Not a soul in sight.

And painted on the floor in bright blood-red letters she saw:

WELCOME TO MOONBASE

PLEASE DO NOT ENTER

ROUTINE CLEAN-UP PROCEDURE IN PROGRESS DANGER! NANOMACHINES IN OPERATION

She stared at the words, neatly stencilled on the smooth rock floor.

Munasinghe's angry voice grated in her earphones. "You were to stay behind me! You had no right to run up here on your own!"

Turning, she saw the captain galumphing awkwardly toward her. Edith grinned inside her helmet: the leader of the troop has to run hard to stay abreast of his troopers.

Ignoring his pique, Edith pointed to the lettering on the garage floor. "Look," she said.

She could not see the captain's face behind his gold-tinted visor, but she imagined his red-rimmed eyes bugging out.

"What does this mean?" Munasinghe was panting from the exertion of running.

"They don't want us to go in."

"Of course! But—nanomachines? What nanomachines? Where is the danger?"

His voice sounded frightened to Edith. Nanomachines had such a bad reputation virtually everywhere on Earth that the mere mention of them was enough to worry almost anyone.

The tall Norwegian, recognizable by the lieutenant's insignia on his nametag, pointed a gloved finger.

"Look!" he said, his voice shaking slightly.

A big grease stain on the garage floor was noticeably shrinking.

And then the stencilled letters of the warning sign started to get ragged around the edges, as if something was chewing on them.

"My God," Munasinghe breathed.

"They're not going into the garage," Brudnoy said. "Not yet," Gordette replied. "Do you think they will?" Doug asked him.

Gordette nodded. "They'll fuss around a bit, but they're not going to be stopped by some paint and a few grease stains."

"You don't think so?"

"They'll come in. And once they're past the garage, we've got nothing to stop them."

Munasinghe had to make a decision. Instead of a trap, this was starting to look like a ruse to him. Yes, nanomachines had killed people, he knew, but what danger could nanomachines pose to armed troops encased in spacesuits? This is nothing but a ruse, a desperate attempt to keep us from entering Moonbase.

Still, he switched from the suit-to-suit frequency to call Killifer, back at the ship.

"Nanobugs, huh," Killifer said.

"Can they truly be dangerous to us?" Munasinghe demanded.

No answer for several heartbeats. Then, "Well, yeah, if they're programmed to gobble organic molecules."

"What do you mean?"

"If they've spread nanobugs across the garage floor to eat up oil stains and paint and stuff like that, the same bugs might be able to eat up the rubber and plastic materials in your spacesuits."

"Nothing but the soles of our boots will touch the garage floor," Munasinghe said.

"Uh-huh. And what're the soles of your boots made of? Plastics, aren't they? Organic molecules."

"But there is a layer of metal mesh inside the plastic sole."

"Sure. That mesh'll look like a gang of wide-open doorways to the nanobugs. They're the size of viruses, y'know."