Doug clicked from the long-range frequency to the suit-to-suit freak. "She's pretty smart, Jinny is," he said to Edith. "Knows how to use the systems."

"I feel better knowing there's a security team backing us up."

"By three hours or so," Doug said.

"What makes you think she waited until now to send them out?"

Doug felt his brows rise. "You're pretty smart yourself, you know."

Edith replied, "You're just figuring that out?"

She could see Gordette's tractor trail easily now that there were no other cleat marks chewing up the regolith. No one's been out here in a long time, she thought.

"Tempo six was one of the original shelters my father built," Doug explained. "Before they decided where the permanent base would be sited they dug shelters into a dozen spots on the crater floor and outside the ringwall on Mare Nubium."

"Do you think Gordette has really stopped there?" Edith asked.

She waited for several moments before Doug replied, "I don't know. I can't understand why he headed this far away from the base. There aren't any easy passes over the ringwall up in this region. If he wanted to get out of Alphonsus, Wodjo Pass around Yeager would be the easiest way."

"Maybe he's going to meet somebody or get picked up, something like that," Edith said.

"Maybe."

She went on, "That'd mean he'll have other people with him, wouldn't it?"

"If they've been waiting for him at the tempo, yeah, maybe."

"Then we're steering ourselves right into a trap, Doug. He's tried to murder you twice. You're giving him another shot at it."

A longer silence this time. Edith stared at Doug's space-suited figure, trying to peer through it to see the man inside. All she saw was the cermet suit, like armor, and the strange metal pistons of the muscle amplifiers on the backs of his gloves, like a skeleton's hands, but made of metal rather than bone.

"Jinny didn't say there are any other vehicles parked at the tempo," he said at last. "I don't think anybody else is there."

Then why did he stop there?"

"That's what we're going to find out," he said.

"Why don't you wait for the security team to catch up with us?" Edith urged.

"I can't let him get away. He can tell the Peacekeepers exactly how to knock out our electrical power and take over the base."

"You don't think they know that already?"

"Bam knows what we've been doing, what we've been thinking. I can't let him tell it all to the Peacekeepers."

"Doug, you're full of bullshit," she said, feeling anger rising in her. "You're acting like some macho gunslinger who's got to face down the bad guy all by himself."

"It's not that, Edith."

"The hell it isn't. You're going to get yourself killed, and me too."

"No! I—" Doug realized there was some truth in Edith's accusation. He turned to look at her and saw only the reflection of his own blank visor in the dim Earthlight.