"Fine," she said.

But once the screen went dark again Greg wondered, Why doesn't she want to talk with Doug as soon as we make contact again? Is she worried that I'd be jealous? Or will she be making her own contact, direct from Savannah, without letting me know?

Doug's eyes snapped open. He hadn't realized he'd fallen asleep until he woke up. He had been afraid to go to sleep, he realized. Despite everything he had been telling himself, deep within him lurked the fear that once he shut his eyes in sleep he would never open them again.

Well, he said to himself, that was feeble.

He found himself lying on his right side and tried to roll back onto his stomach again. The effort left him gasping, dizzy.

I'm weak as a kitten, he said to himself.

Brennart was still asleep, stretched out beside him. Doug twisted over and looked around. It made his head swim. For several minutes he simply lay still, panting, trying to fight down the fear and nausea that rose inside him like an inexorable tide. Hang on, he demanded of himself. Hang in there; the storm must be almost over by now. Help will be on the way soon.

But not soon enough, a sardonic voice in his head replied.

His world was constrained to this metallic nest beneath the hopper, with a few containers and tanks around them. The nozzle of the hopper's main engine hung between him and Brennart like a bell in a church spire.

An old tune sprang to his mind: It's a Small, Small World. Idiot, Doug snarled to himself. You're being fried by a solar flare and you're thinking about childhood songs.

His earphones chirped.

By reflex, before he realized what it meant, Doug tapped the radio channel selector on his wrist.

"Moonbase to Brennart. Do you read?"

He heard Killifer's overjoyed voice, "Loud and clear, baby! Are we glad to hear you!"

"We're working on reactivating the minisats that the storm knocked out. We have two of them working so far."

"Great!"

"What is your condition?"

"We're all okay, except Brennart and Stavenger. They've been up at the top of Mt Wasser for. .Doug sensed Killifer checking a clock, "... almost seven hours now."

A different voice came on. "Seven hours? In the open?"

"Brennart himself? And the Stavenger boy?" It sounded like Jinny Anson's voice. Urgent Demanding. Doug didn't much like being called a boy.

"Right," Killifer said again.

"What's happened to them?" Now it was Greg's voice. Unmistakable.

"Don't know," said Killifer. "We haven't been able to contact them."

"This is Stavenger," Doug said, shocked at how weak his own voice sounded. "Can you hear me?"

"Stavenger!" Anson shouted. "How are you?"

"Alive... barely."

"And Brennart?"

"Sleeping. Or unconscious."

"We'll get help to you as soon as we can," Anson promised.

Greg came on again. "Killifer! Get somebody up to that mountaintop and bring those two back to your base camp. Now!"

"Hey, we've got a few problems of our own. Power cells are running low, our one remaining hopper needs refueling-"

"Get them as quickly as you can," Anson said. Her voice was cool, but there was no mistaking the implacable tone of her command.

"Right," said Killifer. "We're on our way."

"And shoot us a complete rundown of your own status," Anson added. "All systems."

"Doug," Greg called. "Doug, how are you?"

"I feel kind of sick, but I'm still breathing." He reached across and shook Brennart's shoulder. No response. "I mink Mr. Brennart's unconscious."

"We'll get help to you right away," Greg said.

"Good," said Doug.

Anson came on again. "Killifer, it's going to take us several hours to get a resupply lobber to you. Storm beat up our surface facilities pretty good and we'll need some time to get 'em all back on line."

"Understood," Killifer replied. "We're all okay here, except for Brennart and Stavenger."

"How long can your power supplies hold out?"

"Fuel cells are down about forty percent. We can power down if we have to, stretch 'em out till the resupply arrives."

Doug heard Greg's voice in the background urging, "You've got to send a medical team down there. Right away!"

"Stavenger," Anson called, "can you put your medical monitoring system on frequency three? We can start checking out your medical condition."

"Okay. And Mr. Brennart's, too."

"Right. Of course. But you've got to be quick. The satellite won't be above your horizon much longer."

"I understand," Doug said. "Now, which of these plugs is the medical system?"

"It's marked with a red circle."

Doug held his left arm up in the light of his helmet lamp. It brushed the underside of the hopper's platform. He squinted hard to keep his vision from blurring. Either the lamp's running down or my eyesight's going, he thought.

"Okay, found it."

"Toggle the microswitch and then press the keypad for frequency three," Anson directed patiently.

It seemed to take forever, but Doug finally got it right.

"Okay, good," Anson said. "Data's coming in."

"What about Brennart?"

"Do the same for him, if you can."

Puzzled by the if you can, Doug pushed himself closer to Brennart, found the right switch and punched frequency three on his radio keypad.

"We've only got another fifty seconds before the satellite drops below your horizon," Anson said. "Killifer, get a team up to those two immediately."

"Will do."

"We hope to re-establish a link with you in fifteen minutes."

"Right."

The contact broke up into crackling static. Doug clicked off the noise. The universe went silent, except for the sound of the suit's fans and his own breathing, it sounded ragged, labored. A wave of nausea was surging up his throat Doug fought it back. The last thing he wanted was to upchuck inside the helmet Panting, sweating, feeling sick and dizzy, he clicked on the suit-to-suit frequency, to check on Brennart's breathing.

Nothing. Doug held his breath and listened hard. He could not hear anything at all from Brennart.

BASEL.

Wilhelm Zimmerman rocked slowly in his desk chair. It creaked under his weight. He was a fat, bald, unkempt man in a wrinkled gray suit that looked as if he had been sleeping in it for a week.

The woman sitting in front of his desk looked distraught. She was well into her seventies, lifeless white hair hanging straight, skin wrinkled and brittle-looking, obviously her blood circulation was poor. Too bad, thought Zimmerman, she must have been something of a beauty once.

"I don't want to die," she said, her voice cracking.

"Neither do I," said Zimmerman softly. "No one does. And yet...' He shrugged elaborately.

"I've heard... some of my friends have told me... that it is possible to reverse the effects of aging." She looked at him piercingly, her diamond-hard blue eyes belying the hesitancy in her voice.

Zimmerman rested his hands on his considerable paunch. She wants to live. So do I.

"Madam, what your friends have told is unkind. There are no miracles."

"But... I thought that your work here at the university," she said. "What is it called? Nano-something or other."

"My research is on nanotechnology, yes," he replied. "But procedures on human subjects is absolutely forbidden. The laws are very strict. We are not allowed to deal with human patients."

"Oh!"

"In fact," Zimmerman said, "for the past several years we have worked only on non-medical aspects of nanotechnology. The animal rights movement has made even animal experiments too difficult to continue."

The elderly lady took a tissue from her tiny purse and dabbed at the corners of her eyes.

Pointing a chubby finger at the graphs on his office wall, Zimmerman said with some distaste, "As you can see, Madam, our most recent work has been on new manufacturing processes for solar panels and long-range electrical distribution lines."

"Oh my," said the elderly lady, "I haven't the faintest idea of what that means."

"For an organization called OPEC," Zimmerman explained, frowning. "To generate electricity in the desert and send it here to Europe."

The woman's eyes went crafty. "But isn't it true that you also do therapeutic work-but you're not allowed to let people know about it?"

Zimmerman shook his head hard enough to make his cheeks waddle. "No!" he said firmly. "That would be against the law. The university would not stand for it and neither would the authorities."

"But I was told-"

"Madam, you were misinformed. I am sorry, but do I look like the kind of man who would risk his career and his good name by breaking the law?"

Dubiously, she replied, "I suppose not."

For another half hour she tried to get Zimmerman to admit that he could use nanotherapy to help her. When at last she gave up and left, Zimmerman called a friend from the forensic medical department who came to his office, grinning, and lifted several excellent fingerprints from the armrests of the chair on which she had sat.

It took more than a week for Zimmerman's connections in the Swiss national police to get the information to him. The elderly woman was the mother of a bureaucrat in Berne who was in charge of monitoring all nanotherapy work in the nation.

"An agent provocateur," Zimmerman said to himself. "Next they will close down all nanotechnology work, even research, the way they've done in the United States."

He wished there was somewhere in the world where he could continue his work in peace.

MOONBASE.

"It'll take at least twelve hours to get a lobber properly loaded with the supplies they need," Anson said over the din in the garage.

Tractors were starting up, the whining shrill of their electrical engines echoing painfully off the rock walls of the cavernous garage area. Men and women were scurrying across the polished rock floor; the big steel inner hatch of the airlock itself was groaning on its bearings as it slid shut for the twentieth time in the past two hours.

"They need help now," Greg insisted. "My brother's dying, for chrissake."

Anson shook her head. "No sense killing more people by going out there half-cocked."

"Can't we send a medical team right now?" Greg pleaded. "I don't care what it costs-''

Anson whirled on him. "You think I'm worried about cost?"

Greg backed a step away from her sudden fury. "What I meant was... dammit, send a medical team now. Right away! Consider that an order from the board of directors."

"I take my orders from Ibriham Rashid, in Savannah," Anson said, striding away from Greg.

He pushed past two technicians waving hand-held computers at each other as they argued.

Grabbing Anson by her shoulder, Greg said, "Send the medical team now. Don't wait for the rest of the stuff they need. Do it now! I'll take the responsibility."

Anson glared at him. "We don't have any medical staff to send! One doctor and a couple of part-time technicians, that's our medical staff. They won't be able to do anything for him down there anyway."

"But-"