Tinker’s first scream turned Paul’s blood cold. Tink either hadn’t taken off his helmet, or he had left his suit radio on while he was getting out of the spacesuit. Either way, Paul heard him screaming and screaming and screaming. Wojo had died of decompression when the bugs had eaten through his suit. Tinker was devoured alive, screaming until his voice went hoarse.
Paul stood alone out on Mare Nubium, his two companions dead, the area infested with killing nanobugs, the nearest shelter twenty miles away.
Greg, he knew. Greg’s done this. He’s the only one who would even think of it Slipped a sampling of gobblers in with the assemblers. He’s trying to murder me. He’s killed Wojo and Tink. I’m next. If I let him.
SHELTER 19
Paul was struggling with an invisible demon. He couldn’t see it, but he could feel it clutching at his throat, tearing at his flesh. He thrashed madly, grappling with it, trying with every ounce of strength in him to push it away, to get it off him.
His eyes snapped open. Above him curved the rounded ceiling of Tempo 19. Air circulation fans hummed softly and a pump chugged faithfully in the background.
I’m safe, he told himself, lying in his sweaty coveralls on the bunk. I’m okay. For how long?
“Long enough,” he said, his voice a grating, harsh rasp. Wincing when he put his weight on his right foot, he limped to the food freezer and microwave oven that comprised the shelter’s galley. The sink was beside it. Paul took a plastic cup from the rack over it and filled it with water. He drank it down slowly; it was warm and flat and the best drink he had ever tasted. He savored it, relished it, gloried in the way it eased the sandpaper feeling in his throat.
He pulled out a plastic container of frozen soup and popped it into the microwave. Then he limped to the communications console and called Moonbase.
Impatiently he reported the deaths of Wojo and Tinker. The guy on comm duty quickly called the base’s director, and Paul had to repeat the news to her.
“The nanomachines killed them?” her hard-bitten face radiated surprise, disbelief.
“And damned near killed me, too,” Paul said wearily. “Now patch me through to Savannah. I want to talk to my wife.”
“Just a minute,” said the base director. “I need to know a lot—”
“Later,” said Paul, putting iron into it. “I want to talk to my wife. Now. On a private link.”
“Okay,” the director said. I’ll put together a team to go out there and get the bodies.”
“No! Nobody goes anywhere near that site until I’ve had a talk with the San Jose troops. That whole area is quarantined as of now,”
The director’s eyes went wide for a moment. Then she nodded. “Understood.”
Paul was glad that Joanna was in her office at corporate headquarters. From the looks of the little urban park outside her window it must have been late afternoon.
She was smiling as her face appeared on the tabletop display screen before Paul, but her smile froze the instant she saw his haggard, bleary-eyed face.
“Paul, what’s happened?”
He had spent twenty minutes setting up a direct laser link to Savannah. Anybody at Moonbase could tap into his transmission from the shelter, if they dared, but from Moonbase’s laser to the receiver on the roof of the headquarters building, no one could eavesdrop.
“Greg tried to murder me,” he said, then waited three seconds for the shock to register in her face.
“Greg? How…?”
“He put a mix of gobblers in with the nanobug assemblers. Two men were killed and he damned near got me.”
“Gobblers?” Joanna echoed.
“Nanobugs that take molecules apart. Long-chain carbon molecules. Like spacesuit materials. Like human flesh.”
Joanna gasped, “Oh no.”
“There’s a tractor outside this shelter. I’m going to ride back to Moonbase and then head home.”
He could see the conflicting emotions battling within her. “What should I do? About Greg, I mean?”
“Nothing!” Paul snapped. “Stay away from him. He’s a murderer and I don’t want him anywhere near you.”
Joanna did not reply, hut Paul saw what she was thinking. He’s my son.
That’s the long and the short of it, Paul told himself. I’m her Husband, the father of the child she’s carrying. But Greg is her son and she’ll try to protect him even if he tries to kill her.
I’ve got get back there, he realized. Quick as I can. Got to get there and protect her.
Joanna could see the determination in Paul’s exhausted face. He wants to get back here so he can accuse Greg. Greg tried to murder him.
Without consciously thinking about it, she tapped the phone console on her desk and called out her son’s name. In a few seconds Greg’s darkly handsome face appeared on the display screen.
“Could you come over to my office, Greg?” Joanna asked.
“I’m in the middle of—”
“Right now,” Joanna snapped. Then she added, “Please.”
Annoyance flashed across his features, but he held it in check and answered, “Certainly.”
He looked more apprehensive than annoyed when he stepped into Joanna’s office. She had hardly changed anything in the big corner room since taking it over from Bradley Arnold. There had been no time; Joanna had been much too busy learning her new responsibilities to deal with interior decorators.
Warily, with the same expression he had worn as a little boy when he’d been caught doing something he shouldn’t, Greg walked across the richly patterned Indian carpet and took the leather chair in front of Joanna’s desk.
“What’s happened?” he asked softly.
“I just got a call from Moonbase,” said Joanna.
His brows rose. “Oh?”
“It was Paul. He’s still alive, but the two men working with him were killed.”
Greg let out a long sigh. “Too bad.”
“The nanomachines killed them.”
“Yes.”
“You know all about it,” don’t you?”
“Nanotechnology is very new, Mom. Untried. Accidents will happen.”
Joanna stared at her son. “Paul thinks you tried to murder him.”
“That’s just like him.”
“Did you use nanomachines to kill Brad?” Joanna heart herself ask.
The hint of a smile ghosted across Greg’s lips. “The pompous old fool.”
“Did you?”
Greg shifted slightly in the chair. “When I was in San Jose a few months ago I saw a demonstration of what they cal gobblers — nanobugs that can take the platinum atoms out of an old-fashioned automobile’s catalytic converter.”
“What’s that got to do with Brad’s death?”
He shrugged carelessly. “I’ve heard that jet engines have a lot of blades that are coated with platinum and tungsten and other metals. To resist heat, I think. If those metals erode away the engine blades break up.”
“And that’s what happened to Brad’s plane?”
“At supersonic speed a sudden loss of power can be very dangerous,” Greg said. Then he added, “So I’m told.”
“Paul isn’t dead,” Joanna said. “He’s coming back here and he’s going to accuse you of murder.”
For the first time something like fear showed in Greg’s face. “He’s got no proof…”
Joanna said, “Don’t you think he’ll find proof? Don’t you think he’ll find someone in the San Jose division who gave you a sampling of nanomachines? What do you call them, gobblers?”
Irritated, Greg answered, “I suppose the corporation’s CEO can find employees who’ll tell him what he wants to hear.”
“Greg, two men have died!”
“Three,” he said smugly, “counting Brad. More, come to think of it: there’s the crew of his plane, too, isn’t there?”