Through pain-hazed eyes Doug saw his half-brother hesitate, the screwdriver held over his head like a dagger. Pushing Greg’s weight off him, Doug reached up with his good arm and grabbed Greg’s wrist.
It was a nearly equal contest. Doug’s left forearm was broken, but he was stronger, more muscular than Greg. Gripping Greg’s wrist, Doug pulled himself up to a sitting position, forcing Greg backwards. Then he began bending Greg’s wrist back slowly, slowly, until Greg grunted and dropped the screwdriver.
The two brothers sat on the cold stone floor, gasping, glaring at each other.
“How’d you get in here?” Greg growled.
“Vents,” Doug panted. “Plasma torch exhaust vents.”
“What do you think… you’re going to… accomplish?”
Doug pointed with his good hand toward the hatch up at the front of the EVC. “They’ll be breaking through,” he said, breathing raggedly. “When they do… we’re all dead. The tunnel’s… almost down to vacuum.”
Suddenly Doug’s world exploded. Flashes of light burst before his eyes and then it all went utterly black.
He slumped over, the back of his head oozing blood. Greg looked up and saw Melissa standing triumphantly over them, a heavy wrench grasped tightly in both her gaunt hands. The wrench was stained with Doug’s blood.
“That takes care of him ,” she snarled.
Greg climbed slowly to his feet.
“You heard what he said,” Melissa urged. “They’re going to kill us when they get the hatch open.”
“We’re trapped in here,” Greg said, looking around wildly. “There’s no way out.”
“Then let’s finish what we came here for.”
“We won’t have time!”
“We’ve got to!”
Another thumping sound from the hatch.
“They’re going to burn through it,” Greg said, his voice shaking. He looked down at Doug again; his half-brother seemed dead.
“Do something!” Melissa shouted.
Greg tried to clear his thoughts. “He came through the old plasma vents…’ Straightening up, Greg went to the computer by the workbench. “Those vents open to vacuum! If I can open them all, it’ll suck all the air out of the base in a few minutes.”
Melissa’s eyes glowed. “That’ll do it!”
Greg began scrolling through the computer programs, searching for the controls to the plasma vents.
Doug couldn’t focus his eyes. Everything was a blur, a red smear. Blinking, coughing, he pushed himself up to a sitting position and slumped against one of the pumps. He wiped at his eyes with his good hand and they came away sticky with blood.
Far, far away he saw a slim figure bent over a glowing computer display screen. Greg. Someone was standing beside him but his vision was too blurred to make out who it might be.
“Hurry!” she was saying, her voice pitched high and shrill. “Hurry! I can hear them outside the hatch!”
“I’ve got it,” Greg said, his voice as calm and implacable as death.
“Greg…’ Doug croaked, his throat raw. “Don’t…”
Greg turned and his eyed flashed wide. “I thought she’d killed you.”
“Don’t do it,” Doug said again. “You’ll be killing Mom.”
He saw his brother’s eyes widen slightly. But then Greg said, “What of it?”
Doug pushed himself to his feet, feeling slightly dizzy. He reached out a hand to steady himself against the gutted shell of a pump.
“Stay away,” Greg warned, growling. Yet his fingers hesitated over the keyboard.
Melissa tried to push him away. “If you won’t do it, I will,” she snarled.
Strength was returning to Doug’s legs. The pain hi his left arm was bearable, a sullen throb. His vision had cleared and he felt stronger with each step he took toward the pair of them.
“Stop it, Greg. Stop it now while you can. Put an end to the killing.”
I’ll put an end to everything!’ Greg snapped. But he stared at his brother without touching the keys that would open the plasma vents.
“No, you don’t want to do that, Greg. You can’t destroy Moonbase. It means too much to everyone on Earth. It means the future of the human race.”
“The human race!” Melissa laughed bitterly. “The world would be better off if the human race were wiped out to the last pitiful one.”
Doug was almost within arm’s reach now. The nano-machines had stopped the bleeding from his scalp wound, repaired the blood vessels in his brain that Melissa’s blow had ruptured. They were even beginning to knit together the fracture in his forearm.
“I’m warning you!” Greg screeched. “Stay away from me!”
“Just back off from the computer, Greg,” Doug said as softly as he dared. “Go to the hatch and tell them you’re coming out peacefully.”
“No!”
“You’ve got to, Greg. This isn’t just between you and me. There’s more than our lives involved here, much more.”
Greg took an uncertain, lurching step backwards, like a drunk too addled to understand what he was doing.
“Coward,” Melissa hissed. She stabbed a finger toward the keyboard.
Doug lunged forward blurringly fast and caught her frail wrist ’No,” he said. “You’re not going to destroy us.”
“Leave her alone!” Greg threw himself at Doug, clawing at his throat Melissa scratched at Doug’s face with her free hand.
He staggered back under their assault, flung Melissa aside like a rag doll and grasped one of Greg’s strangling hands. His brother was trying to choke him. Beyond his insanely twisted face, Doug could see Melissa reaching for the keyboard again.
Doug jabbed a thumb in Greg’s eye. He howled and released Doug’s throat Stepping back just enough for the leverage, Doug punched his brother in the jaw with a short, compact right Greg’s eyes rolled up and he collapsed to the stone floor.
Melissa was banging on the keyboard, desperately hoping to strike the key that would open the plasma vents to vacuum. Doug reached for her again when suddenly the big chamber seemed to erupt into a tornado. Dust swirled as Doug’s ears roared painfully.
He saw Melissa’s face, glowing with triumph, crumble into a mask of blood. Blood gushed from her ears, her eyes. Her mouth filled with blood as she twirled in the rushing air, and slid across the floor, arms flapping like a scarecrow’s.
Doug had only a moment to turn and look down at Greg, bleeding from every pore, before he too collapsed and died.
MOONBASE INFIRMARY
Douglas Scavenger was sitting up in the bed, tubes carrying whole blood, saline solution, and liquid nutrient into his arms, monitoring machines above his head blinking and displaying crawling, glowing lines that represented his heart beat, breathing rate, blood pressure. Each factor was so high that the monitors had been specially programmed so that they would not constantly be screeching their warning signals.
His mother was sitting on a hard plastic chair at the foot of the bed while Zimmerman stood beside the bed, scowling at him.
“The nanomachines have raised your metabolic rate by a factor of nearly three,” he muttered. “I don’t understand it.”
Joanna said softly, “They saved his life; that’s enough for me.”
“Yah, but how ?” Zimmerman insisted. “How did they do it?”
“Don’t ask me,” said Doug. “One moment I was passing out in the EVC. The next thing I knew, I woke up here in the infirmary.”
Still scowling, Zimmerman mumbled, “They must have shut down your heart rate to lower your blood pressure and prevent ruptures of the capillaries.”
“How did they know to do that?” Doug asked.
Zimmerman looked down at him. “How did they make the decision to suspend your heart function? Did they simply react to the immediate physical stimulus, or…’ His voice trailed off.
“Or what?” Joanna asked.
With a shake of head hard enough to make his jowls waddle,
Zimmerman continued, “Or did they make an assessment that it was safer to shut down your heart than to allow your capillaries to burst?”