When the clotting problem had first surfaced, hours earlier, Falcone had told his people merely to increase the pressure on the nitrogen gas they were using to force the gel out of the storage tanks. But nitrogen was rare and precious on the Moon, and Falcone quickly saw that they weren't going to have enough to do the job. He had originally wanted to use oxygen for the pressure gas, it was plentiful and cheap, but the chemists had worried that oxygen would react with the gel and change its chemical properties too much.

"Helium would be best," the chief chemist had mused. "If only we had enough helium…"

So they had settled on nitrogen, raiding the life support backup supplies for two dozen tanks of it. And now it wasn't doing the job.

Time and again, Falcone and his cohorts had to stop their tractors and physically clean out the jammed hoses with wire brushes that the chemists had provided them.

"Everything in chemistry comes down to plumbing," Falcone muttered to himself. "Might as well be cleaning a goddamned latrine."

A voice crackled in his earphones. "What I don't understand is why nobody's hardening the microwave antennas against radiation."

Falcone looked up from his work and tried to identify the questioner as his voice continued, "I mean, like what good is this goop gonna do if the antennas are knocked out by the nuke's radiation pulse?"

Newman, Falcone decided. He never could see past his friggin' nose. "What happens if Wix's smart guys don't stop the nuke?" he demanded.

For a moment no one replied, then Newman said, "The warhead goes off above the crater floor, right?"

"And what happens then?"

"Uh… it knocks out the solar farms."

"And where do the antennas get their electricity?"

"From the… oh, yeah, I get it. If the nuke goes off the antennas are dead anyway, right?"

"So there's no sense sending anybody up to the top of Yeager to harden the antennas. Capisce?'

No response, although Falcone thought he heard stifled giggling from somebody.

A few minutes later his earphones chimed, so he dropped his brush and let the kinked hose fall gently to the ground as he tapped the keypad on his wrist.

A comm tech's voice announced, "Peacekeeper vehicles are in sight, crossing Mare Nubium."

"How long before they reach the pass?" he asked.

"Unknown. The thinking here is that they'll stop and camp at the foot of the ringwall until the nuke from L-l hits."

Grunting an inarticulate reply, Falcone arched his back slightly and looked through his visor up to the top of Mount Yeager, where the microwave transmitters stood. For the first time he realized that this entire 'blue goo' business was totally untested.

Christ, I hope it works, he said to himself. If that nuke isn't stopped by Wicksen's zap gun, the microwave transmitters'll be knocked out and all our work will have gone for nothing.