MAINTENANCE CENTER
Cardenas stared at the thin slice of metal resting on the workbench. Toshio Aichi stood a respectful half meter from her side, saying nothing.
“That’s the sample you took from the mirror lab airlock hatch,” Cardenas said.
“Yes,” Aichi replied.
Standing on the other side of the workbench, Delos Zacharias volunteered, “We confirmed that a nanometer-scale hole was drilled through it.”
“Using your laser probe?” Cardenas asked.
“Yes,” said Aichi. “It has resolution in the nanometer scale.” He glanced at moon-faced Zacharias, then added, “Unfortunately, that’s not good enough to give us much information about the nanomachines themselves.”
Aichi’s face looked like a skull with skin stretched over it, Cardenas thought. He was utterly serious, unsmiling, somber.
“Disassemblers drilled a hole all the way through the hatch.”
“Pinhole,” Zacharias said. “Nanometer-scale in diameter.”
“Enough to cause an air leak in the mirror lab,” Aichi added.
“What’s the composition of this metal?” she asked.
Zacharias started to reply, but Aichi silenced him with an upraised hand. “I will call up the information from the computer files. That will give you a completely accurate report.”
He stepped to the end of the workbench and spoke to the computer terminal there.
Zacharias said, “It’ll take a few seconds.”
Cardenas nodded.
“Here it is,” said Aichi, swiveling the display screen so that Cardenas could see it.
As she studied the list, Aichi said, “May I express my pleasure at working with you, Dr. Cardenas. You are most respected.”
Cardenas regarded his stiffly somber expression. “Thank you. I hope that together we can solve this problem.”
“I have no doubt that you will.”
Cardenas had plenty of doubt, but she accepted Aichi’s compliment with a mechanical smile.
Scanning through the display screen’s list, Cardenas saw that the hatch was made of an alloy of titanium, mixed with aluminum, vanadium, and several smaller components. Most of it obtained from the lunar regolith, she knew, scraped up from the topmost layer of dusty ground and refined in smelters at Selene.
“Was there any residue in the pinhole?” she asked.
“Residue?” Zacharias asked, his round face puckering into a mild frown.
Cardenas told them, “The disassemblers took apart the molecules of the hatch’s alloy. They must have been programmed to look for a specific type of atom and remove it from the molecular structure.”
“Ah,” breathed Aichi. Zacharias nodded.
“So what happened to the atoms they removed?” Cardenas went on. “They must have been deposited inside the hole that the nanos drilled.”
Aichi almost smiled. “So we should examine the hole and determine what kind of atoms are contained in the residue.”
“Do you have equipment that can accomplish that?” Cardenas asked, feeling eager for the first time.
“The mass spectrograph, maybe,” Zacharias suggested.
“Can you do it?”
“We can try,” Aichi said. And for the first time he looked eager, too.
* * *
Grant stepped from the airlock and plodded toward the nearest of the hoppers.
Josie’s voice sounded in his helmet earphones. “Grant, why don’t you take the lobber? I can call the two guys who flew it in here and they could fly it to Korolev for you.”
She’s trying to make up for letting Halleck sneak out of here, Grant thought. Aloud, he replied, “No, Josie, this is our problem, not theirs. Besides, if Oberman has any sense he’ll plant his hopper square in the middle of the concrete slab out at Korolev. That’ll prevent a lobber from landing there. Lobbers need a pad to sit down on, they can’t land on unprepared ground the way hoppers can.”
“Oh,” said Josie, disappointed. “Yeah.”
“You just keep an eye on Korolev, kid. Let me know when they land there.”
“Right.”
Grant thought, Keep Josie busy. Let her use the surveillance satellites to keep track of Nate’s hopper.
As he started to clamber up the ladder to the hopper’s platform, Grant realized that he hadn’t told Uhlrich what he was doing, what was going on.
The Ulcer would pop a blood vessel, he thought. Be better to tell McClintock. Let him tell the Ulcer.
So, once he checked out the hopper’s systems, taking special care to check the propellant supply, he asked Josie to patch him through the communications satellite system to McClintock.
“You don’t need the commsats,” Josie said. “Your suit radio can—”
“I’m going to be over the horizon in two minutes, Jo,” Grant reminded her. “Plug me through the commsats.”
No answer for a heartbeat or two. Then Josie asked, her voice low, “Grant, you’re not going to tell him that I let Mrs. Halleck get away, are you?”
That’s what you did, isn’t it? Grant thought. But he said to her, “No, Josie. He won’t even think about that. I just want to tell him that Halleck flew the coop and I’m going after her.”
And Trudy, he added silently. I’m going out to bring Trudy back here. I don’t care if Halleck and Nate break their necks out there. I’m going to find Trudy.
* * *
“It’s a minuscule sample,” said Toshio Aichi.
Zacharias nodded vigorously. “I bet there’s not more than a couple milligrams there.”
“Will it be enough?” Cardenas wondered.
“I believe so,” Aichi replied as he tapped the almost invisible sampling of dust from the filter paper in his hand into the focal point of the mass spectrometer.
Cardenas watched as Zacharias flicked on the spectrometer and the sample in its focus flashed into gas.
“Got it!” Aichi said, pumping a fist in the air.
The bright lines of an emission spectrum showed on the spectrometer’s display screen.
“What did we get?” Cardenas asked.
“Hold one,” said Zacharias, his chubby fingers working the keyboard. “Yeah! There it is.” A comparison spectrum appeared alongside the spectrum of the sample.
“Mostly titanium,” Zacharias murmured, studying the spectra. “A little aluminum…”
“And some vanadium and minor constituents,” said Aichi.
Zacharias looked disappointed. “That’s the composition of the titanium alloy that the airlock’s made of.”
“It doesn’t tell us much,” Aichi admitted.
“The disassemblers wouldn’t be designed to attack all those elements,” Cardenas mused, as much to herself as the two men. “They go after specific atoms, one particular element.”
“But which one?” Zacharias wondered.
“Unless we know that,” said Aichi, “we have no way of protecting the alloy against the nanos.”
“The nanos we create at Selene are deactivated by high-energy ultraviolet light,” Cardenas said.
“That probably isn’t the case here,” Aichi countered. “If these devices were produced by a rogue laboratory on Earth they won’t have the same safeguards built into them that you would provide.”
“They should have a finite lifetime, though.”
Shaking his head, Aichi countered, “Only if they were designed so. That does not appear to be the case here. They have been active for several weeks.”
“And it looks like they’re spreading,” Zacharias added.
“How do we stop them?” Aichi asked again.
Cardenas looked into his solemn dark eyes, wondering, when the answer came to her. “Elbow grease,” she said, breaking into a grin. “Oil and a lot of elbow grease.”