Again the infernal wait. "We will walk in and take the base. Failing that, the special Yamagata force will destroy the air and water systems, the control center, farms and nanolabs."

Faure signed deeply. There will be nothing left of Moonbase after that, he thought. But what of it? Yamagata wants Moonbase taken intact, but it will be better if it is wiped out of existence altogether.

Now, if only the colonel would start his troops moving at once. Why wait? Strike swiftly.

Yet he said nothing. He had ordered the Peacekeepers to strike swiftly the first time and it had turned out to be a fiasco.

But this time will be different, Faure told himself. Looking into Colonel Giap's expressionless eyes, Faure concluded that the colonel's plan would work, and he should not meddle in the tactical decisions. Moonbase would be brought to its knees within a week to ten days.

Or destroyed utterly.

DAY FORTY-FOUR

"Do they have toilets in the tempos?" Edith asked.

Startled out of his inner thoughts, Doug replied, "Yes. Sure."

"Good."

"There's a vacuum toilet behind the seats," he said, jerking a gloved thumb over his shoulder. "Kind of tricky using it, but the toilet hatch connects to the port in your suit."

"How long will it be before we get to the tempo?"

Doug glanced at the electronic map on the tractor's dashboard. "Less than an hour."

"I'll wait, then."

Looking at his wrist displays, Doug saw it was after midnight. Neither of them had slept. For the past few hours Doug had been wrestling with his inner demons, wondering why he was driving himself to confront Gordette. Why not just give up? he kept asking himself. Yet something inside him refused to. He couldn't let Killifer win without at least trying to fight back.

"You want me to drive a while?" Edith asked.

"I'm not tired."

"You certain? Aren't you sleepy? I sure am."

"Crank your seat back and catch a few winks," Doug suggested.

Edith tried; whether she fell asleep or not, Doug could not tell. Steering the tractor was fairly easy; it was built to clamber over rocks and across craterlets, like a tank. Doug followed the bright marks of Gordette's trail, which avoided the boulders and deeper pits scattered across the crater floor.

He saw a rille snaking off to the left, like a narrow riverbed waiting for water. You've been waiting a while, haven't you? Doug asked silently. Four billion years, give or take a week.

In the dark lunar night the stars were like dust strewn across the bowl of the sky. He could see them gleaming at him right down to the chopped-off horizon.

One star in particular seemed to beckon. Red, bright, hovering just over the horizon straight ahead.

Doug realized it was the beacon light atop the radio mast of tempo six.

We'll be there in half an hour, he told himself.

Then what?

Doug took in a deep double lungful of canned air. We'll find out when we get there.