Doug wished he could talk with Edith, now that her marathon performance had been cut short, but he had no time for that. He watched the advancing Peacekeeper troops. So did everyone in Moonbase. In the control center, in The Cave, in the infirmary and labs that were still working, every resident of Moonbase looked at the screens and held his or her breath. Doug had never heard the control center so absolutely silent. Even the hum of the machinery seemed muted.

The white Peacekeeper tractors edged cautiously through the airlock. Big as it was, the airlock could only accommodate two vehicles at a time, so the invading tractors came in pairs, then deployed around the edges of the garage.

"They're expecting us to fire at them," Gordette said, almost whispering. Still, his voice broke the silence jarringly.

"With what?" Anson muttered acidly.

Doug looked past Vince Falcone to Nick O'Malley. "Ready with the dust?" he asked, also in a near reverent whisper.

"Ready and waiting," O'Malley replied firmly.

Doug nodded as he thought: Waiting. We've been waiting a long time. But we won't have to wait much longer.

"The garage is clear," Giap heard in his earphones. "No enemy troops."

The colonel had established his command post just outside the main airlock, where he could see easily into the broad, brightly-lit garage.

Four teams of specialists were sweeping the garage floor with powerful ultraviolet lamps. So far there was no sign of nanomachines, but Giap did not want to take any chances. His teams would sterilize the hatches on the other end of the garage, as well, the hatches that led into Moonbase's corridors.

No opposition so far, Giap mused. Either they intend to surrender once we enter the corridors and occupy their critical centers, or they have a trap waiting for us inside.

He played his plan through his mind once again. The first wave of troops were to open the corridor hatches. They were airlocks, of course, double hatches that protected the corridors from the vacuum outside. They had been built as a secondary level of protection, since usually the garage was pressurized and vehicles and personnel left it for the lunar surface through the oversized main airlock.

If the rebels have sealed the hatches, Giap's men were under orders to blast them open. If they had been able to bring their missile launchers with them they could have blown the hatches apart from where he was standing, outside the main airlock. As it was, the lighter, shoulder-fired missiles would have to do the job. The troops also had grenades. The hatches would pose no problem, Giap told himself.

Once inside the base proper, his troops would quickly move to the water factory, the control center, the electrical distribution station and the EVC—their environmental control center. Hold those, and you command Moonbase. For good measure, Giap had assigned squads to the underground farming area and the nanolaboratories.