As soon as Greg awoke he checked with the control center. “Radiation levels haven’t started down yet, Mr. Masterson,” said the young woman on his phone screen. “We expect them to start diminishing within the next hour or so.”

“Thank you,” Greg said tightly. Within the next hour or so. How long have I slept?

He tapped the keyboard next to his bunk and the screen showed he’d been asleep a little more than four hours. Feeling grimy, he stepped into the shower stall. But no water came from the shower head. “Christ!” he bellowed. “Doesn’t anything work right around here?”

Naked, he stormed back to his bunk and pounded the keyboard. “Maintenance,” he told the phone’s computer.

A bored-looking kid in repulsive sickly green coveralls appeared on the screen. “Got a problem?”

“My shower’s not working.”

The kid glanced off to his left. “Room two twenty-three, right?”

“No shower until Tuesday. Sink Water only”

Greg raged, “What do you mean—”

“Water rules,” the kid said, with the finality of unshakable regulations on his side. “Got a problem, take it up with administration.”

“I’m the next director of this base!” Greg roared.

The kid was far from impressed. “Then you oughtta know the rules.” The screen went blank.

Defeated but still steaming, Greg sponged himself as best as he could in the tiny stainless steel sink, pulled out a fresh pair of dark blue coveralls from his travel bag, then put through a call to Savannah.

“The radiation level will be back to normal in about an hour,” Greg told his mother as he pressed the Velcro seal of his coveralls front.

And heard her saying, as soon as she saw his image on her screen, “The radiation level will be back to normal in about an hour.”

Greg laughed and so did Joanna.

“They’re going to be okay,” he said.

This time she waited for his words to reach her before replying, “Have you heard from them yet?”

“Not yet,” Greg said. “I’m going down to the comm center now. I’ll have them patch you in to their transmission when it comes through, if you like.”

Joanna answered, “No, that won’t be necessary, just as long as you can tell me they’re all right. I can talk to Doug later, when things calm down and get back to normal.”

Pleased with her response, Greg said, “Okay, Mom. I’ll let you know the instant we re-establish contact with them.”

“Fine,” she said.

But once the screen went dark again Greg wondered, Why doesn’t she want to talk with Doug as soon as we make contact again? Is she worried that I’d be jealous? Or will she be making her own contact, direct from Savannah, without letting me know?

Doug’s eyes snapped open. He hadn’t realized he’d fallen asleep until he woke up. He had been afraid to go to sleep, he realized. Despite everything he had been telling himself, deep within him lurked the fear that once he shut his eyes in sleep he would never open them again.

Well, he said to himself, that was feeble.

He found himself lying on his right side and tried to roll back onto his stomach again. The effort left him gasping, dizzy.

I’m weak as a kitten, he said to himself.

Brennart was still asleep, stretched out beside him. Doug twisted over and looked around. It made his head swim. For several minutes he simply lay still, panting, trying to fight down the fear and nausea that rose inside him like an inexorable tide. Hang on, he demanded of himself. Hang in there; the storm must be almost over by now. Help will be on the way soon.

But not soon enough, a sardonic voice in his head replied.

His world was constrained to this metallic nest beneath the hopper, with a few containers and tanks around them. The nozzle of the hopper’s main engine hung between him and Brennart like a bell in a church spire.

An old tune sprang to his mind: It’s a Small, Small World. Idiot, Doug snarled to himself. You’re being fried by a solar flare and you’re thinking about childhood songs.

His earphones chirped.

By reflex, before he realized what it meant, Doug tapped the radio channel selector on his wrist.

“Moonbase to Brennart. Do you read?”

He heard Killifer’s overjoyed voice, “Loud and clear, baby! Are we glad to hear you!”

“We’re working on reactivating the minisats that the storm knocked out. We have two of them working so far.”

“Great!”

“What is your condition?”

“We’re all okay, except Brennart and Stavenger. They’ve been up at the top of Mt Wasser for. .Doug sensed Killifer checking a clock, “… almost seven hours now.”

A different voice came on. “Seven hours? In the open?”

“Brennart himself? And the Stavenger boy?” It sounded like Jinny Anson’s voice. Urgent Demanding. Doug didn’t much like being called a boy.

“Right,” Killifer said again.

“What’s happened to them?” Now it was Greg’s voice. Unmistakable.

“Don’t know,” said Killifer. “We haven’t been able to contact them.”

“This is Stavenger,” Doug said, shocked at how weak his own voice sounded. “Can you hear me?”

“Stavenger!” Anson shouted. “How are you?”

“Alive… barely.”

“And Brennart?”

“Sleeping. Or unconscious.”

“We’ll get help to you as soon as we can,” Anson promised.

Greg came on again. “Killifer! Get somebody up to that mountaintop and bring those two back to your base camp. Now!”

“Hey, we’ve got a few problems of our own. Power cells are running low, our one remaining hopper needs refueling—”

“Get them as quickly as you can,” Anson said. Her voice was cool, but there was no mistaking the implacable tone of her command.

“Right,” said Killifer. “We’re on our way.”

“And shoot us a complete rundown of your own status,” Anson added. “All systems.”

“Doug,” Greg called. “Doug, how are you?”

“I feel kind of sick, but I’m still breathing.” He reached across and shook Brennart’s shoulder. No response. “I mink Mr. Brennart’s unconscious.”

“We’ll get help to you right away,” Greg said.

“Good,” said Doug.

Anson came on again. “Killifer, it’s going to take us several hours to get a resupply lobber to you. Storm beat up our surface facilities pretty good and we’ll need some time to get ’em all back on line.”

“Understood,” Killifer replied. “We’re all okay here, except for Brennart and Stavenger.”

“How long can your power supplies hold out?”

“Fuel cells are down about forty percent. We can power down if we have to, stretch ’em out till the resupply arrives.”

Doug heard Greg’s voice in the background urging, “You’ve got to send a medical team down there. Right away!”

“Stavenger,” Anson called, “can you put your medical monitoring system on frequency three? We can start checking out your medical condition.”

“Okay. And Mr. Brennart’s, too.”

“Right. Of course. But you’ve got to be quick. The satellite won’t be above your horizon much longer.”

“I understand,” Doug said. “Now, which of these plugs is the medical system?”

“It’s marked with a red circle.”

Doug held his left arm up in the light of his helmet lamp. It brushed the underside of the hopper’s platform. He squinted hard to keep his vision from blurring. Either the lamp’s running down or my eyesight’s going, he thought.

“Okay, found it.”

“Toggle the microswitch and then press the keypad for frequency three,” Anson directed patiently.

It seemed to take forever, but Doug finally got it right.

“Okay, good,” Anson said. “Data’s coming in.”

“What about Brennart?”

“Do the same for him, if you can.”

Puzzled by the if you can, Doug pushed himself closer to Brennart, found the right switch and punched frequency three on his radio keypad.

“We’ve only got another fifty seconds before the satellite drops below your horizon,” Anson said. “Killifer, get a team up to those two immediately.”

“Will do.”