"Damn! If I were Doug Stavenger I'd come down there and hang the man myself."

"Vigilante justice? From a judge of the World Court?"

"Justice," Jill snapped. "When your own government won't give you justice, you've got the right to make your own move. Jefferson wrote that into the Declaration of Independence, remember?"

"But Jill dear, Stavenger and the rest of his Lunatics don't regard us as their government anymore. Do they?"

Jill had no answer. Luce always was the better debater; she could score points off the devil himself whenever she chose to.

MOONBASE

Jinny Anson's office was crowded. Doug sat at the foot of the table that butted against her desk, flanked by Zimmerman and Cardenas, the heads of Moonbase's major departments, and the physicist Wicksen. There was no room at the little table for Edith, so she sat slightly behind Doug and to his right.

Bam Gordette sat alone on the couch by the door, separated from all the others by a meter of empty floor space and an uneasy distrust that was almost palpable. The others are treating Bam as if he's a leper, Doug thought.

"You're certain the Peacekeepers are gonna make their move so soon?" Jinny Anson was asking.

"We've got maybe a week, if we're lucky," Doug replied grimly. "What can we accomplish in that time?"

A gloomy silence filled the office. Even the normally perky Anson looked downcast.

"Wix?" Doug asked. "We need the beam gun up and working in a week."

The physicist shook his head slowly, his big soulful eyes staring straight at Doug. "I told you it would take two lunar days… two months."

"You've got seven Earth days," Doug said. "Maybe less."

Wicksen started to shake his head.

"Put every man you've got onto it," urged Doug. "And every woman."

"We're already working flat out."

"How close are you?"

The physicist shrugged uncomfortably, more like a writhing.

"The beam collimator is finished. The aiming circuitry is ready to be tested. Then we've got to bring the kloodges out to the mass driver and mate them. Then we need to test the complete system."

"Kloodges?" Edith asked. "What are they?"

"Ramshackle collections of hardware," Harry Clemens answered in his laconic twang before Wicksen could respond. "Clinking, clanking, caliginous collections of junk."

"Oh."

"Makeshift hardware," Wicksen said, grimacing slightly at Clemens. "Slapped together quickly, without worrying about how it looks."

"Kloodges," Edith repeated.

Doug demanded, "Can you put it all together by the end of this week?"

"We have to test-"

"We don't have time for testing!" Doug said sharply. "Get the hardware together, make it functional. You can test it after it's completely assembled, if the Peacekeepers give us enough time."

Wicksen's big eyes widened even further. "You'd hang the survival of this base on untested equipment?"

"If it doesn't work, we're dead anyway," Doug pointed out. "Right?"

The physicist thought it over for a moment, his big tarsier's eyes staring at Doug. At last he admitted, "Right."