"You mean all work stops while the flare's going on?" Greg heard the brittleness in his own voice as he selected something that looked somewhat like finger sandwiches.

Anson shrugged. "Might as well. All the surface equipment is shut down. Even the scientific instrumentation outside takes a beating from the flare, so a lot of the researchers got nothing much to do."

"What about communications?" Greg asked.

"The comm center is always manned," she said easily, pulling out a soyburger on a bun and heading for the microwave ovens. "Even during a party."

"Doesn't the flare interfere with communications?"

"We can always go to the laser comm system if the microwave gets too hashed up."

"I didn't mean communications with Earth," Greg said. "I meant with the expedition."

Her face went serious. "We've got six minisats in polar orbit. They're hardened, of course, but if the radiation levels exceed their hardening-"

"Then those people are cut off."

"Right," she conceded.

"Then what happens?"

"We've got two more minisats as backups. We send them up after the radiation dies down. Not much more that we can do."

Greg thought hard for a few moments, then had to admit, "I guess you're right."

The microwave pinged and Anson pulled out her steaming soyburger. "Come on, let me introduce you to some of the gang. Are you straight or gay?"

Greg nearly dropped his plastic dish.'What?"

"Gay or straight? Who'd ya like to dance with?" Sex, Greg realized. It all comes down to sex. That's what this party is all about. The solar flare is an excuse for these people to have a gene-pool enrichment. Just like neolithic hunting tribes that came together once a year to exchange virgins.

Anson waslooking at him with a positively impish expression. "Have I embarrassed you?" she asked.

"No..."

"We get pretty close to one another, living cooped up in here for months on end she said. "I forgot that most people Earthside aren't as open as we are. I'm sorry."

"It's okay," Greg said, trying to adjust his outlook. "And I'm straight."

"Great!" Anson said, with seemingly genuine enthusiasm. "Then you can dance with me."

Riding down the mountain was like dropping down a long dark shaft. Brennart fired the hopper's main rocket engine once to lift them off the summit, then used the maneuvering jets to nudge them away from its slope. After that it was a long slow fall into the darkness below.

Doug felt his stomach fluttering and wondered how Bianca was handling it. Brennart stood at the podium, his gloved hands on the controls, like a sea captain of old at the helm of his storm-tossed ship. Instead of a sou'wester he was encased in a bulky spacesuit. And instead of the heaving and rolling of the waves, their hopper was falling smoothly in the shadows of the massive mountains, plummeting swiftly, silently, like a pebble dropped down a deep, deep well. This is what the old-time explorers must have felt like, Doug told himself. Danger and excitement and the thrill of doing things nobody's done before. He grinned inside his helmet. This could become habit forming!

His earphones chirped with the signal from one of the minisats. Quickly, Doug plugged his vidcam into the comm port on the belt of his suit and played the tape at top speed. He heard a brief screeching in his earphones, like a magpie on amphetamines, then a verifying beep from the satellite. The data-compressed signal had been received.

"What about transmitting our claim?" Brennart asked before Doug could report to him.

"Just did it," he said. "Squirted the tape to the minisat. When it comes over Moonbase's horizon it'll transmit the whole scene to the base."

"How soon will that be?"

Doug made a quick mental calculation. "The satellite orbit is one hour. Should be in forty, fifty minutes."

Brennart huffed again. "Plasma cloud might hit by then."

"The commsats are hardened, aren't they?"

"Up to a point."

"Is there a chance the radiation could knock them out before our message reaches Moonbase?"

"Ever heard of Murphy's Law?" Brennart replied.

"Yes, but-"

"It's all a matter of degree. There's no such thing as absolute hardening. The minisats are built to withstand a certain level of radiation. If the plasma cloud's levels are higher, then the satellites will be kaput."

"Then we'd be cut off from Moonbase." Bianca's voice, filled with apprehension.

"Until they pop up more satellites, after the storm is over."

"I wonder how hardened the Yamagata snooper satellite is," Doug mused.

Brennart made no answer and when Doug tried to talk to him he realized that the expedition leader was talking to the ground on a different frequency. Doug switched to that channel.

"... landing lights haven't been set up yet," he heard Killifer's voice, almost whining. "You told me to get everybody inside-"

"Never mind," Brennart snapped. "Turn up the radar beacon to full power. I'd like to have some idea of where the ground is!"

"Right."

Doug knew there were no lights beneath the hopper's platform. We could crash in this darkness, he realized.

The little cluster of instruments on the control podium included a laser altimeter, and Doug saw that its digital readout was falling so fast the numbers were almost a blur. Still Brennart did not fire the rocket to slow their descent It's like parachute jumping, he thought. See how long you cap stay in free-fall before you chicken out and pull the ripcord.

He felt his heart racing as he clutched the flimsy railing with both hands and marveled at Brennart's cool while the hopper plunged deeper and deeper into the eternal darkness.

"Are we there yet?" Bianca's voice bleated in his earphones. She's trying to make light of it, Doug thought, but this long free-fall must be bothering her. I wonder how she did on the trip to Moonbase from Earth? She must have been in misery all the way. Greenberg had said nothing since they'd climbed aboard the hopper and damned little before that Doug realized that the nanotech engineer was as closed-mouthed as anyone he had ever met.

Straining his eyes, Doug peered over the railing into the darkness below. He could make out vague shapes in the darkness, like monsters from a child's nightmare reaching up to snare him.

Then a lurch of thrust nearly buckled his knees and the landscape below was briefly lit by the rocket's silent flame, like a scene suddenly illuminated by a lightning bolt's flash. Before Doug could blink it was inky dark again and they continued to fall.

Then another flash and surge of thrust. Then a gentle bump and Doug felt the comfortable reassurance of weight once more. They were on the ground.

"Don't just stand there," Brennart commanded. "Get off and into the shelter."

For a moment Doug was transfixed, immobilized with admiration for Brennart's piloting. The man really is as good as all the stories about him.

"Move!" Brennart bellowed.

Almost laughing, Doug knocked down the hopper's railing and jumped softly to the ground.

"Which shelter?" Greenberg asked. He had turned on his helmet lamp, Doug saw. So had Brennart. He did the same, then Bianca followed suit.

"Number four," said Brennart, pointing with a long arm. "The others are already occupied."

They trooped to the airlock, Greenberg in the lead. He may not say much, Doug thought, but he sure makes it clear that he wants to get safely inside.

"Don't take off your suits," Brennart commanded. "Go right through the lock and into the shelter. Leave your suits on."

Doug waited for Bianca to go in, then turned toward Brennart.

"Go on, go on," the expedition commander shooed impatiently. "We don't have all damned day."

Doug ducked through the airlock hatch, waited for it to recycle, then stepped into the shelter. Bianca and Greenberg were sitting awkwardlyspn the edges of two facing bunks, still encased in their bulky spacesuits, looking like a pair of hunchbacked giant pandas. There were no internal partitions in this smaller shelter; it was merely a dugout for sleeping and eating.

The pumps chugged and the inner airlock hatch opened to let Brennart step through. He had to bend over slightly to keep the top of his helmet from scraping the shelter's curving ceiling.

"Not enough rubble on top of us to provide full shielding," he explained, "so we stay in the suits until the radiation dies down."

"That could be days!" Rhee blurted.

"We'll need the extra shielding the suits provide," Brennart said calmly. "It'll be uncomfortable but better than getting fried."

"And the backpacks?" she asked.

"We can take off the backpacks and breathe the air in here, but otherwise we will stay buttoned up. Like the man says, better safe than sorry."

"What about eating?" asked Doug.

Brennart turned toward him slowly, his helmet visor staring at him like a blank-eyed cyclops. "We'll take a quick meal now, before the radiation builds up. After that, I'll decide when and if it's safe to open our visors for food."

After a heartbeat's span of silence, Brennart added in a more relaxed tone, "A little dieting won't hurt any of us."

So they grabbed prepackaged meals from the shelter's food locker and took turns sticking them in the tiny microwave oven.

"Stand back from the oven. You don't want to get exposed to any radiation that leaks through," Greenberg said, so solemnly that Doug couldn't tell if he was joking or serious.

Brennart raised his visor to eat his meal, and Doug could at last see the man's face. If Brennart was worried, he didn't show it. He looked calm; thoughtful, but certainly not jittery.

"That's our guide," he said, pointing to the radiation meter built into the airlock control panel. "That, and our suit patches, are the only way we have of telling how high the radiation level is."

The suit patches were cumulative, Doug knew. They changed color with dosage, going from green through yellow to red. Once they turned red you were supposed to get inside shelter, no matter what you were doing out on the surface. He looked down at the patch on his right arm and was startled to see it had already turned a sickly greenish yellow. Just from the work we've done outside today, he thought. What color will it be when the radiation cloud hits?

How can they eat this garbage? Greg wondered as he chewed on the little sandwich. It tasted like sawdust and glue, with a core of hard rubber.

He felt uncomfortable at the flare party, and most of the people around him seemed uncomfortable in his presence. Jinny Anson was perfectly relaxed, apparently, but the others stiffened visibly as he approached mem. They were friendly enough, but Greg saw them put their drinks down or try to hide them behind their backs. Laughter died out as he came up to a knot of party-goers. People became polite, their smiles strained.

The new boss, Greg figured. They know I'll be in charge here in a week, the board chairwoman's son, and they don't know what kind of a boss I'm going to be. Inwardly, Greg frowned at the irony of it. I don't know what kind of a boss I'm going to be, either. Obviously there's alcohol in most of those drinks, even though nobody's offered me any. What else is going down?

He had made a sort of ragged circumnavigation of The Cave, and ended up back near Anson, who was deep in conversation with a tall, ragged-looking old simp with a mangy beard and sad, baggy eyes. Greg left his dish of unfinished finger sandwiches on the nearest table and went toward her.

"Here he is," Anson said as Greg approached them. She waved Greg toward her, then introduced, "Greg Masterson, Lev Brudnoy."

The legendary Lev Brudnoy! Greg realized that Brudnoy's legend was more than twenty years old now. The poor geezer must be pushing sixty, at least.

"How do you do," said Brudnoy gravely, extending a calloused hand. His coveralls were a faded olive green, splotched here and there with stains. He was about Greg's own height, though, and wider across the shoulders.

"I'm very happy to meet you," Greg said perfunctorily. Brudnoy's grip was strong; Greg got the feeling he could have squeezed a lot harder if he'd wanted to.

"So you are going to be our leader for the next twelve months," Brudnoy said.

"That's right."

"I knew your stepfather, Paul Stavenger. He was a good man."

Trying not to bristle, Greg said, "I thought it was my father who gave you permission to join Moonbase."

With a slow smile, Brudnoy answered, "Quite true. But I never met your father. He never came here and I was never invited to meet him when I visited Earthside."

"Oh. I see."

"I am most indebted to him, of course. And to your lovely mother-whom I also have never met"

Feeling awkward, Greg tried to change the subject 'I suppose you've been here at Moonbase longer than anyone else' It was inane and he knew it, but Greg couldn't think of anything else.

"More than twenty years," Anson said.

"Not all that time has been spent here on the Moon, of course' said Brudnoy. "I visit Earthside each year, as required by our health regulations"

Greg knew the regulations. They were based on the idea that living on the Moon deconditioned the body for living in Earth's heavier gravity. Every Moonbase employee was required to undertake an exercise regime to keep muscles and bones strong enough for an immediate return Earthside. , "Yet' Brudnoy went on, almost wistfully, "my trips Earth-side grow shorter and my stays here grow longer. This is my true home. Earth is a distant dream"

With a sardonic smile, Greg said, "The food's better on Earth"

"Quite true' Brudnoy agreed.

"What we grow in our farm is for nutrition, not gourmet taste' Anson snapped.

"Mostly soybeans' said-Brudnoy. "What little variety we have comes from thjem' Before Greg could comment, he went on, "And green vegetables, of course. We recently introduced carrots, but they aren't doing too well"

"Everything else we have to bring up from Earthside' Anson said defensively. "We have to go for the highest nutritional values per kilo, not taste"

"That's obvious' said Greg.

Looking nettled, Anson turned to Brudnoy. "He'll fit right in here; up here ten minutes and he's already complaining about the food"