"You're not going out there! With the nuke less than ten minutes from detonation!"

"Somebody's got to."

"Let me," said the man who had done the wiring. "It's my responsibility."

"We'll both go," said Wicksen.

Colonel Giap had taken the precaution of having the seven suicide volunteers placed in the same tractor with him. He wanted them under his eye; he was not willing to take chances that such fanatics might strike off on their own once the action started.

The American woman especially intrigued him. She was not young, and she certainly did not seem fanatical. Giap wondered what could have happened in her life to make her want to embrace death.

So he asked her. There was scarcely any privacy in the tractor, crowded with troops and the seven volunteers, all in spacesuits, but once they were safely parked in the lee of Alphonsus's ringwall mountains, Giap clambered down onto the dusty regolith soil for a quick inspection of his vehicles.

Once satisfied that all the vehicles were properly positioned and there were no problems with the troops—except the usual complaints of soldiers everywhere—he returned to his own tractor. Instead of re-entering it, however, he ordered the American woman outside.

She came without a murmur and stood before him, an anonymous, sexless figure in a white spacesuit. Giap connected their two helmets with a communications wire, so they could speak without using their suit radios.

"I want to know," he said without preamble, "how reliable you and your comrades are going to be."

Without hesitation she replied, "Faithful unto death. That is our motto."

"A motto is one thing. Soon we will be in action."

This time her response took a few moments. At last she said, "We are pledged to give our lives to the cause of eliminating the scourge of nanotechnology. When the time comes, we will not hesitate to act."

"I'm certain," Giap said. "What concerns me is—what if the time does not come?"

"Does not… I don't understand."

"Soon a pair of missiles will knock out Moonbase's entire electrical generation capability. They will be forced to surrender, or die within a few hours from lack of air to breath. There will be no need for you to sacrifice yourselves."

"Oh, I see. You want to know if we will obey your orders."

There will be no need to blow up Moonbase—and yourselves."

"If all goes as you have planned."

"Well?"

"You have nothing to fear," she said easily enough. "Our pledge includes that promise to obey the authority over us. For the time being, that authority is you, Colonel."

All well and good, Giap thought. But still he had no inkling of why this woman—or any of her comrades—was willing to throw away her life.

As if she could read his mind, she said, "You are wondering why I am not married and mothering children, or building a career for myself."

"Yes," he confessed. "Why have you volunteered to kill yourself?"

"Because I want to die."