Moonbase - Moonwar Part 37

"How do you iron them?"

"The old-fashioned way," Doug answered. "With automated ironing machines that use waste heat from the base's living quarters and machinery."

Edith shook her head inside her helmet. Her clothes seemed clean enough when she got them back from the laundry, but rolling them around out here...?

"I'm switching to the base's standard comm frequency," Doug told her. "First keypad on your comm set."

It took Edith a few moments to remember which row of pads on the wrist of her suit was the comm set. In the dim lighting, little more than the glow from the tractor's dashboard instruments, she figured it out after a few moments.

"... yes, I'm outside with Edith," Doug was saying.

"Are you crazy?" Jinny Anson's voice snapped. "What the blazes are you doing outside?"

"Trying to get to Gordette before he reaches Yamagata's people," said Doug. "Any joy with tracking his tractor?"

"h.e.l.l no.' Anson sounded thoroughly unhappy. "He was smart enough to turn off its transponder and now he's so far over the horizon that even if he had it on we couldn't hear it."

"Any idea of which way he went?"

"I checked the automated radar plot," Anson replied immediately. "Shows he was heading on a bearing of three-forty-five degrees, relative to true north."

"Three-forty-five?"

"That's out past the ma.s.s driver, heading almost due north."

"So he's not taking Wodjohowitcz Pa.s.s, then."

"Not yet. He's probably trying to knock out the ma.s.s driver first. The magnets, I betcha."

Doug's voice caught in his throat. "The magnets! So we can't use them to drive Wicksen's particle beam gun."

"Which means we won't have any chance at all of stopping an incoming nuke."

"I've got to stop him."

"Get real! He's got a six-hour lead on you."

"I've still got to try. Does Wix have any people out at the driver?"

"Not for the past ten days. His whole crew's been inside here, working on the new hardware."

"Do we have anything at all that we can use to spot his tractor, Jinny?"

She humphed. "Crystal ball? Tarot cards...' Suddenly her voice brightened. "Hey! What about Kadar's survey satellite?"

"Is it still functional?"

"We can power it up and see. Lemme check on when it'll swing over Alphonsus again."

"Good. Call me as soon as you can."

"Will do, boss."

Edith asked, "Aren't we over the horizon from Moonbase?"

"We will be in another fifteen minutes," Doug said.

"Then how will you be able to talk with Jinny? Or anyone at the base?"

"Antennas up on top of Mount Yeager," Doug explained. "We can reach more than half of the area within the ringwall, and a considerable amount of territory out on Mare Nubium."

"Then why can't they find Gordetie's tractor?"

"The antennas are for communications, not radar tracking."

"Oh."

"We'll get him."

Edith was worried that he was right.

Doug began to show her how to run the tractor. It wasn't much different from driving a car.

"Not a lot of traffic out here," he said, "but you've got to be on the lookout for craters and rocks that can get you stuck. Stay with the flattest, clearest ground you can find."

"Like you're doing."

"Right."

"Do you know where you're going? I mean, without knowing where his tractor is?"

Doug pointed a gloved finger over the hood of the tractor. "I'm following his trail."

"His trail?"

"Look. The cleat tracks."

She saw a maze of tracks running pretty much in the same direction: out to the ma.s.s driver, she supposed.

"His are the brightest," Doug explained. "n.o.body's been out here for ten days or so, so Barn's tractor has churned up the newest tracks. Surface dirt is darkened by solar ultraviolet. New bootprints, new tractor marks, they uncover the brighter stuff underneath."

"Shades of the Lone Ranger and his faithful Indian companion," Edith muttered.

"Who?"

He knows so much, Edith thought, and there's so much he doesn't know. She settled back to watching the landscape, trundling by at a frustratingly slow thirty kilometers per hour or so.

"Do you really find this rock pile beautiful?" she asked.

"Don't you?"

"It's so barren! So empty and lifeless. There's not even air to breathe."

It took him a few moments to reply. "It all looks a lot better when there's a full Earth. Fifty times brighter than a full Moon, back Earthside. It's breathtaking. Everything glows like silver out here. And you can watch the Earth, see its clouds and oceans, it never stays the same for very long."

"It's only a sliver now," Edith said, glancing upward at the thin crescent hanging in the starry sky.

"Take a good look," Doug said. "Stare at it for a few minutes."

There's nothing better to do out here, Edith thought. She looked at the bright crescent Earth, a scimitar-slim curve of bright blue with flecks of white.

And saw that there was a blue glow stretching beyond the points of the crescent. The Earth's air was gleaming, catching the Sun's light and warmth.

"Look on the dark side," Dough told her. "Focus your eyes a little to the left of the crescent's bulge."

She did, and saw nothing but darkness. The night side of Earth, she realized. Dark and- There were lights glittering there! At first Edith wasn't certain she really saw them, but the harder she stared, the more she saw. Cities aglow with light. Thin twinkling threads of highways linking them.

"Holy cow!" she blurted.

"See the cities?"

"It's like a connect-the-dots map," Edith said excitedly. "I can see Florida... at least I think it's-no! That's Italy! And over there must be Paris! Wow!"

"And look at-" A sharp buzz interrupted Doug. "Hold it. Incoming message."

It was Anson again. "Gotta hand it to Kadar: his bird chirped right up when we interrogated it. It's at periluna over Alphonsus, of course, so it'll be zipping by at its fastest when it comes over us."

"How soon, Jinny?" Doug asked.

"Five minutes. No, four-fifty. I'll get the data wrung out and pipe it to you in half an hour, max."

"Good."

It took longer. Doug let Edith drive the tractor while he dug into the food box. There was no way to eat solid food in a s.p.a.cesuit, but he pumped a quart of milk and three containers of juices through the feeding nipple in his helmet.

"Milk and orange juice?" Edith asked, grimacing. "Chugging them down one right after the other?"

"The last one was beet juice," Doug said. "Got to thank Lev for that: he likes to make borscht."

Anson called again. "Got him! He's 'way past the ma.s.s driver, out beyond the central peaks. Still heading north."

Doug thought a moment. "Jinny, if he's that far out he couldn't have stopped for long at the ma.s.s driver, could he?"

"Prob'ly not," she answered. "I doubt that he stopped at all. He's been truckin' right along, I betcha."

"Then he hasn't tried to sabotage the magnets."

Anson hesitated, then replied, "Unless he left a bomb there to go off later."

Doug started to ask where Gordette would get explosives, then realized that a man with his smarts could convert rocket propellants into a bomb easily enough.

"The satellite'll swing by this way again in sixty-three minutes," Anson said. I'll update you then."

"Okay. Thanks, Jinny."

"Just doin' my job, boss."

They drove past the ma.s.s driver. It seemed intact to Doug, but he made a mental note to send a team out to look for b.o.o.by traps, just to be on the safe side.

Edith rode beside him in silence. She picked a container of fortified dietary supplement and sipped at it unhappily. It tasted somewhere between chalk and sweat socks.

"I'm glad it was Bam."

After the long silence, Edith wasn't certain she had heard his muttered words correctly.

"Glad?" she asked.

"Well... not glad, exactly. But...' His voice faded away.

The d.a.m.ned s.p.a.cesuits took away all the visual clues, Edith realized. All she had to go on was his voice in her earphones. She couldn't see his face, his eyes.

"You see," Doug said slowly, as the tractor trundled along the bleak landscape, "we didn't have any problems with sabotage or attempted a.s.sa.s.sination until-well, until you came into Moonbase."

That jolted her. "You thought I was a hit man?"

"No, I didn't. But the possibility was there. And I hated it."

"You never -I mean, we were sleeping together! How could you think..."

"I had to consider it," he said, his voice sounding miserable. "I never really thought you were the one who tampered with my suit, but I had to consider the possibility. And And the possibility that I wasn't thinking straight because I love you." the possibility that I wasn't thinking straight because I love you."

"You love me?"

"I had to get my throat slit to finally figure it out. My last conscious thought after Bam cut me was that I was glad it wasn't you."

Edith blinked several times inside her helmet. "Douglas Stavenger, that's got to be the least least romantic announcement a man's ever made to a woman!" romantic announcement a man's ever made to a woman!"

For several moments she heard nothing but her own breathing, magnified inside the helmet. Then Doug burst into laughter.

"You're right, Edith," he said, laughing. "That was about as romantic as reading an inventory list. I'm sorry."

She felt a smile tugging at her lips. "Nothing to be sorry about, I guess."

"I do love you, Edith. I really do."

"And I love you, too," she said, surprising herself.

His laughter only increased. "We picked a great time to bare our souls, sealed up in these suits."