"It's a fait accompli," the President said curtly. "In another forty-eight hours or so the Peacekeepers will have taken over Moonbase and this whole problem will resolve itself."

"Maybe," the staff chief said softly. "But what happens if Moonbase drives the Peacekeepers off? They did it once, you know."

She scoffed at him. "That's impossible and you know it."

"Yeah. But still

"Don't you intend to sleep?" Lev Brudnoy asked his wife.

Joanna sat in the exact center of the largest sofa in their living room, her eyes riveted to the big Windowall screen above the dark fireplace.

"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."