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machines got loose on Earth.
" -- and Erika Trace must have been infected at least a full day before
any of you. Yet, you say she has shown no signs of any adverse reaction."
Celeste plowed through the conversation, unmindful of Chu's interruption. When
she stopped, the delay allowed him too much time to think, to feel sorry for
himself.
"It's only a matter of time before somebody gets disassembled. We're
all watching each other to see who's the first to turn into a blob of ...
whatever."
Celeste came back gently. "Bernard, I'll give you all the help I can
from here, but I'm not sure what to do."
"I'm sure as hell not going to sit here and wait! What's happened to
you, Celeste? You never resigned yourself to waiting for the end before! What
would have happened if you'd done that on the Grissom? Where did this
bureaucratic mindset of yours come from?"
Celeste's unchanging face finally sagged. She kept staring, her face
grim. Chu watched her for ten heartbeats before he realized that she wasn't
going to speak again, that she was waiting for him to suggest something
better.
"These alien nanotech machines -- " He jabbed at his chest. " -- could
take us apart in a few seconds if they wanted to. At least let us do something
useful, dammit. What else have we got to lose?"
"Specifics, Bernard. What do you want to do?"
Chu settled down and got a grip on his emotions. He felt like a man
dying of lung cancer who was about to volunteer to smoke two packs a day.
"The entire moonbase is infected too, thanks to Typhoid Mary. Dvorak
has confirmed that. So, it doesn't matter if we come into contact with them. I
propose that we abandon the Collins and go down to Columbus. We can load up in
the LTV and head for the Moon before anything happens."
"Convince me. What advantage is there?"
Chu shrugged. "They've got more resources down there. You just hauled
the biostatistics equipment up here when you transferred my command. I'm a
biochemist -- maybe I can do some work on this, too."
"What do you propose doing differently?" Celeste's questions seemed to
be pro forma, as if she wanted to see if his answers matched her own ideas.
"First off, I'd start taking care of things Dvorak should have done a
long time ago. This is the perfect time to send a scouting party out to
Daedalus crater, explore the artifact. Since everyone is infected, why should
we be afraid of the nanomachines now?"
"You'll be disassembled if you do that." Her voice sounded cold.
"We should have been disassembled hours ago! Something has happened, a
mutation maybe, and we need to take advantage of it! Our death sentence is
already signed."
Celeste pondered this for some moments, but Chu could not tell what she
was thinking, could not read her body language. Her voice came as a near
whisper transmitted across cislunar space. "What about the rest of the Collins
crew? Do they agree? Are all fourteen of them willing to go along with this?"
Chu thought of the two astronomers and one tech locked up and sedated
in the loading pod bay, how they had broken down and started raving when told
of their infection.
He also thought of Bryan Zimmerman, who still did not know of their
situation, though he too was infected. Chu had decided that, with so much
riding on the pilot shuttling everyone down to the surface, it was best not to
tell him yet.
Chu whispered, "Yes, everyone agrees -- we need to expedite leaving the
Collins."
Celeste glanced down at her watch. "We can't postpone the _Rising Sun_
longer than seven hours before they have to abort and return to Earth orbit.
Can you leave your station before then?"
"Of course." Chu felt confident in that much. He had checked already in
the LTV specs; if everyone took only minimal items with them, the lunar
transfer vehicle was rated to carry the full complement down to the lunar
surface, though Bryan Zed might have a tough time piloting the heavy craft.
And Chu wanted to bring as much of his biostatistics equipment as he could.
"Very well, now listen to me carefully." Celeste's voice became hard.
"Once everyone has departed, we will remotely initiate the station shutdown
sequence."
Chu frowned. _Shutdown sequence?_ "That doesn't sound familar. I was
supposed to have been fully briefed before I took over command up here -- "
Celeste waved a hand. "General Simon Pritchard is working with me to
oversee a new instruction uplink to your onboard computers. We're writing the
code as we speak."
"But what does it do? What's going to happen to my station?"
"Once we get you to the Moon, the uplink instructions will sterilize
the Collins. No one -- including that Japanese tug or any hotshot salvage
artists -- can be allowed access to the L-1 staging area anymore. Any contact
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