A PLAGUE OF NANOMACHINES
Grant couldn’t move. He stared at the display screen as the fireball that had been a lobber dissipated and pieces of the rocket fell bouncing to the ground.
“It … it…” Cardenas’s voice was choked, gasping.
“It blew up,” Nate Oberman said, his voice a hollow whisper.
“Oh, my god.” Cardenas began to sob.
Turning toward her, Grant took both of her hands in his. It took him three tries before he found his voice. “Are you okay?”
Her eyes filled with tears, Cardenas nodded as she pulled in a deep, shuddering breath. “I might have been on it,” she whispered. “I might have…”
“You weren’t on it,” Grant said firmly, “and you’re alive. You’re okay.”
She said nothing, simply stared at him.
Josie Rivera’s voice came through the overhead speakers. “It’s gone. It … it…”
Raising his voice, Grant said, “Better call Selene, Josie, tell them what happened.”
“Yeah, right.” Her voice sounded weak, dazed. “But how did it happen? How did it happen?”
That’s what we’ve got to find out, Grant told himself. But first I’ve got to tell Uhlrich about it.
* * *
Grant walked Cardenas back to the quarters that had been assigned to her.
“Will you be okay by yourself? I can get somebody to stay with you.”
Her eyes red but dry now, Cardenas said calmly, “I’m all right. It was … a shock. But I’m all right now.”
“Good. I’ll look in on you in a while. Right now, I’ve got a lot to do.”
“I understand. Go ahead.”
Grant left her and started sprinting down the corridor toward Professor Uhlrich’s office. As he ran he called Harvey Henderson on his pocketphone.
“Get a crew suited up and go out to pick up the bodies,” Grant ordered.
“What’s left of ’em,” Henderson said grimly.
“Don’t touch the debris,” Grant continued. “Leave it where it fell. We might be able to establish an idea of the force of the explosion from the debris pattern on the ground.”
“Yeah. Right.”
He reached Uhlrich’s office, rapped on the door once, and slid it open.
The professor was at his desk, as usual, with Trudy Yost sitting at the conference table. One of the wall screens was filled with spectrographic data.
Uhlrich looked annoyed at Grant’s interruption; Trudy seemed surprised.
“What do you want, Mr. Simpson?”
“There’s been an accident, Professor.”
“An accident?”
“The lobber from Selene. It exploded on liftoff.”
“What?” Uhlrich shot to his feet.
“The two men in the crew were killed. Dr. Cardenas wasn’t aboard it, though. She’s okay.”
“It exploded? How? Why?”
“That’s what we’ll have to find out,” said Grant. “The flight monitoring people have all the telemetered data from the vehicle. I think the copilot said something about a pressure drop just before she blew up.”
Uhlrich slumped back into his chair and stared sightlessly at Grant.
“It blew up?” he asked, his voice a thin, pitiful whine.
Grant looked at Trudy. She seemed shocked, distraught.
“I’ll get down to the flight control center and see what the telemeter record can tell us,” Grant said.
Uhlrich shook his head in misery. “Selene will send investigators. They’ll get in our way, poking and probing everywhere. Just when we’re starting to get results from the first telescope, they’ll ruin everything.”
“Professor, two men were killed. Of course Selene will want to investigate.”
“They’ll ruin everything, everything,” Uhlrich moaned.
Trudy suggested, “Maybe I could go out to Mendeleev and work the telescope from there, out of their way.”
“No!” Grant snapped.
She turned toward him. “Why not?”
“You’ll be safer here.”
“Safer?” Uhlrich demanded. “Safe from what?”
“Nanomachines,” said Grant. As he spoke the word he realized that his deepest fear was looming before him. “I think this place is infested with destructive nanomachines.”
“That’s insane!” Uhlrich roared. “You’re insane!”
“Face the facts, Professor. Winston was killed at Mendeleev. Now the lobber blows up.”
“There is no evidence that nanomachines destroyed the lobber,” Uhlrich insisted. “None at all!”
“They killed Winston and now they’ve blown up the lobber,” Grant countered stubbornly.
Leveling a finger at Grant, Uhlrich seethed, “If you mention nanomachines to anyone outside this room I’ll fire you! I’ll send you packing, Simpson!”
“Send me where? Do you think Selene or anyplace else will take somebody from a site that might be infested with a plague of nanomachines?”