“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.

Beads of perspiration on his lip and brow, he chewed anxiously on his black cigar, his fourth of the long, trying day. One of his assistants had thoughtfully converted a laboratory dish into an ashtray for him. It sat on the lab bench at his side, filled with the shredded and soggy remains of three earlier cigars.

On the other side of the clear plastiglass wall, his four assistants bent over lab benches. Their lab smocks looked very new, starched and pressed.

The airtight door of the nanotechnology laboratory sighed open and Kris Cardenas came through.

“How’s it going?” she asked.

Zimmerman’s bushy brows contracted into a worried frown. “What takes weeks in Basel we are trying to do in hours here.”

“Is there anything I can do to help?”

“Turn up the air conditioning! Must I suffer like this?”

Cardenas shrugged. “I think the temperature is centrally controlled.” To her the lab felt comfortably warm; perhaps a bit stuffy. She smiled and added, “If you would lose some weight—”

“Camouflage,” Zimmerman said, slapping his belly.

“Camouflage?”

“Do you think the politicians and their spies suspect me of working on nanotherapies when I am so gross? Hah?”

Cardenas felt her jaw drop open. “Is it that bad? Even in Switzerland?”

“I take no chances,” Zimmerman said.

“Do you need anything?” Cardenas asked.

Zimmerman’s cheeks waddled slightly. “No. The equipment here is surprisingly good. Not precisely what we require for medical work, but good enough, I think. We are adapting it.”

“They use nanomachines here quite a bit.”

“But not for medical purposes.”

“No, I think not.”

“How is the patient?” Zimmerman asked.

Cardenas shrugged. “last time I checked he was fairly stable. Sinking slowly, but they’ve lowered his metabolic rate as far as they can.”