For several heartbeats Edith did not reply. Then she said, her voice low, "I'm sorry I brought it up, Doug. You've got enough on your shoulders without me adding to it."

He felt himself smiling at her. "That's okay. I guess if you hang out with reporters you've got to expect troubles."

She laughed. "That's it. Blame the media."

DAY SIX

Edith was surprised at how difficult it was to make contact with her boss at Global News in Atlanta. She had beamed the contents of her camera chips to headquarters, then spent the whole day trying to get through to the programming department to make certain they had received it okay.

Now it was past midnight, and still the smart wall display read: YOUR CALL HAS NOT BEEN ACCEPTED.

"Shee-it," she muttered in her childhood Texas accent, sitting tensely in the spindly desk chair of the one-room apartment the Moonbase people had given her.

Doug had told her that the commsats were blacked out, but Global should be able to take a message directed straight at their rooftop antennas. Yet her call did not go through.

"Did they take my broadcast chip?" she asked herself, wondering for the first time if Global would accept anything she sent from Moonbase.

She sank back in her chair, thinking hard. It was well past midnight at Moonbase. A few stabs at the keyboard on her desk brought up the information that it was 7:23 p.m. in Atlanta.

Manny'll be home, knocking back his first cocktail of the evening, she thought. Good!

But how to get him, if neither the commsats nor Global's private antennas were taking calls from the Moon?

She hated to call Doug and admit she couldn't get through on her own, especially since the guy was probably asleep at this time of night. Yet she couldn't think of anything else to do.

Doug's face popped up on her smart wall immediately. He was wide awake, still dressed, at his desk.

He listened to her problem, then showed her how to route calls through Kiribati. Edith thanked him, keeping her face serious, strictly business. Yet she found herself feeling glad that he wasn't in bed with someone else.

It took a few minutes more, but the wait was worth it once she saw Manny's look of shock when he recognized who was calling him.

"Edie! You're in Kiribati?"

"No, I'm still at Moonbase. How come y'all aren't taking calls from here?"

In the three seconds it took for his reply to reach her, Manny's surprised expression knitted into a frown. "That's not my doing, kiddo. If it were up to me I'd keep a special link open to you twenty-four hours a day."

"Well, put your drink down and get on it, then," Edith said sternly.

"We're getting everything you send," he said, looking worried, guilty. "We're just not allowed to acknowledge receiving your transmissions."

"Not allowed? By who?"

For three seconds she waited, and got, "Whom."