"Where are we going" Stoner asked aloud

 

"That is of no consequence to you "

 

Yes, Janos was definitely miffed Stoner smiled Wherever they were going, it would be better than this And he might get an opportunity to get away from this maniac

 

Hours passed, then finally one of the tall many-armed robots came into his room, pulled Stoner's arms behind his back and snapped a pair of handcuffs on his wrists Then it slipped a burlap hood over Stoner's head The bag smelled of coffee It effectively blocked his vision, although the robot did not tie it tight around his neck, so some light filtered in and Stoner could see a sliver of the floor at his feet

 

Almost immediately he realized what was happening They have to move me, and it will probably be by plane They won't have room for the robots They'll have to come into fairly close contact with me Janos is afraid that I'll be able to control him and the others, and he thinks that my ability to manipulate people depends on my being able to see them-- like a hypnotist

 

He almost danced down the hallway as the robot led him out of the room That's fanos's mistake He thinks he'll be safe as long as I can't see him How wrong he is.

 

Relief and a strange, bitter form of elation flooded Stoner I don't have to see him, I don't have to touch him Just let me get close enough to talk to the sonofabitch without an intercom system between us Just let me into the same room with him and I'll bend his brain into pretzels I'll twist his guts inside out I'll snap his bones, each and every one of them.

 

His star brother said nothing, but Stoner sensed the alien

 

presence's cool disapproval. Slowly, slowly as the robot led him carefully into an ancient elevator that wheezed and groaned as it descended and then out across a wide expanse that must have been the hotel's lobby and finally through a creaking set of boards that served as a door and into the hot brightness of real sunlight--slowly Stoner's exhilaration died away.

 

Patience, he told himself. Remember the story of the young bull and the old bull. He felt the touch of his star brother's curiosity. Smiling inwardly, Stoner explained, The young bull sees a herd of cows grazing in the distance and says to the old bull, "I'm going to run over there and grab a cow for myself." The old bull says, "Let's walk calmly and get all of them."

 

His star brother smiled back. Let Janos take us to his superiors. Then we will find out who is behind all this.

 

Yes, Stoner said. Let him take me to those who are responsible for Cathy's murder. He saw his daughter's body floating in the swimming pool again, saw her blood spreading across the lighted water. His elation turned to pain.

 

He was bundled into a car of some sort, probably a van from the way he had to climb up and slide into a padded bench. Not much light, despite the brilliantly sunny day. The van either had no windows in its rear or they had been painted over to conceal whoever sat in back. Couldn't be a limousine, Stoner told himself. Even blindfolded he knew that.

 

No one said a word to him, but he sensed the presence of Ilona Lucacs sitting in front of him. Stoner remained silent, realizing that Ilona had indeed called Janos's superiors as he had asked her to. Did Janos know that she had done this? Stoner sensed that he did, and he was furious with her.

 

fanos was not in this vehicle. Stoner made himself as comfortable as he could with his hands cuffed behind him as the van lurched and careened along the empty streets of Old Beirut. Soon they were on a highway, and within a quarter hour Stoner began to hear traffic noises. The shrill whine of a jet plane screeched overhead They were approaching the airport.

 

Out to a big hangar they drove Stoner heard an overhead door rattle shut behind them and, as they helped him out of the van, voices echoing inside the closed hangar He smelled machine oil and the cold metallic tang of cryogenic piping and pumps that handled the liquid hydrogen used to fuel airplanes.

 

Standing in the midst of a small knot of people he counted six huddled around him, one of them Ilona, the others strangers No robots. No Janos.

 

As he wondered what would happen next, the door clattered open again and another car drove in. Stoner sensed Janos, and then heard his voice speaking in English to the others He felt an immense wave of relief. He wanted Janos with him

 

They led him carefully up the aluminum ladder of a small transport plane and moved him back toward the rear. Without a word, the men who were guiding him pushed his head down slightly so he would not bump it on the narrowing ceiling panels. They went through a partition, sat him in a seat, and buckled a seat belt across his lap

 

"Can't you take off these handcuffs?" Stoner asked through his burlap hood. "It's damned uncomfortable "

 

The two men with him said nothing They left him alone, closing the partition door behind them

 

The plane lurched into movement Since the engines had not yet started, Stoner realized they were being towed to the runway He heard voices through the flimsy partition, all of them speaking in English, although the accents told him none of the speakers were natives of the language

 

That means they come from different countries, Stoner thought Their native tongues differ, so they speak the international language English Which means that they're not all Hungarian Whoever Janos is working for, it's not the president of Hungary anymore. Nor the Hungarian government.

 

Maybe it never was The thought startled him.

 

Li-Po Hsen eased back in the sunken Japanese hot tub and allowed the nearly scalding water to cover him almost to his chin

 

Of all the luxuries that one could have on the Moon, abundant water was still the most precious The engineers could manufacture water out of oxygen from the lunar rocks and hydrogen from the solar wind, imbedded in the top few centimeters of the soil. But it took so much energy to harvest the hydrogen and to extract the oxygen that water was literally more expensive than titanium on the Moon.

 

Pacific Commerce had spaceport operations at each of the half-dozen bases on the Moon, no matter who owned the base itself. Hsen's only competition in space transportation came from Vanguard Industries, and even at Vanguard's facilities in Archimedes and elsewhere Pacific shared the transport franchise.

 

Hsen's own private retreat on the Moon was at Pacific Commerce's recreational facility at Hell, a twenty-mile-wide impact crater where Pacific had built a casino and posh tourist hotel that catered to mountain climbers and other kinds of gamblers

 

It pleased Hsen that his safe retreat was in Hell, a crater named after a Jesuit astronomer, irony upon irony. He had built a modest home for himself there, deep underground, since he did not want to attract the attention of potential rivals and enemies. No one should suspect that the head of Pacific Commerce could live in comfort for as long as he wished on the Moon. Therefore his household staff was small, his quarters almost spartan when compared to his various homes on Earth

 

The chambers were decorated in Japanese style, which seemed most appropriate for the setting. Spare, clean, the rooms almost empty of furniture. Except for the western conveniences such as a large, comfortable bed hidden behind wall panels Instead of wood panelling and flooring, Hsen's quarters used plastic manufactured on the Moon, textured and painted to resemble wood. It was not that a man of Hsen's means could not afford to bring the necessary wood to the Moon, he used lunar plastic to avoid calling attention to a domicile he intended to keep secret

 

Now he lay back in his steaming tub while two boyishly slim young women knelt at the tub's edge, naked and silent, waiting to administer to whatever whim possessed their master.

 

But Hsen's attention was focused on the screen of the telephone that had been placed on the floor at the edge of the sunken tub. Vie Tomasso's face looked wary, evasive The man was smiling, but his eyes were cold Tomasso was in the tourist hotel built into Hell's nngwall, above Hsen's deeply-buried quarters.

 

"Please give me a direct answer," Hsen said with the soft hiss of a dagger sliding out of its sheath. "Do you have the plan of Delphi base or do you not?"

 

"Not yet," Tomasso said.

 

"You will be able to get it? You realize that the information you have given me so far concerning this so-called secret base is useless without some actual proof of its existence "

 

"It's there, all right" Tomasso countered. "Hard to find, I know, but it's there."

 

"And the proof?"

 

"I can get it for you."

 

"How soon?"

 

Tomasso's eyes shifted away, then returned to Hsen's gaze again. "I don't like to be blunt, but--what's in it for me?"

 

Hsen nodded once, slightly, a movement that dipped his chin into the steaming water. "A reasonable question. At the moment you are being followed by an operative from Ms Camerata's household--"

 

"What?"

 

Suppressing a smile of pleasure at the man's surprise, Hsen replied, "One of the Italians from her personal staff followed you from the space station to your hotel."

 

"I didn't see ..." Tomasso's voice trailed off, his face went slightly pale.

 

"In payment for your information about Delphi--complete information about its location and layout--in return for that I will protect you from the bitch's personal assassin "

 

Tomasso licked his suddenly-dry lips and agreed to the bargain

 

TOKYO

 

THE rioting had gone completely beyond all control From the walls of the old imperial palace to the heart of the Gmza, hundreds of thousands of maddened Japanese battled the police, the army, each other They howled and screamed They threw stones and homemade fire bombs at the police, who crouched behind plastic not shields as they were slowly forced to retreat The tear gas that the police fired into the mob had no effect, there were simply too many people Those who were gassed were trampled underfoot by those behind them

 

Panic Outright terror The not had started when a young woman had collapsed on the platform of a commuter train station, writhing and screaming in terrible agony The Horror had struck once again

 

But this time the others on the station platform made a mad rush for the exits Fifty people were crushed to death in the panic The terrified people spilled out into the streets of a heavily-trafficked shopping area, running blindly to escape the Horror

 

Like an infectious agent of its own the panic swept the shopping area and spread onward at the speed of human sight and hearing The Horror The Horror is here. It is striking down people left and right No one is safe Run Run

 

It was the end of the working day, the time of the homeward-bound commuter rush, a time for catching a train or driving through the impossibly heavy traffic or just sitting

 

down at a bar and trying to relax before going home or out to an evening's entertainment Millions were in the streets The word of the Horror spread like a brush fire and the millions of individual men and women, in their business suits and flowered dresses and working clothes, all those myriad minds and bodies became a single ferocious terrified wild animal desperately trying to escape the Horror and not knowing which way to run

 

Within minutes not police began pouring out into the streets, helmets buckled tight, electric stun wands and tear gas grenades clipped on their equipment harnesses The many-faced feral animal of the mob swarmed them under More police came out to do battle, then the army Someone fired into the crowd, live ammunition that killed and maimed hundreds, and still the mob howled and brawled, smashing windows now, overturning cars and buses, burning and breaking in their blind fear and fury

 

The huge video screens that rose ten stories high on virtually every street corner in downtown Tokyo showed the rioters scenes of themselves, taken from news helicopters buzzing overhead like busy insects seeking the nectar of sensation The enormously enlarged video scenes pollinated the riot, nourished the mindless animal below with electronic feedback Downtown Tokyo began to burn fiercely while the news cameras recorded its funeral pyres

 

Abruptly all the news cameras turned to a single saffron-robed figure who stepped out of a police helicopter that had touched down on the lawn in front of the old imperial palace While the police officers watched wide-eyed from behind their bulletproof visors, the slim, almost frail, saffron-robed man calmly walked across the wooden bridge that arched over the ancient moat and entered the swirling, maddened mob of terrified people

 

It was as if a powerful extinguisher had been played against a rampaging fire As if calming oil had been poured on raging waters The rioters stopped where they were, clothing torn, faces scratched, breathing labored The man in the saffron

 

robe looked at them, his head turning right and then left, and raised one hand in benediction.

 

The people sank to their knees A single murmur spread through the crowd "Varahamihara " The huge video screens all around the city showed the same scene and everywhere the rioters stopped and gaped in awe

 

"Varahamihara Varahamihara."

 

The lama walked the whole distance from the palace to the Ginza, blessing all on his way. They dropped to their knees as he approached and watched with open-mouthed veneration as the Great Soul passed by them. When he moved too far to be seen they craned their necks to watch him on the video screens He said nothing. He made no speech He merely turned the terrified mindless mob back into individual human beings, who--tattered, bleeding, shame-faced--made their individual ways back to their individual homes.

 

CHAPTER 29

 

FROM his solitary seat in the rear of the plane, the burlap hood still over his head, Stoner closed his eyes and probed cautiously for the minds of those who were sitting on the other side of the partition

 

It was uncomfortable sitting with his wrists tightly cuffed behind him, but his star brother constantly massaged the muscles of his arms and hands with microbursts of nerve impulses so that the blood circulated properly despite his enforced cramped position Stoner paid no conscious attention to these ministrations, he took them for granted All his attention was concentrated on reaching out mentally to touch

 

the faint tendrils of fields generated by other human brains, the barely-discernible energy that comes with thought.

 

The human brain generates about two-hundredths of a watt of electrical power, he told himself. It would take a thousand people to light a twenty-watt bulb. His star brother replied, But it is the complexity of the fields that the brain generates, not their power, that counts. Stoner silently acknowledged the truth of it.

 

He felt Ilona Lucacs's presence, easy to detect because she wanted so desperately not to be alone Janos was sitting beside her, separated by the aisle that ran down the middle of the compartment, separated from her by his own indifference and swelling cancerous ambition.

 

There were four others in the plane, plus the two pilots in the cockpit up front. Stoner thought about probing Janos's mind; he was curious to find who the Hungarian was actually working for. A good deal of money was behind Janos's research. Obviously the president of Hungary had been a cover, a straw man to hide the real source from view But he feared alerting Janos, making him realize that this makeshift hood they had pulled over his face was not enough to protect him So he did not probe Janos

 

Instead Stoner caught fragments of conversation, the mental formulations that produced the sounds of speech. Two of the men were talking about something called the Horror. Something that killed with great pain. A disease. A new plague

 

"We'll be safe from it on the Moon," said one of the men.

 

"I hope you're right," said the other

 

The Moon We're going to a lunar settlement, Stoner realized

 

His surprise, though, was quickly smothered as he probed the speakers for information about this plague they called the Horror Gradually, as the plane droned hour after hour southeastward, Stoner learned about the Horror

 

And was horrified. A plague that strikes without warning Incredibly painful, quickly fatal Spreading across the world, particularly in the biggest cities, the megalopolises that had engulfed whole countrysides around them. Spread at super-

 

sonic speed by the airliners that jetted across the world Killing women, mostly Especially pregnant women Carried by unsuspecting people flying from one major city to another, carrying death that burned their insides away and killed them in excruciating agony

 

The only way to stop the Horror's spread was to stop all air traffic Which would break down the world economy and cause a different kind of plague hunger, starvation, actual famines in the poorest parts of the world The kind of thing that Stoner had spent the past fifteen years struggling against

 

And then a new realization broke upon him with all the terror and pain of a tidal wave crushing the life out of him

 

The plague is man made Stoner knew it with a certainty that excluded all doubt And his star brother silently, numbly agreed

 

The world's medical researchers are looking for a virus, but the Horror is caused by--

 

His star brother shuddered within him The Horror is caused by virus sized devices that are parasites, rather than symbiotes Some human being has started to create nano-technology weapons The thing we feared most of all is beginning to destroy the human race

 

Stoner sat in shocked, stunned silence as the plane droned on across the Indian Ocean Someone, somewhere, has discovered nanotechnology Someone has produced nanometer-sized machines that kill And there's no way on Earth for human medical knowledge to stop this Horror

 

No way on Earth

 

Nunzio Palestrma had the dogged patience of a thousand years of southern Italian peasantry bred deep into his bones His family line stretched back to the days when Naples had been a kingdom, briefly independent, more often under the iron-handed control of Normans or Austnans or Spaniards or French For generations Nunzio's peasant forebears had learned to be patient and to forget nothing For generations they had waited for the darkness of night and the tenacity of blood ties to help them fight enemies too powerful to face in the daylight

 

In a world at peace, where nations no longer fought or invaded one another, there was still work for a man of Nunzio's background The family was always there, its bonds of blood and marriage stretching across oceans La Signora was a distant cousin, born in New England and now living on a tropical island far from Italy Like many a contessa before her, she had enemies Her enemies were the enemies of Nunzio, by simple fact of family allegiance

 

She paid well, and Nunzio was able to help his many sons and daughters to build homes of their own in the old country His family grew stronger, thanks to the generosity of La Signora

 

Now she had sent him to the Moon, of all places, to find un' pezzo de merde named Tomasso And do what? Watch him Nothing more Simply watch him, without being seen On the Moon Watch and wait

 

Nunzio shrugged and obeyed He checked into the fancy hotel on the Moon, where the names were all diabolical the hotel itself was called Hell's Haven, the casino was Dante's Inferno, even the restaurants had names such as Satan's Pit and The Devil's Den

 

Nunzio found it very distasteful, perhaps blasphemous He did not truly believe in the Church, of course, not the pranc ing effeminate men who sermonized against sin while they counted their gold in the Vatican But still, it was not proper to make light of hell and its denizens

 

Yet the hotel was very comfortable Completely underground, but except for the fact that you had to wear special weighted boots unless you enjoyed hopping around like a fool, the place was not too different from windowless gamblers' hotels in Europe and America

 

After three days of avoiding the casino and the women who smiled enticingly even at gray haired old Italians, Nunzio began to think that Tomasso was never going to leave this place called Hell

 

It was a total surprise when a baby-faced bellboy brought a complimentary breakfast into his room on the morning of his fourth day in the hotel and shot him with an air pistol that fired a lethally poisonous dart into his neck Nunzio did not

 

even have time to raise a hand. He slumped over in his chair by the TV wall, dead within seconds.

 

The bellboy stabbed at the telephone keyboard with the end of the teaspoon he had carried on the breakfast tray. He made two calls. One to Hsen's chief of security, to tell the woman that his task had been completed. The second was to the hotel's doctor, to tell him that an elderly Italian gentleman had apparently been taken by a heart attack.

 

The dart had melted away and its tiny puncture wound had closed by the time the puffing red-faced doctor arrived in the room.

 

Cliff Baker stayed semi-drunk all the way to the Moon It was not too difficult to do, especially during the enforced layover at the Earth-orbiting space station. Everyone had to wait there twenty-four hours, the grisly incubation time of the Horror.

 

Acting more swiftly than Baker had ever thought they could, the World Health Organization's researchers had determined that it took no more than twenty-four hours between the time a person contracted the plague and the time when the Horror ripped out its victim's guts. Twenty-four hours from first contact to screaming excruciating death throes.

 

So everyone heading Moonward was detained for twenty-four hours at one of the space stations. Perfunctory medical exams were made by the largely automated diagnostic systems, and then the traveler waited.

 

The space stations took on a macabre holiday air. Their corridors and shopping arcades and restaurants were filled with brittle laughter and talk of "Eat, drink, and be merry ..." It was like Halloween night, continuously. Sales of Edgar Allan Poe tapes skyrocketed. One enterprising shopkeeper even organized a bizarre party for all the tourists aboard the station based on "The Masque of the Red Death "

 

The station's supply of antihistammes was bought out immediately, no matter how quickly it was replenished by cargo shuttles from Earth. A single sneeze was enough to terrify everyone. Anyone who sneezed in public was immediately locked away in solitary confinement for twenty-four hours.

 

Baker walked uncertainly through the long sloping corridors of the space station, never fully sober, never entirely drunk. Just a pleasant haze, a crooked grin on his fleshy face.

 

What do they do when somebody comes down with the Horror? he asked himself. Pop 'em out an airlock? Wrap the body in plastic and ship it home? What happens to all the other people who're aboard the bloody station when the Horror strikes? They're all sent back Earthside, of course Can't contaminate our space habitats. They've gotta be kept pristine pure. Safe havens in case the whole fucking world gets its guts ripped out by the Horror.

 

Baker laughed to himself, out loud. No one around him noticed or cared They were all cloaked in their own forced gaiety, their own unavailing antidotes for terror.

 

I've got the answer to all the world's problems, Baker shouted at them silently. He weaved through the human traffic that constantly streamed along the station's mam corridor, peering bleanly into their faces.

 

I'm the savior of the human race, he said to himself, and they don't even know it.

 

It had all been so simple. The human race's big problem was overproduction. Population growth. Everybody and his brother was working furiously to reduce the birthrate. For years. For decades. Baker suspected that even Jo Camerata and her weird, alien husband were trying to do that--he more than she, he knew. Jo would help her fellow human beings only after she had helped herself. Long after.

 

But reducing the birthrate was a long, slow process that might not work, in the final account. How much easier to increase the death rate!

 

He giggled to himself as he reached for the flask at the belt of his coveralls and brought it to his lips. Pure unblended whisky. Those kilted sonsofbitches certainly knew how to get the best out of their barley.

 

Increase the death rate. And not among the poor, the hungry, the people at the bottom of the ladder. Kill the rich! Baker savored the idea once again. Slaughter the guilty, not the innocents. Strike down the ones who can travel by jet

 

airliners Use the jets as a vector for the disease Kill the bitches who make the babies, get them first of all Make them scream at just the thought of motherhood.

 

It was all going better than Baker had ever thought it could The giant cities of the world, the great megalopolises with their proud towers, were starting to die The plague was only the beginning Already there was panic over the Horror, riots in the streets The proud cities were starting to self-destruct

 

And I'll be on the Moon, friends and neighbors, safe as houses, watching you kill yourselves How's that for solving the world's problems'

 

The quarantine made no sense to Jo

 

"It will take more than twenty-four hours to make the trip," she said impatiently as her captain held the WHO quarantine order in his hand "If anyone aboard is going to come down with the Horror it will happen before we're ready to land at Archimedes "

 

The main compartment of the Vanguard spacecraft was fitted out like the interior of a luxurious business jet, except that there were no windows Jo was buckled into one of the big padded seats, feeling slightly queasy in zero gravity despite the pills she had taken The captain, who had something of a reputation for zero-gee sexual gymnastics, had strapped himself into the facing chair to talk with her

 

Rickie was in the sleeping compartment, in the rear, enjoying the thrill of weightlessness for the first time in his life Unlike adults, the boy seemed to suffer no symptoms of space sickness at all When Jo had last looked in on him Rickie had been happily floating in mid-air, turning somersaults and twisting himself into pretzel shapes

 

"Ma'am, the World Health Organization "

 

Her captain was a young man, very competent, with a video star's rugged good looks and a record of solid reliability He wore a Vanguard uniform of midnight blue with the stylized V of the corporate logo on the chest of his tunic Briefly Jo wondered what it would be like to make love in zero gravity,

 

what he could do once he took the uniform off She thought of Keith, a pang of sudden guilt mixed with the worry and dread she had carried inside her for nearly two weeks

 

"Captain," said Jo, making herself smile, "I will not allow my son to be exposed to god knows how many tourists and workers for twenty-four hours at a space station Any one of them might have the Horror And then what?"

 

The captain's brows knitted with concern "We could sit tight inside this craft while parked alongside the station We wouldn't even have to dock "

 

"No," Jo said firmly "We will make our rendezvous with the transfer rocket as scheduled and go on to Archimedes directly You will file that flight plan, and if anyone from World Health tries to interfere you will refer them to me "

 

The responsibility lifted from his shoulders, the captain smiled at his boss, unbuckled his seat belt and floated up from the chair

 

Jo leaned her head back on the padded chair I will not expose Rickie to the slightest chance of contracting the Horror Never I'll keep him on the Moon or in one of the Lagrange habitats until this plague is over I don't care if it takes years

 

She would protect her son And her daughter In the spacecraft's cargo hold, the delicate apparatus of an artificial womb was tenderly held in thick shockproof webbing inside heavy radiation shielding The cloning team was coming up in a separate craft They had assured Jo that a few days in zero gravity would not affect the fetus that was growing inside the womb, cloned from Cathy's cells "It's effectively in zero gravity inside the womb anyway," said the chief medic "It's floating in the fluid like a little tadpole "

 

Jo had frowned at comparing her daughter to a tadpole, and she frowned now as she recalled the bald medic's words But Cathy was with her, and Rickie, and she would see to it that they were safe and beyond all harm

 

But Keith Where was Keith? When will I be with him again?

 

Yet even while she ached for her husband, Jo felt a tiny undercurrent of seething anger Once on the Moon, she in-

 

tended to squeeze Vie Tomasso until she learned all that he knew and then execute him for Cathy's murder Then she would find Hsen, wherever he was hiding, and broil him over a slow fire But she knew that Keith would never stand for that He was too different, too alien, to feel the normal human hatred and thirst for vengeance that fo felt

 

Keith will try to stop me from killing them He'll want to understand them, convert them, allow them to change their lives and their ways Jo's fists clenched until the nails bit into her palms I want them dead They killed Cathy and I'm going to kill them, no matter what Keith wants

 

It was not the first time she had faced the realization that if she were actually reunited with her husband, he would try to work against her

 

Maybe it's better if I don't find him, Jo thought Not just yet

 

She tried to bury the guilt she felt over that And she was successful, except that as she slept on the way to the Moon her dreams were filled with images of roasting her enemies over red-hot coals And Keith was one of the men she tortured

 

CHAPTER 30

 

THEY were getting closer to Koku Lela sensed that the gorilla was near No matter how urgently she warned him to flee from these murdering marauders, Koku seemed reluctant to run away

 

As they struggled up the steep slope of a hill, the thick foliage so wet from the night's ram that they were all soaked through to the skin despite their heavy khaki clothing, Lela desperately tried to make Koku understand that he must run away

 

But she could feel the young gorilla's confusion The only humans that Koku had known had been at the university park, where men and women such as herself had lovingly tended the baby gorillas and reared them from infancy with all the care and affection of foster parents Koku did not know that humans could kill

 

"Take five," gasped the blond leader The men flopped to the soaking ground, breathing hard from the punishing climb The two blacks were up ahead of Lela, leading the way along a trail of flattened foliage so clear that even she could see it in the thick, dripping brush Behind her was the redhead with the foul mouth and his silent friend The leader stayed at Lela's side

 

Her boots were soaked through and she could feel her feet blistering inside them Sitting on the wet ground, she stared up at the menacing gray sky and wondered hopelessly what was going to happen to her

 

And Koku

 

Closing her eyes, she saw the world as the gorilla did Koku was very near, she realized with a shock of fear

 

He sniffed the breeze wafting across the steep hillside and smelled the faint tang of gun oil and tobacco Koku put down the thorny blackberry branch he was nibbling on and hauled himself up on all fours Lela Lela afraid Fear had a smell to it From the biochip implanted in his brain Koku sensed Lela's terrible fear And he vaguely saw men sitting on the ground, heard them speaking, saw one of them puffing on a slim white cigarette

 

Dimly Koku remembered a man who had smoked in the house where he had been reared Lela had pulled the cigarette from the man's mouth and shouted angrily at the man

 

Now Lela was afraid Koku felt her fear inside his own mind as he turned away from the men and from Lela and resumed his climb up to the crest of the ridge, shambling through the thick foliage in the characteristic knuckle-walking gorilla way, mashing the bushes and grass flat beneath his ponderous bulk

 

Koku obeyed Lela's wordless warning He moved away from the humans, away from Lela But slowly, reluctantly

 

* * *

 

The Pacific Commerce shuttle coasted weightlessly through the emptiness between the Earth and the Moon Zip-pered into fiber mesh cocoons, the passengers slept and dreamed their separate dreams All except Stoner, who lay awake, strapped into a sleep cocoon with the burlap hood still over his head and his wrists still cuffed behind his back

 

Four pilots--two humans and two computers--monitored the spacecraft's flight up in the cockpit Stoner knew that there was little for them to do in this stage of the journey The craft was coasting on a trajectory that Isaac Newton could have predicted, as inert as a rock as it glided from one world to another in the fnctionless vacuum of space

 

Nature abhors a vacuum, Stoner mused to himself The human pilots up front think that space is empty, but Stoner could feel the energies that pulsed all around them particles streaming from the Sun, magnetic fields reverberating like the strings of a stupendous bass viol thrumming notes that no human ear could perceive, cosmic radiation singing of the death of stars and their rebirth

 

Some people see a desert as a barren wasteland, others see life thriving there Humans believe that space is a vacuum when it's actually the vibrant plasma of the universe, Stoner thought How easy it would be to lose yourself eternally in this so-called emptiness, to go on and on forever, looking, listening, tasting the wonders of creation

 

But there was work to do, he reminded himself No time to swim among the star clouds Not yet

 

llona Lucacs was barely asleep, miserable and writhing inside her zippered mesh cocoon, alone and longing for the pleasure of her electronic stimulator Stoner soothed her and she began to dream of her father Her body relaxed as she saw the man she loved beyond all measure smiling at her approvingly The man sometimes looked like her father, sometimes like Zoltan Janos And now and again his face resembled the bearded visage of Keith Stoner

 

Janos was deep in dreams, his eyes scanning rapidly back

 

and forth beneath their closed lids With all of the Hungarian's conscious defenses down, it was easy for Stoner to look deeply into Janos's mind and to learn who was behind his abduction and the murder of his daughter

 

Stoner's own eyes widened as he learned the truth His hands behind his back clenched into fists powerful enough to snap the flimsy chain of the handcuffs But he caught himself lust in time

 

It isn't the moment to strike Not yet Get them all together first All of them Until that moment, don't let them know what you can do Let them keep on believing they're leading a lamb to slaughter Don't show the wolf's teeth until you can get each and every one of them

 

"Can't I go with you"

 

Rickie said it in the semi whine of a ten-year-old being told to come in from play and wash up for dinner But To saw the fear in his eyes

 

He had spent the day exploring the Archimedes facility under the watchful care of two security men, and now he sat unhappily in a big chair in his mother's office, looking to Jo like a little boy on the verge of tears

 

Jo was sitting on the edge of the sofa next to her son She made a bright smile for him "It wouldn't be much fun for you It's a business trip You'll enjoy staying here at Archimedes more "

 

"I don't want you to go away," Rickie said

 

Even on the Moon Jo had an apartment/office suite that was exactly like her suites at other Vanguard centers The only difference here at Archimedes was that she wore special weighted boots to counter the gentle lunar gravity and save her from undignified stumbles and hops when she tried to walk

 

Nearly everyone wore simple coveralls on the Moon Most of the Vanguard employees' outfits were color-coded tan for administration, coral red for security, yellow for engineering, pumpkin orange for maintenance, blue for research, apple green for safety Jo was in a metallic silver zippered suit that

 

bore only a faint resemblance to coveralls. And her weighted boots glittered stylishly

 

Rickie enjoyed the low gravity. He bounced and leaped across furniture and up the walls. He never walked when he could hop like a kangaroo. Even when he did misjudge and stumble he could put out his hands and right himself before hitting the floor. In less than a day he had become a veteran lunar resident He loved being on the Moon. But the thought of being separated from his mother clearly troubled him

 

"It will only be for a day or two," Jo told her son. "Aunt Claudia and Max will be right here with you."

 

Rickie did not seem reassured. "What's so special about where you're gomg?"

 

"It's business, Rickie. Something mother's got to do."

 

"I want to go with you I'll be good, I promise."

 

Jo got off the sofa and knelt on the carpeted floor. Wrapping her son in her arms, she said softly, "I know you'd be good, dearest. But this isn't the kind of trip that you'd enjoy. You'd be bored and very unhappy "

 

Rickie clung to her.

 

"Listen," she said. "While I'm gone, Max can take you up to the flying center. You can rent wings there and fly around the mam dome Would you like that?"

 

"Can F And do high dives in the swimming pool?"

 

She hesitated. "You'll have to take a few classes in low-gee acrobatics before you can do that."

 

Rickie grinned at his mother and agreed to be a good boy while she was gone She excused him and he dashed happily toward the door and his own room down the underground corridor from her office. There were wall-sized video screens there, and he could go exploring the Moon from the safety of a snug apartment more than twenty meters below the radiation-drenched airless lunar surface.

 

Claudia's like a she-wolf when it come to Rickie, she told herself. And Max has two kids of his own back Earthside, so he'll know how to take care of him while I'm gone. Rickie will be all right. Jo repeated that to herself several times until she almost believed it.

 

Then she went back in her swivel chair and began completing the arrangements to travel out to Delphi base. She thought about Nunzio. A fatal heart attack while sitting in his hotel room at Hell Crater. No one in that family had ever had heart problems. They died of cancer in their nineties, or shotgun blasts much earlier. Nunzio had been murdered. By Vie Tomasso or the man Vie worked for, Hsen. ,

 

Jo felt a brief twinge of guilt. Maybe Nunzio hald become too old for such work. Maybe she should have sent a younger man, or at least some backup. But old or not he had located Vie for her, and that was what she had asked hini to do. Of course, Vie could lose himself among the tourists iommg and going at Hell. He might even double back to Earth. But she knew, and she knew he knew, that if he set foot on Earth there would be Vanguard people to track him down.

 

No, Jo said to herself, staring up at the featureless smooth ceiling of her office, Vie will stay here on the Moon. Under Hsen's protection. I've got to flush him out. Flush both of them out where I can deal with them. The ceiling was painted plastic sheeting that covered the bare lunar rock from which the room had been carved. Every day Vanguard security personnel checked her suite for electronic bugs. Jo had swept the office herself, with her own pocket-sized detector, barely an hour earlier.

 

Now she smiled and leaned across her desk to touch the keypad of her phone unit. She told the computerized voice that answered that she would need a cross-country tractor with a driver and two security men.

 

"I'm going to visit Delphi first thing tomorrow morning," Jo added. It was a serious breach of her own security regulations to give such information over an ordinary telephone link.

 

Then she buzzed the chief of Archimedes's security office and asked her to come to her office. In person. With no tap-pable communications links between them. Rickie's protection had to be absolutely foolproof. So did Cathy's.

 

They may call this place Hell, thought Vie Tomasso, but it's more like paradise to me.

 

He was living out an old fantasy, running up win after win at the craps table while the crowd grew and all eyes focused on him White dinner jackets were de ngueui at the casino, even though it was permissible to wear baggy gym pants beneath them Vie glimpsed himself in the big ceiling-high mirror behind the craps table the lapelless jacket looked terrific with its padded shoulders and his pale-blue shirt with the bow tie painted on it

 

He threw the dice again and watched in fascination as they tumbled slowly in the soft lunar gravity and came up eleven The crowd gasped and applauded The croupier chanted, "The man wins again" and pushed a small mountain of chips toward Vie

 

Gorgeous women in low-cut glittery gowns with warmly inviting smiles clustered around Vie He took the dice in hand once more, but before he could throw again, someone tapped him firmly on his padded shoulder

 

A blank-faced oriental, small and slight as a child, almost Yet he looked mercilessly dangerous, the kind who used knives in the dark

 

"Mr Hsen wishes to see you immediately "

 

The stress on immediately was very slight, but very noticeable Vie put down the dice and told the two women on either side of him to split his winnings between them They squealed with delight

 

"Plenty more where they came from," Vie said lightly to the oriental The man did not reply

 

Swiftly they went down the special elevator to Hsen's private quarters

 

Li-Po Hsen was pacing back and forth in the spartan living room, hands clasped behind his back, so deep in furious thought that he paid no attention to the holograms of Mmg vases and bronze horses that decorated the room The plastic flooring and ceiling beams lovingly painted to resemble actual wood, the imitation oriental carpets and tapestries, the sweeping video window that showed the Great Wall snaking over hills as far as the eye could see--all were ignored

 

"She's going to Delphi," Hsen snapped as Tomasso entered the breathtaking room

 

"How do you know " he replied automatically

 

"She ordered a cross-country tractor for tomorrow morning "

 

"How do you know?" Tomasso repeated

 

"The telephone lines'" Hsen nearly shouted "Do you think I'm without my resources'"

 

Tomasso stopped a few paces before the Chinese He knew that Hsen did not like to have taller men standing close to him It pleased Tomasso to be taller than this powerful, ruthless oriental But he took his pleasure sparingly, Hsen was obviously upset, and there was no sense turning that an ger toward himself

 

"I don't like it," Tomasso said "Jo knows better than using phones "

 

"Perhaps she feels safe at Archimedes "

 

With a shake of his head, "She must know that the old man is dead Why should she feel safe?"

 

Gazing up at Tomasso, Hsen stroked his chin thoughtfully "You suspect a trap"

 

"Could be "

 

Hsen clasped his hands behind his back again and walked slowly across the carpeting of lunar imitation silk toward the holographic display of the Great Wall

 

"What would Sun-tzu have done in a situation such as this?" he muttered

 

"Sun-tzu?"

 

Hsen turned back toward Tomasso with a disdainful look on his face, almost a sneer "A great general The first of the great generals, twenty-five centuries ago "

 

Tomasso shrugged

 

For several minutes Hsen stood stock-still, head bowed Then he looked up and smiled thinly

 

"When facing a trap," he said, "offer your enemy a piece of bait so that you may trap the trapper "

 

Oriental bullshit, Vie said to himself

 

"Since you are familiar with the location and layout of this secret Vanguard facility," Hsen went on, his voice like a cobra's hiss, "you will follow Ms Camerata tomorrow You will spring her trap "

 

"Hey, wait a minute She wants"

 

"I will follow with a force large enough to destroy her Have no fear, you will be perfectly safe at all times "

 

Vie Tomasso looked into Hsen's glittering eyes and knew there was no way to argue him out of his decision He did not want to face Jo, of course, but he certainly had no way of saying no to Hsen

 

BRASILIA

 

JOAO de Sagres stood by the window of his office and looked out at the magnificent towers and sweeping curves of the buildings that comprised the capital of Brazil In a few minutes the cabinet meeting would begin and he had to find an answer to the Horror that had begun its reign of terror in Latin America

 

Once, many years ago, when he looked out this window he saw shacks made of hammered tin cans and cardboard huddling on the outskirts of the federal precinct Now they were replaced by modern housing blocks, concrete, functional The poor still existed, the problems of poverty and hunger still gnawed, but they were being solved--slowly, with patience And with love

 

De Sagres sighed heavily Yes, love It was impossible even to begin to approach the problems of the poor without love That had been the great revelation You must love your neighbor as yourself, and you must love yourself as you love your God Otherwise you get bureaucrats and swindlers and

 

opinion polls and computer-generated graphs in place of helping the needy Cold impersonal bureaucracies do not solve problems You must go out into the alleys, out among those old dilapidated shacks, among the poor and filthy and sick, just as did our Lord and Savior

 

And now, as things were beginning to get better, )ust as de Sagres himself was finally understanding what had happened to him and what his true place in the world of his fellow human beings should be, now the Horror had reached its bloody fingers into the heart of Rio, Sao Paulo, Caracas

 

It would reach Brasilia any day now Unless he acted

 

De Sagres squeezed his eyes shut and asked his star brother, What would Stoner do. The man had changed his life forever and then left him to face these crises alone, without help or guidance What would Stoner do?

 

His star brother told him

 

De Sagres's eyes popped open and he grinned to himself, almost sheepishly He could see Stoner staring at him silently What would Stoner do He would tell me to stand on my own two feet and stop looking for a crutch

 

The president of Brazil squared his shoulders and sighed like a man ready to face an unpleasant duty He walked across the tiled floor of his office and threw open the double doors that led into the cabinet meeting chamber

 

The cabinet members rose to their feet He took his chair at the head of the table and announced without preamble

 

"We must quarantine those who have been close enough to a victim of the Horror to have caught the disease And we must quarantine all incoming passengers at every international airport and seaport for twenty-four hours, just as they do at the space stations "

 

That started a debate that took hours to settle Cabinet ministers protested that such measures would cost too much, that there were not enough trained personnel to carry out such quarantines, that there were no facilities at the airports to hold incoming travelers for twenty-four hours, that the ports would be deserted and the economy would crash

 

De Sagres heard them all, each minister, each objection, and invited them to use their wits to solve the problems they foresaw. Four and a half hours later they had hammered out a plan to contain the Horror It would require a huge increase in paramedical personnel It would require a massive rearrangement of the facilities at each of the international airports It would require the cooperation of the media.

 

It would be done

 

"This Horror comes from the pits of hell," de Sagres said, his voice trembling with emotion "But we will show that men of good will and good sense can stop it We will serve as an example to the rest of the world We cannot cure the unfortunate wretch who is struck by this Devil's evil, but we can take the necessary steps to prevent its spread With God's help, we will prevail "

 

Four of the cabinet members had training in medicine. Two of them had been practicing physicians and the other two research scientists before entering public service. None of them had thought to ask, that, though the incubation time for the disease was apparently less than twenty-four hours, could there be a dormant phase where the disease agent lay quietly within its human victim, waiting to spring up again at a later time

 

CHAPTER 31

 

STONER knew that the spacecraft was heading for Hell Crater and the Pacific Commerce facility there. Janos had been working for Li-Po Hsen all along

 

The president of Hungary had been a figurehead, like so many politicians. In this case, the power behind him was the immense financial and political clout of Pacific Commerce

 

Corporation. Li-Po Hsen. How many other governments did he control? Stoner wondered.

 

It had never been difficult to corrupt the average politician. Money and power are irresistible lures. And in an era where politics is played out on the media's screens, the most successful politicians are those who could perform before the cameras, those who reveal their need for adulation, their absolute willingness to say anything that the crowd wants to hear in return for the applause, the approval, the worship of the masses.

 

No wonder most politicians are emotional cripples, Stoner thought. No wonder an egomaniac like Novotny could be seduced by a powerful international corporation's money and influence. It took a rare person, a de Sagres or Nkona or Varahamihara, to rise above such lures.

 

Are they enough? he asked himself. His star brother replied, They might have been, if someone had not unleashed the Horror upon the world.

 

The sleepers were stirring. Stoner closed his eyes and saw their landing through the mind of the spacecraft's captain, up in the cockpit surrounded by panels of complex instrument displays as the pinpoint of light set in the dark lunar wasteland grew into a ring of brilliance, domes outlined in colors, landing pad marked with flashing beacons that grew larger and larger as they descended . .

 

Stoner's mind suddenly filled with his last sight of his daughter floating in the lighted pool, her blood spreading across the crystal water as he was carried aloft by the kidnappers' rocket pack, her dead young body dwindling, dwindling as he rose higher, higher into the dark night.

 

Zoltan Janos bears responsibility for Cathy's death More than him, though, is Li-Po Hsen. And then Stoner realized there was a third man involved: the traitor whose presence he had felt at his birthday party. Three men.

 

His star brother replied, At least three. There will undoubtedly be many more.

 

* * *

 

"How did you know I was here?" asked Cliff Baker. "I mean, you've got a big facility here and it seems to be jam-packed."

 

Jo sat tensely, straight upright in her powered chair. Her office at Archimedes was almost exactly like her offices at Hilo and elsewhere. The major difference was that, deep underground, this lunar office had video screens where windows would normally be. At the moment they showed camera views of the barren surface of Mare Imbrium.

 

She made herself smile at Baker. "I have a subroutine in my daily program that announces the arrival of VIPs."

 

"I'm a VIP?" Baker's blond eyebrows rose. He was sprawled on one of the small couches, arms spread across its back, slouched halfway down on his spine, booted legs crossed. Instead of the normal lunar coveralls he still wore a sports shirt and chino slacks.

 

"Don't be coy with me, Cliff." Jo was in metallic silver coveralls. Even the lowliest Vanguard employee at Archimedes could recognize her at a distance of a hundred meters.

 

"Alright, so I'm an important person. Good of you to let me have a suite at the hotel. I understand it's filled to capacity."

 

With a slightly nervous nod, Jo admitted, "Everybody who can afford the trip is trying to come here to get away from the Horror. That's why you're here, isn't it?"

 

"Royt as rayn," said Baker, emphasizing his outback accent. "The bloody plague is starting to wipe out whole cities down there."

 

"No one's found a way of stopping it yet?"

 

Baker shrugged. "National governments are starting to quarantine incoming people for twenty-four hours."

 

"I know. It raises hell with commerce."

 

"Sure. And it's beautiful when somebody who's quarantined at an airport comes down with the Horror. Talk about riots! Fuckin' troops have had to fire live ammunition into the mob. They're killing thousands every day, and not a peep of it gets into the media. Not even in the U.S.! States have declared martial law."

 

"It's . . ." Jo groped for a word. ". . . terrible."

 

"Not for us, though," said Baker cheerfully. "We can sit up here and watch the world tear itself apart, safe and sound. Just goes to prove that, rich or poor, it pays to have money."

 

Jo felt her nerves tightening. "That's my Cliff. Always ready with a snide remark."

 

He hunched forward, leaning his arms on his thighs, and almost snarled at her, "So what've you done to help? Run away to the Moon, that's what!"

 

"And you?"

 

"There's not much I can do to help, is there? You and your kind won't vote more money for the medics and you dash up here to avoid the consequences."

 

The bastard knows that Keith's been abducted, Jo said to herself. He knows Cathy was murdered and Hsen's out to get me. But he doesn't give a damn. He's too busy playing his stupid rich-vs.-poor game to care about actual people.

 

"So--" Baker leaned back in the couch once more, spread his arms again, "--how long d'you intend to stay up here, luv?"

 

"I've got work to do here," Jo said.

 

"Sure. Of course."

 

Suddenly her temper flared out of control. "You think I don't? You think all I've got to do is sit around here and wait for the plague to die down? You think I'm some kind of latter-day Nero?"

 

Baker grinned, a lopsided show of pleasure at Jo's pain. "I don't see any fiddle, but ..."

 

Jo jumped to her feet. "Come on with me, Cliff. I'll show you what I've got to do! I'll show you things that'll wipe that damned smug smile off your face!"

 

An hour later Baker was sitting beside Jo in a converted lunar bus as it lumbered across the desolate Imbrium plain. Originally capable of taking a dozen tourists out across the lunar surface on journeys of a week or more, the bus now carried only the two passengers plus its normal crew of three. Her security troops were all still at Archimedes, waiting for her signal to board ballistic rockets that would loft them

 

across the airless Mare Imbnum and land them at the secret base within minutes

 

Rickie stayed at Archimedes Jo was offering herself as bait to trap Hsen, and she did not want Rickie to be involved in more violence So she left him behind, surrounded by dozens of security men and women, as safe as he could be in a world where private armies and mercenary commandos worked at the behest of giant multinational corporations

 

She was certain that Vie Tomasso was on his way to the base, leading an assault force for Hsen Maybe Hsen himself would come to Delphi base No, she told herself, that would be too much to hope for Tomasso would be there That's enough For now

 

Briefly she wondered if it was smart to go to Delphi herself, to dangle herself as bait for the trap she wanted to spring on her enemies There's no other way, she concluded Hsen can't pass up the opportunity to get at me Whether he suspects a trap or not he'll send Vie to Delphi to take me She smiled to herself Besides, I want to be there to see the bastard's face for myself

 

The battle between her and Hsen was coming down to its final moves There was no room in the solar system now for the two of them Either he dies or I do, Jo told herself And he knows that It's gone beyond a corporate power struggle, beyond the battle to control most of the world's wealth and power It's a personal war between the two of us A vendetta Turning those thoughts over and over in her mind, Jo rode in the plushly furnished, wmdowless van toward Delphi base How Nunzio would have been shocked to see a woman involved in a vendetta Women were not supposed to fight They could goad their men to fury, they could nourish the generations-long hatreds that set grandson against grandson, they could recite with bitter tears who murdered whom, but they were not expected to do the actual fighting They stayed at home while the men slaughtered each other, tending to the wounded, keening dirges at the funerals, nursing the acid poison of vengeance all their lives

 

Nunzio was dead, though Murdered Like Cathy Killed without mercy or reason because Hsen wants my power and Keith's abilities Is Keith dead too' She shook her head Probably not I just hope he keeps out of the picture until I've finished with Hsen I don't want him trying to make me forgive the murdering bastard

 

She closed her eyes and said to herself, Stay out of my way, Keith Don't try to stop my revenge If you force me to choose between you and Cathy, it'll destroy everything we've had together

 

As soon as their spacecraft landed, a new team of security people replaced the burlap hood over Stoner's head with a sophisticated black blindfold and a pair of soundproof earphones Stoner had a brief glimpse of the interior of a spaceport hangar and the solemn faces of strangers clustered around him and then the blindfold cut off all light from his eyes

 

Blind and deaf, he was led to another vehicle, strong hands guiding him and then half-boosting him up a ladder and through a low hatch Someone checked the handcuffs that still pinned his wrists behind his back, apparently satisfied that they were tight enough, the person pushed Stoner down onto a seat and fastened a safety harness across his lap and shoulders

 

Stoner knew they were on the Moon He recognized the gentle lunar gravity, and his star brother immediately helped him compensate his Earth-trained muscles to the lower pull Then he felt the push of acceleration, like a rocket liftoff but much softer, almost ethereal Before he could take a breath the acceleration died away and he felt weightless as the rocket craft soared across the airless lunar surface

 

His physical senses cut off, Stoner probed with his mind to find out who else was in the rocket vehicle and where they were heading He sensed fanos and Ilona, but they were the only ones among the eighteen people aboard whom he recognized The others were all men, all strangers, except

 

He felt the tingle of discovery the same sensation he had felt at his birthday party The same man was aboard this rocket, the traitor from Jo's headquarters Stoner concentrated on his mind and found that Vie Tomasso knew where they were going and why

 

They were heading for Delphi base, out in the bleak and empty Mare Imbnum where he and Jo were constructing the starship Jo was already on her way there and they meant to trap her there

 

Why are they taking me there? Probing deeper, he found the answer in Tomasso's mind Li-Po Hsen planned to keep Stoner at the isolated base so that Janos could continue his experiments until he uncovered the secrets of Stoner's abilities Hsen wanted those abilities for himself Above all, he wanted immortality

 

Stoner felt his teeth clenching together so hard that his jaws hurt Hsen wants immortality for himself and death for Jo He sees himself as a new Genghis Khan, absolute ruler of all the world, immortal and all-powerful He wants to be a god

 

CHAPTER 32

 

"WE'VE been thrashing around this bush long enough," muttered the blond leader of the hunters "That damned gorilla is always ahead of us "

 

Lela sat on the damp ground and watched silently as the men shrugged out of their rifle straps and backpacks The last slanting rays of the setting sun made the tree trunks glow almost orange while gray threatening clouds scudded so close

 

that some of the taller trees up along the ridge crest were lost in their misty billows

 

There was no dry wood to be found, so the men lit a tin of paraffin and tamped down their miniature cooking grill over its blue flame One of the blacks started a pot of water boiling while the others laid out their sleeping bags

 

The blond leader came over to Lela, who was sitting as far away from the men as she could, her back resting against the moss-covered trunk of a Hagenia tree It had been a punishing day, climbing the steep, heavily wooded slope up past the ten-thousand-foot height, close to the territory where Koku's three females waited for him Her chest hurt from exertion in the thin air

 

The blond sagged wearily to the ground next to Lela His voice too low for the others to hear, he said, "Now listen carefully I know about the biochips I know you're telling the gorilla to keep away from us You've got to stop that "

 

"So you can kill him?" Lela wanted to sneer at the blond, but she was surprised to find that her voice was as much of a near-whisper as his

 

"That's right We're not leaving until we've done the job we've been paid to do And the three females too "

 

"There is a team of students and rangers patrolling the territory where the females have been placed "

 

"We'll get past them without any trouble, never you fear "

 

"And kill them all "

 

"Just the apes We're not here to kill people "

 

"And what about me'" Lela asked, struggling to keep her voice from trembling

 

The blond glanced at the other four men, gathered around the minuscule fire

 

"I'll make a deal with you," he said "You stop telling the gorilla to stay away from us, and I'll see to it that you get back to your people safely "

 

"You want me to trade Koku's life for my own "

 

"Let us kill the damned ape and get it over with"

 

Lela said nothing

 

"They're going to rape you, y'know A nice little gang bang before they kill you I can protect you "

 

"Leave me alive to identify you afterward'"

 

"We'll be long gone from here by the time you get back to your friends A chopper will pick us up once we send the signal "

 

She shook her head

 

"For god's sake," the blond hissed, "are the gorillas more important to you than your own hfe?"

 

"I could ask you the same question "

 

"I'm offering to let you live if you'll stop protecting the damned animal "

 

Again Lela went silent She did not know what to say She did not believe him, no matter how sincere he sounded The others would never let her live They would strip her and rape her and then kill her And him too, if he tried to stop them

 

With a huffing sigh that almost sounded like a gorilla's grunt, the blond hauled himself up to his feet "Think it over," he said, his voice still low But now there was menace in it "Once you're dead, y'know, we'll be able to track the ape down without much trouble "

 

Lela believed that She knew it was true

 

It was all coming together, like the threads of an ancient tapestry, thought Li-Po Hsen Individually, each strand means little But weave them together properly and a beautiful picture emerges He sank back in his softly yielding reclmer chair and twined all the threads together in his mind

 

Stoner The former astronaut The man who had visited de Sagres and the other Great Souls Stoner, the only man to survive being fiozen, the only one to be reawakened after a sleep of years The only man to defeat death itself

 

From the Hungarian scientists Hsen had learned that Stoner carried within him the alien creature who had built the starship Within his mind was all the knowledge of the alien technology, secrets that could span the unthinkable gulfs between the stars, secrets that had already provided fu-

 

sion energy and invisible screens that protected cities from nuclear bombs How much more did Stoner and the alien within him carry inside his skulP Immortality was merely one of the gifts he possessed

 

From Tomasso he had learned that Stoner was building a new starship at the Vanguard base out on Mare Imbnum All the secrets of the aliens were within Stoner's mind Hsen knew he could not rest until he had all that knowledge for himself

 

With such knowledge a man could become absolute ruler of the Earth, he knew Emperor of emperors. The entire world would kneel at my feet.

 

But Stoner would never willingly share that knowledge That is why, Hsen told himself, it is vitally important to have the bitch Camerata in my grasp If I can control her I can control him

 

He knew from the Hungarians and from the stories that Cliff Baker drunkenly reeled off that Stoner had impressive powers But the Hungarians have learned to protect themselves against his mental abilities And I will remain safely shielded from him

 

Hsen smiled happily It was all coming together at last Nothing could stop him now, as long as he remained safely here in his protected headquarters while his trusted employees dangled Tomasso like a piece of bait

 

Jo Camerata will snap up Tomasso, and I will have her With her in my grasp I will have control of Stoner

 

For good measure, Hsen thought, I should take the bitch's son And the artificial womb in which she is trying to reproduce her daughter

 

He laughed aloud With her children in my grasp, I can even get her to bed with me, if I desire her It was a pleasant thought He closed his eyes and sank deeper into his enfolding chair, picturing Jo Camerata naked and helpless before him

 

Twelve tourists just happened to meet in the lobby of the Vanguard Hotel shortly after Jo and Cliff Baker left Archimedes Dressed in brightly colored coveralls that were deco

 

rated with jeweled clips and patterned scarves of lunar faux-silk, all twelve of them crowded into one of the lobby's elevators

 

On the Moon, status was indicated by how many floors down one lived While a penthouse indicated wealth and perhaps power on Earth, the most preferable quarters on the Moon were those furthest from the airless surface, where hard radiation and micrometeoroids constantly churned the lunar dust

 

The hotel ran five levels down, but one of the tourists pulled a palm-sized electronic black box from her coverall pocket and applied it to the elevator's control board With a barely-discernible click, the elevator plunged past the normal five floors, past the basement level where much of the life support equipment for Archimedes base was housed, and down to the sub basement level that held nothing but the private quarters of the president of Vanguard Corporation

 

When the elevator doors at last slid open, the twelve men and women leaped out, weapons in hands, balanced on the balls of their booted feet, ready to spray nontoxic gas from the nozzles of innocent-looking cosmetics cans

 

The corridor in which they found themselves was empty

 

Their leader, a solidly-built graying man with square shoulders, frowned slightly No guards in the corridor, not even a robot Nothing but the tiny red eyes of security cameras set up near the ceiling, and they had been short-circuited moments earlier

 

These Vanguard people must be damned cocky about their security, the leader of the attack force thought

 

With silent gestures he motioned eight of his force to the left, where the living quarters were, the remaining three to the other end of the corridor, where the makeshift laboratory had been established to hold the artificial womb and its associated apparatus He himself went with the mam body There was bound to be resistance where they kept the boy

 

The woman applied her electronic box to the lock of the living quarters' main door It popped open and they poured through

 

Into an empty room Bare walls No furniture Nothing but an absolutely empty room

 

"We've been screwed," the leader muttered

 

Those were his last words The air was pumped out of the room, out of the corridor, out of the entire sub-basement level When a team of Vanguard security personnel came down to clean up, armored and helmeted, with robots leading their way, they found all twelve mercenaries piled in a jumble at the elevator door, their faces blue, tongues swollen in their gaping mouths, their eyes staring, their hands clawing desperately at the elevator door

 

Half a mile away, Rickie played ping-pong with a Vanguard robot in the rec room of Archimedes's maintenance department office Connected to all levels of the underground center by utilities tunnels, the maintenance facility was spacious enough to house several visitors from the security department with ease

 

Rickie watched with fascination as the plastic ball arched lazily over the net Ping-pong in low gravity was a very different game than it was on Earth more deliberate, like slow motion Through the open door of the rec room Rickie could see the jumble of equipment where his sister was slowly growing to the point where she would be a baby again

 

Rickie paid no attention to the artificial womb He and the squat little robot were tied, fifteen-all, and he was bending all his energies on winning his game

 

The ballistic rocket in which Stoner rode with Vie Tomasso, the two Hungarian scientists, and an assault team of Pacific Commerce commandos did not at all resemble the sleek, slim boosters of Earth On the airless Moon, the vehicle needed no streamlining It was round and flat, like a saucer, with six awkward-looking legs sticking out and downward from its rim

 

As it began its descent toward Delphi base, Tomasso slid into the seat to the right of the command pilot and buckled the light harness straps over his shoulders The rocket had

 

only one port, an oblong window of lunar glassteel that curved across the entire cockpit

 

Vie still wore his sand-colored Vanguard coveralls, the front open low enough to show several strands of gold necklaces resting on his hairy chest He slipped a communications headset over his thick curly hair and then, stabbing a forefinger at the comm console master switch, Tomasso said into the pinhead microphone

 

"Security override Access code one-one-eight-three-two, yellow "

 

A flat, unmflected computer-generated voice immediately replied, "Voiceprmt identification accepted Security override in effect "

 

"Delphi, this is Tomasso, from corporate headquarters Approaching in ballistic vehicle Require clearance to land "

 

A human voice, male, answered, "Clearance to land approved, Tomasso This is Matthews Why the security override and yellow alert?"

 

"I'll explain when I get down, Matthews Expect arrival in " Tomasso glanced at the pilot's control displays, " seven minutes and twenty seconds "

 

"Okay I'll be at the airlock "

 

With a nod and a grin, Tomasso shut off the radio "Dumb bastard'll never know what hit him "

 

The saucer-shaped rocket landed slowly, its engines kicking up dust from the lunar surface As it settled on its six spraddling legs, an access tube snaked from Delphi base's mam airlock--little more than a rubble-covered dome on the pockmarked surface of Imbnum--and connected to the airlock of the saucer

 

True to his word, Matthews was at the airlock in his frayed, faded blue coveralls The expression on his face went from curiosity to outright shock as Tomasso and the dozen black-uniformed Pacific Commerce commandos poured through the access tube, guns in hands, and started down the power ladder toward the interior of the base "What the hell is this?" Matthews demanded.

 

Tomasso waved a slim automatic pistol in his face "Stay cool, friend, and nobody will get hurt "

 

In less than ten minutes the commandos took control of Delphi's communications and life support centers Tomasso led Matthews into his own office and took the seat behind Matthews's desk The crew-cut administrator stood in front of the desk, fuming

 

"I want to know what in hell you're doing"

 

Tomasso was already pecking at the keyboard on the desk top The display screen showed a list of the base's personnel

 

Looking up at the older man, Tomasso said jovially, "This is a sort of corporate takeover, friend This base is now the property of Pacific Commerce "

 

"Are you crazy When Ms Camerata hears about this "

 

"She'll be here in another hour or so She's going to become another Pacific Commerce acquisition "

 

Matthews's legs seemed to give way He groped behind himself for the only other chair in the cubbyhole office and sank onto its creaking plastic seat

 

Jabbing a thumb at the desktop display screen, Tomasso said, "I want you to assemble each and every member of the base's staff in the cafeteria Now I'm going to check them off against this list If anybody's missing, those guys in the black uniforms are going to start shooting people Starting with you "

 

Two levels further down, Paulino Alvarado looked out from the makeshift quarters Matthews had given him and saw strange men in black uniforms with machine pistols in their hands stalking up the corridor They went right past his door, intent on some task, but Paulino knew they would come looking for him sooner or later

 

Police he thought Or soldiers

 

His pulse thudding in his ears, his palms suddenly clammy, Paulino desperately looked around the tiny cubicle for some means of escape

 

Matthews had cleared out one of the small labs that was no longer being used and converted it into living quarters for

 

Paulino A folding cot, a set of metal bookshelves that now held a few sets of coveralls, and a portable shower/smk/toilet unit plugged into the former lab's plumbing Other employees had generously provided odd pieces of clothing, bedsheets, a blanket

 

Trapped like a bird in a net The tiny cubicle had only one door, and it led to the corridor and the armed soldiers Paulino peeped out into the corridor and saw the men in black pushing a handful of blue-coveralled people back in his direction

 

Very softly, but quickly, Paulino closed his door Leaning against it, he heard the footsteps pass him by, heard a woman asking who the armed men were and what they wanted

 

They want me, Paulino knew I've got to get away

 

His eyes darted back and forth across the bare little room No way out No escape

 

Then he saw the grille covering the heating shaft up by the ceiling With the strength of desperation he worked it loose and boosted himself on the shaky metal shelving to its level It was a narrow square tunnel of smooth metal, too small for a man of Matthews's size

 

But not too small for Paulino He scrambled up into the shaft, scraping his knuckles and barking his shins, then wormed around and replaced the grille It was slightly lopsided and would fall to the floor if anyone as much as touched it But it was the best he could do

 

Slithering along the shaft, Paulino found himself looking through another grille out into the cafeteria The whole staff of the base was there, sitting at the tables or standing glumly against the far wall They looked bewildered, frightened Like the people of my village must have looked when the soldiers came, Paulino thought

 

The men in black uniforms did not start shooting, however Another man, short, stocky, wearing crisp new coveralls of tan and gold chains around his neck, was calling out names and checking those who answered against a pocket computer he held in his hand

 

Finally he said, "All right, that's the entire staff Good You people will be staying here until further notice "

 

Paulino saw Matthews take a step toward the man in the tan coveralls Several of the soldiers leveled their guns at him

 

"There's nothing for you to do, friend," said the man, "except relax and enjoy it "

 

Then he turned to one of the soldiers and said, "Okay, bring in Stoner and the Hungarians Set him up the way they want him fo Camerata should be arriving in less than an hour "

 

CHAPTER 33

 

HUNCHING slightly as she stood behind the driver's seat, Jo saw through the tinted windshield of the lumbering bus the squat saucer shape of the rocket sitting on its spindly legs at Delphi base's main airlock The saucer was unpamted, unmarked, but she knew that Vie Tomasso had brought an assault team of Pacific Commerce commandos in it to seize the base

 

"Check Archimedes," she said curtly to the woman sitting at the driver's right

 

The woman, in the coral jumpsuit of the security department, touched the comm panel in front of her with one hand while passing a headset to Jo with the other

 

Jo received a terse report from the security chief at Archimedes The attempt to kidnap Rickie had failed, and all the Pacific Commerce commandos were dead Three platoons of paramilitary personnel were already aboard ballistic rockets, ready to take off for Delphi at Jo's signal

 

"Good," said Jo tightly into the pin mike "If I don't transmit a signal within half an hour, send the troops "

 

"Yes, ma'am," said the security chief's voice He had been with Vanguard since boyhood, and Jo had investigated his

 

background and actions so thoroughly that she knew him better than he knew himself. He was utterly reliable, she would stake her life on that.

 

I am staking my life on him, she told herself as the bus labored over the last small rise in the dust-covered rocky ground and finally groaned to a halt before the auxiliary airlock of Delphi base.

 

Jo walked down the length of the bus to its mam hatch Cliff Baker pulled himself up from his seat and joined her, a quizzical grin on his puffy face.

 

"So what's here that's so bloody important?" he asked Jo.

 

"You'll see soon enough."

 

It took a few minutes for the personnel inside the small rubble-covered dome to snake out the access tube and make the connection with the bus's mam hatch.

 

At last the indicator light on the wall panel turned green and the hatch popped open with a little sigh. Jo's nose wrinkled at the slight odor of stale air and plastic as she pushed the hatch all the way out. Stepping into the access tube, she felt every sense heightened, every nerve straining taut.

 

Hsen's not here, she knew, but Vie is. He thinks I don't know he's taken over the base He thinks he's trapping me.

 

As she walked slowly along the tube, Baker two steps behind her, she thought, And I think I'm trapping Vie. The kids are safe, so that card's been taken out of Hsen's hand. Even if I can't get to Hsen right away, I'll have Vie in my grasp. And I'm going to squeeze him until his damned traitor's eyes pop out.

 

She paid no attention to the fact that the two men working the airlock wore black uniforms rather than the blue coveralls of Delphi's staff. With Baker trailing behind her, Jo placed both her booted feet on the power ladder and grasped the rung at the level of her shoulders. It began to descend slowly, the faint hum of an electric motor the only sound in the cramped little dome. Baker followed her down.

 

Despite herself Jo was trembling inside. More than the anticipation of roasting Vie for his part in killing Cathy, there

 

was something else gnawing at her innards Not fear Something else.

 

The ladder carried down past three landings to the lowest level of the underground base, ending at the juncture of five corridors. Vie was standing there, smiling brightly, as Jo stepped off. He was in the tan coveralls of a Vanguard administrator, the damned traitor, with the front unzipped halfway down his hairy chest to show off three ropes of gold

 

"You don't look surprised," he said to Jo.

 

"Should I be?"

 

Baker stepped off the ladder, his lopsided grin fading into genuine puzzlement.

 

"Your bodyguard?" Tomasso asked

 

"Hardly," said Jo. "This is Cliff Baker, chairman of the International Investment Agency. You're the one who needs a bodyguard, Vie."

 

"I've got one."

 

"They won't be enough. Rickie and Cathy are safe. The goons Hsen sent to take them are all dead."

 

Tomasso's smile faltered for only a heartbeat. "I didn't think that would work Hsen wanted it for insurance, though "

 

"Where is Hsen?" Jo asked, her voice low and murderous.

 

Tomasso made his smile wider, showing lots of perfect teeth. "I thought you'd be more concerned about the whereabouts of your husband."

 

"Keith can take care of himself There's nothing you can do to hurt him."

 

"Oh no?" Crooking a finger, Tomasso said, "You'd better take a look at this."

 

He led Jo down one of the corridors and into a small empty office He pointed to the desktop computer and Jo stepped up to the desk and swivelled its display screen so she could see it.

 

Her face paled and she leaned heavily against the desk Baker's mouth dropped open.

 

The screen showed Keith Stoner, blindfolded, strapped into

 

a stiff-backed chair, his bare torso showing a score of ugly burns, yellowing black against his pale skin His head was slumped forward, he was obviously unconscious

 

Jo kept herself from screaming Barely She realized that the tension, the odd sensation she had felt a few minutes earlier, had been a warning The fear that she had kept bottled within her all these weeks finally erupted in a hot flame of anguish Keith was helpless and in their hands He was not the powerful, confident, capable superman she had told herself he was He was just as vulnerable and defenseless as any ordinary man

 

Jo realized now that she was vulnerable and defenseless, too

 

Zoltan Janos had been carefully briefed by Tomasso He and Ilona Lucacs had waited inside the rocket with the handcuffed and blindfolded Stoner until a black-clad Pacific Commerce commando returned to tell them that the base was securely in their hands Then, following Tomasso's orders, Janos dispatched Ilona and two of the orientals to set up Stoner while he himself followed a third black-uniformed man to the base's communications center

 

Ilona Lucacs had gone with two men who led Stoner, their hands tightly gripping his arms, down the base's only elevator to a small storeroom There they ripped off his shirt and strapped him--still handcuffed--into a stiff chair As Janos had told her to, Ilona then injected Stoner with a heavy dose of phenobarbital He gave a little gasp, more of surprise than pain, when the needle went into his bare arm Then his head lolled on his shoulders, and finally his chin sank to his chest

 

Ilona stared at the unconscious Stoner for several moments, thinking, He wanted to help me He wanted to be my friend, to be my father, almost And all I've given him in return is pain

 

She pulled off the earphones that were still tightly clamped to his head He was completely limp, sagging against the straps that cut into the flesh of his chest and arms

 

But it has to be this way, Ilona told herself He is too important to be sentimental over His offers to help me, to love me,

 

they were nothing but bribes to make me do what he wanted fanos and I must study him further, pry out all the secrets within him He is an experimental subject, nothing more An experimental subject

 

Still, she knew that he had not volunteered for these experiments And the only end to them that she could see was death

 

The two silent orientals were waiting at the door Carrying the earphones in one hand, Ilona walked out into the corridor The two commandos shut the airtight storeroom door firmly, the rubberized gasket around its rim gave a sighing sound They clicked its electronic lock and, for good measure, wedged a thick metal rod across it as a makeshift bolt

 

Ilona took a deep breath and headed for the room that the man Tomasso had indicated she could use Her pleasure machine was waiting for her there [ust a few minutes of it and she knew she would feel much better about everything

 

Stoner remained limp and sagging against the straps that constrained him until he was certain that he was alone His star brother had neutralized the sedative that Ilona had injected into him almost as quickly as the chemical had entered his bloodstream But it wouldn't do to let them know we're perfectly conscious

 

He sensed a camera over the room's only door, up by the ceiling Originally installed to guard against pilfering, now it was watching him He probed its mechanism and found that it could be overloaded and shorted out without much trouble

 

Jo He realized that she was in the base, watching the picture that the camera showed Stay strong, Jo, he said silently Stay strong The real test is just beginning

 

Paulino Alvarado wormed his way along the heating duct, desperately looking for a way to escape the soldiers who had taken over the base He had seen Matthews and the others milling about angrily, worriedly, in the crowded cafeteria If he could find them weapons, maybe they could fight their way out There seemed to be only a dozen or so soldiers

 

As silently as he could, Paulmo slithered along the cold metal ducting He had never seen guns or weapons of any kind in the many days he had spent at the base But surely there must be something

 

He stopped at one of the grilles A beautiful young woman was sitting on the bed, an open suitcase full of electronic gear on the floor at her feet Her face was exquisite, but so troubled that Paulmo felt he had stumbled upon a princess in exile, like the stories he had read in childhood

 

All the soldiers wore black uniforms and were orientals This lovely young woman wore a tweed skirt and a wrinkled blouse that had once been white Her hair was the color of thick honey and her skin was like flawless cream

 

And she had a suitcase full of electronics Maybe it was a radio Maybe they could summon help If she isn't one of the enemy Paulmo knew he had never seen her before She did not wear the blue coveralls of the regular staff Yet she was sad, perhaps even frightened, as she stared at the little suitcase on the floor

 

And so beautiful With the glandular wisdom of youth, Paulmo decided that a woman of such beauty could not possibly be evil, or an enemy

 

He tapped on the grille

 

Ilona flinched and looked up toward the sound that startled her A man was behind the grille set up in the wall near the ceiling

 

"Senonta," he whispered hoarsely, "poi favor "

 

"Who are you " she whispered back in English as she stood up

 

"I need your help," the young man replied in accented English

 

It took a few minutes of rummaging in her purse before Ilona found a nail file sturdy enough for the screws holding the grille Standing on the room's only chair, she quickly got the grille off, then stepped down and watched Paulmo slide stealthily to the chair and then the floor

 

He looked something of a scarecrow, rail-thin, with fright-

 

ened, darting eyes The eyes were deeply dark, though, and his thin face with its sculpted cheekbones had an aesthetic look to it that was almost romantic His pale orange coveralls were stained and rumpled, as if he had been living in them for days on end

 

"I can help you," he whispered, once his feet were safely on the bare floor "We must work together to get away from the soldiers "

 

Ilona heard herself answer, "Yes, but how "

 

She was shocked at her own words, until she realized that she did indeed want to get away from these menacing orientals in black, away from the guns and the danger, away from Janos and what he was doing to Stoner

 

But how?

 

CHAPTER 34

 

JO recovered her strength and her poise after only a moment She tore her eyes away from the display screen, away from the picture of Keith helpless and unconscious, and faced Tomasso once again, unconsciously fingering the belt that cinched her glittering jumpsuit at the waist Its jewelled buckle was an old family heirloom, it could be pulled free easily and used as a dagger

 

Vie was trying to keep his face straight, trying not to smile, not to sneer He almost succeeded Jo, her mind filling with images of how his smile would turn to agonized screams, stepped away from the desk Cliff Baker stood out in the hallway, goggle-eyed, trying to digest all that was happening

 

"Your husband's in a storeroom," Vie explained, "and the air has been pumped out of the corridor on the other side of

 

his door. If you don't cooperate, we'll have to pump the air out of the room he's in."

 

"I play ball or you kill him," Jo snapped.

 

Tomasso nodded. "That's it."

 

"What does Hsen want?"

 

Tomasso allowed himself a small grin. "Hey, what about what I want?"

 

fo gave him a level stare, then replied, "Vie, you're nothing but a miserable little shit who's going to get his guts ripped out an inch at a time."

 

From the corridor, Baker made a guttural noise that might have been a suppressed laugh. Tomasso's grin vanished. "You oughtta watch your mouth, Jo."

 

"You talk as if you're in charge here," Jo said. "But it's Hsen who's calling the shots. What if I tell him that I'll cooperate--but only if he'll turn you over to me."

 

Tomasso frowned.

 

"Hsen knows you're a turncoat. Do you think he really trusts you? You've thrown away your only card. Now that you've helped him take over this base, what've you got left to bargain with?"

 

His face flushing with barely-suppressed anger, Tomasso snarled, "Never mind the big talk. You just call off the troops you've got ready to fly here or your old man starts breathing vacuum."

 

"Hsen won't let you kill Keith."

 

"Wanna bet? The medics can study his dead body. Be a lot easier than dealing with him alive."

 

Baker said, in a complaining tone, "Would one of you mind telling me what this is all about?"

 

"It's about a starship," Jo replied. "That's what you want to see, isn't it, Vie? Well come on, then. Let's go see it."

 

She swept past Tomasso, out into the corridor and past Baker, heading for the chamber where the starship was waiting, her finger stroking the razor-sharp edge of her belt buckle.

 

Li-Po Hsen paced nervously, almost frantically, across the imitation bare wood floor of his private quarters. Tomasso's reports from Delphi were all good, well-nigh perfect.

 

The base is securely in my hands, Hsen told himself. Stoner is incapacitated, ready for further examination. The bitch Camerata is my prisoner, and she has called off the counterattack that she had planned.

 

The only failure had been in the attempt to seize her children, but that is a minor matter. Jo Camerata is cooperating because she knows her husband is at my mercy. I can pick up her brats at any time now.

 

Hsen's head nearly swam with excitement. I can control Vanguard Industries! I can have the Hungarian scientists make Stoner reveal all the alien's secrets, because his wife is in my hands.

 

He clapped his hands gleefully and skipped right through a hologrammic reproduction of an ancient bronze horse to lean across his bare desk and tap the communications button.

 

Within a minute his dour-faced security chief entered the sparsely-furnished room.

 

"I have decided to go to Delphi base," Hsen told her, "to see this starship for myself."

 

The security chief bowed her head, but replied, "That is not part of our plan. It was agreed . . ."

 

Hsen snorted disdain. "The base is secure. There is nothing to fear."

 

"Sir, we still do not understand the extent of the man Stoner's powers."

 

"He is unconscious at present, is he not?"

 

"Yes, but ..."

 

"And even when he awakes, he will be made to realize that his wife's well-being depends on his cooperation."

 

"Still, sir, it is my duty to point out that there may be unknown dangers in your personally going to the Vanguard base."

 

"Pah! It is my base now. I want to see the bitch and her husband for myself. I want to see this starship the alien has built for them. What kind of general sits quailing in his castle after his troops have conquered the enemy?"

 

A wise general, thought the security chief But she dared not speak the words aloud

 

Cliff Baker gaped in unabashed awe at the towering vat that bubbled and steamed, almost close enough to reach out and touch

 

Vie Tomasso felt an uneasy sense of forces at work beyond his control or even his understanding

 

The two men were standing with Jo on the grillwork catwalk that circled the vast underground chamber The floor was lost in the mists, far below them Many stones above, high-efficiency suction fans pulled the steam into special ducts where it was used to run turbines before cooling to the point where it condensed into pure potable water

 

Jo was reciting woodenly, explaining the starship construction system as if she were a tour guide who had given this lecture a thousand times

 

"The nanomachmes are as small as viruses, but they are machines, not living creatures Each one is programmed to do its specific task and no other They can assemble individual atoms and fit them together like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle What they're doing now is taking the raw elements that are being fed into the vat in the gaseous stage through the hosing at the lowest level and picking out individual atoms to place them exactly where they need to be to build the ship "

 

"Individual atoms?" Tomasso asked, his voice somewhere between incredulity and astonishment

 

Without changing the tone of her voice or the frozen expression on her face, Jo replied, "Yes Individual atoms of aluminum, titanium, silicon Quite a bit of silver Some gold Mostly carbon atoms for the ship's structure The starship will be almost pure diamond, except for the guidance system and life support equipment "

 

Baker muttered, "It must be worth " "It costs less than a lunar shuttle," Jo said, with a little force "The nanomachmes are incredibly cheap, once you have a few master assemblers, they create all the other ma-

 

chines out of simple raw materials like carbon and silicon Then the raw input for the ship itself is the same stuff, plus a bit of metal Literally dirt cheap, we scoop most of it from the top few centimeters of the soil outside "

 

But as she spoke Jo was furiously thinking of how she could get out of this trap, how she could overcome Tomasso and the dozen or so military types who now controlled the base, how she could save Keith No plan of action came to her mind For once in her life she accepted the ancient wisdom of patience The burning hatred still seethed in her heart Every part of her wanted to tear Tomasso's flesh into bloody ribbons But now her ancient blood counseled patience, so Jo kept her passions frozen within her and waited for the proper moment to strike

 

For nearly an hour the three of them paced slowly around the catwalk, peering into the bubbling, frothing vat Jo could make out a graceful curve of crystalline material through the steaming brew, but little more

 

"And this ship is big enough to leave the solar system and go out to the stars" Tomasso asked

 

Jo replied, "This is only the propulsion and guidance unit The living quarters and life support sections have already been completed They're waiting in underground hangars, not far from here "

 

"What kind of propulsion does it use?" Baker asked

 

"It taps magnetic fields when it's close enough to planets that have them," Jo said "Don't ask me how, the physicists are still trying to figure it out For the long-distance jumps between stars it scoops in hydrogen from the interstellar plasma to feed a fusion engine "

 

"And it can go from one star to another, all that distance "

 

With a single nod, Jo said, "The nanomachmes constantly maintain all the ship's systems Keith told me they can even repair the erosion that micrometeors cause when they strike the hull "

 

Tomasso was about to ask another question, but his wrist communicator chimed softly He held the unit to his ear for a moment Jo saw his face go from surprise to pleasure

 

"Hsen is coming over," he announced With a wry smile, "You'll have a chance to show him your starship, Jo "

 

Jo kept her face expressionless But her heart leaped within her The murderer is coming here And she knew exactly what she had to do Kill the bastard Throw him over the railing and let him drop fifteen stories to the concrete floor Slice his throat open with the dagger built into my belt buckle Jam my thumbs into his eyes and then kick his balls into his throat

 

She clenched her hands to keep them from shaking with anticipation

 

My babies are safe, he can't get to them now I'll kill him What happens to me afterward doesn't matter What happens to Keith doesn't matter I'll kill the sonofabitch with my bare hands

 

Stoner, meanwhile, was still pretending to be unconscious while his mind explored the underground base Reaching, probing, he sensed Jo with Tomasso and Baker, felt the fury of her mind blazing like a bonfire in the night He recognized Matthews and many of the base's staff cooped together in the automated cafeteria Delicately stealing along the silent underground corridors he realized that there were twelve pro fessional soldiers present, half of them in the base's communications center, the others divided between the life support center and the docking facility

 

Why the docking facility Another rocket was on its way to the base, he found with a feathery touch on the mind of one of the orientals Li Po Hsen himself was coming to view his new conquest firsthand

 

Stoner filed that information and pressed onward Zoltan Janos was busily setting up equipment in one of the laborato nes, getting ready to resume his experiments on Stoner Where is Ilona?

 

He found her in one of the cubicles that served as quarters for the staff There was a man with her, a stranger

 

For several moments Stoner explored their minds, learning what he could without pressing hard enough for them to real

 

ize he was present Then, realizing that he had no better choice, he called to the Hungarian scientist

 

--Ilona Ilona, can you hear mej

 

She stiffened with surprise, sitting on the bed Paulino, primly ensconced on the room's only chair on the other side of the room, saw her face go pale

 

"What is it'" he asked

 

She silenced him with an upraised hand while replying aloud, "Yes, I can hear you "

 

--I need your help

 

"There's nothing I can do "

 

Paulino saw that she was talking to thin air His mother would have recognized a religious vision, his father would have twirled a finger against his temple Paulino, however, had grown accustomed to electronics miracles and immediately assumed that Ilona was speaking to someone through a miniature communications device planted somewhere on her person

 

"Who is it?" Paulino asked, getting up from his chair and crossing the room to sit beside Ilona on the bed "Is it someone who can help us?"

 

And he heard in his mind --Perhaps we can help each other

 

CHAPTER 35

 

IT was night in the rugged mountains of the Fossey Preserve, along the border of Rwanda and the Congolese Republic

 

Lela sat in a tight knot as lar from the fire as she could, knees pulled up to her chin, thin black arms circling her legs The blond had asked her for the final time if she would call Koku to them She had refused

 

Now the men were sharing liquor from a metal flask, laughing and eying her The silvery flask gleamed in the firelight as they tilted it back Lela could see their Adam's apples bobbing as they swallowed

 

"I'm first," said the redhead "I found her, so I go first " He had not shaved in the several days since he had discovered her, his rust-colored beard looked shaggy and vermin-infested

 

Lela tried to block out their coarse jokes as the men swilled the liquor All but the blond, who sat some distance away from the others, on the far side of the fire, his face looking tired and grim

 

"Call the damned ape and save yourself " he had hissed at her, only a few moments earlier Now he sat staring at her the way an angry teacher would stare at a child who has gotten into mischief and must be punished

 

The irony was that Lela could sense Koku The young gorilla was near, very near Lela wanted to command him to go away, to race as fast as he could to the territory where the females waited, protected by rangers and university students But she could not Her mind was filled with the terror of death staring her in the face, wearing the mask of a morose blond Englishman

 

And the ordeal the others would put her through before they killed her I could run, Lela thought In the night I could probably get away from them

 

But in the following day, she knew, they would track her down and find her She would only be postponing the inevitable Worse, Koku would probably seek her, linked by the bio-chips implanted in their skulls, and when the hunters found Lela they would also find the gorilla

 

No, Lela told herself, hugging her shins tightly to keep from

 

. shaking like a wind-blown leaf, once I am dead Koku will go

 

his own way He will stay clear of these hunters He knows

 

enough to be afraid of them now At least I have taught him

 

that much

 

Koku felt the swirl of emotions in Lela's mind The young gorilla knew she was very near, and her growing terror filled

 

him with a nameless fear He could not build a sleeping nest He could not sleep

 

But he could not run away, either His eyes saw nothing to be afraid of His nose smelled the thin smoke of a campfire, but he felt no danger from that The only sounds he heard were the normal hoots and shrills of the night Yet Lela was afraid, and because she was, Koku felt fear also

 

Fearful yet uncertain, wanting to run away yet unable to leave Lela, Koku paced back and forth on his knuckles, three hundred pounds of gorilla trying to deal with complexities that his brain had no way of unravelling

 

But then a white-hot shriek of fright scalded his brain Even without the biochip he heard Lela's scream He charged off through the brush toward her

 

The four men were all over Lela, their hands tearing at her clothing, gripping her flesh She could smell their foul breaths and feel their fingers clutching at her She screamed and struggled, and they laughed as they stripped her

 

Twisting her arms painfully they pushed her to the ground The redhead gripped her ankles and spread her legs apart

 

A thundering roar A blur of black smashed into the redhead and sent him sprawling, tumbling right into the camp-fire He howled with pain and tried to get up but could not The fire licked at the backs of his legs as he shrieked and yowled

 

Koku's backhand slap knocked the two blacks away, and the other white man cowered and scrambled away, scuttling backwards, his eyes so wide Lela could see white all around the pupils

 

Koku stood on his hind legs and roared at the men, slapping his palms against his stomach It sounded like a huge drumbeat of doom

 

"Koku, no " shouted Lela "Get away Get away "

 

She knew that the gorilla had done his worst He could push strangers away from Lela, and his push could snap frail human bones But he was not aggressive Having moved the

 

strangers away from Lela, Koku roared and threatened. But he could never attack.

 

The blond knew it. While his redheaded friend roasted in his own fire, his back broken, while Lela shouted and pleaded with Koku to run back into the safety of the trees, the blond calmly got to his feet, automatic rifle in his hands, and put the gun to his shoulder.

 

"Don't!" Lela's scream was lost in the roar of gunfire.

 

The burst of bullets stitched Koku's chest. He staggered backwards a few steps, then sank to his haunches. Lela saw blood gush from his mouth and he pitched forward Lela crawled to him, sobbing. The gorilla reached out a massive hand toward her, but then his eyes froze and he went still. A final sigh, so much like a human, and Koku was dead.

 

Gasping, panting, crying, Lela sat frozen on the ground. The redhead and both blacks lay very still, bones broken, skin ripped open. The other white was on his hands and knees, eyes squeezed shut now, rocking back and forth like an autistic child

 

Koku lay less than a meter from Lela She crawled to him and lay her head on his hairy back, the bloody bullet holes already matting. She sobbed, crying as she had when her baby brother had died of fever so many years ago.

 

Through tear-filled eyes she looked up at the blond He had slung the rifle over his shoulder and was picking up his backpack. Without a word, without looking back at her or the creature he had murdered, he walked off into the shadows of the forest

 

Lela knew where he was heading She stopped crying. Her entire body shook, but now it was not from fear Pulling the tatters of her blouse around her, she got to her feet and went toward the sleeping bags. The redhead was muttering incoherently, his legs black and smoking in the fire, his hands twitching uselessly She walked around him, reached the sleeping bags, and picked up one of the leather cases that held an automatic rifle

 

Sliding the gun out of its protective casing, she briefly

 

looked it over, found the safety, and clicked it off. Then she worked the bolt as she had been taught to on hunting rifles.

 

Planting the plastic stock firmly on her hip, she shot the two blacks first. The blast shook her slim body and bellowed through the night like a stuttering lion. The blacks' bodies jerked and rolled as the bullets plowed through them.

 

Traitors, thought Lela. Thieves and murderers.

 

The redhead's eyes followed Lela as she stepped slightly toward him, then fired the gun again at the white who still hunched on hands and knees. He was knocked over sideways, gouts of blood and dust churned up by the bullets.

 

Lela looked down at the redhead. His face was contorting fiercely. He was trying to move but could not, his back broken

 

She relaxed her grip on the rifle, let its muzzle point downward. "The jackals can deal with you," she said to him.

 

Then she put together a backpack, took a fresh, fully loaded rifle, and started after the blond.

 

Stoner knew the layout of Delphi base better than anyone else there, since he had directed its design and construction.

 

Strapped in the stiff-backed chair, still pretending unconsciousness, he instructed Ilona Lucacs and Paulmo. The young Latin also had a fair knowledge of the base's layout, at least he knew where pressure suits were kept, and how to work inside a suit.

 

While Paulmo and Ilona crept stealthily along a deserted corridor toward a set of lockers where the suits were, Stoner mentally examined the TV camera that was watching him Probing the electromagnetic fields it generated, he traced the pattern of the picture it was sending back to the bored, half-asleep oriental who sat at the monitoring desk in the base communications center

 

By the time Paulmo and Ilona had zipped up their suits and begun plodding toward the evacuated corridor where Stoner's room was situated, he had altered the camera's inner workings so that it simply continued sending the same electrical

 

transmission, no matter what its lens saw. The commando monitoring the camera continued to see Stoner slumped in his chair.

 

But Stoner slowly straightened up and flexed the muscles of his arms and torso. He was soaked with sweat from the effort of mentally jiggering the camera. How much easier it would have been to use physical tools instead of mental ones, he thought. The human race had developed physical tools instead of its rudimentary extrasensory abilities because a bone club worked much more surely than a mental death projection, for most humans, the club was more efficient and much easier to use.

 

The blindfold was a help rather than a hindrance. By eliminating all the thousands of bits of visual data his eyes provided every second, Stoner and his star brother were able to concentrate much more certainly on the mental tasks at hand.

 

Now for these handcuffs, he thought. There were many, many incidences of what the media and even the medical profession called hysterical strength A mother sees her child pinned beneath an overturned car and lifts the car with her bare hands high enough to allow the child to wriggle free. A man being chased by a murderous mob leaps a wall that not even a top athlete could clear. Under certain conditions of stress, the human body is capable of fantastic feats of strength.

 

Stoner's star brother duplicated such conditions. A tremendous surge of adrenalin, a sudden flood of the phosphate and other compounds that energized the muscles, a wild lightheaded moment as he strained to snap the chain that linked the cuffs together

 

Stoner felt as if his arms would snap instead, but suddenly the chain broke with a sharp crack and his hands pulled loose from behind his back

 

He took several deep breaths while his star brother adjusted his body metabolism back to normal His wrists were badly bruised, but free He reached up and unbuckled the strap

 

across his chest. Finally he undid the strap across his thighs and, on shaky legs, stood erect for the first time in hours.

 

He smiled grimly to himself. Like the old Frankenstein films when the monster breaks free of its chains and goes off to terrify the village.

 

For a few moments he puzzled over the mechanism of the locks on the cuffs. Once he clearly pictured the microscopic fields of the mechanism he easily moved them. The cuffs clicked open and fell languidly away from his raw bruised wrists in the gentle gravity of the Moon to clunk lightly on the concrete floor.

 

Stepping to the storeroom's only door, Stoner realized that its electronic lock was more complex. But the fields it generated were much easier to sense.

 

He sensed Ilona and Paulino entering the corridor through one of the airtight doors that separated all the corridors of the base just as watertight hatches separated the passageways of a warship He directed them to his door until they were )ust on the other side

 

"There is an electronic lock," said Ilona, her voice muffled by the door's thickness, "and a metal bar jammed across the doorway."

 

"Can you remove the bar?" he asked.

 

"Yes," said Paulino.

 

"Before you do, can you find the emergency pump and put air back into the corridor?"

 

"I don't know where the pump is."

 

"There's a control panel set into the wall next to each of the airtight doors. Emergency instructions are printed on it."

 

A moment's hesitation. "I don't read English . . "

 

"That's all right," Ilona cut in. "I can "

 

Stoner heard their boots clumping down the corridor. He thought, If a section of corridor starts to leak air it sets off the alarms in the comm center. But there are no alarms if you refill a section with air. Just a set of monitoring lights on one of the consoles changing from red or yellow to green. Will the men in the comm center notice the change?

 

He decided that even if they did, it would be too late for them to do anything about it Frankenstein's monster would be loose, and anyone who tried to stop him would be in for a shock

 

The two came back and told him that the corridor was filled with air once more

 

"I have raised the visor on my helmet," said Paulino "The air is good "

 

"You shouldn't have taken that risk," Ilona said Stoner sensed more admiration in her voice than admonition

 

It took him a few seconds to spring the electronic lock Stoner remembered a professor from his college days telling him, "The more complicated a device is, the more ways it can fail " Or be made to fail, he added mentally That was the trouble with that damned guard robot in Beirut, he told himself Too damned simple

 

The door popped open with a little sigh of air and Stoner grabbed its edge and pulled it all the way back

 

He felt astonishment from the two others

 

"You are still blindfolded " Ilona gasped

 

"Oh " With an almost embarrassed grin, Stoner tore the blindfold off and tossed it sailing back into the storeroom He blinked several times before his eyes adjusted to the light of the fluorescent strips along the ceiling of the corridor

 

"Come with me," he commanded Ilona and Paulino With the scowl of an Old Testament patriarch on his bearded face, Stoner stalked off toward the chamber where the starship was being built, the chamber where his wife and Li-Po Hsen stood face-to-face

 

The first hint of dawn was graying the sky when Lela caught up with the blond He was working his way down a steep slope, long-leafed fronds of blackberry bushes slapping at him Lela followed him down the heavily wooded ravine and then stopped, panting, while the blond continued up the next slope

 

Her face and arms scratched bloody by the thistles she had

 

pushed through, Lela watched in the dim early light as the blond doggedly made his way to the top of the ridge He is heading for the females, Lela told herself He knows where they are and he knows how to slip past the rangers patrolling this area

 

As the blond neared the top of the ridge, Lela unslung the heavy rifle she carried Stretching out prone on the damp ground, she unhooked the gun's muzzle bipod and set it firmly on the ground Squinting through the sights, she waited until the blond was clearly silhouetted against the milky sky Then she squeezed the trigger The gun blasted half a clip of ammunition before she could take her finger away

 

Slowly, tiredly, Lela climbed the steep green slope The blond lay sprawled on his face several meters down the other side, his back a mass of blood

 

Lela slipped and half slid down to where he lay She pulled him over onto his back

 

His eyes were glazed with pain Yet he smiled at her, raggedly "You think more of those bloody apes than you do of human beings, don't you?" His voice was a harsh, bubbling whisper

 

"Yes," said Lela as she watched him die "Yes, I do "

 

CHAPTER 36

 

LI-PO Hsen walked onto the catwalk in the starship chamber only after six black uniformed men armed with pistols and submachine guns stepped out and formed a silent menacing line along the metal railing Then the head of Pacific Commerce came through the doorway He was too short, Jo no

 

ticed, to need to duck his head. The only addition to his usual shortsleeved shirt and comfortable, baggy slacks were the weighted lunar boots he wore. To Jo they looked almost like the boots deep-sea divers had used a century earlier.

 

Behind him came Zoltan fanos, his antiquated business suit still buttoned tightly across his stocky torso, his round bearded face staring in awe at the huge bubbling vat that simmered and steamed almost within arm's reach of the catwalk.

 

Cliff Baker and Tomasso stood next to Jo, but their presences faded to nothing as she locked eyes with the man who had murdered her daughter.

 

Both of them tried their best to keep their faces from betraying the emotions that raged within them. Hsen felt the joy of long-awaited triumph All the knowledge of the alien star-rovers is within Stoner's mind, and I have him in my grasp He will cooperate once he understands what can happen to his wife if he does not. It might even be profitable to give him a little demonstration, show him how easy it is to make a woman beg for mercy. Jo would try to resist, of course. I wonder how much pain it will take to break her?

 

Jo saw the corners of Hsen's mouth twitch with the beginnings of a smile that he quickly suppressed. She allowed herself to smile back at him, and watched the surprise flash in his dark brown eyes.

 

That's not the only surprise I've got in store for you, she told her enemy silently You think you're safe because you've got six goons with guns behind you But just give me the opportunity to take my belt buckle off and I'll give you the last surprise of your life

 

Does he want to go to bed with me? Jo asked herself. It would be just like his kind of barbaric thinking, fuck the woman you've conquered. Okay, )ust say the word, take me to your bed and tell me to strip. That's all I want from you now

 

"I know what you are thinking," Hsen said

 

"Do you?"

 

"You would like to kill me, wouldn't you?"

 

Jo said, "Wouldn't you "

 

"No, not yet. Not for a long time Perhaps not at all, if you are reasonable "

 

"You murdered my daughter," Jo said, her voice as flat and wooden as that of a woman who had given up all hope.

 

"A regrettable accident."

 

"You abducted my husband and tried to kidnap my son."

 

"Your husband is an extremely valuable property," Hsen replied. "As for your son, and the cloning apparatus that bears your daughter--I can take them, if I must, no matter what the cost Or it might become necessary to destroy them Archimedes has no nuclear shield, does it?"

 

Jo's teeth clenched Kill him! her blood urged Kill him as quickly as you can, before he kills your babies

 

"You don't need to threaten me," she said, her right hand slowly going to her belt buckle. "You've won I know that the game is over."

 

Hsen's eyes became wary. "You accept defeat?"

 

Toying with her belt buckle, Jo said, "I understand when the time has come to make an accommodation."

 

"Such as?"

 

Gesturing toward the steaming vat with her left hand, Jo answered, "You can control Vanguard through me. You can have access to all the technology of the aliens through my husband. As long," her voice hardened, "as you promise not to harm my children or my husband."

 

Despite himself, Hsen let his eagerness show "Stoner will cooperate?"

 

"If I tell him that he must."

 

"Truly?"

 

"Why not ask me myself?"

 

They all turned and saw Stoner filling the metal doorway, his bare chest showing the ugly burns, his wrists skinned red, his beard and hair fiercely ragged. The guards levelled their guns at him

 

"Keith!"

 

Jo ran to him, pushing past Hsen's slight form and the

 

shocked, gaping Janos to throw herself into his arms. He gripped her tightly

 

"What have they done to you'"

 

"Not 'they,'" Stoner replied. "Him " He pointed at Janos with his left hand.

 

"Your fingeri"

 

Stoner moved his accusing hand to point at Hsen. "Working for him."

 

"How did you get out . . ." Janos's voice choked off as Ilona clumped through the doorway, still in the pressure suit, followed by Paulino Both of them had removed their helmets

 

"Who are these people?" Hsen demanded

 

Stoner made a wry smile. "Two lost souls "

 

Hsen folded his thin arms across his chest. "You are very clever, Dr. Stoner But not clever enough to evade bullets, I trust."

 

"That won't be necessary," Stoner said. Then he saw Cliff Baker and Tomasso, still standing off a few paces along the catwalk.

 

For a long moment he said nothing. The only sounds in the huge underground chamber were the frothing hiss of the immense seething, steaming glassteel vat and the distant whirring hum of the suction fans high above.

 

Stoner recognized Tomasso and sensed the fear and tension that made the man's innards tremble. But no guilt. Not a shred of guilt Tomasso felt no remorse for the role he had played in killing Cathy. He's convinced himself that it wasn't his fault, not his responsibility, Stoner sensed Poor damned fool All he fears is Jo's vengeance. If only he knew what he should really be afraid of.

 

Turning to Baker, Stoner asked, "What are you doing here, Cliff?"

 

But before Baker could answer, Stoner saw it flashing through the man's mind. He felt a sudden dizziness, a stomach-tumbling vertigo, as if the metal grillwork beneath his feet had given way and he was plunging in lunar slow motion down, down, down to the concrete floor fifteen stones below.

 

"My god, Cliff," Stoner gasped. "Why? Why did you do it?"

 

Baker made a lopsided smile "Why not?"

 

"Do what?" Jo asked, still in Stoner's protective grasp.

 

"The Horror," said Stoner "Cliff created the Horror."

 

Hsen and all the others stared at the Australian

 

With a slight giggle, Baker said, "I didn't create it. The stuff came out of a Vanguard laboratory--your own lab, Jo. The one at Mt Isa "

 

"That's not a biology lab!"

 

"The plague isn't biological," Stoner said "It's caused by nanomachmes. Virus-sized weapons specifically designed to destroy the cells of the stomach lining."

 

Baker's grin widened, became more twisted "Two of Jo's very bright lads were working on the next step down in size from biochips. One of 'em was a drinking mate of mine. Instead of communications chips, he wanted to create machines that could work inside the human body He got the idea of designing microminiaturized machines that could build even smaller machines."

 

"Down to nanometer dimensions," said Stoner "The size of a virus."

 

"Right The easiest one to build would be a machine that chewed up biological cells. That's what he wanted to do first. As an experiment "

 

"I've never seen a report about this work " Jo said in an accusing voice

 

" 'Course not. They knew what they were doing could be turned into enormous profits for Vanguard. And power That worried 'em "

 

Stoner saw Hsen's eyes glittering with the prospects of nanotechnology and the power it could yield

 

"Being good lads, they let me talk 'em into quitting Vanguard before their work went beyond the theory stage It was easy for me to convince 'em that no corporation could be trusted with this technology So I got 'em both to come and work for the IIA Gave 'em a lab of their own in Sydney and let 'em go ahead with their experiments."

 

"And then you killed them," said Stoner.

 

"I had to test the stuff, di'n't I?"

 

Hsen seemed wonder-struck. "And then you turned the plague loose on the world?"

 

"Right. Started my own population control program," Baker answered, almost laughing. "Women and children first, of course. Decent thing to do, don't you think?"

 

"It kills women preferentially," Stoner explained. "Especially pregnant women."

 

"Rich women," Baker corrected. "Kill the rich. Send the little buggers all across the world on airliners. Let the fat tourists and big-shot business people spread the plague among their own."

 

"But the Horror is killing millions of people--rich and poor!" Jo said.

 

"Can't be helped," Baker replied, shrugging. "Can't make an omelet without breaking eggs, y'know."

 

Ilona whispered, shocked, "But all those people . . ."

 

"What of it?" Baker snapped. "Maybe the plague will wipe out everybody except those of us who're clever enough to get off the planet. So what? There's too damned many people on Earth anyway, everybody knows that."

 

"If nanomachmes cause the Horror," Hsen mused, one hand lightly stroking his chin, "then other nanomachmes can be made to protect a person against the plague. Such protection would be priceless. Absolutely priceless!"

 

He turned to Stoner, "Is that not so?"

 

Stoner closed his eyes. Inoculate the whole population of Earth? Turn nanotechnology loose for everyone, all at once? The results could tear human society to shreds. Most human beings couldn't bear to see themselves as they truly are; it would hit them the way it hit Novotny. Half the world might go insane.

 

There is no other way, his star brother counselled. It is too late for gradual measures Our deepest fears have come true. Humans have discovered nanotechnology and are using it for genocide, perhaps racial suicide. We have no choice now but to provide them with the means to protect themselves.

 

"Is it not so?" Hsen repeated, raising his voice angrily.

 

"Yes," Stoner answered. "It is true."

 

"The ultimate power!" Hsen said, half to himself. "The power of life and death. Over everyone! Over the entire world!"

 

fo snapped, "You're acting as if the power is already yours."

 

"Of course it is! I control you, both of you. Dr. Stoner, you will begin by inoculating me, just as you inoculated de Sagres and the others."

 

Stoner stared at him for long moments, his gray eyes seeing beyond Hsen's jubilant face, beyond the starship being built atom by atom within the giant vat, beyond the confines of this world and time.

 

"Let me tell you about my star brother," he said, so softly that the others strained toward him slightly to hear.

 

It began nearly ten million years earlier, on a planet imbedded in a thick cluster of stars halfway across the Milky Way. They were originally created as weapons, Stoner told them. The nanomachmes were first invented to serve as implements of death. "Almost the same way you're using them, Cliff," Stoner said

 

Before they wiped themselves out, the race that invented the nanomachmes sent a few of its kind into deep space. Their best scientists saw that they had committed planet-wide genocide and tried to save a few of their own. The stars in their cluster were so close together that it took only a few years for a spacecraft to reach another civilized world. But the nanomachmes that they carried within them, built for nothing more than killing, began to destroy that race, too. Like an interstellar plague, the machines killed and killed and killed.

 

The second race's scientists worked feverishly to develop their own nanotechnology and counter the invading plague. They succeeded. They saved their species. For a while. They found that the nanomachmes could be made to preserve the bodies they dwelled in, protect them against disease and cure injuries. Their hfespans lengthened incredibly They became virtually immortal. But they did not know how to handle such godlike power. They allowed their numbers to grow

 

beyond the ability of the planet to support them. The gift of life was turned into worldwide pollution that destroyed their biosphere. Again, a pitiful few were able to get away on spacecraft, but their race died in its own garbage and excrement.

 

And so it has gone. For millions of years, from one world to another, across the breadth of the Milky Way galaxy the nanomachmes have spread. Over those eons the machines have gained incredible new capabilities as one race after another added different powers to them. Now they can be sym-biotes, enhancing not only their hosts' physical well-being, but the hosts' mental abilities also. Yet not one race in a thousand has been wise enough to use them well. The race that sent them to Earth was one of those rare exceptions. Virtually every species to attain nanotechnology killed itself within a generation or two.

 

"The star brethren are a test," Stoner concluded. "The human race's ultimate test Can we join with these symbiotes to move humanity to the next phase of our development, or will we use their powers to destroy ourselves?"

 

Hsen nodded as if he understood. "That is why this power must be restricted to the very few people who have the understanding and strength to direct all the others."

 

"Such as you?" Jo sneered.

 

"Don't you understand?" Stoner asked of them. "Don't any of you understand? We're talking about an evolutionary step as big as the invention of fire Bigger! Even the biochips are trivial compared to nanotechnology."

 

"Yes," said Ilona. "I see. I understand."

 

Stoner went on, "At first, evolution works at the physical level, changing species over geological spans of time. Once a species achieves intelligence, though, evolution becomes social. Our societies change, and that becomes the driving force in our evolution. Social changes happen over centuries, generations, incredibly faster than physical evolution works. But when the species invents science, the big evolutionary changes come out of technology, and they come so swiftly that it's hard to keep up with them. The world begins to change in decades instead of generations."

 

The others stared at him in silence.

 

"Two or three decades ago," Stoner went on, "everybody was scared to death of nuclear weaponry. For the first time people realized that we had developed a technology that could wipe out all life on Earth. Politicians and scientists and diplomats worked out treaties to control nuclear weapons. But while they were doing that, our global technology was spewing out enough pollution to heat up the atmosphere and change the world's climate."

 

"And cutting down the rain forests," Ilona said.

 

"And manufacturing poison gas weapons," added Tomasso.

 

"That's just it," Stoner told them. "Our technology is global in its power. Unless we control it carefully it can destroy us in a thousand ways."

 

Jo said, "And nanotechnology is so big a step ..."

 

Looking at her, Stoner said, "Right. Bigger than anything that's come before it. It's so big that it could shatter the human race before we learn to deal with it. That's what we've been trying to avoid. That's why we've worked to introduce nanotechnology gradually, carefully, with the least shock and pam to human society as possible."

 

He turned back to Baker. "But you've made that impossible, Cliff You're forcing me to inoculate the world against your Horror. The consequences . . . god, I don't know what the consequences will be."

 

"That is of no importance at the moment," Hsen snapped. "You will inoculate me Now!"

 

"No," said Stoner.

 

Hsen's thin lips curved upward slightly "You are in no position to refuse me. Unless, of course, you do not care what happens to your wife "

 

Stoner thought swiftly. He's a strong personality, not like Novotny. And absolutely amoral. Like Vie, he doesn't feel guilt for anything he's done. A star brother might open his heart to the rest of humanity, or it might simply reinforce his existing personality. A man of that strength, of that ruthlessness, with a star brother? We can't take that chance, Stoner's star brother agreed.

 

"I won't do it," Stoner said.

 

Hsen let his fury show in his face. He pointed at Jo and said to the black-uniformed men behind him, "Pin her arms behind her back "

 

Not a man moved They stood staring at nothingness, their submachine guns slung over their shoulders.

 

"Do as I say!" Hsen shouted.

 

"They can't hear you," said Stoner softly. "They can't even see you "

 

His face contorting with rage, Hsen grabbed at the holster on the hip of the commando nearest him. Pulling the heavy black revolver from it, he levelled the gun at Stoner. The others backed away, but Jo clung tightly to her husband

 

"You can control them but you can't control me " he shouted.

 

"What makes you believe that?" asked Stoner mildly. "Do you really think that you're some sort of superior creature? Do you think that your ability to make money, to steal and he and murder, places you above normal men?"

 

Hsen squeezed the trigger. Nothing happened. He brought up his other hand and pulled with both fingers. Beads of perspiration broke out on his forehead. His lips peeled back in the grimace of a hissing snake.

 

Ignoring him, Stoner turned to Baker. "Cliff, you're sick. Maybe you've always been this way. Maybe it's my fault. I don't know if a star brother can heal the scars in your mind. There's a chance that if you realize what you've done, truly understand the enormity of the evil you've unleashed--that realization might kill you. It's a chance you'll have to take."

 

Baker backed away, one hand sliding along the railing of the catwalk. "No you don't! You're not sticking those alien monsters in me!"

 

"Stop speaking!" Hsen screamed. "I'll kill you all!"

 

Without moving his arm from Jo's shoulders Stoner told him, "Be quiet, little man. Cliff is a psychopath, and he needs our help. But you are a deliberate, calculating murderer. You are a carrier of death, you belong with the dead."

 

"I'll kill you'"

 

Stoner's voice became as soft as the sweep of an angel's hovering wings. "There is only one person here that you can kill."

 

For a long moment Hsen stood absolutely still, holding the heavy revolver rigidly in both hands, pointed at Stoner's chest. Then his arms began to tremble and slowly, painfully, his hands turned the pistol inch by agonizing inch until it pointed at his own face. Hsen's entire body shook with the exertion. Rivulets of sweat ran down his face. His eyes were wide with horror as he stared directly into the yawning black depths of the gun's muzzle.

 

"Now," whispered Stoner, "if you truly want to kill someone, now you can pull the trigger."

 

Hsen screamed an incoherent animal screech. The gun went off with a shattering roar and the upper half of his head disappeared in an explosion of blood and bone and brain His nearly headless body slammed against the catwalk railing, vaulted over it and fell slowly twisting to the steel flooring fifteen stories below. It finally hit with a sickening wet thump

 

Jo's fingers tore into Stoner's flesh She screamed, and so did Ilona. Baker stared, goggle-eyed. Tomasso and Janos stood frozen in slack-jawed shock. Behind him Stoner heard Paulmo gag and retch in the corridor outside the doorway. Jo was clutching at his bare torso He could feel her gulping for breath, her whole body wire-taut.

 

The six black-clad commandos still stood as if they had turned to statues

 

"How does revenge feel, Jo?" he asked.

 

She swallowed hard "Numb," she gasped. "I feel numb all over "

 

"You would have felt worse if you had killed him yourself Vengeance is always bitter, Jo. Always."

 

Janos, his eyes nearly popping from their sockets, stuttered, "P-please . . . don't . . don't kill me!"

 

Stoner stared at him

 

"I didn't know ... I didn't realize ..."

 

"You knew," Stoner said calmly. Extending his left hand with its stump where a finger should have been, "You knew exactly what you were doing. You )ust never thought that you'd have to face the consequences."

 

The Hungarian fell to his knees and clutched Stoner's legs. "Don't kill me! Please don't kill me "

 

Stoner reached out and grasped his quaking shoulder with his four-fingered hand. "Don't you think that I know the terror that lies deep in your heart? I feel it too, the terror of death, the fear that I will cease to be."

 

Janos raised his tear-streaked face.

 

"Hsen killed himself," said Stoner, "because he didn't have the courage to face a world in which he would be powerless. I simply allowed him to do it. I can't kill you--even if you deserved it."

 

"Thank you!" Janos blubbered. "Thank you!"

 

But Stoner raised his hand. "I'm going to do something to you that might be much worse. I'm going to give you a star brother. You saw what it did to your president. What it does to you will depend on your own inner strength, your own ability to expand your consciousness to envelop the entire human race."

 

"It'll protect us against the Horror?" Jo asked.

 

"Yes. And it will change the way you see the world, for as long as you live "

 

"What about me?" Tomasso asked, all in a rush. Stoner could see that it took every ounce of his courage to ask Jo the question. The muscles beneath the skin of his face were so rigid that he seemed to be wearing a mask of pain.

 

Jo looked up at her husband and then back at the traitor. "Just get out of my sight, Vie," she said wearily. "Go away and never let me see you again."

 

"Can . . ." Tomasso shifted his fearful eyes to Stoner. "Can I get it too, a star brother"

 

Stoner nodded. "Will you share it with others? Will you return to Earth and help to inoculate your human brothers and sisters?"

 

"Ten billion people?" Tomasso's voice was slightly hollow with the challenge.

 

"Everyone," said Stoner.

 

"I'll try," he said.

 

"Good."

 

"You'll never do it in time," Baker said, almost snarling. "They're already starting to tear themselves apart down there. The human race is going to self-destruct!"

 

"You're wrong, Cliff," Stoner replied. "You've been wrong about almost everything."

 

"Everybody dies!" Baker nearly shouted it.

 

"Not anymore," Stoner said softly. "You almost had it right when you said that only those of us off-planet can survive the Horror. Space flight, the ability to live elsewhere than on the Earth, that's what guarantees the immortality of the human race. Even if we fail to beat the Horror, the human race can survive here on the Moon and in the Lagrange habitats. Our' fate is no longer tied to the fate of the Earth."

 

"And star flight," Jo said, the realization of it filling her voice with wonder. "With star flight the human race can outlive the Sun!"

 

Stoner smiled at her and pointed to the enormous vat beyond the catwalk's railing. It had stopped bubbling. The steam was gone. Within its cylindrical glassteel walls they saw the graceful crystalline lines of the starship's propulsion and guidance section.

 

"It glitters like a diamond!" Ilona exclaimed. "An enormous diamond!"

 

Stoner said, "A lot of it is diamond, especially the structural segments and the hull. Nothing but carbon atoms, properly arranged by nanomachines."

 

Glancing down at the bloody remains of Hsen, Jo said, "That's what he wanted. The starship. All the knowledge that the aliens hold."

 

"There are no aliens," Stoner said. "Not anymore. They're our star brothers and sisters. Our symbiotes. We need each other to live."

 

"Like multicellular organisms," Ilona said. "Single-celled

 

creatures joined together billions of years ago to produce the earliest multicellular organisms Now we are joining with the star creatures "

 

Stoner nodded "First single cells, then aggregations of cells Now we move on to a symbiosis that will create a new species, the next step in humankind's development "

 

"You're not sticking those alien machines in me!" Baker shouted, waving his fists in the air "You're not going to turn me into an alien freak "

 

Stoner took a step toward him "Cliff, the symbiotes have made me more human, not less There's nothing to fear "

 

Baker stared at him wildly

 

"Believe me, Cliff," Stoner soothed, "we're all going to be more than human You'll see "

 

The primitive fire in Baker's eyes calmed His hands unclenched

 

Will he be able to handle a star brother within him' Stoner wondered silently His own star brother replied, That is a test that every human will have to face, now

 

Paulmo's timid voice came from the doorway "Will we really be safe from the Horror?"

 

Stoner smiled at him "And from addictions, too Chemical and otherwise " He nodded to Ilona

 

"Immortality?" Jo asked "Will we truly be immortal?"

 

"Maybe With the star symbiotes within us, who knows how long a human being can live? Long enough to go star-roving, at least "

 

"It frightens me a little," said Ilona

 

"It frightens me a lot," Stoner admitted "This is going to change human society completely The upheavals are going to be tremendous "

 

"But the alternative is the Horror," Jo said

 

"Yes That's the problem "

 

"Then what are we waiting for?" she asked, with newfound strength in her voice "We've got a whole world of work to do Let's get started Now "

 

EPILOGUE

 

JOAO de Sagres stood at the crest of the bare pebbly hill and watched, breathless in the high altitude of the Nazcan plain, as the Sun touched the horizon exactly at the point where the long straight line arrowed to reach it

 

The star brother within him had never seen the figures before, scratched into the bare soil of Nazca so many centuries earlier Neither had de Sagres Together they thrilled at the artistry and determination that had covered the empty plain with human purpose

 

De Sagres smiled inwardly How my cabinet members would laugh if they saw me here, alone, in this faded old wmdbreaker and worn-thin slacks £7 Presidente should always have his entourage around him, he should wear hand-tailored suits with razor-edge creases and elegant silk ties At least, thought the president, they no longer expect their leader to wear a military uniform

 

The breeze gustmg across the treeless plain from the Andes was chilling De Sagres knew it would get much colder once the Sun had dipped completely below the barren horizon Still he waited at the hill's dusty summit Waited and watched the sky darken

 

Perhaps we should not have come alone, his star brother said to him It's a long way to the nearest station on the highway

 

I had to get away, he replied silently, away from the crowds and the ceremonies Away from the work and the pain and the grief This night of all nights, I must be by myself

 

He sensed his star brother's hurt Are we not one person he rebuked mildly

 

One person, my brother, admitted de Sagres

 

It had been a long, hard year The Horror was being brought under control, but slowly, ever so slowly Nearly a quarter billion people had died in Latin America alone A terrible, agonizing tragedy De Sagres could feel the awful grief and misery that spanned the world To him the deaths were not merely statistics, they were brothers and sisters who had perished, his blood, his km He had gazed deeply into the well of anguish A lesser man would have given up hope and run away to hide

 

But it has been only one year, his star brother replied Less than a full year And the death rate is dropping fast now

 

De Sagres thought of the changes that were already taking place across Latin America and the rest of the world Humans accepted the "alien" inoculations because they were terrified of the Horror Then they found that they carried star brothers and star sisters within themselves

 

Some went mad Some seemed completely unchanged But for most men and women, the star symbiotes seemed to make them more human than they had ever been They could no longer look at another person as someone separate from themselves They could not look at an animal or a tree or even a cloud in the sky as something outside their own existence

 

Across Latin America, across the entire world, the human race was reaching toward a new level of existence No one on Earth was untouched by the twin impacts of the Horror and the star symbiotes There were no isolated human souls anymore No one could stand alone and aloof, not once he acquired a star brother Pushed by the Horror, pulled by the star brethren, all of humanity was swiftly becoming one huge interlinked family, brought together by ties of love and caring and--at long last--understanding

 

The teachings of Christ are becoming the norm of human behavior, thought de Sagres He smiled to himself Even the Church is becoming Christian, at last

 

Slowly the Moon rose from behind the sunset-tinged snow-caps of the Andes, enormous and full, pale and slightly sad looking

 

De Sagres felt his heart thumping as he strained his eyes to see the lights of human settlements on the lopsided face of the Moon And then he saw one single incredibly bright light, so brilliant that no one could miss it, rising up from near the edge of the Moon's disc, heading out into the darkness of the night sky, racing into the depths of black space, stretching into a streak of blazing light that crossed the dome of the heavens and then dwindled swiftly and was gone

 

The sky seemed to shudder Ghostly shimmering veils of delicate pale greens and pinks rippled across the encroaching darkness The aurora, never seen at this latitude except when a starship taps the core of the Earth's magnetic field

 

The dancing sheets of pastel colors seemed to be waving good-bye to the departing starship A farewell from the planet A farewell from all of humankind

 

De Sagres waved too Both his arms, like an eager child, until the light of the starship and the answering gleam of the aurora both disappeared and left the sky empty--except for thousands of glittering stars

 

Dhoum Nkona stood outside his house and saw the silver arrow of light streak across the night sky of Africa He watched, fascinated, as the aurora glowed the way it had thirty-three years earlier, when the alien's ship had first appeared in Earth's skies

 

Beside the gray old man stood Lela Obin, young, strong, slowly recovering from her ordeal of eight months earlier

 

The star sister within her had confirmed what Nkona had tried years ago to teach her that all living creatures are linked, united into a single form of life that spans Mother Earth Yet her star sister expanded even that insight all living creatures are linked even among the far-scattered stars All life in the universe is one

 

That vision had nearly destroyed Lela The guilt and shame she felt over her murder of five men almost drove her insane Almost For months she could not face another human being She lived in the preserve with the great apes while her star

 

sister gradually, patiently helped her to understand her own depths of fear and hatred

 

Now she stood beside Nkona, ready to take her place in the world of imperfect men and women once again The old man gave her a fatherly smile Lela was stronger now than she had ever been The wound in her spirit was healing, the scar would always be there, but she would be all the stronger for having suffered the wounding and surviving Men and women were imperfect, it was true, but they were striving toward perfection Nkona believed with all the fierce passion in his soul that each human being was truly perfectible

 

Less than fifty kilometers from where they stood, outside Nkona's modest home on the fringe of the university campus, several hundred gorillas lived in peaceful contentment at last No one had even tried to bother them, not since the star brethren had shown all who received what Lela had known from the beginning

 

In Bangladesh it was nearly morning Walking slowly along the sandy shore, Chandra Varahamihara turned his gaze from the gently lapping sea to the dark forest that lined the beach with tall swaying coconut palms and thickly gnarled goran mangroves

 

He was a lonely figure, this frail bald-shaved lama in his saffron robe But he was not alone Within him dwelled a star brother, and he sensed all the hundreds of millions, the billions of humans who also shared their blood with brethren from the stars

 

Once this region where the five mighty rivers met the sea was called the Plain of Death The rivers would flood and thousands who had no dwelling place except miserable shacks along their banks would be swept away The sea would be heavy with drowned bodies for weeks afterward

 

Now, in his mind's eye, Varahamihara could see the mighty dams far to the north in the mountains of Nepal that controlled the flow of the rivers And the forests that had been planted to hold the moisture of the monsoon rains and pre-

 

vent the erosion of the soil that the people needed to grow their food Almost, he smiled Nepal was becoming a rich nation, selling its hydroelectric power not only to Bangladesh but to India, China, and even the Soviet Union

 

But the smile never came to his lips The Horror had been particularly cruel in the great Indian subcontinent Its ravages were diminishing as the visitors from the stars joined in the unity of life, but what a terrible, excruciating toll it had taken Yet perhaps such pain was necessary The wheel of life is lubricated with human blood, it seems At least now the teachings of the Buddha were becoming the true frame of reference for all the people of Earth

 

Yet he wondered What changes will come when all men and women are linked with star brothers and sisters? We will survive the Horror, that much seems sure now But can we survive the cure'

 

The lama lifted his worried face to the glowing dawn that touched the sea's horizon with pink

 

A streak of brilliant light rose in that brightening sky and climbed across the heavens Varahamihara watched the star-ship until it disappeared from sight, uttering a prayer of peace to those who were heading for the stars And of thanks

 

But most of all he prayed for understanding

 

In the dimmed lighting of the starship's observation dome, Stoner and his son seemed to be standing on nothing, suspended in space, as the Earth dwindled to a mere point of light Stoner rested one hand on Rickie's shoulder and realized that the boy was already chest-high to his father

 

Wherever they looked the stars crowded thickly against the blackness of space, like sprinklings of brilliant gems that dazzled the eye

 

"We're on our way " Rickie shouted, a mixture of excitement and fear in his voice

 

Stoner tousled his son's hair "Yes, we are This is going to be our home for a long, long time, Rick You'll be a grown man before we return to Earth "

 

"How long will it take to get to the world where the star brothers came from?"

 

Stoner called up the figures in his mind. "It will seem like a couple of years to us."

 

"Cathy will be born by then, won't she? She'll be a little baby."

 

"You'll be her big brother, Rick. You'll help to take care of her, won't you?"

 

"Sure."

 

Stoner and his son walked back to the living quarters, where there were normal-looking walls and furniture. He had designed this part of the ship to look as much like their home in Hilo as possible, even down to the plant hangings and carpets.

 

Half the scientists of Earth had wanted to go along on this first human flight to the stars. Politely but with implacable firmness, Stoner had refused them all.

 

"The ship's sensor systems will be transmitting data to you constantly," he had said. "That will have to do until more starships are built."

 

The only other one aboard their ship, other than Jo and Stoner and their children, had been the dead and frozen body of Kirill Markov. The first duty that Stoner had performed once the ship had cleared the Earth/Moon region was to release Kir's sarcophagus and send it searching outward among the stars.

 

"Good-bye, old friend," Stoner had whispered. "May you find eager minds wherever you travel."

 

Now he lay in bed next to Jo, watching the stars through the transparent diamond ceiling above them.

 

"Just like home," Jo murmured.

 

"This is our home," he replied. "All the home we'll know."

 

"I'll miss seeing the Moon."

 

He smiled. "You'll have other sights to entertain you. Have you noticed that the stars aren't just pinpoints of light anymore?"

 

"No ..." Jo stirred slightly beside him, as if concentrating her attention on the panoply of stars above them.

 

"See? They're like little oblate spheres. Almost like teardrops."

 

"Oh yes! They're all that way."

 

"In another few days they'll look like streaks, smears that are red on one end and blue on the other," he told Jo.

 

She moved closer to him, pressed against his bare flesh. He slid an arm around her lovely shoulders. The scent of her hair was like jasmine.

 

Jo asked, "Are you certain we had to leave?"

 

He turned and looked at her in the light of the stars. "Helluva time to ask."

 

"We could always turn around." But she was grinning at him.

 

"I had to leave, Jo. Maybe you and the kids didn't, but I had to. I've done everything I could do. If we had stayed on Earth they'd start to treat me like some kind of royalty. Or worse, a deity."

 

"You wouldn't like to be worshipped?"

 

"I haven't done anything to be worshipped for," he said tightly. "I failed, really. I wanted to introduce the star brethren gradually, gently, give the human race enough time to absorb the changes that nanotechnology will bring. But I failed."

 

"It wasn't your fault."

 

"Still ..."

 

"You did everything you could."

 

Stoner did not reply.

 

Propping herself on one elbow, Jo looked down at his starlit face and said, "I'm glad it worked out this way. If it hadn't, you'd have spent the next hundred years trying to ease them into nanotechnology. You'd have broken your heart trying to make things right for every last idiot on Earth. Now they've got to do it for themselves."

 

"But can they? Can they absorb this without destroying themselves?"

 

With a shrug of her bare shoulders, Jo answered, "We'll find out when we come back."

 

Stoner thought about it for a few moments. Then, "Maybe

 

you're right, Jo. I thought I could give them a new world, but maybe in the final analysis nobody can give the human race anything They've got to make it for themselves."

 

"Sink or swim."

 

"Ten billion lives," he muttered.

 

"Less than that, after the Horror," Jo corrected.

 

Nodding absently, "Well, the human race has beaten other challenges in the past. The Ice Ages, wars, famines . . ."

 

"They'll make it," Jo said confidently "By the time we return they'll have statues of you in every city on Earth."

 

"God forbid'"

 

She laughed

 

"That's exactly what I wanted to avoid," Stoner said. "That's why we had to leave. If I had stayed on Earth they would have never left me alone. They would have wanted to ... to

 

"To deify you Or at least make you a saint." Jo lay back on the pillows "Saint Keith of the Star Brethren They'd hang your portrait in the Vatican."

 

"That's not funny." Despite himself he was grinning at her.

 

"No, it isn't. Especially when we both know you could have never said no to any of them Never duck that damned sense of responsibility of yours "

 

Stoner changed the subject "I know it was a lot to ask, Jo, bringing you and Rickie--taking you away from everything, away from home . ."

 

"My home is with you, Keith."

 

"You won't miss Vanguard? The power?"

 

"I don't know Maybe I will But I want to be with you," she said, her eyes searching his.

 

"Even out to the stars'"

 

"Even out to the stars," Jo said. Then she added, "It is kind of scary, though "

 

"Scary?"

 

"Flying out to the stars aboard a ship completely unlike anything that's ever been built before Don't you have any doubts' And questions'"

 

Stoner wrapped his arms around her "I think it's time you received your very own star sister Then you would understand much better than you do now "

 

"I don't need it now," Jo said "There's no danger of the Horror here "

 

"There's no danger of anything here, except maybe an equipment failure But the ship is self-repairing, self-regenerating Just like me " He waggled the five fingers of his left hand

 

Jo was quiet for a moment Then, "Keith, I can't trust what I don't understand "

 

"But

 

"Let me finish " She touched a finger to his lips "I trust you If you think I should have a star sister, I'll do it. Not because I want it, but because you want me to "

 

Stoner kissed her "I'll have to prick your finger "

 

"Can't you do it while we make love?"

 

He blinked with surprise "I never thought of it " His star brother smiled within him "Yes, of course If that's the way you want to, why not "

 

"I'll get my star sister by injection," Jo teased

 

Stoner laughed and kissed her again

 

Nearly an hour later, as they lay side by side staring up at the stars, a sheen of perspiration on their naked skins, Jo said, "I don't feel any different "

 

"You will tomorrow And all the tomorrows afterward The next time we make love, you'll see "

 

"Really?"

 

"The symbiotes can damp down on your emotions, when it's necessary," he said, grinning "But they can also enhance them You'll see "

 

"So that's how " Jo pursed her lips

 

Stoner became serious again "You'll start to understand why I couldn't let you kill Hsen "

 

"That would have been an execution," she snapped

 

"It would have been a vendetta murder, and sooner or later you would have felt the full impact of its guilt "

 

"The last of the warlords," Jo muttered.

 

"What?"

 

"Hsen--he always reminded me of an old-fashioned oriental warlord."

 

Stoner smiled at her. "Good analogy. Only, he wasn't the last of the warlords, Jo. You were."

 

"Me?"

 

"Not all the warlords were evil," he quickly added. "Still . . . maybe it's a good thing that you're heading for the stars with me. You might have decided to make yourself empress of Earth."

 

For some while she did not reply. They lay together and watched the stars.

 

"I'm sure you would have made a good empress," Stoner offered.

 

Jo laughed softly. "Sure you are."

 

"Want to go back and try it?"

 

Instead of replying, she said, "Everything always changes, doesn't it? Whether we want it to or not."

 

Nodding in the starlight, Stoner answered, "Some changes we deliberately cause, some we have to adapt to because we can't avoid them."

 

"Keith," she asked, her voice suddenly urgent, "where does it all end? Where are we heading? What are we doing?"

 

He smiled at her. "We've helped the human race make the transition to the brotherhood of the stars, Jo. That's the greatest achievement we or anyone else could have accomplished."

 

"And now what?"

 

"And now we have the whole universe to play in. No matter what happens, we have each other and our children."

 

"And the stars," Jo said.

 

"And the stars," he agreed.

 

She turned toward him again. "Keith . . . you could have gone on this journey without us."

 

"Without you?"

 

"You left me once. For eighteen years."

 

"That was a long time ago. A lifetime ago. I couldn't leave you now. I love you, Jo. I want you beside me always."

 

She smiled in the starlight and twined her arms around his neck.

 

"That's what I wanted to hear," Jo said.

 

"You didn't know?"

 

"I still like to hear you say it."

 

Stoner kissed her lightly on the lips. Then he began to sing an old tune that Jo recognized from her student years. He's never sung to me before, she thought. And at that moment all her fears disappeared like a rime of frost evaporating in the morning sun. Jo smiled, content to be with this man and their children, wherever their destiny would take them.

 

And Stoner sang, in a surprisingly gentle and romantic voice:

 

"If the world should stop revolving, spinning slowly down to dust

 

"I'd spend the end with you,

 

"And when the world was through

 

"Then one by one the stars would all go out,

 

"Then you and I would simply fly away."

 

The End