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.They're only allowed to operate when an attack is launched across an international frontier.""So they claim."Kelly ignored his thrust."Moonbase isn't about to be invaded.It's being threatened by a gang of terrorists.We're trying to stop them.""Who the hell is this 'we'?""Private operation."He waited for more.When she did not offer it, Jay asked, "And the terrorists?""Professionals.Third World fanatics who're against the industrialized nations and against the Peacekeepers."Jay remembered a group of men and women who were against the Peacekeepers.Feared that the International Peacekeeping Force was a first step toward a world government.Refused to accept the idea of having their nations disarm and trust their defense to a gaggle of foreigners.They had rebelled against the IPF and nearly won.Nearly.Jay had been one of those rebels.His father, now director-general of the IPF, had branded him a traitor."Some of the smaller nations," Kelly was saying, "don't like the IPF in general, and hate Moonbase in particular.Lunar ores and space factories are competing with Third World countries.They say that just when they're starting to make a success of industrialization, Moonbase is underselling them.""So they hire a gang of professionals to nuke Moonbase.""That's it.""And where do they get their nuclear device? The IPF's been pretty damned thorough in dismantling the world's nuclear arsenals.""Not really," said Kelly."Disarmament's been more or less at a standstill for the past several years.There's at least half a dozen nukes unaccounted for.Somebody named Jabal Shamar stole them and disappeared.""And you think one of them's here?"Nodding, "Or on its way.Shamar sold it for the equivalent of a hundred million dollars.In gold."Jay whistled with awe.Despite himself, he believed her story.That's just what some of those bastards would do.They don't care who gets killed, as long as it isn't them.The only part that he refused to believe was her insistence that his father had no role in this operation.He knows about it.Jay told himself.He knows exactly where I am.Down to the millimeter.A flicker of movement caught his eye.Movement meant only one thing on the eons-dead surface of the Moon."Another vehicle up there."Kelly barely moved in her seat, but her body tensed like a gun being cocked."Another bus?" she asked."Out here? No way.""Then what.?"He tapped the camera keyboard and displayed the view on the screen that took up the middle of the dashboard.The vehicle was a smallish tractor, painted bright red, not unlike the automated crawlers that tended the solar energy farms.But the bubble riding atop it was undeniably a life-support module."Two-man job," Jay muttered."Have they seen us?""Probably.Might be from Lunagrad.""This far south?""It's a free territory," Jay said."They've got just as much right to poke around here as anybody.""Is it likely?""No," he had to admit."The Russians usually stay close to their own bases.And there's no scientific excursion out here—that I know of.""Turn around," Kelly said."What? I thought you wanted to get to Fra Mauro.""I do, but i want to get there alive.Turn around!"She was genuinely frightened.Jay saw.He gripped the wheel and slewed the bus almost ninety degrees, angling roughly northeast.We can tell them we just took a side trip on our way to Copernicus, Jay said to himself.Then he realized that he had accepted her view of the situation without thinking consciously about it: he had accepted the idea that this crawler was carrying two terrorists who had somehow learned of Kelly's mission and were here to stop her.Kelly popped out of her seat and went back toward the sleeping compartments.She returned with a pair of binoculars, big and black and bulky.Jay recognized the make and model: electronically boosted optics, capable of counting the pores on your nose at a distance of ten miles."They're following us." Her voice was flat, almost calm.Only the slightest hint of an edge in it."Two men in the cab, both wearing pressure suits with the visors up."She's been in heavy scenes before.Jay thought.Probably a lot more than I have.In the back of his mind he remembered the only real danger he had ever seen, the battle in orbit that his side had lost.Because of me.Jay heard his mind accuse.We lost because of me."They're gaining on us," Kelly announced, the binocs glued to her eyes."Can't you go faster?""This tub isn't built for speed," Jay grumbled, leaning on the throttle.The bus lurched marginally faster."There's no place to hide out here," she said."It's like the ocean." He thought that his father would know what to do.An old salt like him, with his Annapolis training, would be right at home on this lunar sea."You've only got the one air lock?"Jay nodded."Emergency hatch here by my side." He nudged the red release catch with his left elbow."But you've got to be in a suit to use it.""We'd better suit up, then.And fast.""Now wait a minute."She cut him off with a dagger-sharp look."You say you're not in with them.Okay, I'll believe that.As long as you behave like you're not in with them."Jay turned away from those blazing eyes and looked out the side window.The red crawler was gaining on them, coming up on their left rear.Kelly said, "Suits."She's scared of what they'll do when they overtake us, he thought.Deep inside him, Jay was frightened too.He set the controls back on autopilot and followed the diminutive redhead back toward the air-lock hatch.It took nearly fifteen minutes to worm into the suits and check out all the seals and systems."When we get outside," Kelly said through her open visor, "no radio.If we have to talk, we put our helmets together.""Tete-a-tete."She flashed a quick grin at him, thinking it was a pun rather than standard lunar jargon.They clumped back to the cab, single file, in the bulky suits.The crawler had gained appreciably on them.It was scarcely half a kilometer away.Jay began pecking at the guidance computer's keyboard."What are you doing?" Kelly demanded."We don't have time.""Instructing this bucket to circle around and head back to base.That way we can pick it up again later.Don't think we're going to walk back to Moonbase, do you?""I hadn't thought that far ahead," she admitted.They made their way back to the air lock and squeezed inside together.The outer hatch was on the right side of the bus, away from the approaching crawler
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