“Never told me what?”

“About your brother! She never told you what your brother did!”

“Greg?” Doug felt suddenly uneasy, as if he were teetering on the edge of a tremendous precipice. “What’s Greg got to do with this?”

“He killed your old man!” Killifer roared. “He murdered your father, kid.”

“That’s a lie,” Doug snapped.

“The hell it is. Your brother salted the nanomachines your father was using. The nanos didn’t malfunction. They did exactly what they were programmed to do.”

Inwardly Doug was falling off that precipice, dropping like a stone into the darkness. He heard his own voice, hollow with shock, “They were programmed to destroy the spacesuits?”

“Yeah. Your brother asked me for a sample of nanobugs that could eat carbon-based molecules. I didn’t know what the fuck he wanted ’em for, but he was big shit with the corporation so I gave him what he wanted.”

“You gave him—”

“Gave him the bugs that killed your old man, that’s right Nobody else knew. Just your big brother Greg and me. But your mother figured it out and shipped me up here.”

Feeling his legs trembling, Doug pulled up the plastic chair and sat on it. Hard. “But why would she send you here to Moonbase?”

“To get me outta the way, wise ass! She didn’t want me where I might rat out her son.”

“Greg.”

“That’s right.”

“Greg murdered my father and you helped him.”

“Hey, I didn’t know what he wanted the friggin’ bugs for. Not until after it happened.”

“You were just following orders,” Doug muttered.

“Right.”

For what seemed like hours Doug sat there, running the story around in his head, over and over again. Mom protected Greg. She knew he’d killed my father and she protected him. And she never told me.

Never told me.

Never told me.

“So, whatcha gonna do now, kid?” Killifer taunted. “Beat the crap outta me? Kill me?”

Slowly Doug got to his feet. Killifer cringed back on the bunk, his bravado suddenly evaporated.

“Get out of here,” Doug said quietly.

“What?”

“Get off the Moon. Quit Masterson Corporation. Take early retirement and go back to Earth.”

“And if I don’t want to…?”

Doug looked down at him. “If I see you here after tomorrow I’ll kill you.”

From the look in Killifer’s eyes, Doug knew the man believed him.

ALPHONSUS

Doug walked alone across the floor of the giant crater, his boots stirring clouds of dust that settled languidly in the gentle lunar gravity.

He had lost track of time. For hours now the universe had narrowed down to his spacesuit, the sound of his own breathing, the air fans softly whirring, the bleak cracked, pitted ground. He passed the rocket port, where an ungainly transfer ship sat on one of the blast-scarred pads, waiting for tomorrow’s launch Earthward. Past the solar farms he walked, where nanomachines were patiently converting regolith silicon and trace metals into spreading acres of solar panels that drank in sunlight and produced electricity. Off in the distance he could barely make out the dark bulk of the half-finished mass driver, a low dark shadow against the horizon.

Turning, he looked through the visor of his helmet up at the worn, rounded mountains that ringed the crater floor. Mount Yeager, he saw. And the notch in the ringwall near it that everybody called Wodjohowitcz Pass.

My father died up there. Greg murdered him and my mother covered it up, kept it even from me. Protected him, protected my father’s murderer. My half-brother. Her son. He’s just as much her son as I am and he murdered my father. And got away with it.

“Doug? Is that you?”

The voice in his earphones startled him. He would have turned the suit radio off, but the safety people had fixed all the suits so that you couldn’t.

A small tractor was approaching him, kicking up a plume of dust that looked almost silvery in the sunlight. Must be the safety guys, Doug thought. I guess I’ve wandered too far out for them. Broke a rule.

“Doug, are you all right?”

He realized it was Bianca Rhee’s voice.

“I’m okay,” he answered as the tractor approached him. Sort of, he added silently.

He stood there as the tractor pulled up and stopped in a billow-of dream-slow swirling dust.

“Where’ve you been?” Rhee asked, stepping down from the tractor. It was a two-seat machine with a flat bed for cargo: the lunar equivalent of a pickup truck.

“I needed some time by myself,” he said.

“Oh! I’m interrupting—”

“No, it’s okay. I was just about to start back anyway.”

“Everybody’s looking for you. Your mother’s just about to roast the infirmary staff under a rocket nozzle for letting you walk off like that.”

Doug looked at Rhee’s stubby, spacesuited figure and felt glad that their helmet visors hid their faces. He did not want anyone to see his expression right at this moment. Nothing but an impersonal, faceless figure encased in protective plastic, metal and fabric.

“How’d you find me?” he asked.

“I like to be by myself sometimes, too.”

“And you come out here?”

“No…’ Her voice faltered. “I, uh, I find some cubbyhole where I’m alone and I… dance.”

“Dance? By yourself?”

“Ballet,” Rhee said, her voice so low Doug could hardly hear her. “You know, with an orchestra disk.”

“Ballet,” said Doug. “Sure! Here on the Moon it must be terrific.”

I’m not very good, even in low gravity.”

“How do you know, if you don’t let anybody see you?”

“Every time I fall down, I know!”

Doug didn’t laugh. He could tell from the tone of her voice that this was very precious to Rhee.

Softly, he said, “I hope ybu’ll let me see you dance sometime, Bianca.”

He waited for her reply, but she said nothing. So he said, “You’re the only one in the whole base smart enough to find me.”

“I checked with the airlock monitors,” she said, sounding relieved. “They keep a record of everybody who goes out.”

“And comes in,” Doug added. The crew monitoring the main airlock didn’t know that Doug was supposed to be in the infirmary. They had allowed him outside after only a cursory check of the computerized files.

“You must be feeling awfully good to come out here,” Rhee said cheerfully, clambering back up to the driver’s seat.

And Doug realized, She must feel awfully strong about me to come out looking for me. It can’t be impersonal, after all. It never is.

“Bianca,” he asked as he climbed up into the tractor beside her, “how long are you going to be here at Moonbase?”

“My tour’s over at the end of the month. That’s when the new semester starts.”

“Well,” Doug said carefully, “we’ve got a couple of weeks to get acquainted, then.”

He could hear her breath catch, over the suit radio. Then she said, “That’d be fine.”

I can’t tell her anything, Doug knew, but at least I can have a friend to unwind with. Somebody to help keep me sane.

“Uh…’ How to say it without hurting her feelings? “You know, it’s good to have a friend here. I really don’t know anyone else in Moonbase.”

“There’s Killifer,” she said lightly.

“He’s leaving tomorrow.”

“Really?” She sounded completely surprised.

“Really.”

“Well, your brother’s here now, isn’t he?”

“Half brother.” Doug felt his insides clench. “And I hardly know him. He’s always… we’ve never been close.”

He heard her chuckling. “What’s so funny?”

“Oh, I was just thinking about some of the other women here. They’ll be green with envy.”

“Bianca, it isn’t going to be like that.”

“They’ll say I’m robbing the cradle,” she went on, happily ignoring him. “After all, I’m almost five years older than you.”

Doug shook his head inside the helmet. “I’ve aged a lot since coming to Moonbase,” he said. And he hoped that he could keep her as a friend without crushing her dreams.