PART I: Destiny
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MARE NUBIUM
“Magnificent desolation.”
Paul Scavenger always spoke those words whenever he stepped out onto the bare dusty surface of the Moon. But this time it was more than a quotation: it was a supplication, a prayer.
Standing at the open hatch of the airlock, he looked through his tinted visor at the bare expanse of emptiness stretching in every direction. Normally the sight calmed him, brought him some measure of peace, but now he tried to fight down the churning ache in his gut Fear. He had seen men die before, but not like Tinker and Wojo. Killed. Murdered. And he was trying to get me. The poor bastards just happened to be in his way.
Paul stepped out onto the sandy regolith, his boots kicking up little clouds of dust that floated lazily in the light lunar gravity and slowly settled back to the ground.
Got to get away, Paul said to himself. Got to get away from here before the damned bugs get me, too.
Twenty miles separated this underground shelter from the next one. He had to make it on foot. The little rocket hopper was already a shambles and he couldn’t trust the tractor; the nanobugs had already infected it. For all he knew, they were in his suit, too, chewing away at the insulation and the plastic that kept the suit airtight.
Well, he told himself, you’ll find out soon enough. One foot in front of the other. I’ll make it on foot if I make it at all.
Twenty miles. On foot. And the Sun was coming up.
“Okay,” he said, his voice shaky. “If it is to be, it’s up to me.”
The sky was absolutely black, but only a few stars showed through the heavy tint of his helmet’s visor. They stared steadily down at Paul, unblinking, solemn as the eyes of God.
Turning slightly as he walked, Paul looked up to see a fat gibbous Earth, blue and gleaming white, hanging in the dark sky. So close. So far. Joanna was waiting for him there. Was Greg trying to kill her, too? The thought sent a fresh pang of fear and anger through him.
“Get your butt in gear,” he muttered to himself. He headed out across the empty plain, fleeing death one plodding step at a time. With all the self-control he still possessed he kept himself from running. You’ve got to cover twenty miles. Pace yourself for the long haul.
His surface suit held the sweaty smell of fear. He had seen two men die out here; it had been sheer luck that the berserk nanomachines hadn’t killed him, too. How do you know they haven’t infested the suit? he asked himself again. Grimly he answered, What difference does it make? If they have, you’re already dead.
But the suit seemed to be functioning okay. The real test would come when he stepped across the terminator, out of the night and into the blazing fury of daylight. Twenty miles in that heat, and if you stop you’re dead.
He had calculated it all out in his head as soon as he realized what had happened in the shelter. Twenty miles. The suit’s backpack tank held twelve hours of oxygen. No recycling. You’ve got to cover one and two-thirds miles per hour. Make it two miles an hour, give yourself a safety margin.
Two miles an hour. For ten hours. You can make that Sure you can.
But now as he trudged across the bleak wilderness of Mare Nubium, he began to wonder. You haven’t walked ten hours straight in… Christ, not since the first time you came up here to the Moon. That was twenty years ago, almost Twenty pissing years. You were a kid then.
Well, you’ll have to do it now. Or die. Then Greg wins. He’ll have murdered his way to the top.
Even though it was still night, the rugged landscape was not truly dark. Earthglow bathed the rolling, pockmarked ground. Paul could see the rocks strewn across the bare regolith, the rims of craters deep enough to swallow him, the dents of smaller ones that could make him stumble and fall if he wasn’t careful.