"Okay, okay," Doug said, waving his hands to quiet them down. "I've got to admit it, Jinny, I agree with you about ninety-five percent."

"Only ninety-five?" She planted her fists on her hips defiantly.

"Hey, I wanna get back home!" a man hollered. "I don't intend to spend the rest of my life here."

"Me neither."

"Listen," Doug said. "For the time being, nobody's leaving. We're in a state of siege, looks like."

"For how long?"

"Until this thing gets settled, one way or the other," Doug answered.

"Or until the Peacekeepers come back with more troops," came a voice from the rear.

Doug conceded the point with a nod, thinking that if he were pushed far enough, Faure might destroy Moonbase rather than admit defeat.

"Okay," Doug said, loud enough to bounce his voice off The Cave's back wall. "We're going to have to act as if we really are independent. Jinny's right about that. As long as we're under siege, nobody can leave, so we might as well go about our work and show Faure and the rest of those flatlanders that we can get along without them."

"Then I can launch my rocket?" Kadar asked.

"We'll look into it."

"But I still wanna get home!" a voice wailed.

"Once this matter is settled," Doug told them, "anyone who wants to leave Moonbase will be free to do so. And anyone who wants to stay here permanently and become a real Lunatic, you'll be free to do that, too."

They asked questions and gave opinions and griped and argued among themselves for more than another hour. As Doug watched and listened, he realized that very few of these men and women had ever thought about remaining at Moonbase indefinitely. They were all contract workers, even Jinny Anson, accustomed to working on the Moon for a fixed period of time, then returning to Earth, to home.

Of all the people here, he realized, only Zimmerman and Kris Cardenas and her husband have consciously decided to live in Moonbase permanently. Maybe Jinny, he conceded. Her marriage had broken up because she spent so much time at Moonbase while her husband stayed Earthside.

And me. If I have to go back Earthside with these nanobugs in me, some crackpot nanoluddite will kill me, sooner or later. That's the sweet part of religion, Doug thought, you can be as fanatical as you want in the name of God.

The mercenary hung at the rear of the crowd, wondering how long these people could go around the same mulberry bush. Then Kadar climbed up on the table beside Doug and began telling them all, in elaborate detail, how wonderful the Farside astronomical observatory was going to be and how important it was to the future of the human race.

People started to drift out of The Cave, most of them still talking among themselves as Kadar droned on, unperturbed. As if talk's going to do any good, the mercenary thought. They've been talking for damned near four hours with nothing to show for it but a bunch of sore throats.