‘That’s now. But who’s going to look after us when it’s time for the real deal?’
‘This is a necessary risk,’ explained Dallas. ‘That is, if we want this stage of the plan to succeed.’ He shivered as cold began to permeate his body. Then the fridge gave a shudder and produced a dull mechanical noise.
‘What was that?’ asked Gates.
‘Helium isotopes venting into space,’ said Dallas. ‘It means that the fridge is doing its job properly. Drawing heat away from us efficiently.’
‘That’s comforting,’ trembled Gates.
‘It ought to be. Might be kind of unpleasant for us if our surface temperature stays too high.’
‘That’s what I meant to ask you, Dallas. In what way unpleasant? You didn’t say.’
‘You really want to know?’
‘In case you hadn’t noticed, I’m already living dangerously.’
‘Okay, you asked for it. Prev and Sim will fetch us out of here and carry us to the electric blood wagon. That way the car’s microwave motion detectors will collect only two approaching body signals. Shouldn’t be too difficult for them. Even carrying a big ox like you. Neither of us weighs more than thirty to forty pounds in one-sixth g.
‘They’ll dump us inside one of the cars, collect the units of blood for Ronica, close the lid of the car, and then move away again. The car computer checks for two retreating signals — Prev and Sim — and then heads back down the golden road to Samarkand. If there aren’t two retreating signals, then Prev and Sim are in big trouble. The computer fires a laser called a Dazer. Even from behind a sun visor it’s more than enough to blind you. Then they’d probably wander off into the minefield and goodbye both.’
‘The hell with their comfort and convenience,’ said Gates. ‘What about us?’
‘All units of cryoprecipitate have to be stored at minus one hundred and twenty degrees Celsius. Stored and transported to the First National’s own RLVs. Each refrigerated car is equipped with a thermal heat sensor to protect the integrity of the cryoprecipitate being transported.’
‘Right,’ grunted Gates, who was shivering all the time now. According to the readout on his life-support system computer, his core body temperature had already dropped below normal. ‘ ’S why we’re in here, I know all that.’
‘If the sensors detect heat, any heat at all, the on-board computer will assume that the blood has been compromised and then deploy a nanodevice to destroy the units. This is a simple molecular disassembler manufactured to behave like a bacteria. It eats the compromised units, container bags, labels, everything. And then dies. The car contents are then disinfected and vented into space. I’m afraid you and I would be treated in the same way. The nanodevice would eat through our space suits and then us. By the time it finished we’d look like moondust.’
A great spasm of a shiver ran down Gates’s broad back. He was uncertain if this was the result of fear or cold, and finally concluded that it was probably both.
‘Jesus,’ he said through chattering teeth, ‘Christ.’
‘By my estimate, we only have sufficient time to get through the main facility door before what body heat remains inside our suits starts to get out and be detected by the sensors. But for this, we could ride the car all the way through the inner labyrinth door and into the vault itself. Instead, we exit as soon as we’re through the main door and then head for the rest and recreation area to get warm again, before proceeding to the next stage.’
‘I can hardly wait,’ Gates said dully. His hands were numb and his core temperature had now dropped to ninety-five degrees Fahrenheit.
‘It’s a nice balance.’ Dallas’s speech was already sounding slurred, an early sign of mild hypothermia.
‘Nice?’ Gates laughed flatly.
‘Nice. Meaning something requiring great precision.’
‘And I thought it meant nice, as in nice and warm. Whatever the hell that is.’
‘What I mean is that if we don’t get cold enough, we get killed by the nanodevice. But if we get too cold, we die as well.’
‘Oh, that kind of nice. Of course. Dumb of me. I’m shivering like I’ve got a motor disease.’
‘When you stop, you can start to worry,’ Dallas told him. ‘Means heat output from burning glycogen in your muscles. Insufficient. Shivering in waves. Pauses get longer. Until stops altogether. Life threatening.’
The next two or three minutes passed in frozen silence.
Dallas gave a little jump as he heard Prevezer’s voice inside his headset.
‘Okay, cold people, let’s go.’
‘What?’
Dallas felt himself picked up like a side of frozen meat. Why were they being carried, and to where? His thinking processes seemed as frozen as his toes. Something to do with blood. Not the same blood as moved slowly inside him. Different. Lunar sunshine streamed through his unvisored helmet, dazzling him for a second until, slowly closing his eyes, he remembered. Amnesia. Somewhere on the edge of severe hypothermia. Body temperature probably as low as ninety degrees Fahrenheit. Maybe lower. Couldn’t see his EVA computer to check. Much lower than that and they’d really be in trouble. Needed brain to perform something that required higher reasoning. To stay fully conscious inside the electric car. Otherwise might forget to climb out.
Dallas began to count backward from one hundred by nines.
‘Ninety-one,’ he mumbled as Prevezer laid him carefully in the car’s frozen interior. ‘Eighty-two.’ Why was the man carrying him — he couldn’t see if it was Simou or Prevezer — breathing so heavily? Whoever it was sounded like there was something the matter with him.
‘Dallas? Gates? You’re both in the car.’
‘Seventy-three.’
‘Come again?’
‘He’s counting backward by nines to keep his mind alert.’
‘Please collect your components, close the car, and then step away,’ ordered the transport computer.
‘Whatever you say,’ said someone, and then the lid on the car was closed.
There wasn’t supposed to be an opportunity for dialogue with this particular computer, so no open communications channel existed between them; but the channel that existed between the two men lying inside the car and the two men now stepping away from it would last only as long as they were all outside the main facility. Dallas and Gates were relying on Simou and Prevezer to tell them when the car was about to pass through the main door, thus giving them their cue to get out. Once they were through the outer door, Dallas and Gates would have no further verbal contact with the outside until the vault had been breached.
‘Good luck, guys.’
‘Yeah, good luck.’
‘Sixty-four.’
The car, the shape and proportions of a medium-sized missile, began its silent return to the main facility.
‘Dallas? This is Prev. You’re on the move.’
‘Fifty-four. Fifty-five. Fifty-four.’
‘Talk to me, Gates,’ said Simou.
‘Cold,’ said Gates.
‘Forty... forty-six.’
‘Terribly cold,’ he whispered. And then, ‘Who’s there?’
‘It’s me, Gates. Simou. What’s your name?’
‘Thirty-something.’
‘My name?’
‘What’s your name?’
‘Thirty-what, Dallas,’ said Prevezer. ‘Come on, think, man. What comes after forty-six?’
‘Seven. Forty-seven.’
‘My name is...’
‘Negative, Dallas. Think. You were counting backward by nines. If you were hypothermic, you couldn’t do that. Come on, Dallas. You’re halfway there. Just a little longer.’