Never! he snarled inwardly. I won’t let him get away with it He rammed the rod with all his strength against the unyielding ceiling panel.

Four more bangs and the panel gave way with a groan. Doug could see it lift away slightly from the lip of the square in the rock ceiling.

“I think that did it,” he said, puffing from the exertion.

“Yes.” Brudnoy was panting, too. Wheezing.

“Okay,” said Doug. “You’d better get back to the control center and tell them I’m on my way.”

“But I’m going with you,” said Brudnoy.

“No,” Doug said, placing a hand on the Russian’s bony shoulder. “This is something I have to do alone. Besides, I need you to take care of my mother.”

Brudnoy gave him an odd look. Then he shrugged submissively. “I understand. I’m too old for heroics.”

Doug smiled at him sadly. “You’re out of shape, you know.”

Shrugging, Brudnoy replied, “Too much soft living. Here, at least I can help you up.”

“I can jump it. Get on back before he starts pumping the air out of this tunnel, too.”

“They can’t,” Brudnoy countered, “now that the hatches have all been closed.”

Doug nodded. “Yeah, all he can do is knock out the pumps or the recycling system and let us strangle slowly.”

“It’s always best to look on the bright side,” said Brudnoy.

With a rueful grin, Doug backed up a few steps, then lunged forward and leaped, arms outstretched. His fingertips caught the open space where the panel had been pushed ajar. Hanging there with one hand, he shoved at the panel with the other. It hardly moved.

“No leverage,” Doug gasped.

“Stand on my shoulders,” said Brudnoy, ducking under Doug’s flailing feet. “Then you can use both hands.”

“You knew this would happen all along, didn’t you?” Doug asked, as Brudnoy straightened up under him. He pushed the panel aside; it screeched like a rusty hinge.

“Simple physics,” Brudnoy said.

Doug hauled himself up into the vent ’Thanks,” he said, looking down at the Russian.

“There you are!” It was Zimmerman, hurrying along the tunnel. He reminded Doug of a big sea lion waddling across a beach.

“You should be in your quarters,” Doug called down to him.

“So? I will be safer there?”

Brudnoy turned slightly to hide the smile that the professor’s sarcasm triggered.

“We can’t have people just wandering around the base,” Doug said.

“I am not wandering. I came looking for you.”

“Oh? Why?”

“To warn you.”

Brudnoy’s smile vanished. “Of what?”

Waggling a stumpy finger up toward Doug, Zimmerman said, “You think you are superman, maybe, because you have the nanomachines in you?”

Doug blinked down at the professor. “I hadn’t even thought about that.”

“Good. Forget about them. They will not make you into a hero. They cannot protect you from all harm.”

“I didn’t think they could,” Doug said.

“They are medical, metabolic,” Zimmerman went on. “They can heal injuries quickly. But that is all they can do for you.”

“Okay,” said Doug.

“Do not think you can perform superhuman feats. You cannot”

“Okay,” Doug repeated, feeling slightly exasperated “Thanks for the warning. I’ve got to get going now.”

“Yah. I know.” Zimmerman stood there fidgeting for a moment, men said in the softest voice Doug had ever heard out of him, “Good luck, my boy.”

Grinning, Doug replied, “Thanks.”

Brudnoy handed him the power drill they had brought with them. Doug grasped it, men started to worm around for his trek down the vent.

“Turn on the transponder,” Brudnoy reminded.

“Yeah, right.” Doug reached for the little black box clipped to his chest pocket and pressed its stud. Now they could track his progress back at the control center. If I get killed, he thought sardonically, at least they’ll know where to find the body.

“One more thing,” Brudnoy called.

“What?” Doug asked, getting irritated at the delay.

“I want you to remember something your father often said. Every time he had a difficult job to do, he said it”

“My father?” Doug asked, more gently.

“If it is to be, it’s up to me,” Brudnoy said. “That was your father’s motto.”

“If it is to be, it’s up to me,” Doug repeated.

“Yes,” said Brudnoy.

“Thanks, Lev. That’s good to know.”

“Good luck.”

“Right.”

Brudnoy and Zimmerman watched the young man disappear into the darkness of the overhead vent.

“Come on,” said Brudnoy to the professor. “Time for us old men to go wait with the women.”

Zimmerman shook his head, glanced up at the ceiling, then let Brudnoy lead him back toward the control center.

Doug tucked the hand drill into the thigh pocket of his coveralls and undipped the penlight from his chest pocket. The pencil beam seemed feeble as he swung it back and forth. The vent was barely wider than his shoulders, and caked with dust. Should’ve brought a breathing mask, he said to himself. At least there won’t be any rats or bugs. Shouldn’t be. All the inbound cargoes are checked Earthside and on arrival here. There won’t be anything in this vent to surprise me. Couldn’t be.

But he knew he was trying to convince himself of something he was really unsure of.

Joanna almost threw herself at Brudnoy when he and Zimmerman came back into the control center.

“He’s in the vent?” she asked, her voice high with tension.

Brudnoy said as soothingly as he knew how to, “He’s on his way. He’ll be at the EVC in half an hour, at most”

Anson muttered, tight-lipped, “They can do a lotta damage in half an hour, I betcha.”

Brudnoy shrugged. “As long as they don’t damage the recycling equipment too badly…”

“Good thing they don’t have any explosives in there,” Anson said, turning back to the wall screen.

“It’s a question of time now,” Brudnoy said to Joanna. “Can Doug get there soon enough to stop them from doing too much damage.”

Joanna fought to keep back her tears. Doug was going to have to fight Greg. At best, only one of her sons would come out of this alive, she knew.

“We’re picking up his transponder signal,” called one of the technicians from his monitoring station.

“Put it on the big screen,” Anson commanded.

A blinking red dot showed up on the wall screen, halfway down the gray line marking the vent running atop tunnel three.

Zimmerman, sitting on one of the little wheeled console chairs like a walrus perched on a beach ball, pointed and asked, “That is him?”

“That’s him,” Anson replied.

“Can we speak with him?”

“He’s got a pocket phone,” she said. “He’ll call in when he hits the first partition.”

Joanna stared at the blinking red dot as it moved slowly along the gray line. Brudnoy stood beside her and put an arm around her shoulders. She leaned against him, grateful for the support.

Roger Deems unconsciously gnawed on a fingernail as the eight others — three women among them — filed into the security office. Just my luck, Deems thought, to be tapped for the security job this month. The others looked equally unhappy.

The security assignment was rotated among the long-time Lunatics. Usually the job required nothing more than keeping the base’s surveillance cameras working. Drugs were a minor problem, but the long-timers usually policed themselves pretty well and kept the short-timers under control. The still that produced rocket juice was an open secret and seldom made problems for anyone. The toughest moment Deems could remember had been when two short-timers got into a fistfight in The Cave over a woman they both coveted. By the time that month’s security chief had arrived on the scene, like the sheriff in an old west barroom brawl, the other Lunatics had already ended the fight simply by dousing the combatants with all the fruit juice they could grab from the dispensers. Wet and sticky, the two young men felt foolish and embarrassed. Wyatt Earp was not really needed.