The Silent War

SHINING MOUNTAIN BASE

Daniel Jomo Tsavo hated the three-second lag in communications between the Earth and Moon. It upset him to ask a question and then wait and wait and wait until the answer came back. Yet there was no way around the lag. And now the safety people have warned us that a solar storm is on its way; normal communications will be disrupted and all work on the surface will have to stop until the storm passes. Ah well, he said to himself, this call to Yamagata is on a tight laser-beam link. The storm should not affect it, unless it’s powerful enough to fry the laser transmitter on the surface.

“Pancho Lane wants to visit your base?” Nobuhiko Yamagata replied at last.

Tsavo nodded vigorously. “She just called. She’s at the Astro facility in the Malapert Mountains, no more than a hundred kilometers from where I sit.”

Again the interminable lag. Tsavo used the time to study Yamagata. His round, flat face looked frozen, his eyes hooded, his expression unreadable. Yet he must be thinking furiously, Tsavo thought. Come on, come on. Tell me what I should do.

“This is a striking opportunity,” Yamagata said at last. Tsavo agreed heartily. “I took it on my own authority to invite her to come over tomorrow.”

Yamagata again seemed lost in thought. At last he said, “Don’t delay. Bring her to your base as quickly as you can. I will send an interrogation team immediately on a high-g burn. There is much we can learn from her.”

Pancho felt slightly nervous being out on the surface with a solar flare cloud on its way. The scientists had estimated that it would take more than six hours for the radiation to even begin building up, but still she felt edgy about it. She was wearing a standard hard-shell space suit as she followed the Astro base director along the crest of Mount Randolph. Approaching storm or not, the director wanted to show off what his people were doing and Pancho had no intention of showing any fear in front of her own people.

I should be testing the softsuit I brought with me, she said to herself. Yet she answered silently, You know what they say about test engineers: more guts than brains. I’ll wear a softsuit when they’ve been in use for a year or two. Momma Lane didn’t raise any of her daughters to get themselves killed trying out new equipment.

She was being conducted on a quick walk through the small forest of gleaming white towers that reached up into the bright sunlight. Their wide, circular tops were dark with solar cells that drank in the Sun’s radiant energy and converted it silently to electricity. They look like great big mushrooms, Pancho thought. Then she corrected herself. Nope, they look more like giant penises. She giggled inwardly. A forest of phalluses. A collection of cocks. Monumental pricks, all standing at attention.

“As you can see,” the base director’s voice rasped in her earphones, “another advantage of the power towers is that the solar cells are placed high enough above the surface so they’re not bothered by dust.”

It took an effort for Pancho to control her merriment. “You don’t need to clean ’em off,” she said, trying to sound serious.

“That’s correct. It saves quite a bit of money over the long run.”

She nodded inside her helmet. “What about damage from micrometeoroids?”

“The cells are hardened, of course. Deterioration rate is about the same for the ground arrays around Selene.”

“Uh-hmm.” Pancho seemed to recall a report that said otherwise. “Didn’t the analysis that—”

A new voice broke into their conversation. “Ms. Lane, ma’am, we have an incoming call for you from the Nairobi base at Shackleton.”

“Put it through on freak two,” she said.

It was voice only, but she recognized Tsavo’s caramel-rich baritone. “Ms. Lane, Pancho, this is Daniel. I’m sending a hopper over to your facility within the next half-hour. Please feel free to visit us whenever you’re ready to.”

Grinning, delighted, Pancho answered, “I’ll get over there soon’s I can, Danny.”

“You know that a solar storm is approaching,” he said. Pancho nodded inside her helmet. “Yup. I’ll get to you before it hits.”

“Fine. That’s wonderful.”

Pancho cut her inspection tour short, apologizing to the base director, who frowned with undisguised disappointment.

Sure enough, there was a Nairobi Industries hopper standing on its spindly little legs, waiting for her at the launchpad. It was painted a vivid green with the corporate logo—an oval Masai shield and two crossed spears—stenciled just below the glassteel bubble of the cockpit.

She dashed to the room that the base director had given her for her quarters, picked up her still-unopened travel bag, and headed out toward the pad. She called Jake Wanamaker on her handheld to tell him where she was going and why. Then she buzzed her security chief and asked him why in the name of hell-and-gone he hadn’t been able to locate Lars Fuchs yet.

“I want him found,” she insisted. “And pronto.”

At that moment, Lars Fuchs was huddled with his three crew members in a narrow, shadowy niche between one of the big electrical power converters and the open-shelved storehouse that he used as his sleeping quarters.

“This is where you live, Captain?” Amarjagal asked, in a whisper that was halfway between respect and disbelief.

“This is my headquarters,” Fuchs replied evenly. “For the time being.”

Nodon said, “You could move in with me, sir. There is no need for you—”

“I’ll stay here. Less chance of being discovered.”

The three Mongols glanced at one another, but remained silent.

Over the weeks since Fuchs had gone underground he had learned the pattern of the maintenance robots that trundled along the walkways set between the machinery and storehouses in Selene’s uppermost level. It was easy enough to avoid them, and he swung up into the higher tiers of the warehouse each night to spread his bedroll for sleep. It was a rugged sort of existence, but not all that uncomfortable, Fuchs told himself. As long as he kept his pilfering of food and other supplies down to the bare necessities, Selene’s authorities didn’t bother to track him down. From what Big George had told him, it was easier for the authorities to accept a slight amount of wastage than to organize a manhunt through the dimly lit machinery spaces and storehouses.

The one thing that bothered Fuchs was the constant humming, throbbing that pervaded this uppermost level of Selene. He knew that Selene’s nuclear power generators were buried more than a hundred kilometers away, on the far side of Alphonsus’s ringwall mountains. Yet there was a constant electrical crackle in the air, the faint scent of ozone that triggered uneasy Earthly memories of approaching thunderstorms. Fuchs felt that it shouldn’t bother him, that he should ignore the annoyance. Still, his head ached much of the time, throbbing in rhythm to the constant electrical pulse.

He had chosen this site for his headquarters because he could commandeer the big display screen that had been erected on one side of the storehouse shelving. It had been placed there to help the occasional human operator to locate items stacked in inventory. Fuchs used its link to Selene’s main computer to study schematics of the city’s water and air circulation systems. He was searching for a way into Humphries’s mansion. So far his search had proved fruitless.

“The man must be the biggest paranoid in the solar system,” Fuchs muttered.

“Or the greatest coward,” said Amarjagal, sitting on the walkway’s metal grating beside him, her sturdy legs crossed, her back hunched like a small mountain.

Nodon and Sanja sat slightly farther away, their shaved skulls sheened with perspiration in the overly warm air. This close together, Fuchs could smell their rancid body odors. They have showers in their quarters, he knew. Perhaps they’re worried about their water allotments. Fuchs himself washed infrequently in water tapped from one of the main pipes that ran overhead. No matter how careful he was he always left puddles that drew teams of swiftly efficient maintenance robots, buzzing officiously. Fuchs feared that sooner or later human maintenance workers would come up to determine what was causing the leaks.

“Every possible access to his grotto is guarded by triply redundant security systems,” Fuchs saw as he studied the schematics. “Motion detectors, cameras, heat sensors.”

Nodon pointed with a skinny finger, “Even the electrical conduits are guarded.”

“A mouse couldn’t squirm through those conduits,” said Sanja.

“The man is a great coward,” Amarjagal repeated. “He has much fear in him.”

He’s got a lot to be afraid of, Fuchs thought. Then he added, But not unless we find a way into his mansion.

No matter how they studied the schematics, they could find no entry into Humphries’s domain, short of a brute force attack. But there are only four of us, Fuchs reminded himself, and we have no weapons. Humphries must have a security force patrolling his home that’s armed to the teeth.

Nodon shook his head unhappily. “There is no way that I can see.”

“Nor I,” Amarjagal agreed.

Fuchs took in a deep, heavy breath, then exhaled slowly, wearily. “I can,” he said.

The three of them turned questioning eyes to him.

“One of you will have to change your job, get a position with Selene’s maintenance department.”

“Is that possible?” asked Amarjagal.

“It should be,” Fuchs replied. “You’re all qualified technicians. You have identity dossiers from Astro Corporation.”

“I’ll do it,” said Nodon.

“Good.”

“And after Nodon begins working for the maintenance department?” Amarjagal asked.

Fuchs eyed her dispassionately. Of the three, she was the feistiest, the most likely to ask questions. Is it because she’s a woman? Fuchs wondered.

“I’ll have to acquire an identification chip for myself, so I can get down to Selene’s lowest level.”

“How can you get one?”

“I’ll need help,” he admitted.

The three Asians looked at him questioningly.

“I’ll call Pancho. I’m sure she can get an identification tag for me that will give me access to Humphries’s grotto.”

He was grasping at a straw and he knew it. Even worse, when he called Pancho from one of the phones set along the walkways of the machinery spaces, he was told that Ms. Lane was away from her office and unavailable.

“Where is she?” Fuchs asked.

“Ms. Lane is unavailable at present,” the phone’s synthesized voice answered. “Please leave your name and someone will get back to you as soon as possible.”

Fuchs had no intention of leaving his name. “Can I reach her, wherever she is?”

“Ms. Lane is unavailable at present,” the computer replied cheerfully.

“How long will she be gone?”

“That information is unknown, sir.”

Fuchs thought swiftly. No sense trying to pry information out of a stupid machine, he thought. Besides, he didn’t want to stay on the phone long enough to draw the attention of Selene’s security monitors.

“Tell her that Karl Manstein called and will call again.”

Feeling desperate, trapped, he punched the phone’s OFF key.

It wasn’t easy to surprise Douglas Stavenger. No matter that he had been officially retired from any formal office for decades, he still kept himself informed on everything that happened in Selene. And beyond, to a considerable extent.

He knew that his wife was pressing the news media chief for more coverage of the war raging out in the Belt. He knew that the corporations were pushing in the opposite direction, to keep the story as hushed up as possible. The Starlight tragedy had forced some light into the situation, but both Astro and Humphries Space Systems exerted every gram of their enormous power to move the media off the story as quickly as possible.

But now, as he sat at the breakfast table with his wife, Stavenger was truly shocked by her revelation.

“You’re going to Ceres?” Edith smiled prettily over her teacup. “Nobody else wants to open up this story, Doug, so I’m going to do it.”

He fought down an impulse to shake his head. For several moments he said nothing, staring at his bowl of yogurt and honey, his thoughts spinning feverishly.

Yet when he looked up at her again all he could think to say was, “I don’t like it, Edie.”

“I’m not sure that I like it myself, darling, but somebody’s got to do it and I don’t see anyone else stepping up to the task.”

“It’s dangerous out there.”

Her smile widened. “Now who’s going to harm the wife of Doug Stavenger? That would bring Selene into the war, wouldn’t it?”

“Not automatically, no.”

“No?” She arched a brow at him.

He conceded, “I imagine the corporations would fear Selene’s response.”

“If anyone harmed me,” she went on, quite seriously, “you’d see to it that Selene came into the war on the other side. Right? And that would throw the balance of power against the corporation that harmed me. Wouldn’t it?”

He nodded reluctantly.

“And that would decide the war. Wouldn’t it?”

“It could.”

“It would, and you know it. Everybody knows it, including Pancho Lane and Martin Humphries.” She took another sip of tea, then put the cup down with a tiny clink of china. “So I’ll be perfectly safe out there.”

“I still don’t like it,” he murmured.

She reached across the little table and grasped his hand. “But I’ve got to, Doug. You can see that, can’t you? It’s important: not just to me but to everybody involved, the whole solar system, for god’s sake.”

Stavenger looked into his wife’s earnest eyes and knew he couldn’t stop her.

“I’ll go with you, then,” he said.

“Oh no! You’ve got to stay here!”

“I don’t think—”

“You’re my protection, Doug. What happens if we both get killed out there? Who’s going to lead Selene?”

“The duly elected governing council.”

“Oh, sure,” she sneered. “Without you pulling their strings they’ll dither and shuffle and do nothing, and you know it.”

“No, I don’t know that.”

She smiled again. “I need your protection, Doug, and I can only get it if you’re here at Selene, keeping things under control.”

“You give me more credit than I deserve.”

“And you’re the youngest eminence grise in the solar system.”

He laughed. It was an old standing joke between them.

“Besides,” Edith went on, “if you come out to Ceres all the attention will be on you. They’ll fall all over themselves trying to show you that everything’s all right. I’ll never get a straight story out of anybody.”

He kept the argument going for nearly another half-hour, but Stavenger knew that his wife would do what she wanted. And so would he. Edith will go to Ceres, he realized, and I’ll stay here.

Nobuhiko was brimming with excitement when he called his father to tell him that Pancho Lane was walking into the Nairobi base on the Moon.

The elder Yamagata was in his cell in the monastery, a fairly sizable room whose stone walls were covered now with bookshelves and smart screens. The room was furnished sparsely, but Nobu noticed that his father had managed to get a big, square mahogany desk for himself.

Saito was sitting on his haunches on a tatami mat, however, directly under the big wallscreen that displayed an intricate chart that Nobu guessed was the most recent performance of the Tokyo stock exchange.

“She’s going into the Nairobi base voluntarily?” Saito asked.

“Yes!” gushed Nobu. “I’ve ordered an interrogation team to get there immediately! The Africans can drug her and the team wring her dry and she’ll never even know it!”

Saito grunted. “Except for her headache the next day.”

Nobu wanted to laugh, but held back.

His father said nothing for long, nerve-racking moments. Finally, “You go to Shackleton. You, yourself.”

“Me? But why—”

“No interrogation team knows as much about our work as you do, my son. You can glean much more from her than they could without you.”

Nobu thought it over swiftly. “But if somehow she recognizes me, remembers afterward…”

“Then she must be eliminated,” Saito answered. “It would be a pity, but it would be quite necessary.”