She knew from her Earthside briefings that the backpack she now wore massed fifty-two kilos. One hundred and fourteen point four pounds. In zero gravity it weighed nothing, but Edith was surprised at how difficult it was to move, once the backpack was loaded onto her.

She saw that she was one of the last people still hovering weightlessly in the cabin's central aisle. Most of the troopers were back in their seats, spacesuits and backpacks and all. And weapons. Each trooper carried a rifle and a bandolier of various types of grenades strung around their shoulders. One of the women had explained the different types: concussion, fragmentation, smoke, and—what was the other one?

Oh, yes: flare. It made a brilliant light that blinded people temporarily.

Slowly, feeling as if she were pregnant with an elephant, Edith pushed herself back into her seat. The backpack forced her to sit on the front few centimeters of the chair.

Munasinghe came through the hatch up forward, from the cockpit. He looked at the watch set into the left cuff of his suit.

"Touchdown in twenty-three minutes," he announced.

TOUCHDOWN MINUS 15 MINUTES

"All buttoned up," said the chief of the monitoring crew.

Standing behind him, Doug turned his glance from the chief's set of display screens to the giant electronic wall schematic of the entire base. Every system was functioning within normal limits, every section of the base was secure, almost all the personnel were in their quarters instead of at work, every airtight hatch along each corridor was closed, all the airlocks sealed shut.

Except the main airlock in the now-empty garage.

"They've rotated," said the controller's voice, from the rocket port. "Coming down the pipe."

Doug stared at the radar plot that was displayed on the chief's center screen. Eight smaller screens were arrayed around it, like the compound eye of some strange electronic insect. Each showed a different view.

Leaning over the seated chief's shoulder, Doug said as calmly as he could, "I want to talk to the controller, please."

Wordlessly, the chief touched a keypad on the board of his console and the controller's face suddenly appeared in the upper leftmost of his set of display screens, replacing a view of the crater floor outside.

"I want you to get out of there as soon as they touch down," Doug reminded the controller. "Shut down all your equipment and get back here as fast as you can."

"Don't worry, boss," she said, with a nervous grin, "I'm not gonna hang out here until they barge in, believe it."

The rocket port was more than a kilometer away from the base proper. Its underground chambers were connected to the base by a long, straight tunnel. The plan was for the lone controller to drive the old tractor that was used as a taxi to the base, after shutting down all her systems and sealing the two airlocks that opened onto the crater floor. Once she was safely through the airtight hatch at the Moonbase end of the tunnel, the technicians in the control center would pump the air out of the rocket port facility and the connecting tunnel.