The Precipice (45 page)

“Fourteen hours from now,” Amanda confirmed.

“Have a nice day.”

“We'll see you in fourteen hours,” Fuchs said.

“Right,” said Dan, silently adding, Dead or alive.

To Pancho, he said, “I'd better drag the air tanks in here.” Before she could object he pushed himself out of the hole and
soared up above the dark, uneven ground. Dan glanced around but could not find the shelter that Amanda and Fuchs had dug for
themselves. They did a good job, he thought as he tapped his jet thruster controls to push himself back to the surface.

The cylinders weighed next to nothing, but still he was careful with them as he slid them down into the pit. They still have
mass, and inertia, Dan knew. I could break open Pancho's helmet or spring her suit's joints if I let one of these things bang
into her.

By the time he wormed himself back into the pit beside her, Dan was bathed in cold sweat and puffing hard.

“You're not used to real work, are you, boss?” Pancho teased.

Dan shook his head inside his helmet. “Soon as we get back to Selene I'm going in for rejuvenation therapy.”

“Me too.”

“You? At your age?”

“Sooner's better'n later, they claim.”

Dan humphed. “Better late than never.”

“Radiation level's starting to climb,” Pancho said, starting to paw at the sides of their pit again. “We better get ourselves
buried or neither one of us'll get any younger.”

“Or older,” Dan muttered.

Buried alive. This is like something out of an Edgar Allan Poe story, Dan said to himself. He knew Pancho was mere centimeters
from him; so were the air tanks. But he could see nothing. They were buried under nearly a full meter of loose rubble, curled
fetally, nothing to see or hear or do except wait.

“… are you doing?” He heard Amanda's voice, scratchy and weak, through his helmet's speaker.

“We're okay,” Pancho said. “I've been thinkin' we oughtta organize a square dance.”

Dan suppressed a groan. That's just we need, he thought, redneck humor. Then, surprisingly, he laughed. He hadn't heard the
term “redneck” since he'd been in Texas, long ages ago. There are no rednecks off-Earth, Dan realized. You don't get sunburned
out here. Cooked, maybe. Fried by radiation. But not tanned, not unless you sit under the sunlamps in the gym at Selene.

He wiggled his right hand through the loose rubble encasing him and felt for the keyboard on his left forearm. By touch he
called up the ship's sensor display. They had programmed the suits to show the displays on the inner surfaces of their bubble
helmets. Nothing but streaks of colored hash. Either the pile of dirt atop them or the radiation storm was interfering with
their link to the ship. Probably a combination of both, he thought.

“What's the time?” Dan asked.

At least he could talk with Pancho. Even if the radio link broke down completely, they were close enough to scrunch through
the dirt and touch helmets so that they could talk through sound conduction.

“More'n thirteen hours to go, boss.”

“You mean we've been down here for less than an hour?”

“Forty-nine minutes, to be exact.”

“Shit,” Dan said, with feeling.

“Take a nap. Best way to spend the time.”

Dan nodded inside his helmet. “Nothing else to do.”

He heard Pancho giggle softly.

“What's funny?”

“Mandy and Lars. I bet they're tryin' to figger out how to get the two of them into one suit.”

Dan laughed, too. “Maybe you and I ought to try that.”

“Boss!” Pancho cried in mock shock. “That's sexual harassment!”

“Nothing else to do,” he repeated. “I can't even jerk off inside this double-damned suit.”

“I can,” Pancho teased.

“Now
that's
sexual harassment,” Dan grumbled.

“Nope. Just better design.”

Dan licked his lips. He felt thirsty, chilled, yet he was sweating. His stomach was queasy.

“How do you feel, Pancho?”

“Bored. Tired. Too jumpy to sleep. How ‘bout you?”

“The same, I guess. Every part of me aches.”

“How's your blood pressure?”

“How in hell would I know?”

“You hear your pulse in your ears?”

“No.”

“Then you're okay, I guess.”

“Thank you, Dr. Pancho.”

“Go to sleep, boss. That's what I'm gonna try to do.”

“I thought you said you were too jumpy.”

“Yeah, but I'm gonna give it a try. Close my eyes and think pleasant thoughts.”

“Good luck.”

“You try it, too.”

“Sure.”

Dan closed his eyes, but his thoughts were far from pleasant. Opening them again, he fumbled with his wrist keyboard until
he got the suit's radiation sensor displayed on his helmet. The graph was distorted by the curve of his helmet, and blurry.
He tried to focus his eyes on it. Looks okay, he said to himself. Curve's going up, but the slope is low and it's a far distance
from the red zone.

Try to sleep. He was certainly tired enough for it. Relax! Think about what you're going to do when you get back to Selene.
I'd like to personally punch out Humphries's lights. Dan pictured Humphries's surprise when he broke his nose with a good
straight right.

Somewhere in his mind an old adage sounded: Revenge is a dish best taken cold.

Punching in Humphries's face would be fun, but what would
really
hurt the bastard? He's tried to kill me. He may succeed yet; we're not out of this. If I die he'll move in and take over
Astro. How can I prevent him from doing that? How can I stop him, even from the grave?

Dan chuckled bitterly to himself. I'm already in my grave, he realized. I'm already buried.

C
harley Engles looked worried, upset. He nervously brushed his sandy hair back away from his forehead as he said, “Kris, I'm
not supposed to let you in here.

It was well past midnight. Cardenas was surprised that anyone was still working in the lab complex. Selene's security people
hadn't bothered to change the entry code on the main door; she had just tapped it out and the door had obligingly slid open.
But Engles had been working in his cubicle, and as soon as he saw Cardenas striding determinedly past the empty work stations
toward her own office, he popped out of his cubbyhole and stopped her.

“We got notified by security,” he said, looking shamefaced. “You're not allowed in here until further notice.”

“I know, Charley,” she said. “I just want to clear out my desk.”

Charles Engles was a young grad student from New York whose parents had sent him to Selene after he'd been crippled in a car
crash. Even knowing that he could never return
to them once he'd taken nanotherapy, his parents wanted their son's legs repaired so he could walk again.

“The cameras…” Engles pointed to the tiny unwinking red lights in the corners of the ceiling. “Security will send somebody
here once they see you.”

“It's all right,” she said, trying to mask her inner tension. “I'll only be here a few minutes. You can go back to your work.”

Instead, he walked with her as she headed for her office.

“What's this all about, Kris? Why do they want to lock you out of your own lab?”

“It's a long story and I'd rather not go into it right now, Charley. Please, I just need a few minutes in my office.”

He looked unhappy, almost wounded. “If there's anything I can do to help…”

Cardenas smiled and felt tears welling in her eyes. “That's very kind of you, Charley. Thanks.”

“I mean, I wouldn't be able to walk if it weren't for you.”

She nodded and added silently, And now that you can walk you'll never be allowed to return to Earth.

“Well…” he shifted uneasily from one foot to the other. “If there's anything you need, anything at all, just let me know.”

“Thanks, Charley. I'll do that.”

He stood there for another awkward moment while Cardenas wondered how long it would take Security to send someone to apprehend
her. Finally he headed reluctantly back to his own cubicle. She walked slowly toward her office.

Once Charley stepped into his cubicle, though, Cardenas swiftly turned down a side passageway toward the rear of the laboratory
complex. She passed a sign that proclaimed in red letters
AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY BEYOND THIS POINT
. This was the area where newly developed nanomachines were tested. The passageway here was lined with sealed, airtight chambers,
rather than the cubicles out front The door to each chamber was locked. The passageway itself was
lined with ultraviolet lamps along its ceiling. Each nanomachine type was designed to stop functioning when exposed to high-intensity
ultraviolet light: a safety precaution.

Cardenas passed three doors, stopped at the fourth. She tapped out its entry code and the steel door opened inward a crack.
She slipped into the darkened chamber and leaned her weight against the heavy door, closing it. With a long, shuddering sigh,
she reset the entry code from the panel on the wall, effectively locking the door to anyone who might try to get in. They'll
have to break the door down, she told herself, and that will take them some time.

By the time the get the door open I'll be dead.

Dan dreamed of Earth: a confused, troubled dream. He was sailing a racing yacht, running before the wind neck-and-neck with
many other boats. Warm tropical sunlight beat down on his shoulders and back as he gripped the tiller with one hand while
the boat's computer adjusted the sails for every change in the breeze.

The boat knifed through the water, but suddenly it was a car that Dan was driving at breakneck speed through murderously heavy
traffic. Dan didn't know where he was; some city freeway, a dozen lanes clogged with cars and buses and enormous semi rigs
chuffing smoke and fumes into the dirty gray, sullen sky. Something was wrong with the car's air conditioning; it was getting
uncomfortably hot in the driver's seat. Dan started to open his window but realized that the windows had to stay shut. There's
no air to breath out there, he said to himself, knowing it was ridiculous because he wasn't in space, he was on Earth and
he was suffocating, choking, coughing.

He woke up coughing with Pancho's voice blaring in his ears, “Recharge your backpack, boss! You're runnin' low on air.”

Blackness. He couldn't see a thing. For a moment he felt
panic surging through him, then it fell into place. Buried in the asteroid. Time to refill his backpack's air tank. In the
dark. By touch.

“Lemme help you,” Pancho said.

Dan sensed her beside him. The gravelly dirt shifted, crunched. Something bumped into his side.

“Oops.'Scuse me.”

Dan pushed one hand through the gritty stuff, remembering where he'd put the cylinders.

“I've got the hose,” he said.

“Okay, good. That's what I was lookin' for.”

“Groping for, you mean.”

“Whatever. Hand it to me now.”

Dan felt her hand pushing against his side. “I can do it,” he said.

“Better let me,” said Pancho. “You're tired and fatigue makes you sloppy, causes mistakes.”

“I'm all right.”

“Sure. But just lemme do it, huh? Tired astronauts don't live long.”

“And rain makes applesauce,” he mumbled, pushing the end of the hose into her waiting hand.

“Don't open it up yet,” Pancho warned. “Don't want grit or dust contaminating the air.”

“I know,” he groused.

It seemed to take hours. Dan tried to keep from coughing but the air in his suit seemed awfully thick; his chest was hurting.
He pictured old pantomime comedy routines as he and Pancho haltingly fumbled with the air hose, working blindly, and refilled
each other's suit tanks. They filled Dan's backpack first, and within a minute he could take a deep breath again without it
catching in his throat.

Once they filled Pancho's backpack he heard her inhale deeply. “Best canned air in the solar system,” she announced happily.

“What time is it? How long do we have to go?”

“Lemme see… seven and a half hours.”

“That's how long we've been down here?”

“Nope, that's how long we still have to go,” Pancho answered.

“Another seven and a half hours?”

Pancho laughed. “You sound like a kid in the back seat of a car.”

He huffed, then broke into a chastened grin. “I guess I was whining, wasn't I?”

“A little.”

A new thought struck Dan. “After the time's up, how do we tell if the radiation's really gone down enough for us to get back
to the ship?”

“Been thinkin' about that. I'll worm my extensible antenna wire up to the top of this rubble heap and see if we can link with
the ship. Then it'll be purty simple to read the ship's sensors.”

“Suppose the ship's comm system's been knocked out by the radiation.”

“Not likely.”

“But what if?”

Pancho sighed. “Then I'll just hafta stick my head out and see what my suit sensors read.”

“Like an old cowboy video,” Dan said. “Stick your head out and see if anybody shoots at you.”

“Hey, boss, you really did learn a lot from Wild Bill Hickok, didn't ya?”

This late at night there was only one man on duty monitoring Selene's security-camera network. He was a portly, balding former
London bobby who had spent his life's savings to bring himself and his wife to the Moon and live in comfortable, low-gravity
retirement. He'd found retirement so boring, however, that he pleaded with Selene's personnel department to allow him to work,
at least part-time.