TELEOPERATIONS CENTER
Grant sat at one of the consoles and put in a call to Dr. Cardenas. The teleoperations center was quietly busy with two teams of techs monitoring the robots’ construction work at Korolev and Gagarin, while a third team huddled around Trudy Yost, who was happily operating the Mendeleev telescope.
In the bud-sized microphone he had wormed into his ear, Grant heard the phone say, “Dr. Cardenas is unavailable.”
“Is she in her quarters?” Grant asked, keeping his voice low enough so that he wouldn’t disturb the others.
The phone’s softly feminine voice replied, “Dr. Cardenas is unavailable.”
Privacy protocol, Grant realized. There’re no surveillance cameras in the rooms, only out in the corridors and workplaces. He asked for the surveillance command system and quickly scanned through the camera views.
And there was Kristine Cardenas, marching determinedly along the main corridor with her travelbag in one hand, looking taut, almost angry. McClintock was striding along beside her, talking nonstop, gesticulating with both hands.
She’s heading for the landing pad, Grant realized. He called up the transportation program and saw that a lobber was due in from Selene in twenty minutes. Kris is heading back to Selene and McClintock’s trying to talk her out of it.
Grant pulled his earbud out, got up from the console, and headed for the reception area. The three teleoperations teams sitting at the other consoles barely noticed him leaving.
I can’t talk to her while McClintock’s yammering away at her, Grant told himself. I’ve got to see her alone.
He hustled down the corridor, actually passing Cardenas and McClintock along the way. He nodded a hello to them as he went by. Kris gave him a tight smile, McClintock didn’t even blink, he was so intensely pleading with her.
Nate Oberman was at the desk in the reception area, looking bored, his chair tipped back and his soft-booted feet on the desktop. Watching a video. When he saw Grant enter the little room Oberman scrambled to his feet, looking surprised and a little guilty.
“Relax, Nate,” said Grant. “I’ve got to get into that lobber as soon as it sits down on the pad. Before they begin unloading.”
“Okay,” Oberman said uncertainly.
“Let me use your phone, please.”
“Sure.” Oberman cleared his screen, then stepped away from the desk. “Be my guest.”
Grant called the flight monitor and asked her to patch him through to the pilot of the incoming lobber. Grant recognized the pilot once his beefy face showed on the phone screen.
“Hey, Grant, how’re they hangin’, buddy?”
“Fine, Derek. And you?”
“Gonna be busy landing this bird in a coupla minutes.”
“I understand. Look, I need to come aboard as soon as you land. Before you start unloading cargo.”
“You goin’ back with us?”
“No, I just need a few minutes with your outbound passenger.”
The pilot frowned with puzzlement. “She’s right there at your facility, isn’t she? Whyn’t you talk to her there?”
Making himself smile, Grant replied, “Long story. I’ll chat with her aboard your ship while you’re unloading, if it’s okay with you. I won’t delay your departure.”
“Okay by me, long’s we get out on time. My boss is a stickler for keeping to schedule.”
Clicking off, Grant turned back to Oberman. “I’ll run the access tube, Nate. You can stay at the desk.”
Oberman’s lean face looked curious, but he said only, “You’re the boss.”
Grant went to the airlock hatch and quickly scanned the controls for the tube that would connect the airlock to the hatch of the lobber, once it landed. Behind him, he heard Cardenas and McClintock enter the area. Actually, he only heard McClintock talking nonstop, more and more frantic with each sentence. He was talking to Kris, Grant knew, but she wasn’t saying a word back to him.
On the control console’s minuscule screen Grant saw the lobber settle down on the blast-blackened landing pad, silently blowing a spray of dust and pebbles across the barren, pitted ground. He worked the access tube out to the ship, watched it groping its way like a blind giant caterpillar and finally connecting to the lobber’s main airlock hatch.
As soon as the console’s lights flashed green, Grant opened the airlock hatch and sprinted along the tube to the ship. The man at the other end, in the sky-blue uniform of Selene’s transportation department, eyed him curiously.
“What’s the rush?” he asked.
“I don’t want to get in your way,” Grant said, heading for the empty passenger compartment.
He saw the ship’s pilot clambering down the ladder from the cockpit and got an idea. “Hello, Derek.”
The pilot’s face was fleshier and ruddier than it had looked in the comm screen. “Welcome aboard, Grant,” he said.
“Dr. Cardenas is your only passenger on the flight out, right?” Grant asked.
With a curt nod, the pilot said, “Unless you people make a last-minute addition.”
Shaking his head, Grant said, “No, no additions. In fact, there’s a guy with Dr. Cardenas who’ll probably try to come aboard with her. She doesn’t want him to.”
“Oh?”
“He’s trying to sell her something she doesn’t want. I’d appreciate it if you didn’t let him come aboard. Dr. Cardenas would appreciate it, too.”
The pilot shrugged his heavy shoulders. “Okay, I’ll stop him at the hatch.”
“Great. Thanks.” Grant climbed up into the passenger compartment while the pilot went to the airlock hatch.
Fidgeting along the thinly carpeted aisle between the empty passenger seats, Grant heard bangs and thumps as Farside’s technicians began unloading the lobber’s cargo. Food, mostly, Grant knew. And supplies for sixteen different kinds of equipment, from tractors to computer screens.
Kris Cardenas stepped into the passenger compartment, her eyes going wide with surprise when she recognized Grant.
“Are you going to Selene, too?” she asked as she dropped her travelbag onto one of the empty seats.
Grant hurried to her. “No. I need to talk to you for a few minutes, that’s all.”
Her expression hardened. “Don’t tell me you’re trying to get me to stay here, too. I told Carter and—”
“No, not that,” Grant interrupted. “I just need to ask you … is there any way that the nanos inside me could have caused the problems out at Mendeleev? Any way at all?”
“Absolutely none,” Cardenas said firmly. “You can’t blame yourself for what happened, Grant. It’s not your fault.”
“You’re certain?”
“Completely.”
Somehow her reassurance didn’t make Grant feel any better. He said, “Suppose somebody, somehow, mixed some gobblers in with the nanos you gave me?”
Now Cardenas scowled at him. “Grant, you’re getting paranoid.”
“But just suppose. Is it possible?”
“No one in my lab would do such a thing.”
He agreed with her. He knew she was right. But deep in his gut he was unconvinced.
“Is there some way to check out the possibility?” he asked.
Cardenas huffed impatiently. “I could take a blood sample and examine it.”
“Could you do it now? Here?”
“Does your clinic have an atomic force microscope?”
“No, but the maintenance center has a laser probe that can do nanometer resolution.”
Looking decidedly unhappy, almost disgusted, Cardenas glanced at her wristwatch.
“You’ve got an hour before they lift off,” Grant coaxed. “You could check my blood and still make it in time.”
Cardenas sighed heavily. “I doubt it.” But she studied Grant’s face for a long moment, then picked up her travelbag and said, “What the hell. Let’s see if we can make it.”
Grant knew that there wouldn’t be another flight in from Selene for three days. We’d better get this done before that lobber takes off, he thought. Otherwise Kris is going to be damned unhappy with me.