I’ll help you,” she said, climbing slowly to her feet ’You don’t have to drag me. I’ll go with you willingly.”

“You bet you will,” Greg said. And he started down the tunnel again.

“Where are we going?” Melissa asked, trying to keep up with him without stumbling again.

“EVC,” he muttered.

“What?”

“Environmental control center. The air pumps.”

Breathlessly, Melissa answered, “Good.”

Greg felt lightheaded, almost giddy, as he hurried down the tunnel. Don’t run, he warned himself. You might trip yourself and fall. You don’t want to look foolish in front of Melissa. He thought about the veteran Lunatics he had seen taking yards-long strides in the gentle gravity, soaring along like ballet dancers. I’ll show those wiseasses, he thought I’ll show them all. Let’s see how far they can jump when there’s no air left to breathe.

For the first time in his life Greg felt free, totally, absolutely free. It didn’t matter what anyone thought or said or did. This is the end of it all. At last it’ll all be over with, finished. The end of everything. No more fear. All my worries are behind me now.

To Melissa, this tunnel seemed longer than the others. As she struggled to keep up with Greg, she saw that they had passed the area where laboratories and offices lined the tunnel on both sides. Now the doors were farther apart and the labels on them proclaimed MAINTENAISjCE STORES and ELECTRONICS SPARES.

At the end of the tunnel was a dull metal hatch with an electronic security pad alongside it.

“Rank has its privileges,” Greg said, almost giggling as he tapped the keyboard with his index finger. “All the base director has to do to open any hatch, anywhere, is punch in his personal code.”

Greg’s eyes were aglow. Melissa thought he looked — happy. I’ve freed him, she said to herself. I’ve freed us both.

The hatch clicked but did not open. Greg grasped its metal wheel, gave it half a turn and then pushed.

Inside was a shadowy cavem that throbbed with the sound of pumps.

As Greg, suddenly solicitous, helped Melissa over the hatch’s coaming, he explained, “All the base’s air supply is routed through here. That’s the recycling equipment…’ He pointed to a clump of bulky metal shapes connected by a maze of piping. “We’ll take care of them later.”

He pushed the hatch shut, then spun its wheel, locking it.

“Find a tool box,” he ordered Melissa. “There’s got to be tools stashed here someplace.”

“What about those lockers?’1 She pointed to the row of metal lockers a few feet down the wall from the hatch.

“Right’ said Greg. He yanked the lockers open, one after the other, and slammed each door shut again with a disgusted clang. “Emergency space suits, emergency oxygen tanks, extra coveralls — where “do they keep the fucking tools?’ His roar echoed off the bare rock walls.

“Here.” Melissa called from a workbench on the other side of the hatch.

Greg rushed to her. “Right!” He yanked open the metal boxes lining the back of the workbench and lifted out a heavy wrench. “Just what I need.”

Grinning madly, he went back to the hatch and lifted the back cover off the security pad. Then, raising the wrench over his head like a spear, he jammed it into the electronic works of the hatch’s security pad. Sparks crackled, throwing blue-white highlights against his grimacing face.

“There,” Greg said triumphantly. Then he jammed the wrench into the hatch’s wheel, to prevent it from being turned. “Now if they want to get in here they’ll have to blast.”

He whirled around, eyes blazing. Melissa felt her heart thundering beneath her ribs. We’re going to do it! she said to herself. We’re going to tear it all down! We’re going to put an end to all of it, at last!

There was a computer at the end of the workbench. Greg strode to it, bending over the keyboard.

“One system at a time,” he muttered. “First the lights.”

The computer screen lit up. Greg worked the keyboard, fingers moving in staccato rhythm. Melissa thought the sparse overhead lights flickered, but the lighting was so dim in this cavern that she couldn’t be sure.

“Damn! The backup nuke conies on-line automatically and there’s no way to shut it down unless the solar farms come back on.”

He pecked at the keyboard again, harder. “Shit,” he muttered. “Shit, shit, shit.”

“You can’t do it?” Melissa asked, looking at the incomprehensible alphanumerics scrolling up the display screen.

“I can do it,” Greg growled. “I just can’t do it through the damnable computer. Too many redundancies and backups.”

“Then what—”

“The main airlock!” Greg crowed. “I can open the main airlock long enough to blow all the air out of the garage! Emergency decontamination procedure. Look!”

Melissa saw another jumble of symbols on the computer screen, but overhead loudspeakers immediately blared out a warning that echoed through the big cavern.

“That’s just a start!” Greg shouted.

He ran back to the workbench, picked up another wrench, and waved it in the air. “I’m going to wipe them all out!I can do it! Watch me!”

Melissa followed him down the narrow walkway between man-tall metal shapes that throbbed and chugged ceaselessly.

“I don’t need the compiler system,” Greg railed, banging his wrench angrily on the metal domes of the pumps as he passed them, making the cavern ring. “I don’t need the fucking computer! I’ll do it the hard way!”

“Do what?” Melissa asked.

Instead of answering her, he turned and pointed back to the workbench. “Get every tool you can carry. Bring them to me. Now!”

She scurried to obey, staggering slightly in the unaccustomed gravity, righting her balance by leaning against the cold metal pumps.

She went to the toolbox they had already opened and lifted out an assortment of wrenches, pliers and screwdrivers. By the time she got back to Greg he had already twisted off two of the four bolts holding down the domed top of one of the pumps.

“It all gets down to plumbing,” Greg mumbled as he worked furiously. “All the high technology of this base depends on pipes that carry either air or water.”

“You’re going to break the pumps?”

Greg looked up at her, a grease stain already smeared across his forehead. I’m going to cut off their air supply. Let them choke to death on their own fumes.”

“Us too?” she asked.

He laughed. “Of course, us too. We’ll die together, Melissa. You’ll like that, won’t you?”

“I was in love with you,” she said.

“No greater love has any man,” Greg babbled as he yanked at the bolts of the pump, “than he lays down his life for his ex-lover.”

She dropped to her knees next to him. “Kill them all,” she whispered urgently. “But be sure to kill us, too.”

“We’ll die,” Greg said triumphantly. “We’ll all die!”

CONTROL CENTER

Doug flew down the tunnel, his feet barely touching the ground, leaping the distance between one closed airtight hatch and the next in a few long, loping lunar strides.

Jinny Anson was already in the control center when Doug got there. So was his mother and Lev Brudnoy.

“They’re in the EVC, affl right,” Anson was saying, pointing at the big electronic wall map of the base. “Sonofabitch blew out the garage and now the oxygen partial pressure in tunnel four is below safe level.”

“How could he do that?” Joanna asked, wide-eyed.

Still scowling at the wall map, Anson replied, “He just opened the main airlock. All the air in the garage got sucked out into the vacuum.”

“But how—”

“There’s an emergency procedure in the computer controls,” Anson answered impatiently, “so we can clear the garage of toxins or radioactives or any other crap in a hurry.”

“Was anyone in the garage?”

“Of course! We’re counting heads now, making sure everybody got out okay.”