"Why'd you want to kill me, Bam? What did I do to you that you wanted to murder me?"

For several heartbeats Gordette said nothing, did not move. Then he sagged down onto the lower bunk.

"It wasn't you," he said, sinking his head into his hands. "Had nothing to do with you."

"It was me you tried to kill."

"You or me, man. Life or death. I had to do it. Had to. One of us had to go. I should've slit my own throat; been better that way."

"Why?" Doug asked again. "Why did you have to do it?"

"I'm a soldier. I follow orders. Or else."

"You were sent here to kill me?"

Gordette looked up at Doug with reddened eyes. "You know that little shit Faure's been planning this for years."

"You work for the U.N.? The Peacekeepers?"

"Naw. I get paid by Washington. Special security forces. They pulled me out of the army. Trained me to be an assassin."

"You've killed other people?"

His face looked awful. That's my profession, man. That's what they trained me to do. Either that or spend my life in jail."

"Why jail?"

He laughed bitterly. "Why else? I killed somebody. It was an accident but I did it and the only way to stay out of jail was to go into the army. They always held that over me; do what they want or they send me to jail for life. No parole. No sweetheart minimum-security farm, either. Jail. In with the perverts and the maniacs."

Doug unfastened his helmet, pulled it off over his head, then walked the length of the narrow shelter to sit on the bunk opposite Gordette. He placed the helmet on the bedsheet beside him.

"Okay, Bam. That's all over now. You can live here. You can be free of them."

The black man stared into Doug's eyes. "Live at Moonbase?"

That's right."

"I tried to kill you and you're offering me asylum?"

That's what Moonbase is all about, Bam. A place to build a new life."

Gordette said nothing, but his expression showed doubt, suspicion, scorn.

"I'm a fugitive, too," Doug said. "On Earth I'd be a marked man waiting for some nanoluddite fanatic to assassinate me. On the Moon I can live-"

"Until some hired assassin knocks you off."

Doug reached out his gloved hand. "Join us, Bam."

T don't deserve to join you," Gordette said, recoiling. "I'm a murderer! A killer!"

"You were a murderer. Now you have the chance to change, to start a new life."

"Doing what?"

Patiently, Doug said, "Doing whatever you do best. It's up to you."

"I killed my own mother!" he screamed, leaping to his feet. "I killed her!"

Doug looked up at him and saw fear, guilt, and the depths of hell in Gordette's red-rimmed eyes.

Gordette bent over him and yanked Doug to his feet so hard that Doug's helmet rolled off the bunk and bounced on the concrete floor.