And, he added as he bent stiffly to pick up the jammed hose again, we got a damned good chance of still being out here and getting fried to a crisp by the mother-humpin' nuke.

The control center was changed. The same hushed intensity, the same low-key lighting, the same hum of murmuring voices and purring electronic machines. Yet the air crackled now; the very smell of the control center was different: nervous, sweaty. It wasn't fear that Doug sensed from the technicians monitoring their consoles, so much as a focused motivation, anxiety masked by the duties of the moment.

Jinny Anson slipped into an unoccupied chair next to the U-shaped set of communications consoles, while Doug paced slowly through the big chamber, walking behind the seated technicians, glancing at each individual display screen. On one side of the room glowed the huge schematic display of Moonbase's systems. The opposite wall showed camera views of the approaching Peacekeeper armada and the spacecraft hovering around the L-l space station.

Doug completed his circuit of the center and returned to Anson's chair.

"Everything we can do, we're doing," he said.

Anson looked up at him. "It's sweaty palms time now."

Looking at the view of the approaching Peacekeeper vehicles, Doug said, "The longer they take, the better it is for us. Time's on our side."

"For now," said Anson.

He nodded. "Better put out an announcement that all personnel without specific tasks for the defense of the base should meet in The Cave."

Anson hiked her brows. "Not stay in their quarters?" 'No, get them into The Cave. Food's there, and it'll be easier to deal with them if they're all together instead of strung out in their individual quarters. There might be fighting in the corridors; I don't want anybody hurt unnecessarily."

"Collateral damage," Anson muttered, turning to the console keyboard.

The editing booth felt hot and stuffy. Edith sat at the big board, watching the array of display screens half-surrounding her, showing views of the approaching Peacekeepers and the spacecraft at L-l.

"The first shot in this battle has already been fired," she was saying into the microphone that sent her words Earthside. "The U.N. Peacekeepers knocked out a reconnaissance satellite that Moonbase had placed in orbit to observe the Peacekeepers' movements."

She pressed the stud that sent the view from Mount Yeager's camera Earthward. "Now the Peacekeeper assault force is moving across Mare Nubium, approaching Moonbase. What you are seeing now…"

Georges Faure was far from composed as he sat in his office, watching the broadcast of Global News. He fidgeted in his big chair, seething with anger. To think that this woman, this slut of a reporter who had seduced him into allowing her to accompany the original Peacekeeper force to the Moon, to think that she was such a traitor, such a propagandist for the rebels—it exasperated him.