Wicksen extended one arm and tapped idly on the keyboard nearest him. "Have to increase the power output, of course," he muttered, more to himself than his visitor. "And focusing the beam isn't a trivial problem."

Doug asked his question again, silently, with his eyes.

Wicksen scratched his pointed chin a moment, then said, "Meet me at the mass driver tomorrow at ten. I'll be able to answer you then."

Doug sensed that trying to urge this man or hurry him would be a waste of breath. Wicksen understood the situation they were in. Doug had noticed him at the meeting in The Cave the previous week. Yet the physicist showed neither worry nor disappointment at being asked to break off his experiments and convert his accelerator into a weapon. He seemed more curious than upset.

"He's a strange duck," Doug said to Edith that night, in his quarters. She had moved in her meager possessions after their first three nights together.

"I've interviewed lots of scientists," Edith said, unzipping her white coveralls. "They're all pretty weird, one way or the other."

"I've got to make a call Earthside," Doug said, padding barefoot to his desk on the other side of the room partition. "Won't take long," he called to Edith.

"I'll keep the bed warm," she called back.

Grinning, Doug called Tamara Bonai at Tarawa. She was his one sure source of news about how things were going Earthside. His mother's calls were tapped, both Doug and Joanna were certain, so she had to be careful about how much she told her son.

But Tamara, as head of both the Kiribati Corporation and the island nation itself, could speak much more freely.

"You owe me a fishing trip," her image on the wall screen teased.

She was on the beach, obviously just after a swim in the lagoon. Her flowered pareo clung wetly to her graceful figure; drops of water beaded her bare shoulders; her long dark hair glistened in the high afternoon sun.

"As soon as I can get Earthside," he promised anew. Then he asked, "How's our publicity campaign?"

As he waited for her reply, Doug admired her long slim legs and the nipples that pushed against the pareo's thin fabric. Since he'd started sleeping with Edith he'd been noticing a lot more about the women he saw.

"Every network is carrying your reports from Moonbase now," Bonai said, smiling brightly as she sat cross-legged before the phone camera set on the sand before her. The camera automatically moved to keep her in focus.

"And there is considerable turmoil among the board of Masterson Corporation. Now that your mother is here on Earth, she's demanding a special meeting to take up the question of Moonbase's political independence."

"How's Rashid reacting?"

Bonai turned to look out at the lagoon as she waited for Doug's words to reach her. Then she turned back to the phone and said, "It's difficult to read his reaction. I'm sure he wants to push through a merger with Yamagata, but that possibility could cause a major rift on the board and he'd prefer to avoid a confrontation, if he can."