"I couldn't sleep if I tried, Lev," she replied. "Not with this going on."

The screen showed the view from the cameras atop Mount Yeager. The Peacekeepers' vehicles were slowing to a halt at the base of Alphonsus's ringwall mountains. They were arranging themselves in a single thin, undulating line that snaked along the flank of the mountains, each newly arriving tractor taking its position at the end of the constantly growing line. The cameras' resolution was fine enough to spot individual soldiers, if any appeared, but the vehicles stayed tightly buttoned up. Joanna could see the spokes of their springy wheels and the cleats on the tractors' treads, but no person got out of the vehicles.

They're waiting, Joanna thought. Waiting for the missile that will be launched from L-l. Then they'll attack. They'll storm Moonbase, and Doug will try to stop them and they'll kill my son and destroy everything.

Brudnoy sank his lanky frame onto the sofa next to her, murmuring, "At least we could go upstairs and watch from bed. Nothing is going to happen for another nine or ten hours, at least."

"You go if you're getting sleepy," Joanna said, not moving her eyes from the screen. Edie Elgin had been speaking for nearly an hour, but now her voice had stopped and the screen was silent.

He shrugged and sat beside her for several minutes. "This is like watching ice melt," he grumbled. "It's hypnotic. Don't you feel your eyes growing heavy? Sleepy? Drowsy?"

Joanna poked at him with her elbow. "Stop it, Lev!"

"At least come up to bed," he urged. "The screen up there will show the same picture, I assure you."

"No."

Brudnoy got slowly to his feet, then bent down to put his bearded face in front of Joanna's, noses almost touching.

"My darling wife," he said, blocking her view of the screen. "I have seldom insisted on my rights as your lord and master-"

"My what?"

"But there comes a time when a man must do what a man must do. Either you come up to the bedroom with me or I will be forced to carry you."

"We're not on the Moon, Lev," Joanna said, smiling at him despite herself. "You'll give yourself a hernia."

"That will be entirely your fault, not mine," he said, very seriously. With that, he reached one arm around her shoulders and the other beneath her legs.

"All right!" Joanna yelped. "All right! I'll go upstairs. I'll go with you."

Brudnoy straightened up. "Good," he said, offering her his hand.

And as she allowed her husband to help her up from the sofa and started for the bedroom, Jack Killifer—watching from the dining room door that he had opened a crack—also said, "Good," in a whisper that only he could hear.

Doug was nervously munching a sandwich, sitting on one of the spindly chairs in front of a console in the control center. Like his mother, like the millions of people Earthside watching Global News, like the men and women who had gathered in The Cave to wait out the battle, Doug was watching the camera views from Mount Yeager.