUS 114 HOURS

Kind of a shame, the mercenary thought. They're pretty nice people, these guys

I work with. The women, too. But I won't be hurting them. It's the leaders I'm

after. The Brudnoys and Jinny Anson and the Stavenger kid.

Nodding as if reaffirming his mission, he went back to his work. Got to finish

this job, he told himself. Can't leave anything undone. No loose ends; no

mistakes.

The word spread through Moonbase's corridors with the speed of sound. In

workshops and offices, in living quarters and laboratories, out at the

spaceport, at the mass driver, even among the handful of spacesuited men and

women working on the surface, the word flashed: We're at war. U.N. troops are

on their way here.

It's about time, said the mercenary to himself. Years of diplomats in their

fancy suits and their evasive language, farting around, trying to talk the

problem to death, and now at last they're taking action.

He looked up from the work he was doing; he took pride in his work. No one

suspected that he was a deep agent, a trained killer who had been inserted

into Moonbase more than a year earlier to work his way into the community and

wait for the right moment. He had been without contact from his superiors ever

since he first set foot in Moonbase. He would operate now without orders.

Cripple Moonbase. That was his mission. For a year he had studied all of

Moonbase's systems and personnel. The underground base was pathetically

vulnerable to sabotage. Every breath of air, every molecule of water, depended

on complex machinery, all of it run by sophisticated computer programs.

Sophisticated meant fragile, the mercenary knew. A computer virus could bring

Moonbase to its knees in a matter of hours, maybe less.

There was another part of his mission. Decapitate the leadership. His

superiors used words such as incapacitate and immobilize. What they meant was

kill.

TOUCHDOWN MINUS 113 HOURS 22 MINUTES

Doug sat alone in his quarters, staring at his blank wall screen. Declare our

independence, he thought. Just like that. Tell the flatlanders down there that

we no longer belong to Kiribati Corporation or any company or government on

Earth. What words do I use to get that across?

His quarters were larger than his office, one of the new 'suites' big enough

to partition into a sitting room and a separate bedroom. It even had its own

bathroom.

Leaning back in his comfortable chair of yielding plastic foam, Doug asked the

computer to call up the American Declaration of Independence from his history

program. Jefferson's powerful, eloquent words filled the wall screen. Doug

reduced the display to a less imposing size, then spent several minutes

studying it. Finally he shook his head. That was fine for 1776, he told

himself, but this is nearly three hundred years later. They'd sound pretty

stilted now.

Ben Bova - Moonwar

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