ESCAPE
Grant skidded to a stop at the closed door to the lockers, with Cardenas a step behind him. He tapped out the entry code, but the keypad flashed red and the door remained shut. Grant tried the code again; still no good.
“That sonofabitch Oberman’s changed the code,” Grant muttered.
“We can’t get in?” Cardenas asked.
“It’ll take a few minutes,” Grant muttered, flicking open his pocketphone to call up the base’s central computer.
“You think they’re leaving Farside?”
“What else? The question is, where the hell are they going?”
As Grant queried the central computer for the new entry code, Cardenas fidgeted nervously. “I wish there was something I could do,” she said, wringing her hands.
“There is,” said Grant, his eyes fixed on his phone’s minuscule screen. “Get down to the maintenance center. Toshio Aichi ought to be there with a sample from the mirror lab’s airlock hatch. Find out what kind of nanos drilled a hole through the hatch and how to kill them.”
Cardenas’s jaw dropped open. “You must be joking! How can I do anything without the proper equipment? I’d need an atomic force microscope, to begin with, and—”
“You’re going to have to work with what we’ve got at the maintenance center, Kris. I know it’s a tall order, but it’s a matter of life or death. Work with Toshio, he’s pretty smart.”
“Grant, that’s like asking a surgeon to operate on a patient blindfolded!”
He looked up from the phone screen and tapped a combination on the wall-mounted keypad. The door slid open.
Turning to Cardenas, Grant said, “You’re the world’s expert on nanotechnology, Kris. Prove it.”
“Thanks a lot,” she griped. “And what are you going to do while I’m trying to perform a miracle?”
“I’m going to get Halleck and make her tell us what kind of nanos we’re up against.”
With that, Grant stepped through the open doorway and into the locker area, leaving Cardenas standing in the corridor, resentful and angry because she knew Grant expected her to do the impossible.
* * *
Moving swiftly down the row of lockers, Grant saw that two of the spare space suits were gone, along with Nate Oberman’s.
He ran to the end of the row, where the airlock hatch stood. Next to it was the ladder that led up to the flight control center. He grabbed one of the titanium rungs and put his foot on the bottommost. It crumbled under his weight, throwing him off balance.
The bugs are here! he realized.
Cautiously, he climbed up the remaining rungs and through the open hatch into the flight control center. Josie Rivera was still at the only operative console. She jerked with surprise as Grant clambered up beside her.
“Grant! What’re you doing—”
“What’s going on, Josie?” he asked.
She blinked at him. “What do you mean?”
Reaching across her to the light-dimmer dial on her console, Grant lowered the lights in the cramped chamber.
He pointed through the thick glassteel window that looked out on Farside’s spaceport. The lobber from Selene still stood on the sole landing pad, but only three hoppers were lined up between the pad and the airlock’s outer hatch.
“Where’s the fourth hopper, Jo?”
“It … it’s gone.”
“I can see that. Who took it? What’s their flight plan? Where’s their manifest?”
Josie shook her head. In a small, frightened voice she answered, “I don’t know.”
“Josie, you’re the flight controller.”
“Three people came out and took off on the hopper,” she said, trying to avoid Grant’s eyes. “I … I don’t know who they are. They just came out and took off, without permission.”
“And you let them go? You didn’t try to stop them? You didn’t call me or Professor Uhlrich or anybody?”
“What could I do?” Josie wailed. “It all happened so fast. I told them to stop but they wouldn’t listen!”
“Where’d they go?”
“I don’t know! They wouldn’t say!”
Grant saw that Josie was close to panic. She’s lying, he told himself. But pressuring her isn’t going to change anything. It’d just be a waste of time.
Calmly, almost gently, Grant said, “Josie, I’m going downstairs and suit up. I want you to check with the GPS satellites and get a track on that hopper. Then you come down and check me out.”
“Okay, sure,” she answered shakily.
“And be careful on the ladder,” Grant added, almost maliciously. “The nanobugs are chewing on the rungs.”
Josie’s dark eyes went wide with terror.
* * *
Trudy was trying hard not to look up into the sky. As the hopper soared on its ballistic trajectory across the barren lunar landscape, Trudy looked downward at the dusty, rock-strewn, pockmarked ground. She swallowed bile, trying to keep her stomach in its place while they flew in virtually zero gravity.
It’s almost two thousand klicks to Korolev, she reminded herself. It’s going to take us close to an hour to get there.
An hour of standing inside this space suit, with Mrs. Halleck beside her, gripping the handrail with both her gloved fists, and Oberman standing at the control podium. I hope he knows what he’s doing, Trudy thought.
As if in answer, she heard Oberman’s voice in her helmet speakers, “Just checked with the GPS system. We’re right on the beam for Korolev.”
“Good,” said Halleck. Trudy thought her voice sounded anxious, tense.
“Be there in fifty-four minutes,” Oberman added.
“Good,” Halleck repeated.
And what happens when we get there? Trudy wondered. How long will we have to stay cooped up in that little shelter? What’s going to happen to me?
“We should’ve disabled the other hoppers,” Oberman said, almost as if he were discussing the weather.
“There was no time for that,” Halleck immediately replied. “Besides, it wasn’t really necessary, was it? Who’s going to come out after us?”
“Grant Simpson,” Oberman said, his tone more serious. “Grant’ll come charging out after us.”
Trudy hoped he was right.