Lynn’s lips opened. Her eyes darted from her to the lift-shaft, and back again.
‘Can you understand me? Miss Orley? We have to get out of here.’
Cautiously, she stretched out her right hand.
Lynn scurried backwards.
‘You have to come with me,’ DeLucas said firmly, even as she felt a thick trickle of something warm running down her upper lip. She put her tongue out, automatically, and licked at it. ‘Come next door. Put on your spacesuit.’
All at once, there was sanity and comprehension in Lynn’s eyes. She moved her lips again and put out a trembling finger.
‘That’s where he came from,’ she rasped.
DeLucas followed her gesture. The woman was obviously acutely frightened of the lift-shaft, or more exactly of someone who had come out of it.
‘Who?’ she asked. ‘Wachowski?’
Lynn shook her head. DeLucas felt a cold fear grip her.
‘Who, Lynn? Who came out?’
‘He just shot him,’ Lynn whispered. ‘Just like that. He could have shot me too.’ She began to hum a tune.
‘Who, Lynn? Who shot who?’
‘Minnie? Tommy!’ Palmer’s voice from the loudspeakers. ‘Please come in, we have a problem.’
Lynn stopped humming and stared at DeLucas.
‘What do you want from me anyway, you silly cow?’ she snapped.
The Landing Field
‘Leland, I’m having trouble with Lynn Orley.’
‘Oh great, that too! What about the rest of them?’
‘They must be ready by now.’
‘Then get them out of there, Minnie!’ Palmer paced up and down impatiently, with Hanna’s corpse at his feet. ‘What are you waiting for?’
‘Something seems to have happened to Tommy,’ DeLucas said. ‘Lynn claims that somebody appeared in the control room and shot some other person, she’s scared out of her wits and—’
‘Hanna,’ Palmer snarled.
‘I think she’s been trying to tell me that Tommy’s been shot. But he’s not here, nor is anybody else.’
‘Crap,’ murmured Gore.
‘We have to make a decision,’ Palmer said. ‘Dana’s managed to stop Hanna from escaping. She had to kill him to do it, but before that he said—’
‘I caught what he said,’ DeLucas interrupted. ‘That this place is about to blow.’
‘So stop jabbering,’ Dana spat at her. ‘Will you kindly ensure that my guests are evacuated!’
‘I can’t be everywhere at once,’ DeLucas snapped back. ‘Tell her—’
‘Listen, Minnie, I’m not going to give up the base as easily as that, but she’s right, you have to get those people out of there.’
Palmer stopped dead and gazed upwards at the shimmering oceans of stars, fading out over to the east where the sun glowed low on the horizon. He simply couldn’t imagine that all this might end.
‘Could be we still have time,’ he said. ‘Hanna must have given himself long enough to get away.’
‘He was in a hell of a hurry,’ Dana remarked.
‘Whatever. We’ll search the area while Kyra flies the guests to a safe distance on the Io.’
‘And where should I fly them to?’ Gore asked.
‘Take them to meet Callisto. Tell her to turn round right away. You should be in radio contact as soon as you’re up there. Then go back to the Chinese base.’
‘That’s madness,’ Dana said. ‘Forget it. How do you expect to find a bomb on a huge installation like this?’
‘We’ll look for it.’
‘Sheer idiocy! All you’re doing is putting your people in danger.’
‘You’ll be flying with the Io anyway.’ Palmer paid her no further attention, and turned to his crew. ‘Does anybody else want to fly with them? You have a free choice – we’re not the army here. I’m going to look for the thing. The bastard must have given himself at least half an hour!’
Dana spread her arms to concede defeat.
‘Leland?’ Minnie DeLucas. ‘If what Lynn was telling me is true, maybe Hanna came up from underground. From the Great Hall.’
‘Good.’ Palmer nodded grimly. ‘Let’s start there.’
London, Great Britain
Had his suspicion been right, or did MoonLight really just mean ‘MoonLight’? There was uproar and disagreement in the Big O. The Moon was still besieged by the bot army, with no end in sight. No contact with Peary Base or Gaia. Merrick was hurrying, burrowing, scurrying from satellites to ground stations, but getting nowhere.
Meanwhile the MI6 delegation were in a feeding frenzy over the theory that China might be behind the attack. It was a beautiful theory, it fit everything so neatly, temptingly. Gaia, well indeed, why would China have Gaia in their sights, but Peary Base – if that were destroyed, a substantial part of America’s lunar infrastructure would be knocked out. Not an attack on Orley, but on Washington’s supremacy. Knock the enemy off his feet. Weaken the American helium-3 industry. It had to be China! Beijing, or Zheng, or both of them.
The CIA had barely joined the list of potential suspects than it was off again.
‘Whatever the truth of it,’ Shaw said, ‘we’ve reached a whole new level of helplessness.’
‘Oh, great,’ said Yoyo.
Security departments at Orley subsidiaries worldwide were reporting back to the London situation room, but there were no concrete leads on further attacks. Norrington insisted that the corporation had to take every conceivable precaution. He hadn’t come up with any more information on Thorn. A photograph of Kenny Xin had been distributed which his own mother wouldn’t have recognised. A shuttle had set out from the OSS to the Moon, but it would take more than two days to reach Peary Base.
‘Norrington looks nervous to me,’ Jericho said. ‘Don’t you think so?’
‘Yes, he’s fighting on too many fronts, opening up one campaign after another.’ Yoyo got to her feet. ‘If he carries on like this, he’ll bring the whole operation to a grinding halt.’
Just a few minutes ago, another crisis meeting with MI5 had broken up, since the agencies now reckoned that domestic security was threatened. There wasn’t even a pause to draw breath. One discussion led straight into the next. The air twanged with the buzz of ideas, urgent purpose and determination. But there was an undertone too, a feeling that all this to-do was deluded, based on the belief that being there and acting busy would lead to answers.
‘So why’s he doing that?’ Jericho mused, following Yoyo outside. ‘Is he so worried?’
‘You don’t even believe that yourself. Norrington’s not an idiot.’
‘Of course I don’t believe it. He wants to put a spanner in the works.’ Jericho looked around. Nobody was paying any attention to them. Norrington was making phone calls in his room, and Shaw was doing the same in hers. ‘I just haven’t the first idea who we should trust to talk to about him.’
‘You mean that they could all be in it together?’
‘How would we know?’
‘Hmm.’ Yoyo looked across at Shaw’s open office door, dubious. ‘She doesn’t exactly look like a mole.’
‘Nobody looks like a mole, apart from moles.’
‘Also true.’ She fell silent for a while. ‘Good. Let’s break in.’
‘Break in? Where?’
‘The central computer. The drives we aren’t authorised for. Norrington’s patch.’
Jericho stared at her. Somebody scurried past them, talking urgently into a phone. Yoyo waited until he was out of earshot, and dropped her voice in a conspiratorial fashion. ‘Simple enough, isn’t it? If you know your enemies and know yourself, you will not be imperilled in a hundred battles; if you know yourself but do not know your enemy, then for every victory you gain you will suffer a defeat.’