He felt his heart racing as he clutched the flimsy railing with both hands and marveled at Brennart’s cool while the hopper plunged deeper and deeper into the eternal darkness.

“Are we there yet?” Bianca’s voice bleated in his earphones. She’s trying to make light of it, Doug thought, but this long free-fall must be bothering her. I wonder how she did on the trip to Moonbase from Earth? She must have been in misery all the way. Greenberg had said nothing since they’d climbed aboard the hopper and damned little before that Doug realized that the nanotech engineer was as closed-mouthed as anyone he had ever met.

Straining his eyes, Doug peered over the railing into the darkness below. He could make out vague shapes in the darkness, like monsters from a child’s nightmare reaching up to snare him.

Then a lurch of thrust nearly buckled his knees and the landscape below was briefly lit by the rocket’s silent flame, like a scene suddenly illuminated by a lightning bolt’s flash. Before Doug could blink it was inky dark again and they continued to fall.

Then another flash and surge of thrust. Then a gentle bump and Doug felt the comfortable reassurance of weight once more. They were on the ground.

“Don’t just stand there,” Brennart commanded. “Get off and into the shelter.”

For a moment Doug was transfixed, immobilized with admiration for Brennart’s piloting. The man really is as good as all the stories about him.

“Move!” Brennart bellowed.

Almost laughing, Doug knocked down the hopper’s railing and jumped softly to the ground.

“Which shelter?” Greenberg asked. He had turned on his helmet lamp, Doug saw. So had Brennart. He did the same, then Bianca followed suit.

“Number four,” said Brennart, pointing with a long arm. “The others are already occupied.”

They trooped to the airlock, Greenberg in the lead. He may not say much, Doug thought, but he sure makes it clear that he wants to get safely inside.

“Don’t take off your suits,” Brennart commanded. “Go right through the lock and into the shelter. Leave your suits on.”

Doug waited for Bianca to go in, then turned toward Brennart.

“Go on, go on,” the expedition commander shooed impatiently. “We don’t have all damned day.”

Doug ducked through the airlock hatch, waited for it to recycle, then stepped into the shelter. Bianca and Greenberg were sitting awkwardlyspn the edges of two facing bunks, still encased in their bulky spacesuits, looking like a pair of hunchbacked giant pandas. There were no internal partitions in this smaller shelter; it was merely a dugout for sleeping and eating.

The pumps chugged and the inner airlock hatch opened to let Brennart step through. He had to bend over slightly to keep the top of his helmet from scraping the shelter’s curving ceiling.

“Not enough rubble on top of us to provide full shielding,” he explained, “so we stay in the suits until the radiation dies down.”

“That could be days!” Rhee blurted.

“We’ll need the extra shielding the suits provide,” Brennart said calmly. “It’ll be uncomfortable but better than getting fried.”

“And the backpacks?” she asked.

“We can take off the backpacks and breathe the air in here, but otherwise we will stay buttoned up. Like the man says, better safe than sorry.”

“What about eating?” asked Doug.

Brennart turned toward him slowly, his helmet visor staring at him like a blank-eyed cyclops. “We’ll take a quick meal now, before the radiation builds up. After that, I’ll decide when and if it’s safe to open our visors for food.”

After a heartbeat’s span of silence, Brennart added in a more relaxed tone, “A little dieting won’t hurt any of us.”

So they grabbed prepackaged meals from the shelter’s food locker and took turns sticking them in the tiny microwave oven.

“Stand back from the oven. You don’t want to get exposed to any radiation that leaks through,” Greenberg said, so solemnly that Doug couldn’t tell if he was joking or serious.

Brennart raised his visor to eat his meal, and Doug could at last see the man’s face. If Brennart was worried, he didn’t show it. He looked calm; thoughtful, but certainly not jittery.

“That’s our guide,” he said, pointing to the radiation meter built into the airlock control panel. “That, and our suit patches, are the only way we have of telling how high the radiation level is.”

The suit patches were cumulative, Doug knew. They changed color with dosage, going from green through yellow to red. Once they turned red you were supposed to get inside shelter, no matter what you were doing out on the surface. He looked down at the patch on his right arm and was startled to see it had already turned a sickly greenish yellow. Just from the work we’ve done outside today, he thought. What color will it be when the radiation cloud hits?

How can they eat this garbage? Greg wondered as he chewed on the little sandwich. It tasted like sawdust and glue, with a core of hard rubber.

He felt uncomfortable at the flare party, and most of the people around him seemed uncomfortable in his presence. Jinny Anson was perfectly relaxed, apparently, but the others stiffened visibly as he approached mem. They were friendly enough, but Greg saw them put their drinks down or try to hide them behind their backs. Laughter died out as he came up to a knot of party-goers. People became polite, their smiles strained.

The new boss, Greg figured. They know I’ll be in charge here in a week, the board chairwoman’s son, and they don’t know what kind of a boss I’m going to be. Inwardly, Greg frowned at the irony of it. I don’t know what kind of a boss I’m going to be, either. Obviously there’s alcohol in most of those drinks, even though nobody’s offered me any. What else is going down?

He had made a sort of ragged circumnavigation of The Cave, and ended up back near Anson, who was deep in conversation with a tall, ragged-looking old simp with a mangy beard and sad, baggy eyes. Greg left his dish of unfinished finger sandwiches on the nearest table and went toward her.

“Here he is,” Anson said as Greg approached them. She waved Greg toward her, then introduced, “Greg Masterson, Lev Brudnoy.”

The legendary Lev Brudnoy! Greg realized that Brudnoy’s legend was more than twenty years old now. The poor geezer must be pushing sixty, at least.

“How do you do,” said Brudnoy gravely, extending a calloused hand. His coveralls were a faded olive green, splotched here and there with stains. He was about Greg’s own height, though, and wider across the shoulders.

“I’m very happy to meet you,” Greg said perfunctorily. Brudnoy’s grip was strong; Greg got the feeling he could have squeezed a lot harder if he’d wanted to.

“So you are going to be our leader for the next twelve months,” Brudnoy said.

“That’s right.”

“I knew your stepfather, Paul Stavenger. He was a good man.”

Trying not to bristle, Greg said, “I thought it was my father who gave you permission to join Moonbase.”

With a slow smile, Brudnoy answered, “Quite true. But I never met your father. He never came here and I was never invited to meet him when I visited Earthside.”

“Oh. I see.”

“I am most indebted to him, of course. And to your lovely mother — whom I also have never met”

Feeling awkward, Greg tried to change the subject ’I suppose you’ve been here at Moonbase longer than anyone else’ It was inane and he knew it, but Greg couldn’t think of anything else.

“More than twenty years,” Anson said.

“Not all that time has been spent here on the Moon, of course’ said Brudnoy. “I visit Earthside each year, as required by our health regulations”

Greg knew the regulations. They were based on the idea that living on the Moon deconditioned the body for living in Earth’s heavier gravity. Every Moonbase employee was required to undertake an exercise regime to keep muscles and bones strong enough for an immediate return Earthside. ,