“Willi, Willi, I could hear you out at the airlock.”
Greg turned and saw Kris Cardenas, bright and blonde and perky, striding into the narrow confines of the four-bed infirmary.
“Kristine, liebling , no one told me you were coming here!”
Zimmerman’s demeanor changed as abruptly as the dawn transforms the dark lunar night.
“Willi, you mustn’t let yourself get angry at these people,” Cardenas scolded cheerfully. “They’re trying to help you.”
“Ach, with such help a’ man could die. I’d rather have Hungarians on my side.”
“It’s bad for your heart to get so worked up,” Cardenas said, smiling sweetly. She was wearing a light blue sweater and slightly darker knee-length skirt. If Greg didn’t know better, he would have sworn she wasn’t much older than thirty-five.
Zimmerman’s fleshy face turned puckish. “Ah, this will be like the old days, won’t it? You were my best student, , always.”
“And you were always my favorite professor,” Cardenas returned the compliment.
With a shake of his head that made his jowls waddle, Zimmerman spread his stubby arms in a gesture of helplessness. “But look around at this place! There is not the necessary equipment! There is not the trained staff! How can I—”
Cardenas silenced him by placing a fingertip gently on his lips. “Willi, I’m here. I’ll assist you.”
“You will?”
“And the four people you brought from your clinic.”
“Clinic?” The fat old man looked startled. “I have no clinic! My research facility at the university is a laboratory, not a clinic.”
“Yes, I know,” Cardenas said. “Forgive my error.”
His beaming smile returned. “For you, liebling, no forgiving is necessary. Now let us get to work.”
MOONBASE
“Welcome to Moonbase, mother,” said Greg.
Joanna did not look haggard. Not quite. But the tension in her face was obvious. She’s frightened, Greg realized. Frightened and frustrated because there’s nothing more that she can do for Doug. Nothing but wait and hope that Zimmerman can perform a miracle.
“Take me to him, Greg,” she said, her voice strained. “Please.”
She had changed into standard lunar coveralls on the trip up, Greg saw. White, the color code for medics, rather than management’s sky blue, such as he wore. And she was already wearing weighted boots.
Without another word, Greg led her to the tractor and started down the tunnel toward the main part of the base. I’m getting to be a taxi driver, he grumbled to himself.
“How is he? Is he in pain?”
“They’ve wrapped him in cooling blankets to bring his body temperature down as far as they dare,” Greg reported. “Zimmerman and his team are programming a set of nano-machines to repair the damage to his cells that’s been done by the radiation.”
Joanna nodded tensely.
Glancing at her as they drove down the long tunnel, Greg added, “They’re giving him massive blood transfusions, but the damage is pretty extensive, I’m afraid.”
I’ll give blood,” Joanna said immediately. “You can, too.”
Greg turned away from her. “I don’t know if Zimmerman’s bugs are going to be able to save him.”
“If he can’t, no one can,” Joanna said.
“Careful!” yelped Yazaru Hara. “His ribs are broken.”
“Got to get him out of the seat,” Killifer said, The unconscious Japanese was dead weight made extra heavy by his bulky armored spacesuit. Killifer grasped him under his arms while Hara, turned awkwardly in his seat, lifted his companion’s legs so that the American could slide him out of the spacecraft cockpit.
“How long’s he been unconscious?” Killifer asked, panting with the effort.
“Many hours,” said Hara. “He was still breathing, though, when you arrived.”
“Yeah.” Slowly Killifer pulled Inoguchi’s inert form through the cockpit’s emergency hatch and out onto the black ice.
Deems had rigged a makeshift stretcher out of honeycomb panels from the side of the Yamagata craft. Killifer lowered the spacesuited Japanese onto it. He heard a groan from the Jap.
“He’s still alive!” Hara shouted.
“Yeah,” said Killifer, thinking, Great. Now we gotta carry this dead weight back over four klicks of ice. Lucky if we don’t all wind up with busted bones.
“How much longer will it take?” Joanna demanded, nervously pacing up and down Jinny Anson’s office.
Greg, sitting on the couch jury-rigged from scavenged spacecraft seats, shook his head. Zimmerman and his staff had been working for hours in Moonbase’s nanolab. The grumpy old man hadn’t even looked at Doug yet.
“It takes time,” Kris Cardenas said. She was sitting behind Anson’s desk. Anson herself had rushed down to the control center to pipe Doug’s vidcam disk to The Hague, registering Masterson Corporation’s claim to the Mt Wasser region. She had graciously turned over her entire suite to Joanna, saying she could stay in smaller quarters until her tour of duty was finished and she left for Earth. In truth, she wanted to keep as far away from Joanna as she could.
“But Doug doesn’t have time,” Joanna said. “He’s dying!”
Cardenas got up from the desk chair. I’ll get back to the lab and see if I can help speed things up.”
“Yes,” said Joanna. “Good.”
The instant the door closed behind Cardenas, Greg got up from the couch, took his mother by the hand, and made her sit down where he had been. Then he sat beside her.
“There’s no sense getting yourself sick over this,” he said. “You should try to get some rest”
Joanna shook her head. “How can I rest?”
“I could get something for you, to help you sleep.”
“No! I…’ She stopped, as if confused, suddenly uncertain of what she wanted to say, wanted to do.
I’ll let you know the instant something happens,” Greg promised.
“Don’t you see!” Joanna blurted. “It’s my fault! All my fault! I should never have allowed him to go to Moonbase. I knew he was too young, too careless.” She broke into tears.
Greg put his arms around his mother and let her sob on his shoulder. “It’s not your fault; it isn’t. And he wasn’t careless. Nobody could have predicted the flare.”
“First the Moon killed Paul, now it’s killed him. And it’s my fault, all my fault.”
Coldly, Greg said, “The Moon didn’t kill Paul Stavenger. We both know that.”
Joanna pulled slightly away from him. Her eyes were red, filled with tears. “I was a terrible mother to you, Greg. What happened was my fault as much as anyone’s.”
“Mom, that’s all in the past. There’s no sense dredging it up again.”
“But if only I had been—”
“Stop it,” Greg said sharply. I’ve spent years working my way through this. I don’t want to hear any more about it.”
Joanna stared at him, but said nothing.
“It’s not your fault. None of this is. What’s happened has happened. Now all we can do is wait and see if Zimmerman can save him.”
But he was thinking, Would she cry over me? He tried to remember back to his own childhood, all those years, he could not recall his mother crying for him. Not once.
Joanna pulled herself together with a visible, shuddering effort. “I can’t stay here,” she said, jumping to her feet too hard in the unaccustomed lunar gravity.
Greg had to grab her, steady her. “Be careful, Mom! You’ll hurt yourself.”
“Take me to him,” Joanna said.
“Doug? He’s in—”
“No. Zimmerman. I want to see him. I want to find out what he’s doing.”
Zimmerman sat sweating on a rickety swivel chair that seemed much too fragile to support his weight He had draped an ancient lab smock over his gray suit; the coat had once been white but now, after so many years of wear and washings, it was beyond bleach.