“You’ve given me life,” Doug said.

“No,” Zimmerman said, shaking his head slowly. “Your mother gave you life. I have merely helped you to keep it. And perhaps prolong it.”

“If there’s anything we can do,” Joanna said stiffly, “you only have to name it.”

“I have already informed you of my price, Madam.”

Joanna’s expression hardened. “Yes, you have, haven’t you?”

“What I have already gained will be payment enough. Plus transportation back to Basel, of course.”

“Of course,” said Joanna. She was positively glaring at the old man now.

Doug realized that their conversation, back and forth across his bed, dealt with things he didn’t know about.

“What’s the price?” he asked. “What are you two talking about?”

Joanna tore her gaze from Zimmerman and looked down at her son: so young, so innocent and unknowing.

“She is referring, young man, to the fact that you will not be allowed to leave the Moon.”

“For how long?” Doug asked.

“Forever,” blurted Joanna.

“You are a walking nahomachine factory now,” said Zimmerman. “No nation on Eartb will allow you entry.”

Doug turned from Zimmerman, who looked gravely concerned, to his mother, who looked angry and fearful and almost tearfully sad.

“Is that all?” he asked. “I have to stay here on the Moon? That’s what I wanted to do anyway.7

It was supposed to be Jinny Anson’s going-away party. And it was supposed to be a surprise. But when Anson stepped into the darkened biolab, led by the hand by Lev Brudnoy, and they snapped on the lights and everybody yelled, “Surprise!” Anson took it all in her stride.

“You are not surprised,” Brudnoy said, disappointed, as well-wishers pressed drinks into their hands.

Anson fixed him with a look. “What kind of a base director would I be if I didn’t know what you guys were plotting?”

“Ah,” said Brudnoy. “Of course.”

She was surprised, though, when a dozen of the women started handing her wedding presents. Little things, made at Moonbase of lunar raw materials or cast-off equipment. A digital clock set to Universal Mean Time that told when lunar sunrise and sunset would be. A hotplate of cermet salvaged from a junked lander. A vial of lunar glass filled with regolith sand.

Halfway through the wedding gifts, Jack Killifer showed up and the party quickly centered around the new hero. Just as Anson had predicted, the women clustered around Jack, who had shaved and showered and put on a crisp new jumpsuit for the party.

Even as she continued to unwrap presents, Anson scanned the growing crowd for the astronomer, Rhee. No sign of her. Busted romance? she wondered. Or is the kid too shy to come to the party? She sneaks off every now and then. I thought she just wanted to be alone, but maybe she’s already got a boyfriend tucked away someplace.

Not likely, Anson thought. Rhee’s not much of a looker and she’s too timid to go out and grab a guy for herself.

One of the lab benches had been turned into a bar. Anson wondered if the illicit still had been stashed in this lab all along; certainly they had all the right equipment for it, plumbing and glassware and enough chemical stores to plaster the whole base. The noise level climbed steadily: people talking at the top of their lungs, laughing, drinking. And then somebody turned on a music disk. The display screens along the walls all began to flash psychedelic colors and the lab quivered under the heavy thumping beat and sharp bleating whine of an adenoidal singer.

Couples paired off for dancing. Killifer seemed to be having the time of his life. Anson staggered away from the ear-splitting music, out into the tunnel where the party had spilled over.

Brudnoy was sitting on the floor with half a dozen others. Anson put her back to the wall and let herself slide down to a sitting position, careful not to spill a drop of her beaker of booze.

“You are not reigning at your own party?” Brudnoy asked. Even out here in the tunnel he had to half-shout to be heard over the music.

“Everybody’s having a great time,” she said.

“Are you?”

“Sure.”

“Truly?”

“Yes, of course.”

Brudnoy looked at her with his sad, bleary eyes. “I think you will miss us.”

“Of course I’ll miss you.”

“Will your husband come up here with you? Brudnoy asked.

Anson shook her head. “I’m not coming back, Lev. I told you that. I’m starting a new life.”

“In Texas.”

“Just outside of Austin, actually,” she said, straining her throat to get the words out over the party noise. “In the hill country.”

“The land of enchantment, they say.”

“That’s New Mexico.”

“Oh.”

“But the Texas hill country is beautiful. Air you can breathe. Mountains and valleys and land that goes on forever. Flowers! When the bluebonnets bloom it’s gorgeous. And a blue sky with white clouds. Clean and wonderful.”

“Not like Moonbase.”

“Not at all like Moonbase.”

“And you really want to leave all this behind you?” Brudnoy made a sweep with his arm.

Anson knew he was kidding. Half kidding, at least. That sweep of his arm took in not merely this crowded underground warren of labs and workshops and cramped undersized living quarters. It took in the ancient ringwall mountains and the cracked crater floor, the vast tracts of Mare Nubium and the Ocean of Storms, the slow beauty of a lunar sunrise and the way the regolith sparkled when the sunshine first hits it, the sheer breathtaking wonder of standing on this airless world and planting your bootprints where no one had ever stood before, the excitement of building a new world, even that crazy mountain down at the south pole that’s always in sunshine.

She pulled in a deep breath. “Yes, I’m really going to leave all this behind me. I’ll miss you guys, but I’ve made up my mind.”

Anson was surprised that she had to force the words past a good-sized lump in her throat.

Doug found that he could not lie idly waiting for the medics to start their tests. He asked for a computer and, once the technician on duty wheeled a laptop machine to his bed on a swing-arm table, he searched through the literature program for something to read.

Nothing appealed to him. In the back of his mind a question simmered, making him restless with pent-up curiosity. An oblong piece of ceramic or metal, about fifteen centimeters long and half as wide, gold on one side and white on the other.

There must be an inventory program, Doug told himself. He started searching the computer files for it.

BIOLAB

The party was winding down. Jinny Anson had gone back inside the biolab, Lev Brudnoy at her side. Only about a dozen and a half people remained, most of them paired off into couples. The music had gone softly romantic, dancers held each other in their arms as they shuffled slowly across the cleared space behind tike lab benches.

As Anson tipped over the big cooler of fruit punch to get its last dregs into her plastic cup, Greg Masterson showed up at the door, looking somber as usual. Anson frowned inwardly. He’s going to have to unwind if he expects to make it as director up here. Otherwise he’s going to have a mutiny on his hands.

She giggled to herself. Captain Bligh, she thought. Who would be Fletcher Christian and lead the mutineers?

Brudnoy saw Greg, too, and made his way past the dancers and the lab benches toward him. Jinny followed the Russian, drink in hand, feeling a little annoyed. Greg’s a wet blanket, he’s going to rain on my parade, she thought, mixing metaphors in her slightly inebriated condition.

“Better late man never,” said the Russian, smiling.

Greg’s face remained somber. “Is my brother here?”

“Your brother?” Anson asked. “I thought he was in the infirmary.”

“He was. He just disconnected all his monitors and walked out.”