About a half hour before the explosion, Kristen Norman was weeping uncontrollably and had no idea why. Was it the date? The eve of Buddha's enlightenment day was a traditional time to become depressed, either because of sentimental reasons or because it coincided with perigee, when the Moon was closest to the Earth.

    But Kristen did not think of herself as the religious type-not the weepy, hero-adoring kind, anyway-and besides, no one really knew the time and the date of the Buddha's enlightenment. All that aside, there was the perigee syndrome, but being in a controlled environment, on an ion-propelled shuttle somewhere between the Earth and the Moon, made it unlikely that a slight change in the Earth's gravitational pull or the amount of Earthshine reaching the Moon's surface would have much effect on her serotonin levels.

    Meditation sometimes worked, but she found it hard, if not impossible, to meditate in a weightless environment. Vipassana, insight meditation, the technique she practiced, required some level of discomfort lest she become too relaxed and fall asleep or just let the mind wander-at least that's the way it was at her level of practice.

    She was bi-polar, true, but she had taken her usual dosage of Somatau, hadn't she? More dependable than any human relationship, the psychotropic drug always made some hidden part of her brain roll over on its back and purr like a contented cat. But not today, obviously. With all her willpower brought to bear, she launched herself across the Sick Bay to a wall-mounted cabinet. Rummaging through the various vials, she found-eureka!-a Diazepam emulsion in a 10mg auto-injector. Diazepam. Valium. An ancient drug, it was on hand for seizures, but it ought to do the trick.

    In less than a minute the weeping stopped, and the air took on the feel of brushed velvet. The despair vanished. The relief was worth the dry mouth and mild fatigue that followed.

    Seen this movie before, she thought, but her mind was too foggy to come up with a title.

    Now then, what had gone wrong with her usual medication? Somatau had always worked. She'd taken it since her teens when the bi-polar disorder had first manifested itself. She and about twenty percent of Lunar citizens took Somatau or a similar drug. Could it be something to do with the microgravity environment? Unlikely. Weightlessness affected many bodily functions-she'd had a backache since departure as her spine stretched, and she had to make constant trips to the bathroom to get rid of excess body fluid-the usual stuff, all to be expected as the human body wasn't designed for a weightless environment. She tried a quick search through the medical records database to see if there were any recorded Somatau/weightless interactions-well, not so quick, as the Valium slowed thinking. The search came up nil.

    No, wait. A relaxing of the search parameters brought up a reference to one of the active ingredients in Somatau boiling out of the tablets under hard vacuum. A quick check of the ship's log showed the medical module had been evacuated prior to mission start to rid it of vermin. She'd been taking Somatau from an unsealed vial from ship's stores. The Somatau in the sealed vials should be okay.

    While she waited for the Somatau to take effect-and for the dulling effects of Valium to wear off-she took care of housekeeping that didn't require too much intellectual wherewithal. First she flushed the worthless Somatau down the vacuum toilet, then gathered up the loose vials that were floating around the cabin. Her earlier tears had coalesced into large globules, and she sucked them up with a miniature vacuum.

    Left with time on her hands, she could run the standard daily blood tests on all the crew. In weightless and low gravity environments, the bones of human beings turned to chalk, and their immune systems became unresponsive. Modern drugs counteracted many of the physiological effects of weightlessness, but like most drugs, they had their own side effects and required careful monitoring.

    Her lab procedures were interrupted by a beep on her head comset.

    "Yes, Norman here,” she said.

    "Kristen, Dr. Taylor here."

    "Yes, Doctor, how can I help you?"

    "I'm just checking in to see that everything is all right over there."

    "Fine, Doctor, except for a minor problem I've identified,” she said, hoping her voice wasn't slurring from the Valium. She briefly outlined the problem with the corrupted Somatau, but didn't mention her near-breakdown.

    "Who of the mission complement is prescribed Somatau?"

    She told him. There were three of the forty-five crew members, plus herself.

    "Glad you caught this, Kristen. I'll give them a heads-up."

    "Thanks, Doctor."

    "Don't mention it, and I'm sorry you can't join us for the party Kristen, but protocol says we must have a medical officer on board the Ark at all times."

    "That's just the luck of the draw,” she said. But the truth was that like everyone lacking an advanced degree, she was relegated to second-class status. With few exceptions, advanced degrees for Moon-born were more inherited than won. Her being here on the Ark, missing the party on the Anita, had been fated twenty-eight years ago. The lottery had taken place at her birth.

    Taylor cleared his throat. “Well, this mission may change things for you. The Cloister is talking about honorary degrees for all non-doctorates on this mission."

    "Yes, Dr. Taylor, they're talking about it,” she said, but she knew how these things went. Talking was one thing; promises were something entirely different.

    "And Kristen, one other thing."

    "Yes?"

    "There's no need to use my formal title, at least not while we are talking privately. Call me Ted."

    "Yes, ah, Ted,” she said. The Valium had made her slow-witted. She now realized Dr. Taylor was a bit wasted himself.

    "Oops. I've got to sign off now. Praise Buddha, I'm the doctor of ceremonies, you know."

    "Have a good time, Doct-I mean, Ted."

    He had disconnected before she finished the sentence. The party must be a good one, a near-orgy for some, as the party's theme was “We Who Are About to Die, Screw You.” She idly wondered if Dr. Taylor's familiarity had been a prelude to a pass or just alcohol and drugs talking. Dr. Taylor-Ted-wasn't a bad guy as the tenured went, but he was well above her station, as her parents had been NASA technicians and lacked doctorates. Her role in an affair with him would be more that of a concubine than a lover.

    She removed her earbuds and virtual visor and logged into one of the external view cameras. It took her three tries to find one that gave her a view of the Anita. For some reason the first two cameras weren't working.

    She wound up with a partial view from an aft-mounted CMOS camera, all she could see was the foreshortened forward section of the Anita, the dumpy heavy lifter that was going to get her and the rest of the crew off the surface of the Earth. That was the theory at least. Nothing like the Anita had ever been tried in an atmosphere. Smaller versions were used to ferry processed ores back to Luna from the asteroid belt, but setting off nukes in a planetary atmosphere-Earth's-was a whole different wad of possibilities.

    Basically, the Anita was an atomic bomb machine gun. Small fusion bombs, ranging in power from one to five kilotons each, would be ejected from a port in the rear like eggs and then detonated about a hundred meters from the ship.

    The whole concept seemed insane. What if one detonated prematurely? Or lodged in the interior launch tube?

    Maybe it was all the frigging Valium, but when the flash of the explosion erupted from behind the Anita, and the shock wave knocked her flat against the far wall, she was only mildly surprised.

    

    

    Shortly before the explosion, Jorge Blanca, the youngest member of the mission, wasn't where he was supposed to be-on watch-but in the head, reading the instructions for the zero-G toilet for about the umpteen-thousandth time. He read the instructions not because he couldn't remember them and not because he had nothing else to read. No, he read them because he had to, was compelled to. In fact-a secret, not to be told to anyone-he had started visiting the toilet when he didn't have to go just to read the instructions. The act comforted him. If he didn't read the instructions several times a day, he would spend every waking moment feeling as if he was forgetting something important, like not putting on his pants before he went out on the public decks. He sighed. It was another strange manifestation of his obsessive/compulsive syndrome.

    Again, maybe it wasn't so compulsive. Maybe it was just operant conditioning. The Reading of the Instructions relaxed him, un-wrenched his intestines.

    Who was he kidding? The compulsions were getting worse, possibly because of the stress of this mission, and maybe-he wasn't sure about this-excessive beating off. If he couldn't master the compulsions, he would soon have to go to Kristen and ask for either a larger dose of DeComp or a new medication altogether. She was almost a psychiatrist. Would she ask him about masturbation?

    The only good news was that it wouldn't harm his career. The powers that be-the powers that were-couldn't ground him. No one knew whether it was because of low gravity or the Moonbase's shallow gene pool or a combination of both, but more than fifty percent of Moon citizens had some sort of mental tic, syndrome, phobia, depression or compulsion, or whatever. In a true democracy, the majority rules, and it had become illegal to discriminate against those with a mental disorder.

    Something inside him relaxed at this thought. It would seem he wasn't just here to read the toilet instructions after all.

    Reluctantly, he pushed the start button and, as before, the seat ring latched onto his buttocks like a huge leech. Worse was the urine catheter-that's what it was called, though it was more like a prophylactic as it slipped over rather than inserted. As most young men have done since the dawn of time, when faced with boredom and stress for more than a couple of minutes, his thoughts turned to sex.

    He had secretly named the vacuum toilet Anita, but he needed a fantasy focus, a real woman to think about, not just a bitch of a space ship.

    First and foremost on his thoughts was Kristen. With her green eyes and ponytail of auburn hair threatening to be red, she was quite a package. Curvaceous without being voluptuous in her tight blue military coveralls and little standard issue booties, she wore an oversized rodeo buckle on her utility belt, a real Earth heirloom, giving her a kind of Texas cowgirl, quirky sexy thing. The fact that she couldn't have children and therefore wasn't constantly pregnant, as were many Moon women, was, of course, a plus. He had made a pass, but gotten some remark about robbing the cradle. She was probably nearly thirty, but hey, that was only ten years difference.

    Then there was Gayle Ring, who also wasn't pregnant, would also never be pregnant, but who had somehow made it clear that she was inaccessible. He first expected she was a lesbian, but now he felt she was one of those people who, out of some idealistic philosophy, stowed away as unneeded thoughts of the crude act of sex, like religious devotees. He thought about unfastening the front of those one-piece overalls she wore. Betcha there was nothing underneath. Just smooth, unblemished woman flesh. She was tall, taller than he was by about eight or ten centimeters, and skinny. Some women could still make curves on the fourteen-hundred-calorie diet that everyone but gestating women had to live on, but Gayle, who always seemed in motion, wasn't one of them. And if Kristen thought she would be robbing the cradle, then Gayle, who was at least thirty-five, maybe older, would probably try to burp him. Old or not, tall and lanky, there was still something really sexy about Gayle. Really sexy. Really, really sexy. But she could put him down with just a look, a chilling glance that made him feel as though he was a piece of primordial slime. The memory of that cold glance unfastened the fantasy, leaving him feeling like a limp adolescent.

    Crap! But the erection persisted. The toilet was a perverted thing; this toilet-it had forced him to pitch the bivouac of sex in the house of excrement. And, now that he thought of it, curse his father for making him read Yeats as a child.

    He started reading the instructions again, hoping it would take his mind off his mental image of Gayle, slowly orbiting him in micrograv, but letting him know with one of those looks that he would have more luck breathing vacuum than getting inside her coveralls.

    Then the hand of God-or something nearly like it-slapped him off the toilet. He would have gone flying across the room except for the urinary sheath. The catheter stretched to its limit, and he threatened to rebound bungee cord fashion, but fear had made him lose his erection, and the sheath snapped off. He drifted leisurely back toward the toilet.

    The lights blinked, then went out entirely, immersing him in total darkness. Something wet and slimy bounced off his face. When the emergency light came on, he could see the turds-disgorged by the toilet-floating weightless around his head like brown trout circling a stream's eddy. Something had hit the ship. Was he going to die, floating among turds?

    

    

    A few minutes before the explosion, Jimmy Olson, who some said looked like Santa Claus on steroids, was lamenting the loss of hard-copy books. There were, of course, lots of reasons why books weren't convenient in space: their harboring dust and bacteria, their weight, their just being big and bulky and in the way. But Olson was old enough to remember and miss them. Besides those same characteristics described him-everything from harboring germs to being big and difficult to read. That didn't mean he should be relegated to obsolescence.

    Or did it?

    So, what was he going to read today? Shortly before the days of independence, when Earth governments were on the verge of collapse, the Cloister declared itself a sovereign lunar state. It had also ruled Earth copyrights null and void, and an entire static copy of the Internet had been uploaded to Moon servers. Olson had at his fingertips, as did every other Cloister citizen, virtually all the important literary, scientific, and even pornographic works-especially the pornographic works-of mankind up to 2040, about twenty years ago. Practically every movie ever made was there in one form or another, which had turned many of his brothers and sisters into the space-bound equivalent of couch potatoes. With little entertainment and strained resources, they watched everything from film classics, to sitcoms (Cheers was particularly popular; the Twilight Zone was not) to old news broadcasts. Radiation was widely blamed for the widespread deterioration of Cloister citizens’ mental states, but he suspected the terabytes upon terabytes of television and movie archives had as much to do with it as anything.

    But for readers, the purloined Internet archives were a godsend. He could carry the full works of practically any author in the pocket of his utility pants, along with a fold-out wi-fi keyboard that could project this data onto any of the many networked displays in the Ark. The Cloister-to-ship bandwidth was a bit narrow, but within a few seconds he could have the full text of any book he could think up displayed on screen.

    Still, he missed the tactile quality of books, of being able to fold the corners on cheap paperbacks, of the sense of ownership of rare volumes. Or even of being able to throw the book in the trash when he found it trite or ill-thought out.

    He missed a lot of things from Earth, things which were now only forty-five-year-old memories.

    He glanced out the porthole. Because the Ark habitat slowly revolved to supply a tenth of a G, the Earth wasn't always visible. Instead, he was treated to a slide-by view of the Anita Ekberg. Connected to the Ark by a hundred-meter truss, the Anita looked like nothing else he'd ever seen in space. The basic design was not that much different from what nuclear-bomb physicists turned-spaceship designers had developed in the 1950s. The ship's name came from another engineering marvel of the mid-twentieth century, the underwire bra. A pointed cone, reminiscent of the “Anita Ekberg Maidenform bra cup"-that's how one of the 1950s team had described it.

    "A fossil, but a man after my own heart,” Olson thought, “Maybe I'm a fossil too."

    The Ark, the ship he rode in, was much more conventional. Ion propulsion units with hydrazine thrusters and a fragile skin made of thin layers of carbon fiber and plastic, the Ark was the tug boat, slowly pulling the Anita into an area where its bombs could be detonated without adding a further dose of radiation to the Moon environment.

    The Anita's tiny aft portholes were unshuttered and dark, but Olson saw that the hanger deck ports that ringed the Anita amidships lit it up like Christmas tree. Exactly like a Christmas tree, for that's where all his privileged crewmates were right now: Partying in zero-G, a we-salute-you, pleasure before we die revelry, a time when one of his female crewmates would have probably laid him out of sympathy. Was he there, with the other party makers? No. No sir-ee. All because of that little indiscretion with the pretty little ensign, Parvani, he was stuck here on disciplinary duty in the Ark with the rest of his fellow losers: Jorge, the obsessive compulsive knight, Kristen, the sob princess, and Gayle the ice queen. And himself? Where did he fit into this royal court? Jimmy, the mad King Lear or the broken down, lecherous court jester?

    Bored and depressed, Olson pulled out the keyboard, which was the size of a deck of cards before he unfolded it, and pulled up a short little video postcard of Parvani from his personal data storage. The nearest network display was the porthole window itself, so he played it there, semi-transparent, letting the real time display of the Anita be layered from underneath.

    "Hi old man,” Parvani began. “Sorry I got you in trouble. I think this whole segregation, academic caste thing is stupid, and I miss you, hairy old nasty body and all."

    Parvani was one of those girls who was pretty in the right light, not so pretty at certain angles. But she was cheerful and bright, had a firm, young body, and had been spared so far of many the health problems so many Moon-born suffered.

    She smiled into the video lens and smoothed her short, coal-black hair from her eyes. She wore a half-dozen silver rings on her fingers, heirlooms passed down from her mother like her doctorate degree.

    What Parvani had ever seen in him was a mystery to Olson. When a young-perhaps not beautiful-but young and fit, twenty-two-year-old woman makes it clear she's willing to be more than just friends, a fifty-five-year old man doesn't ask questions; he just give thanks to the gods that be, whether Christian, Muslim, or Hindu, for the manna that comes his way. For Olson, who lacked any faith at all, this was ironic, that he would feel thankfulness for some unseen higher power because of the affections of a young woman.

    But the relationship promised to be short-lived, as Parvani's parents disapproved of her relationship with Olson. They had objected, not so much because of the age difference, but because in the academic caste system of the Cloister, Olson was, if not an untouchable, certainly beneath their daughter's status, as she was the child and hereditary heir of both their earned doctorate degrees. Though it was possible to become degreed without family support and therefore enjoy full citizenship, it promised to be an ordeal that would consume the remainder of his life. Of course, Parvani's family connections would greatly facilitate the process, but he didn't want it like that.

    Olson found it ironic that to keep the very relationship he wanted to remain uncluttered of Cloister politics, he would have to play politics.

    "Jimmy, I know you don't like to kiss ass-except mine, maybe-I think you just need the proper incentive to do so and get you to continue working toward advancement. Did you know that in Hindu my name means full moon festival?” Parvani said.

    With this fact she turned from the camera, pulled down her pants and presented him with a glimpse of beautiful young behind.

    "Get out your binoculars, dirty old man,” she said. “I'll be at the little porthole near the loading dock at midnight. You can play your favorite game of voyeur."

    Olson switched off the video. Parvani didn't know the whole story. She didn't know he had made too many enemies in the Cloister Administration and would never see promotion. Despite the little thrill the video had given him, Parvani was forever out of his reach, and he might as well get used to the idea.

    The Anita gradually swung out of his field of view and was replaced by the blue marble of Earth. The porthole was augmented, of course. And when he said “FOV one-half degree,” the Earth immediately filled the porthole. At this magnification, he could see, peeking out from a fine filigree of cloud formations, the striking blue silhouette of the Gulf of Mexico. The western United States, from the Rockies to the Pacific seaboard, was in darkness. Overall, the Earth didn't look much different from what Apollo astronauts would have seen with a small telescope from Lunar orbit a hundred years earlier-with one important difference. A century before, the West would have been peppered with specks of light, evidence of the presence of human cities. Now it was largely dark. The city lights were almost gone, either wiped out by nukes, or the plague, or simply darkened because no one was left who could keep the local power grid running.

    Olson felt a sense of loss whenever he looked at the new Earth and knew the big metroplexes were in shambles, and the world population was down ninety percent or more from when he left the planet. Which was ironic; he felt sad about the deaths of billions though he had hated crowds all his life. As a child on Earth, he had spent most of his time trying to get away from the madding crowds, away so he could think. He wasn't terrified of human congestion as his father had been, the fact that drove a high-salaried professional on Earth to migrate to a low-paying life of drudgery on the Moon. What was the word for that phobia? Ochla something or other. He didn't remember, didn't care much that he didn't. But he did feel better, had clearer thoughts, and could think about more important things when he was away from too many people. He preferred people in small numbers and yet needed a sense of family. A mining ship offered just that; plus there was a chance for the love of a woman once in awhile, admittedly a small chance now at his age, but a big chance at the time. A psychiatrist would probably say that he hadn't had enough love from his momma when he was child-whatever the cause, Olson thought his love of women was probably the only reason he bothered to stay associated with the human species.

    Speaking of which, he toggled his intercom switch.

    "Gayle? Are you still with us?"

    "Define us,” came the answer after a moment.

    "Us the living; the human race."

    There was a pause. “Affirmative on the living. I'm not so sure I want to be too closely associated with the human race."

    Olson chuckled. “I'm not a card carrying member of that club, either,” he said.

    "Now you're going to tell me it's your nature. It's in your genes."

    "According to Dawkins, the gene is the basic unit of selfishness. We humans are just robot vehicles programmed to preserve the selfish molecules called genes. Altruism has no place in nature. It's an illusion we survival robots calm ourselves with,” he said with what he hoped sounded like authority.

    "Dawkins said that what passed as altruism in humans was a way of genes preserving themselves,” Olson said, feeling cocky and intellectual. “Since many members of a small inbred community shared similar genes, it made sense for one individual to be sacrificed for the good of the group. That way, more copies of the gene would survive at the cost of only one copy."

    "Sounds like Dawkins should have called his book the ‘Un-selfish Gene,’ not the ‘Selfish Gene.’”

    "Maybe, but it's still a matter of the gene sacrificing the hosts-you or me-for its own survival. It's still nature over nurture."

    "Bullshit,” Gayle said. “It's nurture as much as nature.” She was outside the spacecraft, which now poised at the L1 Lagrange point. “Human nature is for shit, if you ask me,” she added.

    Olson, sitting in the relative security of Deck D, amidships from the ion-jet and navigation on Deck A, had called up the entire script of “The Selfish Gene” on his monocle display and had run a find on “altruism” so he could sound like he was quoting Dawkins from memory. Gayle probably wasn't impressed. She knew about his monocle hack.

    She wasn't supposed to be doing such a dangerous exercise, particularly for space tourist photos, but then that was just Gayle. She did what she wanted and told whoever would listen what she thought. And of course, he hated to admit it, but he was having geezer fantasies about her coming to his hammock the next sleep shift. Maybe that's why he ran interference for her and had temporarily reprogrammed the spaceside surveillance cameras so she could have her walk.

    "Relax. I'm here. The little telescope is acting weird. It almost got away from me. If I let it point itself toward the sun, the CCD will fry."

    "Tell me you're coming back in soon,” he said, sounding like a nagging parent. The reprogrammed surveillance cameras kept her from being busted, but if she got in trouble out there, she could die before he or anyone else got to her.

    "You worry too much,” she replied. He could hear her breathing heavily, a kind of sexy, feminine version of Darth Vader. He imagined her on the far side of the ship, with her space-suited legs (space-suited, though elegantly long with a generous butt in his imagination) wrapped around the lump of the camera, fighting its inertia with an occasional bump and grind of her hips, like a cowgirl riding a mechanical bucking horse.

    That was more fantasy, of course. The telescope Gayle had appropriated had its own miniature propulsion system and was a cylinder about twenty centimeters in diameter.

    Before he had hooked up with Parvani, he had entertained the idea of enticing Gayle into his bunk. And though he was monogamous by nature-anything else would make him a male whore in his opinion-there was a simple knee jerk flirting reaction he had around long-legged, aloof women such as Gayle. Men with active libidos were like dogs. They were always thinking about getting in good with any attractive women they met, making points in hope-at some semiconscious level-of getting laid. He knew this and felt a little ashamed but knew what little virtue he had was safe. Gayle had shown little interest in sex, either with men or women, and particularly not with broken-dick old men like himself. (Buddha only knew what Parvani saw in him.) But flirting was fun; one could have a good conversation with Gayle, made all the more fun knowing it was merely a fantasy that would never be fulfilled, thereby avoiding any performance anxiety. And she was standup enough to know he was just flirting to be flirting; that it wasn't some sexual harassment thing. Hell, in a few years all he might have left would be fantasies and memories of better times. He knew that the current affair with Parvani was doomed, either by parental decree or the inherent Shangri-la nature of spring/fall relationship. He would grow older sooner, more tired, if he didn't succumb to some sort of debilitating disease first. Parvani, on the other hand, in the next few years would not so much age as mature. Now he was a novelty, a young-natured old man. In a few years, he would just be an old man who slept too much and farted too often, and she would be looking elsewhere for a soul-mate.

    He shook off the feeling of gloom and made a resolution-for about the hundredth time-to enjoy the relationship while it lasted and not dwell on the fact that when she left him, or when she began looking at him with a mixture of boredom and pity and he left her, that it wouldn't break his heart. Of course, it might be said that if he truly loved Parvani that he would set her free because there was no long-term future in such altruism.

    "Fuck altruism,” he said, feeling selfish all the same.

    "Excuse me?” Gayle said.

    "Sorry.” He hadn't meant to speak aloud.

    "Didn't Dawkins talk about fish and how they expressed their altruism selectively?” Gayle asked.

    "Well…"

    "Run a search in Dawkins on sucker-that's s-u-c-k-e-r for your information-and see what you get."

    She's gotcha, he thought and began entering the name on his keyboard when Gayle screamed, and the lights went out.

    

    

    A few minutes before the explosion, Gayle Ring was breaking all the rules of ship safety by taking an unauthorized, solitary space walk. It would seem, Gayle thought, that a spacewalk would be virtually effortless compared to walking around on the moon's surface where a similar suit massed fifty kilograms. Microgravity should make things a snap.

    Nothing could be further from the truth, she had discovered. Micro-gravity raised all sorts of problems. For example, when beads of sweat formed on her forehead, she instinctively tossed her head to shake them off. One flung-off bead caromed like a tiny billiard ball and bounced off the inside of her visor to strike directly in her right eye. The inside of the visor was coated with a film of detergent to prevent fogging, and the sweat droplet had picked up some of this soap, making it more a soap ball than a sweat ball. Ten minutes later, her eye still watered. In micro-grav, tears stayed in her eye. They didn't roll down her cheek as they did on the Moon for there was no down here. They just sort of squished out when she blinked, diluting instead of washing away the soap.

    Fortunately, framing shots in the camera's viewfinder only required one eye. Unfortunately, the camera was rigged to be operated using the right eye. To use her left eye, she had to hold the camera upside down-there was that gravity-born thinking again-which meant she had to press the shutter release button with her left index finger, the tip of which she had lost to frostbite on a Moon excursion. So, she had to depress the shutter button with her left thumb which meant she kept jerking the camera and throwing off her composition.

    Shit! How hard could it be to frame the crescent Earth in the camera? It seemed huge, hanging there in infinitely black space. The answer was pretty damn hard. When she turned off her helmet lights and her eyes adjusted to the dimmer light, the viewfinder filled with millions of stars. The stars were visible from the Moon, but here, for some reason, stars seemed closer than others-as if she could reach out and touch them-and it was easy to become disoriented.

    And then there was the problem of momentum. As she continued to drift, she would come to the end of her tether and then rebound. She needed to take her shots at the end of the rebound, when the tether was stretched taut, just before it pulled her back.

    The telescope she was using was another part of the bad mix. It hadn't been designed to be handheld, but to be fork-mounted on a tripod. Lacking any other megapixel alternative with good optics, she had salvaged it from the old observatory for just this purpose and had jury rigged a power supply for the CCD camera. Though it was a Schmidt Cassegrain, she had mounted the CCD in place of its secondary mirror. At a focal ratio of about f2, its field of view was more than three degrees wide, and as the Earth subtended about a half degree, it should, one would think, be relatively simple to put it in the camera's frame.

    She was tempted to disconnect herself from the tether, but there were several good reasons not to do so, death by asphyxiation being the foremost. She checked the time display on the inside of her helmet. She had about ten more minutes of air, if she calculated correctly. It occurred to her that if she could brace herself against the ship, her camera aim would be more stable. After hooking the big Schmidt-it was the size of a small trash can-on her belt, she began to haul herself back to the ship hand-over-hand on the tether. She glanced again at the Earth. It was a glorious sight, a view spoiled only by the Anita, a grotesque ship, seventy-five meters in diameter, one hundred and fifty meters long. It resembled nothing so much as a huge squat bullet sitting on an upturned stool.

    Bullet head. The sitting god of war.

    She hated the thing. She hated how it looked, what it would do to Mother Earth when the nukes were detonated in the atmosphere. She hated the very principle of it, a thing born of genius but of patriarchal old world order genius and therefore twisted. A thing that should never have been built, that should be destroyed before it reached Earth.

    It was an opinion she kept to herself.

    The Ark, now that was something else again. The Ark, connected to the Anita by a long thin truss, was beautiful by comparison. Like the Anita, it had been built in space. Unlike the Anita, it was reusable. Unlike the Anita, it was never meant to go into a gravity well.

    The Ark had drawn the ignominious job as space tug; it pushed the Anita from the L1 Lagrange point with its puny ion-jet engine, like a sparrow towing a Hindenburg size blimp.

    She reached the Ark's hull and turned on her boots. There was a satisfying clank as the magnetic soles took hold. The Ark, a species of spacecraft adapted for deep space, was made of a fiber composite with ice sandwiched in between for radiation shielding. The outer composite hull was sheathed in a thin metal skin, just thick enough to make the magnetic boots work.

    By comparison the Anita had to survive a fiery descent through Earth's atmosphere and was built of steel fifteen centimeters thick. Where the Ark was built like a butterfly, the Anita was built like a tank. The Ark looked so fragile that it could be damaged by a stern look, but the Anita was something else again. Designed to survive a kick in the pants from a five-hundred kiloton bomb, the Anita looked indestructible. Midships, the Anita was ringed with a series of portholes, squarish windows lit from inside. This area was the Anita's weakest point, a large recreation hall/aircraft hangar. The ports would be shuttered with the same thick steel plate during descent and ascent, whenever the nukes were detonated. Engineers considered the ports the ship's Achilles’ heels-if that wasn't snarling a metaphor, she didn't know what was. But the psychologists had won out, saying the little windows were needed to keep the crew's heads on straight. Now the port holes were lit as most of the Anita's crew had their Christmas party. She thought she could make out silhouettes of revelers as they passed in front of windows. They were doing a weightless waltz, it appeared, and for a moment she was filled with an overpowering sadness, of having lost some vital innocence which she would never regain.

    Stupid twit, she thought, you're forty-one; you lost any innocence you ever had twenty years ago.

    Sunlight glinted off the hull, further blinding her and reminding her to slide down her visor's protective polarizing shield. But she was too late. An impossibly bright light flared from the side of the Anita, momentarily blinding her. She was slammed against the hull of the Ark and rebounded to the limits of the tether. Some nerd part of her brain informed her that since there was no air and therefore no concussion wave in space, it was the ship that had slammed into her, not vice versa. From her frame of reference, the effect was identical. Her tether absorbed much of the energy and rebounded. She hung suspended in space. As her visor cleared she could see a cloud of frozen moisture as the Anita's atmosphere spewed from the ruptured hull.

    Gayle tasted her own blood and wondered what had gone wrong.

    

    

    

    Hannah Alman woke from a nightmare with a start, sat up, banged her head on a limb of one of the habitat's fake trees and cussed like she never would have dared to do at the commune.

    "Fucking hell!” she said, more out of a need to break the silence than of anger. She yawned, searched her scalp for lumps, found none and then nearly rolled out of her sleeping bag into the small pool.

    "Maybe this was a stupid place to spend the night,” she said to whatever ghosts of animals still haunted the zoo. “There's a whole city here, full of empty houses, carpeted floors, canned food, doors that lock, so why aren't I there instead of here?"

    The sound of her own voice lightly echoing off the fake stone walls was reassuring. She yawned again and took a deep breath. The air was musky but not foul. In a far corner, the corpse of whatever had occupied this cage in pre-plague times had melted to an indistinct mound, so far gone that it was hard to tell whether it had been lion or tiger or bear. If she squinted, she might make out part of a skull under the carpet of desiccated fur and skin. Whatever it had been, it had been large and had most likely died years ago. She guessed it might have been a bear, but that might be a kind of reverse hopeful thinking, for she liked bears. She had a soft spot in her heart for them as she did dogs, even though like every other large mammal-not counting the few people living at the fairgrounds shelter-she had only seen them in picture books and old disk movies.

    Why the hell was she in this place?

    The answer was simple. She preferred the occasional fur-wrapped bag of bones to those wisps of remembered human flesh. And just as important, the same bars that kept wild things in could keep wild things out, too. Fresh zombies might turn door knobs or break through single-pane glass windows, but they required functioning, rational brains to open the complicated latches on the cage doors.

    Besides, the irony amused her. She was now a member of a rare and endangered species, homo sapiens-homo saps-the creatures that had in a few decades-an eye blink in evolutionary terms-wiped out just about every warm blooded animal on the face of the planet, including themselves.

    She belonged in a protected environment. She could be the last of her kind.

    She stood, stiff from hours with only the sleeping bag between her and the concrete. She was thirsty and debated the wisdom of running the rainwater in the pool through her filtration filter. The debate was a short one, with her thirst winning out. Nothing had killed her yet, had it? The genetic plague that emptied Dallas of people, dogs, cats, horses, birds, and mice had spared her and a few others for unknown reasons.

    Wait a minute! Speaking of cats, where was Stinker? She looked from corner to corner of the habitat. No cat, neither hide nor hair nor smell of him.

    Stinker, the little black and white cat, she had found near the zoo-perhaps the last of his species too-could have easily passed between the bars. Suddenly, sleeping in the animal habitat seemed even more stupid. In an apartment, she could have closed him in, and he wouldn't have been able to desert her while she slept.

    Maybe the sleeping bag. She dropped to her knees and patted it down, looking for a little lump of cat. Nothing.

    She sat down on the bag and put her head in her hands, suddenly feeling terribly lonely-devastatingly so-and fighting back tears. Stupid, she told herself, to weep over a cat; moreover, a cat she had only had for three days. She wiped the tears away with the back of her hand. But damn it, she had loved that cat. She had come across him just sitting there on the edge of the sidewalk and first thought it was a stuffed toy someone had left behind. Then he turned his head and looked at her with his impossibly green eyes and gave a plaintive “meow."

    Not having seen a living cat since the early days of the plague, she hadn't believed her own eyes. Since birds, both wild and domestic, were carriers of the virus, and cats would eat birds, sick or dying or whatever, most felines succumbed quickly to the disease. Supposedly all cats had died, followed soon after by most other mammals, including most humans. But a few humans had been immune, for whatever reason, maybe because of some freakish mutation in their immune systems. She was one such freak. And this little black and white ball of fluff was apparently another.

    Nonetheless, she froze, expecting the cat to run and hide. Domestic cats were prone to become feral once they were outside for a while, say about five minutes. But this little guy stood up on four legs, did a casual yoga stretch-salute the sun-as if he was just getting up from his favorite spot on the couch-and walked toward her, mewing a couple of times for good measure, working the pity-cute-little-me angle in perfect cat style.

    She had half suspected he would bite her as she stretched out a hand, but instead he rubbed the side of his head against her hand. The message was plain: “What are you waiting for? Scratch me, stupid human."

    She had knelt there in the open, not worrying about zombies, scratching behind his ears. He purred, deep and throaty-loud for such a small cat. There were cats and then there were cats, she realized. There were cats that were fine as long as you fed them, but any sign of affection or bonding was all an act. If you stopped feeding them, they would walk away without ever looking back. You just knew some would just as soon eat your eyeballs out of the sockets as look at you.

    Then there were people cats. These creatures-perhaps they were humans in a previous life-seemed to need human companionship. As did dogs, they became part of the family, but cleaner and smarter. This little guy, who wasn't so much little as skinny, was obviously a people cat. Nevertheless, after giving him a good head-scratch, and sharing a can of tuna from her backpack, she had expected him to disappear into the landscaping. She certainly couldn't carry him with her, though she had considered seeing if he would shoulder-ride. But as she started walking, the cat had followed, little cat paws making no sound on the concrete, loping along beside her as she looked for some place to spend the night.

    The next morning, when she rolled out of her sleeping bag on the carpet of some long-dead person's apartment, she found him curled up at her feet. She had first named him Patch, for his long silky fur was a patchwork of black and white, with a single distinctive, almost square white patch on one shoulder. Then he made the most horrendously stinky fart imaginable.

    The morning before, he had jumped into her lap and done the same thing, then sniffed the air and cried in alarm, jumping off her lap and looking at her accusingly. Apparently he didn't recognize his own strength when it came to making bad smells.

    Such little invisible gifts had proved to be his modus operandi. Climb into her lap, fart quietly and foully, then climb off, and look at her angrily.

    Hence, she had re-christened him Stinker, and despite this one bad habit, or perhaps because of it, he had been a constant companion, good company in an otherwise hostile, terrible world.

    Now he was gone.

    Get over it, she told herself. This was a life of pain and suffering. Practically everyone she had loved was gone. It was stupid becoming attached to anything, especially a stupid, stinking cat.

    Thirsty, she scooped a cup of water from the pool into the reservoir of her purifier and began pumping the water through the reverse osmosis filter. In ten minutes, she had a pint of drinking water free of most of the contaminants that could hurt her. Thirst quenched, she rummaged through her backpack, found the bag of swimming-pool purification tablets, and crumbled about half of them into the pool. While the tablets began to dissolve, she stripped. She thought about keeping her panties and sports bra on, then thought better of it and discarded them too.

    Naked, she stirred the crumbled tablet into the water with her big toe and was rewarded with chlorine odor so strong her eyes watered. As the tablet mixed with the rest of the pool water, the chlorine odor dissipated, and she stepped in and sat her haunches in the water. The water was cool but not cold.

    And this one is just right, Goldilocks said.

    An allusion that didn't quite work as she wasn't blonde but redheaded, and there were no bears left alive-not here anyway. And at nineteen, she certainly wasn't a little girl anymore. She was a woman now, evidenced by the curly red wisps of hair at the junction of her thighs. Almost of its own accord, her hand moved there, touching the little bud that seemed to want so much attention these days. Well, to be truthful, it had always wanted some attention, but of late, she seemed to be conscious of its need way too much of the time.

    I could do it here, but what if someone saw?

    She laughed at her modesty. The likelihood of any human eyes watching her-any human eyes still attached to a brain that wasn't rotted-was nil. Still, a few humans might still be rambling about the city, maybe even a young man with good hair, a good build, and dark eyes.

    As she had done about a quadzillion times, she vaguely wondered what love, sexual love, would feel like. About all she had to go on was her father's secret cache of pornographic disk movies that she had stumbled upon. (Okay, to be truthful, she hadn't so much as stumbled across them but found them in his foot locker after picking its lock.) She knew in most movies, the producers had hyped things up a bit, and that the women's cries and moans of pleasure were mostly put on. Still, it seemed such a bizarrely intriguing activity, what with swinging breasts and those silly looking testicles flopping around. Funny that such a ridiculous act could at once disgust her and make her feel wet down there.

    She stood up in the small pool and used the cup from the water purifier to dip water and rinse herself. The chlorine would burn her hair, but at least she would be clean. The water felt good as it trickled down her stomach and legs, slithering down the crack of her ass, like a caress. Thinking of that young imaginary man, dark haired and not too tall, made her blood rise again, and her hand sought out that-not-so secret place.

    She smelled the Low-Path before she saw him. He stood staring at her from the far side of the moat. A small chirp, the stifled beginning of a scream, escaped her lips. Though Low-Paths were usually sexless, this one had once been a he and evidently had enough brain left to remember being so. He had his johnson out and was stroking it. It was a futile gesture, for the thing was a gangrenous, limp worm, almost cut in half by rot, but there was no mistaking the sexual nature of the strokes.

    Low-Paths-zombies-what charmers. You gotta love them.

    Although she knew it wasn't really a person watching her, but rather a thing that had once been a person and that now had less intelligence than an earthworm, she felt herself blushing and drew her hand away, embarrassed. Her other hand reflexively moved to cover her breasts.

    More silly modesty. Tears of blood were streaming from his eyes, which meant, if she had her zombie facts straight, that he would soon not just be mostly dead but thoroughly dead. Brain dead or not, his hand moved in jerking motions. “Just like a man.” A line from a movie, where she got nearly all of her knowledge of the human sexuality. Did he really see her or was the obscene display some kind of leftover autonomous action, pheromones on the wind? Had he been dark and tall before the virus took him, rotted away his higher brain functions and turned his face into a large running scab?

    She knelt and retrieved her.45 magnum from her knapsack, flipped the safety off and took aim, not at his head but at his chest. This zombie, unlike movie zombies, wasn't a supernatural creature and didn't have much brain left to shoot. Besides, it was a lot easier to hit the chest than the head. He might not have enough brain left to zip up his pants, but he would bite her if he could reach her, another reflexive action, something about Mother Nature having hard-wired the male sex drive to aggression. The females would scratch and bite too, but it was more a territorial thing with them, so if you gave them space they wouldn't come after you. Whatever the reason for the bite or scratch, the risk to her was that of becoming infected with a new strain of Low-Path, one to which she would have no resistance. Her father, before he died of the virus, had told her that generally airborne versions of the virus, by the nature of their protein shells, were locked into a narrow window of mutation. The virus strains that could be transmitted by body fluids had more options and mutated rapidly. Those few remaining humans who were immune to the air-borne infectious strain-herself, for example-might not be so lucky with the contagious line. But she was safe for now; her zombie stalker couldn't reach her across the moat and didn't have enough brain left to unlock the door, so she could let it die in peace.

    He made eye contact, a noncommittal action, simply another residual human reflex, but something an animal would never do, and her finger squeezed the trigger on its own accord.

    The report of the pistol was amplified by the acoustics of the small space and made her ears ring. The impact knocked the zombie on his butt. He sat there, with the same deadpan expression stuck on his face. A dark stain of fetid black blood pumped sluggishly out of his chest, steaming in the cool morning air. His body temperature was probably peaking at a hundred and five. He stared stupidly at the blood for a good minute, then flopped back and lay still.

    "Hah,” she said out loud. “I put you out of your misery. You're welcome, thank you very much."

    Then, making her a liar, he began to struggle, feebly thrashing his arms and legs on the cement floor, like an overturned turtle trying to right itself.

    Forget the head, unless you're close enough to smell its breath. Shoot it in the chest, they had told her. And yes, a large caliber bullet to the chest apparently would bring a zombie down, but they didn't tell her it would take a half hour for it to realize it was dead.

    A bullet to the head would stop the struggling and truly put him out of his misery, she decided. She would do the same thing for a suffering animal, and this thing had once been human.

    She should have dressed first, but the thing began moan pitifully between the wheezes, so she flipped the latch on the cage door and stepped out onto the floor. He was still trying to get up when she reached him. Careful not to step barefooted in the spreading pool of blackened, viscous blood, she was shocked to see a young man's face beneath dirt and blood-what was left of a face, that was.

    Poor thing. Not really dangerous in himself; only his body fluids.

    He lolled his head, and looked at her, and grabbed her foot. His move was as fast as a snake's strike, his grip firm as he began to drag her toward him. She stuck the gun in his face. He bit the barrel, but his few remaining teeth sloughed off as he gnawed on the blue steel. He probably couldn't do more than try to gum her to death, but at that moment, slobbering and grunting at her, he stopped being anything human again, and she squeezed the trigger.

    The second shot was as loud as the first. The bullet pierced his softened skull, caromed off the concrete walk with a satisfying cowboy-movie ricochet sound, and shattered the show window of the gift shop across the way. A female mannequin tottered, then toppled over anticlimactically.

    "Shit!” Bits of skull and rotted brain had splattered all over her legs.

    Crap, now she would have to wash all over again. Why couldn't she have let the thing just lie there and bleed to death?

    What was she talking about? Her minor inconvenience was little price to pay to put the suffering thing out of its misery. Stupid of her, though. But luckily, she had no scratches on her legs. Luckily, she didn't bother to shave her legs anymore. No shaving nicks.

    When she turned to go back to the cage and her clothes, she found her way blocked by more zombies milling about at the cage door. Worse, these zombies looked in better shape than the one she had just dispatched. They appeared to have all their teeth left for one thing. One was a Latino woman dressed in what was left of nurse's scrubs, accompanied by two teenage girls. The woman was overweight and had a terrible scowl on her face, the sign of a hard life etched permanently into her features underlying her Low-Path pallor. The girls looked as though they had been pretty and skinny before infected, but now were slack-shouldered bloated things.

    The threesome ambled into the mezzanine in a tight little group, the mother in the lead, then stopped in front of a silver sports car parked for some sort of give-away promotion that had been set up before the plague. All three of them ambled toward the car awkwardly and put their faces to the car's window. They looked as if they were shopping, though Hannah had to wonder if in real life the nurse had bought the two-seater car, which daughter would she have chosen to leave behind?

    Something moved inside the car, and the threesome moved back, the zombie mother stumbling over her own feet and landing on her substantial behind. Trapped inside the car, another zombie, a middle-age man, stared out, his hands and face distorted as he pushed against the inside of the windshield.

    The zombie nurse snarled at the male zombie, dispelling the illusion of a little happy family out on a shopping lark.

    And although these zombies were dumb and moved slowly like actors in a Romero movie, this was a real shit situation. She only had four bullets left in her clip. She could outrun the little threesome easily enough, and the old-man zombie couldn't seem to fathom how to get out of the car, but she had nowhere to go. She was buck naked in the middle of what used to be downtown Dallas.

    She could either try to get back in the cage and perhaps find herself trapped there. Or she could leave her shit behind and head outside, skirting the car shoppers.

    She chose the outside-option and ran toward the double glass doors, hoping there were no zombies waiting and missing her new-found cat. Would Stinker come looking for her? No, probably not. He was just a cat after all, and cats were to varying degrees opportunists.

    But as she stepped out in the early morning light, she was met by a small familiar face.

    "Mew?"

    Stinker sat on a patch of sand surrounding a dead tree. He evidently had gone outside to do his business. As she trotted by, he scampered after her. She might be naked and barefoot in a city of rabid zombies, but at least she wasn't alone.

    

    

    

    Olson floated weightless in pitch darkness. Panic was the visceral reflex even for the veteran space traveler, but power-system crashes were a frequent occurrence, so Olson took a deep breath, fought off the vertigo and fanned his arms hoping to contact a wall.

    No luck. He knew he'd seen this movie before but couldn't think of a title, a sort of deja vu movie experience.

    Moments before, he had been staring out the porthole, gabbing with Gayle. Then the lights went out, and she screamed. Or had she screamed first, and then the lights went out?

    He kicked out and touched nothing. The cabin was only about three meters wide, but in micro-G it was possible to become stranded even in the smallest of spaces. It had happened once while he was on an asteroid run. Back then, he'd slept in the nude and could never sleep with restraints. The ship's computer had suffered a glitch and aborted the spin that provided centrifugal force in lieu of gravity. He'd awoken adrift in complete darkness. It hadn't mattered if the walls were centimeters away; without so much as a pair of jockey shorts, he had no reaction mass to throw. His inertia kept him marooned for hours until the ship had finally made a course correction.

    Not a problem here, as long as he stayed calm. He'd never slept nude on ship again. He had pants, a T-shirt, and a couple of media disks in his pocket. He slung both disks away from him Frisbee style. In less than a minute his backside made contact with a bulkhead. He felt along the surface behind him until he found a porthole. He desperately wanted a look-see, but the Ark's portholes opaqued on default without power, and there were no manual controls.

    He tried for the door, launching himself across the cabin with his hands outstretched to cushion the impact, but he under-estimated his momentum, and a wall jumped out of the darkness and slammed into his face. He tasted blood. Powered usually by a feeble ion-jet engine, the Ark's interior hard corners and angles weren't padded or otherwise designed for hard acceleration-or in this case, hard deceleration.

    The emergency lighting came on, and the Ark's navigational computer began blabbering in a fembot voice about high orbital residuals, loss of cabin pressure, and it “not being my fault."

    Then a more piercing alarm rang out as the fembot warned about firing attitude adjustment jets to stabilize the Ark's roll. Contrary to the navigational computer's warning, the resulting acceleration was relatively gentle.

    Olson ignored the computer-synthesized voice and its warning of subsequent adjustments as he squirmed through the portal into the main access tube and launched himself down the meter wide tube that served as the main corridor. It was also the structural backbone of the Ark, but was referred to as the promenade, for reasons lost. It had openings into other compartments and yellow loops of nylon cord every meter or so which could be snagged by hand. One could see from one end of the Ark to another, down the promenade. The Anita had a similar structure running its length, though three times as wide and four or five times the length.

    His launch wasn't exactly either straight or true, and his shoulders ricocheted off the walls a couple of times. He dragged his hand along the wall and caught one of the nylon loops to halt his progress. He winced at the jolt on his shoulder; his last exam had shown a fifteen percent loss of bone mass despite all the anti-osteoporosis drugs. It wouldn't do to break a shoulder.

    At the air lock, he took another minute getting his helmet on. He considered putting on a life support pack but decided he didn't have time. Gayle could be dying out there. Every second counted. He could live on suit air for several minutes, couldn't he? But touching the outside of the ship without gloves could frostbite his fingers in a split second. On second thought, he strapped on the pack and pulled on his right hand glove but didn't take time for the full suit.

    He couldn't find his left glove. It was a psychological thing. On the Moon, if you laid an object on a table, it stayed there. Not so in a weightless environment. But the mind still expects it to remain where it was last put and refuses to see it in the new place. The mind has a kind of filter that conceals familiar objects in unusual places. It was phenomenon documented as long ago as the early days of the International Space Station.

    He finally found his glove, but only because it floated up against his right ear. He slipped it on, but by then, he need not have bothered. Gayle had already entered from space side under her own power, and the chamber was re-pressurizing.

    As the airlock door opened, he grabbed her by a suit strap and towed her into the promenade. She was a mess. A mist of blood obscured her face behind the visor, and one side of her suit looked like it had been run over by a forklift and dragged through a charcoal pile. On the positive side, neither her arms nor legs appeared to be broken, but it would be hard to tell until he got her out of her suit.

    Where was Kristen?

    As he reached for Gayle's helmet release, she swatted his hands away.

    "I can do it myself.” Her voice was muffled behind the helmet visor. She fumbled with the latches, still wearing her gloves.

    From the corner of his eye, he saw Kristen coming down the promenade, one hand out in front of her, the other carrying a medical kit. She grabbed a nylon cord, and unlike his fiasco, her momentum was such that she came to a stop with a gentle tug instead of a jolt.

    Finally, it came to him. “2001: A Space Odyssey,” he said aloud.

    "Yeah, I've seen that movie before too, about a hundred times. Now move aside,” Kristen said.

    "Hi, Kristen,” he said, “Lighten up."

    "That's ‘Captain’ to you, buddy,” she said jokingly, but her demeanor was all business.

    Gayle was still struggling with the latches. Something seemed wrong with one of her hands inside the glove. She tried to push Kristen away also, but the med officer would have none of it.

    "Gayle, settle down and let me help, or I'll sedate you through your suit!” She waved a hypodermic gun in front of Gayle's visor.

    Gayle lowered her hands. Kristen had the helmet latches loosened in a minute. Jimmy held his breath as he lifted the helmet off Gayle's head. A mist of blood floated out in the corridor air, and he expected the worst. But the damage looked minimal.

    "Looks like your face slammed into the inside of the visor,” Kristen said.

    Olson reached over Kristen's shoulder and ran a finger along a bump in Gayle's nose. “It's broken, I'm sure."

    Gayle reached up, pushed his hand away, and felt her nose. “It's not broken,” she said.

    "I feel a bump. It can be broken, and you wouldn't feel it yet."

    "That ‘bump’ as you call it is my natural nose. My beak."

    "Oh, well, sorry,” Olson said, feeling his face flush.

    "You two can get a room later,” Kristen said. “Here's where the blood is coming from. It's just a small scalp laceration."

    Jorge had drifted up the promenade as they talked. “Get a room; I like that,” he snickered.

    The navigational computer made another course correction, a long one this time, but gentle enough to only cause them to slowly drift to one side of the promenade.

    In less than a minute, with Jorge's help, they moved Gayle down the promenade and on a zero-G gurney in what was officially the Sick Bay. Sick people did come here, though bay seemed an exaggeration. While the Anita's Sick Bay was actually a real bay, taking up a good part of a deck, the Ark's was more like a closet. There was barely room for the patient and Kristen. Jorge had to stand squeezed in a corner while Olson helped Kristen remove Gayle's spacesuit. The outer layer of the suit shed blackened fragments, which were sucked into the ventilation system with a swirling Coriolis effect.

    "Part of a corpse hit me,” Gayle explained.

    "Then why are you burned?"

    "Its clothing was on fire."

    "How could that be? It wouldn't burn in a vacuum."

    "Some sort synthetic, maybe. Had its own oxidant. Who knows?"

    More blackened fragments crumbled off, behaving in the zero-G like barbecued hair balls. One floated up and adhered to Olson's helmet. He tried to wipe it off and smeared blackened goo across his faceplate, forcing him to remove his helmet so he could see. Some of the gunk stuck to his fingers, and he hoped it was indeed burnt synthetic fibers and not the remains of someone's skin or hair.

    "Good, you're getting her out of that suit,” Jorge said.

    "You're always trying get someone out of their suit, aren't you Georgie?” Kristen said.

    Jorge was the youngest member of the Christmas party relief crew, and his unrequited horniness for anything female was notorious.

    "Excuse me, but I can take care of myself. Just let me go to my compartment.” Gayle interjected.

    "In which way do you mean, take care of yourself?” Olson said, then immediately regretted the implication.

    Gayle laughed, or tried to, but choked on something.

    She shook off Olson's and Kristen's grips. “Now leave me alone."

    "None of that, Gayle. You're staying in the infirmary for a clean-up and a whole body scan whether you like it or not."

    Gayle glared at her, seemed poised on the edge of rebellion, but then shrugged inside her suit and said, “Yes, I suppose as state property, mine is but to obey."

    Kristen smiled. “That's the passive-aggressive Gayle we all know and admire,” she said. “I don't suspect you're more than scuffed up, but it wouldn't do to have you bleed out from a ruptured pancreas or whatever. Now, relax and be a good patient for an hour or two.” She took the collar of Gayle's suit and gave it to Jorge to hold, pushing off gently from the bulkhead. “What happened out there, Gayle?” he called.

    "Nothing,” Gayle said. She ran her hand across her face, as if groggy, smearing blood.

    "Nothing?"

    "Nothing that made sense, I mean, I was outside trying to get an image of the Earth on the old Cassegrain. You know how I have this thing about getting hand-held shots. There was a flash of light. Near the midsection of the Anita. I had my solar visor up, and the flash blinded me."

    "That's it?"

    "That's all I can tell you, except before I came in, I saw bodies in space.” Her eyes became wet, and she looked at her feet. “I think that's what hit me. One of the bodies projected from the Anita. I think everyone's dead over there. I think the mission is over."

    Kristen looked over her shoulder. “She may be right. I couldn't reach anyone on the com link. The remotes say the main hall is in hard vacuum.” She began undoing the seal that held Gayle's suit together at the waist. “You boys need to be somewhere else, while I look Gayle over."

    Olson and Jorge looked at each other, shrugged in unison, then pushed off into the promenade. In the filtered dry air of the Ark, where one's sense of smell was sensitized, Olson could smell a faint scent behind the cheap cologne, an odor he couldn't quite identify at first but guessed was hand lotion. The kid had probably been jerking off in the head again. Whoever had designed the zero-G toilet was either a female who hadn't realized the effect of the so-called male “sheathe” vacuum catheter on the lonely male erectile nerves or was some sort of male pervert, one of his own ilk. Himself, he had given the catheter a name: Cathy.

    "What?” Jorge asked.

    "Nothing,” Olson answered. He must have been muttering to himself again. Oh, Cathy. Oh, Cathy. He tried to recall what it was like to be twenty-Jorge's age-a time of raging hormones, a time when women weren't just wanted for the gentle, uncompetitive conversation and the occasional sex but were so frighteningly desirable that it was both painful to look at them and painful to look away. He remembered that feeling with a combination of longing for its return and gratitude that he was no longer under its spell.

    He really needed to get out of this shit-head, broken-dick mood. He thought about telling Jorge that every male in the world masturbated. If they denied it, then they were lying or there was something physiologically wrong with them. But he repressed the fatherly advice, knowing it wouldn't be appreciated.

    "Maybe you and I should go check out the Anita. Right, Mr. Olson?” Jorge said.

    "Why not? There's nothing to do around here but jerk off."

    Jorge made a sound like someone swallowing his own tongue.

    "Of course, we should await orders from our ranking officer.” He unclipped a walkie-talkie on his belt and called Kristen. “Jorge thinks he and I should do a reconnaissance of the Anita right now. What do you think?” he asked her.

    "I guess so, but I wanted to go."

    "Well, go."

    "I'm also the medical officer, and I should check out Gayle."

    "Okay, so while you check out Gayle, Jorge and I will scoot over to the Anita and call you if we find any survivors."

    Kristen nodded on the walkie-talkie's little video display, but her silence echoed his thoughts. They were unlikely to find any survivors. Everyone on the Anita would have been on the hangar deck for the party. Besides, any survivors would have contacted the Ark by now. Or, Olson thought, maybe they were too busy trying to stay alive to communicate, waiting for him to get his ass in gear and come to their aid.

    Fifteen minutes later, Olson was still wondering if he was wasting his time as he neared the midships airlock. He rode a mesh wire chair that traveled along a cable between the Ark and the Anita. The cable was designed to only be in place while the Ark was “tending” the Anita and would be reeled into the Anita when the massive ship began its course corrections toward an Earth landing, an event that now might never happen.

    The chair that Olson rode was dubbed the ski-lift, a reference lost on the Moon-born members of the crew. For Olson, though, it elicited fond memories of a trip to Wolf Creek Pass in Colorado, USA. He had only been eight or nine, and it was one the few times he had traveled with both of his parents when they hadn't had a screaming fight.

    From this vantage point, a slow but safe crawl between the ships, he could clearly see the hull breach as a jagged scar, backlit by interior lights.

    "How's it hanging?” Jorge said. The young man was in the second ski-lift chair, but his vision was blocked by Olson's bulk. From the time they had left the air-lock of the Ark, Jorge's communications had taken the ‘are we there yet?’ tone.

    "As Gayle said, the breach is directly amidships, close to the main cargo door. The ski-lift terminates to within a meter or so of the door, so we should be able to inspect it close up from outside. Any rads showing yet?"

    Jorge had begun monitoring radiation as soon as they left the Ark, a wise precaution as the Anita was basically a space-going A-bomb machine gun.

    "Nothing but the background radiation,” he reported. “Why are we slowing down?"

    "I have to clear some blast debris from the cable,” Olson said matter-of-factly, but a tremble in his voice betrayed him. The debris was a severed human arm, dangling from the cable by a few threads of sinew at the shredded shoulder joint.

    Olson had seen gruesome sights during his time as an asteroid miner, but the arm unnerved him. The hand was feminine and cinnamon brown, and the swollen fingers were covered with silver and white gold rings. There was only one person on the Anita who matched the hand: Parvani.

    He had given her one of the rings as a gift; it was a reworked version of his mother's wedding ring.

    He nudged the ski-lift's joystick until the cable mechanism stopped just short of the arm. Cringing, he grabbed the hand and pulled, wanting to retrieve this small part, but like its owner in life, the arm was stubborn. The torn flesh at the shoulder had frozen to the cable. He had to resort to twisting the arm-several turns-before the threads of skin and sinew tore free. The arm itself was still pliable. The temperature had been low enough to retard rigor mortis, but because vacuum doesn't conduct heat well, it took hours for a body or body part to freeze solid.

    He stowed Parvani's arm beside him on the ski-lift seat, cinching the seat belt over it so it wouldn't be lost to space. The arm looked lonely and cold there by itself, naked except for the bright jewelry, its fingers outstretched as if reaching for someone else's hand. His emotions were a jumble of pain, loss, and embarrassment for its owner-as if she were naked in public. He had nothing to cover the arm with.

    With his hands shaking in the bulky gloves, he started the lift. Jorge remained quiet in the chair behind him. In a minute they were at the terminus, a small platform extending from the Anita's hull. Olson stepped onto the small platform, leaving Parvani's arm stowed on the chair. As he turned to face Jorge, droplets of moisture began ricocheting inside his helmet. Tears. He hadn't realized he had been crying. Shit, now his visor would fog up.

    The cable was attached to the Anita at a platform near the main cargo door. The nearby hull breach was about one meter long by a half meter wide. This meant, said some small computer-like, unemotional function of Olson's brain, that only smaller parts of Parvani's body had been sucked outside during the decompression. Her torso awaited him inside somewhere.

    The breach was where the small observational porthole had been. She had been waiting there at midnight, looking for him, as promised, and had died for it. What would he find inside? Did he really want to look?

    Behind him, Jorge began firing off his camera strobe, taking images of the breach. Olson forced himself to tap in the entrance code for the cargo bay on the hull-mounted keypad. The keys were oversized to accommodate suited fingers, but Olson still had to enter the number twice. He kept losing concentration; gruesome mental images of what he expected to find inside overwhelmed him. He half hoped, half expected the cargo door to be jammed from the hull breach, but it opened effortlessly. Dreading what he might find, he pulled himself into the empty air-lock.

    With vacuum on both sides of the cargo bay air-lock, the inner bay opened almost immediately. Olson paused on the threshold, staring down at his boots in the zero-G environment, though like the Ark, the Anita was not designed to spin in space, hence there was no down or up. Jorge passed Olson, launching himself in a smooth glide through the secondary door. “Great Buddha!” Jorge exclaimed quietly.

    Olson had expected carnage-body parts and floating spheroids of blood-and there was a bit of both. Mostly though, the room was filled with quiet corpses. The bodies, most with their party costumes intact, drifted in a slow-motion, zero-G waltz. Nearby was Dr. Taylor, operations chancellor. He wore a grass skirt with a tuxedo top and was barefoot. His mouth was agape, and the sides of his head were streaked with dried frozen blood from his ears. Otherwise, he looked unharmed. Floating near Taylor was a woman-Karla, operations officer-in a skin-tight scarlet jumpsuit. The bodice of her suit had snagged on Taylor's big toe. The effect was that of some macabre jitterbug, where the male spins his female partner in complicated callisthenic maneuvers.

    Olson used his suit jets to distance himself from Taylor and Karla's bodies and moved to the center of the bay. He did a slow roll so his helmet cam could pan the room. The rest of the corpses appeared the same; no signs of physical injury except for the bloody ears and nosebleeds.

    "Are you getting this feed, Kristen?” he asked.

    "I'm recording,” came the strained reply.

    There were a few body parts here and there and some floating spheroids of blood, but it seemed the body parts were of two persons, one of whom was his beautiful little brown Parvani, the other obviously Caucasian, very hairy and male but headless. It was, he guessed, Parvani's bad fortune to be standing by the source of the explosion that had breached the hull. Bad luck is a relative term, he thought, as the rest of the party-goers, apparently the entire crew of the Anita, were just as dead as she. They had just died prettier and a little slower. But the guilt remained from knowing she had been near the viewing port to give him a midnight moon.

    "You want to take a head count, Jorge?"

    "Is that some kind of sick joke?” Jorge replied.

    A severed head, that of a young man with a full beard, floated nearby. Evidently, the head belonged to the hairy Caucasian. Olson couldn't think of his name.

    "No, I'm sorry. It was just an unfortunate choice of words. I'll see if I can seal up the breech."

    In nearby emergency locker, he found two canisters of metalized foam and some Kevlar netting. It was a simple job to wad the netting in the breach as long as he was careful not to snag his gloves on the jagged metal. He wedged in a few reinforcing rods for good measure, then applied the foam. The trick was to avoid getting the foam on his gloves. Back on Earth, when he was just barely more than a rugrat, he had watched his father use Bondo to fill in a dent in their Chrysler. This was a 21st century version of the same stuff. If he wasn't careful it would immobilize the finger joints of his gloves as it set. He kept flashing on the stiffened fingers of Parvani's hand as he squirted the piss-yellow foam into the crevices and odd angles of the breach. There were specks of red and brown sprinkled on the dark metal. It reminded him of the curry powder sprinkled eggplant that Parvani used to make that he hated but pretended to relish. Were these bits of Parvani or the young man? Did it really matter?

    His throat tightened, and a bottomless well of grief threatened to swallow him whole. He felt as if he were shrinking, as if he was watching himself fall into a bottomless hole. He let anger replace the fear and sadness. Anger he could deal with. The sadness made him want to go out the airlock and remove his helmet. Anger made him want to go kill whomever had done this.

    The foam expanded quickly and hardened, sealing the breach. In a few minutes, it would be as hard as steel, and the cargo bay could be re-pressurized.

    "Jimmy? Jimmy… Jimmy?” It was Kristen.

    "Yes, I'm here,” he said. Though he wasn't religious, he realized he had been saying a silent prayer for Parvani and others on the Anita.

    "What do you make of it? Did they all die of asphyxiation? Decompression?"

    "No, it looks more like concussion blast wave impact,” he said. “There was an explosion near the cargo bay door. It breached the hull as you can see, but if it was just a matter of decompression, there would have been signs of some people, maybe many, trying to reach the front quarters and seal off the bay.

    "I saw something like this on a smaller scale when I was an asteroid miner,” he continued. “One of the crew set off a percussion primer inside a hollowed-out rock chamber. They were all dead when we found them. When we took them out of their suits there was not a mark on them. I think they all died instantly. I suspect if you did autopsies, you would find ruptured internal organs, bleeding in the brain, you know."

    Contrary to what the old Earth-based, space-opera videos showed, exposure to hard vacuum causes no immediate injury. Bodies do not explode. Blood does not boil. Eyeballs do not swell and pop out of their sockets. At some point, consciousness may be lost from lack of oxygen. Injuries accumulate. After a couple of minutes, if you do nothing, you're dead, but that's usually plenty of time to take emergency action. Jimmy had once had a visor plate rupture. He had heard the air gush out, and he had felt the water on his tongue begin to boil-it had felt like a fizzy candy he'd had as a kid on Earth-but he'd had time to slap a leak patch on the visor before losing consciousness. He'd come to minutes later as the suit re-pressurized, none the worse except for a slight case of the bends and no sense of taste for weeks.

    "Did a percussion primer do that?” Kristen asked, bringing him back to the present.

    "No, the example I was talking about was in a small crew quarters room.” He looked around, letting his helmet cam pan the 30-meter wide bay. “It had to be a much more powerful explosion here in the bay, but with a large enough bomb, the effect would be the same."

    "A bomb? Is that what you think it was?"

    Kristen turned on and off the archive light, a small red diode inside his helmet. She was reminding him that this conversation was going into the public record.

    "No, it couldn't be,” he said, imagining himself testifying in front of a Cloister tribunal. Who would do such a thing? All of our futures depend upon the success of this mission. But he was thinking what else could it have been? The internal breach was just that. The metal had ruptured outward, ruling out a micro-meteorite impact.

    Besides, the shape of the breach seemed all wrong. Micro-meteorite impacts tended to leave round or symmetrical holes. The relative velocities meant a lot of energy had to be converted to heat, and the edges of the metal would be fused. Not so here. If he had to guess, it looked like a charge, poorly shaped by someone not used to handling explosives, but meant to blow out the cargo door. It failed to blow the door because the shape had been wrong, directing much of the force inward toward the crew instead of only knocking out the door. It was a shame really. Blowing the door would have scuttled the Anita but most likely spared much of the crew; they would have had time to retreat into one of the adjoining equipment bays and re-pressurize.

    It appeared as if the whole murderous incident had simply been a minor act of vandalism gone terribly wrong.

    "Olson-over here,” Jorge called from the aft wall of the cargo bay. He was peering through a small window in the door. He moved aside as Olson drifted up beside him. Through the window he saw a small room, maybe only two meters square, basically a large storage closet. Five more bodies were visible, lying in various postures about the room.

    "I thought they were all dead at first,” Jorge said, “but I think one just moved; the one in the bunny costume."

    As if she had heard, the bunny girl pushed herself up to a sitting position. Her eyes were ringed with black bruises, and her mouth looked bloody. It wasn't a bunny rabbit costume but a Bunny Playmate costume complete with black fishnet hose. Some little randy part of Olson's brain noted that she was bit broad in the hips and thick in the ankles to pull off the look. One rabbit ear drooped over her face, and she languidly brushed it aside to stare back at them dull-eyed.

    Olson realized his face plate was fogging now that the hole in the hull had been plugged. The ship's circulation system was returning pressure to the hold, albeit slowly, and the warm, moist air was condensing on the vacuum-chilled surface of his suit. He half wiped, half smeared the condensation with the back of his glove.

    With the clearer view, he saw that what he first took for facial injuries was just an overly enthusiastic use of mascara and smeared blood-red lipstick.

    Two men, whose names he couldn't recall, also sat up. They looked as if they had been embracing on the floor, but Olson suspected they must have been thrown together by the explosion.

    "I think they're about out of air in there,” Jorge said. “We need to get them out of the closet or pump some air in."

    

    

    

    Hannah ran naked and barefoot, not daring to look behind herself, for a good half mile to the admissions gate, zigzagging around broken glass and desiccated corpses, not stopping until she emerged from zoo grounds and reached the giant giraffe statue at the entrance gate.

    Stinker had no problem keeping pace, even running ahead of her at times, looking back over his shoulder as if to say, “hurry up."

    After sidestepping the zombie car-shopping family and leaving the great ape enclosure, she had intended to make a leisurely stop at the gift shop and grab some clothes. But outside on the zoo grounds, there were zombies everywhere-no, that was an overstatement. Only a dozen or so were milling about, but that was still more than she had expected, and for some reason, panic had gripped her.

    She had fond childhood memories of the place, and now those experiences kept overlapping the gruesome scenes like a double exposed photograph. Her parents had brought her here at least two or three times as a child. They had indulged her with candy and popcorn, treats she was denied at home. She remembered her parents being happy, so very happy, on these outings, and that had made her happy. The tree-lined paths had offered cool shelter from the sweltering Dallas summers. These same shady paths now attracted the zombies, and now that her reason returned, she realized it was the cool zones they were seeking out, not her.

    With their metabolisms running at full throttle, zombies died fast in the heat, which explained why they were here in large numbers, milling about under the trees. She wasn't sure if they had that much intelligence or whether they migrated here from the hot city streets, seeking relief before their brains fried, or if when they wandered in by accident, they lasted longer once here. The zoo had seemed free of them when she had entered the grounds last night. Could she have been so stupid as to leave the front gate unlatched, or had they been here all along?

    Now, here she was, totally screwed because she had freaked out like a silly twit. Winded, soaked in sweat, she needed shoes and clothes. Ewing Avenue was to the east, and there was bound to be a strip mall, but Ewing ran north/south, which meant the east side would be in deep shadow. A major thoroughfare, it was littered with abandoned cars, making it good territory for an ambush. But Marsalis Avenue wasn't any better, and whole city blocks to the west had burned to the ground last month. So, should she take her chances along Ewing or overcome this silly panic attack and go back to the gift shop? The gift shop was probably the best idea, as there weren't that many zombies, and it was only a couple hundred yards away. Still, she hesitated.

    A female zombie, naked except for furry bunny house shoes and a black lace bra emerged from the zoo. She waddled into view, her cyanotically blue hands resting on her grossly distended belly, her elbows held out akimbo for balance. Something moved languidly beneath the zombie's hands, rippling the skin. She looked pregnant, but the Low-Path infection fried fetuses. No, it was more likely gas, corpse or rather near-corpse bloating. To confirm Hannah's suspicions, the zombie farted, as loud as a car horn, but with a more liquid sound, and Hannah couldn't help but laugh, glad to be up wind.

    "She's got you beat, Stinker, but not by much,” she said.

    Stinker mewed in that cat angst way of his, the feline equivalent of a whine.

    Ewing Avenue looked as she expected, a no-man's land of wrecked and burned cars and broken shop windows. Barefoot, she would have a severe handicap if pursued by a zombie, even a slow-moving one.

    There were few corpses, though, except those of dogs here and there. As the brain-rotting fever peaked, the infected crawled away to cool places, and cool places were usually dark and secluded. Those that survived-if survive is the right term for becoming a barely alive, nearly brain-dead stumbling creature-still kept secluded during the day because of their accelerated metabolisms. Those that died outright tended to crawl away in hidey holes to do so, which was too bad, because the street and sidewalks were strewn with shards of glass. To save her feet, perhaps to save her life, she wasn't afraid of robbing a corpse, as long as it didn't rise, walk about, drool, and bite-or hadn't oozed all over their clothes.

    With no corpses available to rob, she would have to chance going in one of the buildings. There were no shoe stores within sight, but down the street there was a second hand clothing store-"Recycled Duds for Dudes and Dudettes,” the sign read. The display windows had been covered with plywood, which meant the owner had survived the initial wave of the plague. Someone had used red paint to scrawl “HIGH-PATH” in foot-high letters across one of the plywood sheets. For her, it was a bit of history. She had been eight then. The plague had just begun its first two-week death march around the world. She had heard a television newscaster talking about High-Path and Low-Path. There were scenes of sick people strapped down in hospital beds. They looked awful. They had greenish-gray faces, red-ringed eyes, and fought the restraints.

    Her father had explained it to her in measured, patient words, the way he explained everything. She was proud of her daddy. He had taught veterinary medicine at the university poultry department.

    "High-Path is newspeak for highly pathogenic. Doctors classify influenza viruses as highly, mildly, and lowly pathogenic depending upon how virulent they are."

    "Veer-u-lent? That means like a virus, daddy?"

    "Not exactly, sweetheart, though the words are related. No, it means how infectious and how…” He paused, looking for words, then made a decision. “How deadly, the disease,” he said, his face grim. There were tears in his eyes

    "Is High-Path deadly, daddy?"

    "Very much so.” He straightened up, his voice taking on a professorial tone.

    "And Low-Path means it doesn't kill people?"

    "No, it does, but not right away. The antigenic properties change very rapidly. Sometimes the animal doesn't die with the Low-Path. It just gets brain damaged by the fever, and the virus changes its metabolism, stimulating the autonomous nervous system making it work faster. In a way, Low-Path is worse, because the host can remain mobile, animated, and move around, infecting other people.” He was talking like a scientist, again. She didn't interrupt, but mentally filed the words away for later when she could look things up on the Internet.

    "Even worse, the Low-Path strains mutate rapidly in the walk-around hosts, allowing it to jump from species to species. That's why dogs, cats, cows, horses, practically everything warm blooded, can get the disease, too.” He looked away, out the window, to the horses in the corral.

    "Like Tweety Bird?"

    Tweety Bird had been her canary. The little thing had died the month before after a wheezing spell. Her daddy had not let her touch it. In fact, he had immediately moved her and her mother out of the house, taking them to the house in the country, not even giving them time to pack.

    "Yes, like little Tweety Birds and other harmless creatures,” he said, looking at her again with wet eyes. “The only chance we had was to burn the Low-Paths as soon as possible, but too many people tried to take care of their loved ones long after their brains were turned to jelly."

    The next week the horses started wheezing. Then Daddy, too. In horror, she had watched him from the upstairs bedroom window as he stumbled across the backyard and locked himself in the barn with his sick horses. Minutes later, the barn was ablaze. The horses, though sick, had cried out. Sick or not, she had tried to save them, even managed to get the door open. Her father was nowhere to be seen, and the horses, true to the cliche, would not leave the burning barn. Finally, she had left the barn and the horses to their fate.

    She had found a note from her father on the kitchen table. He had used a loaded pistol as a paper weight. Just the previous week, he had taught her how to shoot it, expressing pride at her ability at first to just hold and fire the weapon, then heaping praise on her when she turned out to be a “pretty danged good shot; a regular Annie Oakley,” he said.

    Though nearly delirious from the onset of the fever, he had drenched the note in spray disinfectant before leaving for the barn, and she could still smell the chemical odor as she read the note. He hadn't merely sprayed it; he had soaked it with disinfectant. He was a big fan of the stuff. Wet with the spray, the ink had run a bit, but the note was still readable. “Fate served me up the Low-Path, but I decided to take the High Road,” read the note.

    Now, eleven years, nearly twelve, later, she relived that moment whenever she saw the slogan, the name the media had given to the influenza plague in the last days of civilization, when there still were such things as television stations, newspapers, the Internet, and podcasts.

    Tip-toeing around more glass, she tried the door latch, the type with a twist knob, which turned with a satisfying clank. Slowly, she pushed the door open, afraid of what or who might be lurking inside. Full-blown zombies were too brain-dead to deal with anything as complicated as a turn-latch, but an infected human in the early stages of the disease might have hidden there, his or her brain turning to mush while inside, and the resulting zombie would be too stupid to get out, too stupid to die, too stupid to do anything but drool and bite.

    Carefully, she peered around the edge of the door frame. Her eyes took a moment to adjust. Inside, light crept through the dusty air from a hole in the ceiling. There had been a fire, most likely spread from one of the nearby buildings, but it had burned itself out or been extinguished by natural causes. An aluminum ladder stretched from the floor to the opening in the roof. There was no sign or smell of zombies. She stepped through the door, still cautious. Some of her uninfected fellow humans could be just as dangerous as zombies-more so.

    The center of the store was rain-damaged, and she could smell the mixed odors of musky mold and charred wood. However, the rear of the store, where the dry goods were displayed, appeared unaffected by the dampness. Heaps of clothes-T-shirts!-were piled on one table. Another table had a sign barely distinguishable in low light: “Half-Off!!! Women's Cross Trainers!!!"

    She first stopped at the table and dug through the pile until she found a small black T-shirt and slipped it on. As she pulled the T-shirt over her head, she got the feeling she was being watched. She looked from corner to corner but saw no one except Stinker, who was batting a wadded up piece of paper about the floor like a soccer ball.

    Her feet and bottom were still bare, but for some reason having her breasts covered made her feel less vulnerable, though not fashionable. The front of shirt was emblazoned with a cartoon figure, Marvin the Martian. He wore a helmet with furry Mohawk topping and a red kind of kilt thing about his waspish waist. And he brandished an oversized red and blue ray gun. “Back Off!” the T-shirt's cartoon bubble read.

    Next, shoes. The shoes were off brands, no Nikes or New Balance, but she wasn't in a position to be too picky. She found a pair of size 7s, tried them, and they fit. Socks could come later, maybe much later, but she suddenly wanted to get out of the store fast. It was creeping her out.

    But Stinker would have none of it. He jumped up on a table full of socks, stirred up a cloud of dust, and settled down to take a nap.

    His comfort made her relax, and her sense of foreboding passed. It was morning, the day was heating up, she had shirt and shoes. True, she was butt-naked, but she had her pistol and her cat. That her rear end was hanging out in the cool breezes seemed a minor inconvenience. After all, there was no one around to see it, except for Stinker and maybe an occasional zombie. The zombies didn't count; at the best they were just brainless pricks. And Stinker couldn't care less.

    She pushed the top layer of socks aside, careful not to raise more dust. She was rewarded with a pair of girl's athletic socks, relatively clean and with a pink stripe around the ankle. She kicked off a shoe and balanced on the other foot while she slipped it on, then put on the other shoe, and slipped on the other shoe.

    A horrible smell filled the room as she was stooped over tying her laces, and she grabbed for her pistol on the table of socks, expecting to find a zombie staring at her. Stinker was on all four feet, giving her that accusing look.

    "Damn, Stinker,” she said, wagging her finger at him. “We've got to stop by a pet store and see if they've got anything for that intestinal problem."

    "Meow."

    "I'll take that as a yes,” she said, reminded of something her father once said about some relationships being based on having someone to blame things on.

    "Next, pants,” she said to herself. Was she safe here? The feeling of being watched persisted, but she could see nowhere that anyone could hide. Before the plague, she used to get that feeling in stores. Her father told her it was the eyes behind the security cameras that she felt, and that some people were just sensitive that way. As if to prove it, he had instructed her to stare at strangers in the mall who were walking away, their backs to them. If she stared hard enough, about one in five would turn around to look at her. She smiled at this happy memory, which turned to sadness at losing her father, at losing her childhood, at losing a normal life.

    She shook the feeling off; this time it was just nerves, she decided. But that didn't mean she shouldn't be wary. As the morning heated up, any zombies outside might be drawn to cool air inside the store. She should hurry up, find some pants, and get the hell out of there.

    She found a rack of plastic-wrapped panties in the back, in a darker area than she liked, so she grabbed a bag and moved into an area lit by a small window. She slipped them on without removing her sneakers.

    Now to find some blue jeans.

    Jeans turned out to be harder to find. Everything was two sizes too large, her punishment for being a size 2. Everything that was the right size was incredibly ugly or not practical, with holes already sandpapered through the knees. Finally she settled on a pair with a waist low enough to barely cover the crack of her ass.

    That ought to excite all the male zombies, she thought.

    But at least they weren't pre-worn out. She was debating whether to put them on in the store, but the feeling of being watched was now overwhelming. She decided to put them on in the parking lot.

    She looked to the sock table where her cat had been taking a nap, but he wasn't there.

    "Stinker? Where are you now?"

    "He's over here with me,” came a voice.

    She spun on her heel to see a figure silhouetted by the light from the doorway.

    She froze. Where was her gun? Her hand found it on edge of a nearby table.

    "Why do you call him Stinker?” the figure asked. She couldn't see his face, but Stinker was prowling around his feet, rubbing against his ankles.

    "Just wait a minute. You'll find out,” she said as her thumb worked the safety catch on the pistol. The figure, face still concealed by shadow, picked the cat up and stroked its head. Stinker began purring loud enough to be heard across the room.

    Little traitor cat, she thought, nearly peeing on herself. She swung the gun up and took a step backwards at the same time. But the corner of the shoe table was behind her, and suddenly she was falling backwards. Somewhere in mid-fall her finger squeezed the trigger; she heard the gun fire before the back of her head hit the floor, and the lights went out.

    

    

    

    "Yes, we all agree the mission is unlikely to succeed in the sense originally conceived,” said the Vice Chancellor, “but we have no choice but to continue."

    Kristen checked her crewmates’ faces for their reactions. Olson looked angry and resigned. Jorge sat on a bench and stared at his own clasped hands. Gayle looked at ease, but then Kristen had earlier stuck a sedative patch to the woman's shoulder when she had lapsed into uncontrollable sobbing. Until the patch wore off, Gayle would be unconcerned about anything, even her own death, the end of the world-anything, and Kristen envied her, though she would never use the drug herself. She was still feeling the residual effects of the Valium she had taken yesterday and wondered if it had hindered her treatment of Gayle. She resolved to just tough out the next bout of depression-no matter how bad it was. She was also determined to resume her meditation practice, hard as she found that to do in a weightless environment.

    Kristen and what remained of the mission's crew were huddled around a monitor in the Ark's tiny rec room, in video conference with the Chancellor, two vice chancellors, and the ruling board of regents back on the Moon. Five men and two women sitting at a small plastic conference table were deciding their fate and possibly the fate of the remnants of humanity.

    She took inventory of her fellow survivors. There were nine, counting herself.

    Olson, Jorge, and herself seemed at first no worse for wear. Olson was always a bit gruff, even when kidding around. He stared at the projection screen as if he wanted to jump through it and strangle the Chancellor.

    Jorge sat with his hands clasped between his knees. He looked like someone who had been just dealt a death sentence. Considering what the Chancellor and the regents were discussing, perhaps he had; perhaps they all had.

    The other five survivors had been in a small equipment storeroom off Anita's main cargo bay at the time of the explosion. The door to the unventilated storeroom had been closed for some reason-Kristen suspected they had been smoking something. Trapped in the storeroom without suits-and a bit mentally addled-they hadn't been able to reach a consensus on whether to open the door and try a run for it through the airless cargo bay to the foredeck. They had been minutes from death, semiconscious, and resigned to their fate, when Jorge and Olson discovered them at the last moment.

    Though it was silly to stereotype them, she knew-Kristen thought of them as the ‘loser club.’ They seemed passive now, accepting orders from the regents even if doing so might lead to their deaths.

    Crystal Karen sat cross-legged on the floor, looking hungry as she always did. Crystal had some sort of eating disorder, and she had been caught several times pilfering extra rations from stores, both on the ship and at the Moonbase. In another time, on another world, she would have been obese, but as a Cloister citizen her calorie intake was limited even with her pilferage. Though not skinny as most citizens, she managed somehow to be big in the hips and flat-chested. She was chewing on something absentmindedly; it looked like a piece of plastic strip.

    Tisha Smith was usually vocal about her feelings, but she was now uncharacteristically taciturn. She sat at the table, twirling a strand of hair about a finger, her lips pursed, her brow furrowed.

    Bobby Randel, the ion-propulsion unit engineer, was an extremely shy man. Balding, with a bad complexion, he never looked you in the eye when he talked. Most Cloister citizens looked a bit underfed, but Randel looked like a concentration camp inmate.

    Of the five, Kristen was most familiar with Daniel Kaplan, whom she had seen as a patient. Two weeks into the mission, he had refused to take his anti-psychosis medication because he said it was making him impotent. She suspected this to be an act to get out of extra work detail, but she had given him another prescription, the same drug really, but labeled as something else.

    And last was Abraham Badr. Kristen wondered what he had been doing at the party in the first place. Badr didn't drink alcohol and didn't want to be in same room with anyone who did. Many people didn't trust Badr because he looked angry all the time. Moreover, he was a devout Muslim, a minority religion in the Cloister. Most Cloister citizens were either Buddhists, Christians, or Moist Earth Mothers. Fed a steady diet of archived 21st century newscasts about terrorist acts by Muslim fundamentalists, most assumed him to be a zealot and avoided him. In truth, he was very tolerant of other people's beliefs and life choices. He and Kaplan were buddies of a sort-more than buddies it was rumored-but whatever their relationship, they certainly seemed to spend a lot of time arguing about the invalidity of each other's religion. Maybe it was because as an orthodox Jew, Kaplan was also something of an outsider just as Badr was.

    Like the others, Badr sat at the table, silently listening to the Chancellor outline their fate. With the exception of Olson, they all looked resigned, sheepish even. But how could she criticize them as sheep when she couldn't bring herself to speak up?

    Olson cleared his throat. “I understand that the ship will land on computer control, and that we have a passable chance of making it to the planet's surface; not a sure chance but about fifty-fifty from what I've read But what hope do we have with our reduced numbers?” Here he glanced at Gayle. No one knew if she would recover from her breakdown. “What chance do we have of accomplishing much of anything once we're there?"

    "Quite a bit, actually,” said the Chancellor. “With a limited crew, we'll have to abandon rescuing some of the heavy industrial machinery, but you have a good chance of recovering the DNA fabricator and the banks of stem cells and sperm and ova."

    Kristen doubted this optimistic appraisal. The Chancellor and the regents lived in the insular world of the Cloister. The Moon population was rather small, and she had talked to him a few times face to face during chance meetings in a hall, at the med center, that sort of thing. He was incapable of entertaining anything but a positive view, even when-particularly when-a negative view more accurately reflected reality. He had built a political career by doing so.

    She looked to Olson again. This time he made eye contact. He shook his head. ‘I've seen this movie before, too,’ his expression said. Mutiny on the Jedi? No, that wasn't it. The fucking Valium was still messing with her mind.

    "I don't agree that we haven't any choice,” Olson said. “We, the four of us, have a choice. You say the Cloister is doomed if this mission fails-and reading between the lines of your official assessment, it probably will fail. Fail means the Anita fails on landing, and we all die. Or fail means the Anita makes a walk-away landing, but it's too damaged to lift off again, and we die within a month when the Earth-killer comet hits or a few months later, if we survive the impact, when the nuclear winter takes hold, or maybe we last a year and only die when our bodies fail to adapt to Earth gravity. Or fail could mean we die from a strain of High-Path for which we weren't inoculated. Or fail means we die at the hands of the Low-Path survivors-the zombies-as we go on your scavenger hunt.

    "However you look at it, our chances of dying to save your collective bureaucratic carcasses are high. You say we don't have a choice. What you mean is the Cloister doesn't have a choice. We nine have a choice; we could escape to the asteroids and have a good life."

    "You wouldn't live long."

    "We'd have a good five or ten years-more perhaps-depending upon our luck at mining essential elements for our bio regenerators. Which is longer than the Cloister will likely last."

    The Chancellor, who had been letting the Vice Chancellor play the good cop, now spoke, “Olson, you're verging on mutiny,” he said.

    "Who said I was in mutiny? Just challenging your hypothesis that we don't have a choice."

    The Chancellor said nothing, but the tips of his ears and his cheeks turned a fiery red then faded to purple. Kristen's diagnostician's brain turned on. The aging Chancellor appeared a bit on the pudgy side, which in itself might be considered a symptom of ignoring the calorie ration laws. But having seen the chameleon-like change in complexion, she realized the pudginess wasn't from overeating. It was fluid retention, a sign of low-gravity syndrome. The Chancellor himself had little chance of living out the year.

    "We'll come after you, Olson, even if we have to use the last of our resources,” he bellowed, and his face flared red.

    "Now don't get upset, Carl.” the Vice Chancellor, a bald woman of about forty-five with deep, dark circles under her eyes, gently patted the Chancellor on the shoulder. “I don't think Jim really plans to run off to the rock belt. I think he just wants to have a little more say in the details of the mission.” The woman looked into the camera, trying to make a personal connection across 80,000 kilometers of space. “Am I correct, Jim?"

    "Yes, that's right. We need to talk. You're asking us to get killed in the hopes of saving the Cloister, a system from which we all here-” he motioned to Kristen, Jorge and the others, “-to varying degrees, are disenfranchised."

    Kristen's perception of Olson underwent an instant transformation. A minute ago she had thought of him as a competent propulsion systems officer, but something of a booboisie-a bit sloppy and unprofessional in his personal life, a perpetually horny old man who was always on the prowl but afraid of commitment, and a go-along to get-along when it came to the powers that be. Moody, but for some reason likeable and non-threatening despite all that, but a bit of a milquetoast, resigned to being a company man.

    Now he seemed transformed, suddenly in his element, negotiating with the highest government authority; he was magnetic, a mad monk. Would the real Jim Olson please step forward?

    The Vice Chancellor said, “I would disagree with the word ‘disenfranchised.’ Our system has just been an ordered response to an emergency situation."

    "Bullshit!” Olson shouted. “How else would you explain the historical events that led to a social class system based on hereditary tenure?"

    Now it was Olson's face that turned red, but it was from anger. Kristen, who had access to everyone's medical records, knew his health was basically sound for someone who had spent so much time in low-grav. He was overweight, but for a different reason than Crystal. On the long haul back from the asteroid belt, a micro-meteor strike had killed his two shipmates. He had spent nearly a year alone and had consoled himself by eating triple rations.

    "Extreme measures were necessary to ensure the continuation of society under extreme conditions,” the Chancellor said.

    "By continuing society you mean maintaining status quo,” Olson countered. “You don't expect anyone to actually fall for that self-serving palaver, do you? This whole system, the Cloister, a class society based on tenure, began as a mere expediency and ended up as a way to launch a new privileged class."

    It was true, a dirty little secret everyone knew but never talked about. It was a caste system that began with a sick duck somewhere in Asia.

    No one knew for sure about the origins of High-Path and Low-Path, also known as Dingdang Duck Flu, the mutagenic influenza strains that nearly scoured the Earth clean of all human beings, higher mammals, and birds. Early on, Dingdang flu had split into two diseases, Low-Path and High-Path, dual strains of the same virus. There had been multitudinous conspiracy theories, stories of germ warfare labs, terrorist labs, mad, radical environmental groups, but most likely the diseases were a natural occurrence; natural in the sense of the many new diseases born of rural migration to cities, overcrowding, refugee populations, and the destruction rent upon the South American rain forests and wilds of Africa. Dingdang flu had begun as a moderately virulent disease of water fowl that managed to migrate to swine, where it mutated. The virus then hopped to human beings where it mutated again into a highly pathogenic disease. New diseases emerged all the time, the argument went; this one just happened to nearly wipe out the human race, leaving the small Moon colony as the poor relations destined to inherit the future of human kind, separated from the apocalypse by 400,000 kilometers of space.

    With such a beginning, it's not surprising that the Moonbase society of scientists soon developed a totalitarian government of sorts, one based on some theories of natural selection that had more to do with religion than science.

    As Jean Jacques Rousseau wrote, state and society without religion are an impossibility. Rousseau also talked about how most religions were counterproductive to the state. The pietistic versions, though their practitioners made good slaves, were not very productive. The more virile religions would subvert the secular state to the will of their gospel. Since religion of some sort was necessary, Rousseau proposed a civil religion, “a purely civil profession of faith, of which the Sovereign should fix the articles, not exactly as religious dogma, but as social sentiments without which a man cannot be a good citizen and faithful subject."

    From the eighteenth century forward, Rousseau's writings were used to justify all political revolutions, including Marxism. Maybe it was not surprising then as the twin juggernauts of Low-Path and High-Path rolled over and crushed the life out of Earth's institutions, that the population of the Moonbase, then more than 10,000, with academics and intellectuals constituting the majority, would institute a civil religion built on an image of a government with which said academians were on intimate terms: a university board of regents overseen by a Chancellor. The result, the Cloister, was supposedly a classless society based on ability and academic achievement in the sciences, an egalitarian technocracy. In only a generation, however, it evolved into a society with a privileged elite based on academic rank.

    Ironically, the Cloister lacked the critical mass of resources to build its own system of higher education. Life was harsh and almost everyone's working time was spent just keeping safe from vacuum, shielding themselves and their children from radiation, and growing enough food. As children were born, they were largely home-schooled or educated in small cooperatives formed by a few families. Academic advancement was based on oral and written exams, which were conducted by the higher-ranking academics themselves. Within a generation, the culture evolved into one ruled by the doctorate-degreed, one whose children essentially inherited their degrees from the good-old-college-boy or good-old-college-girl network, and were born into the top level of the social hierarchy.

    By draconian measures, the Cloister was self-sufficient to some degree. But vital resources, such as replacement integrated circuits and pharmaceuticals, were running low. Worse was the legitimate concern about the health of the gene pool. The genetic diversity was sufficient, but the harsh environment of space, inundated with radiation, had riddled the Cloister inhabitants’ DNA with transcription errors. And for reasons unknown but perhaps because of physiological damage done to the brain by high-energy radiation, mental disorders such as bi-polarism, clinical depression, and obsessive-compulsive disorder had risen until nearly three-quarters of the population was affected. What was needed was more genetic diversity, it was argued. If the current trend continued, Moonbase society would collapse within a decade or two.

    From desperation, a plan evolved to build an atomic bomb-powered ship. It would be a monster of a ship, one that spat small fission bombs out its rear, a reusable ship with enough brute force to land on and take off from the surface of the Earth with thousands of metric tons of cargo. It was generally known that the concept was to make a last-dash effort to rescue vital resources, both medical and industrial, that moon society needed for survival. But the exact details were known only by the mission commanders, all of whom were dead now. Rank and file, such as Kristen and Olson, learned only bits and pieces on a need-to-know basis. Because their citizens are forced to make extreme personal sacrifices, totalitarian societies are very efficient, capable of making huge strides in a short period of time. Things were proceeding as planned. The project gradually siphoned off vital Cloister resources, partially replacing them from the asteroid mines.

    Then things went from pretty goddamn bad to terribly fucked up. Moonbase Observatory detected a comet on collision course with Earth. Designated C/2189 O1 but known by the nickname of its discoverer, Kali, the comet was large enough and its relative velocity high enough that the collision would vaporize the oceans and turn the Earth's crust into molten slag. The Moon would survive. But if the human race was to continue, then the Cloister had to make the first and last mission to Earth to rescue vital resources-and it had to be done within a year.

    Literally and figuratively, it was an Earth-or-bust effort. The Cloister had severely strained its resources in the rush to build the Anita ahead of schedule. The idea was to land the 4,000-ton craft on Earth, load it with manufacturing and medical resources, including the DNA fabricator-enough to make the Cloister self-sufficient and provide a chance to repair the damaged DNA. Once loaded, the Anita was to launch and be out of the Earth's atmosphere before the comet struck. Timing was critical with less than two weeks to the comet impact, and now, with the explosion and death of the Anita's core crew, it seemed doomed to fail.

    The Chancellor cleared his throat, bringing Kristen out of her historical reverie.

    "There's something you don't know,” he said. “We have a contact on Earth, near the Dallas landing site."

    He scratched his balding pate and glanced around as if looking for some kind of emotional support from the Vice Chancellor. The Vice Chancellor gave none that Kristen could discern, and the Chancellor visibly sighed. His shoulders drooped.

    She recognized him suddenly, in one of those cloudy double visions produced psychotropics. He was the Wizard of Oz, not the frightening skeleton image from the Baum books, but the rummy old professor of the 1939 film. Yes, she'd seen this movie before, and this was a rewrite. Olson might look a bit like the Cowardly Lion, but as it turned out he was kind of a kick-ass tiger. Tall, gangly Jorge might be the Scarecrow, handsome under his stitched makeup. Gayle would be Dorothy Gale, of course, but a poor, world-weary drugged-out cosmopolitan Dorothy. What role would that leave her? The Tin Man or the Wicked Witch of the West? She certainly wasn't prissy Glenda. Maybe she was just an extra. Maybe her imagination was too derivative, not original enough, she was good for nothing… Stop it! She shook off the self-destructive thoughts and drew her attention back to her breathing, a meditative technique. When she let her attention return to the present, the Chancellor and Olson were still negotiating.

    "That means…?” Olson asked the Chancellor.

    "It means she, our contact, has already accumulated the hard-to-find gene-assembling equipment. She even has frozen sperm and ova. And it's not just any sperm and ova-it's from genius donors."

    "So, who is this contact? And how do you know she's legitimate?"

    "We don't know exactly who she is,” the Chancellor said. “She was broadcasting on a public channel, you see, and didn't want to give her identity away."

    "And why would that be?"

    "Conditions are barbaric. She fears there are survivors on Earth who would do her harm if they knew where she was."

    "So how do we find her?"

    "She'll contact you once you land outside the city. She'll use the codename ‘Deep Throat.’”

    Olson laughed out loud, a throaty, bass laugh that made Kristen jump. “Deep Throat? A woman who collects sperm from geniuses and calls herself Deep Throat? Now that is a movie I have heard about."

    "Yes,” the Chancellor cleared his throat. “The reference wasn't lost on us either, but we have reason to believe she'll make good on her promise to deliver quality genetic material."

    "So, then what?” Olson was still smirking.

    "So it means the mission has a good chance of succeeding. You could save the human race."

    "So, what's that worth to you?"

    "What do you want, Olson?"

    "Simple, I want equality."

    "You've already been promised honorary degrees."

    "No, I want an end to the academic-degree caste system. And I want you to make the promise publicly."

    "What good will that do?” The Chancellor's voice quavered.

    "Let's just say it will make me feel better about risking my ass and those of the good people here with me,” Olson said, and Kristen felt something for him she hadn't felt for anyone in a long time. Not love-that was largely about hormones and could be simulated with psychotropics-but a sort of affectionate admiration, a camaraderie. They, the remains of the crew, were all in this together, but especially her and Jimmy.

    

    

    

    Hannah regained consciousness slowly. For the briefest of moments, she was aware only of evening sunlight filtering through white lacy curtains and the sound of an engine running. For a second she was back in her old bedroom on her father's farm. But illusion evaporated in a panicked flash. She remembered the used clothing store, the shadowy figure, falling. The lacy curtains resolved themselves to be a calico sheet draped over safety glass-so much for the bedroom curtains. Another sheet, this one a Cinderella print and reasonably clean, had been draped over her. She sat up and drew back the sheet. She was still wearing the Marvin the Martian T-shirt and no pants, and she was in the back of a delivery van.

    The windows had heavy metal mesh over them-a bad sign.

    Next to her were the sneakers she had found at the department store. Next to them was a neatly folded stack of jeans, an assortment of several sizes. And on top of the jeans lay her pistol.

    The fact that her-what?-abductor?-had left her gun was an encouraging sign, but when she checked it, the clip was missing. Carefully, as quietly as she could, she sorted through the jeans. One pair was a size 2, and she drew them on; they were a bit tight but fit in the hips; she must be putting on weight. She was putting on the second shoe when a knock came at the back of van.

    "Hello? Are you decent?” asked a young male voice.

    Briefly, she debated diving over the front seat and trying to escape through the front door but couldn't work out the logistics. She hadn't been hurt-yet-but who knew what plans and scenarios wormed their way through the mind of a stranger.

    "Give me a minute,” she said, stalling.

    Maybe he needed her awake and conscious before he skinned her alive. Maybe she had to be dressed so he could tear her clothes off.

    "Take your time in there,” came the voice again, making her gasp. He was definitely young, but how young? She wondered what he looked like.

    As she was tying her other shoe, the door opened. She poised to launch herself over the front seat, but a hand reached in and pitched the pistol clip onto the floor.

    "I don't know you, but it's my guess you feel naked without this,” he said.

    "Thanks.” She slipped the clip into the slot and chambered a cartridge.

    "Okay. Just don't shoot me. Okay?"

    "Okay,” she said, but thought, keep your distance, and I won't be tempted. “I'm coming out.” Wondering if she was making a mortal mistake, she swung the backdoor out of the way with one hand-pistol in the other. Her captor was as she'd first seen him, a shadow, silhouetted by light, this time by the light of the setting sun. Is that a gun in his hand? The bright light made her wince. Her head swam.

    He stepped forward-fast-and grabbed her arm before she could react.

    "Let me go!” She meant to shout, but her voice betrayed her weakness.

    "Easy now. You were going to fall."

    His grip was strong, and she could now see his face, at least in profile. He was presentable enough, maybe even handsome in a strange way, but there was something not quite right about him. She couldn't quite discern what exactly it was. It was a visceral reaction; he just seemed a bit unearthly.

    "Let me go. I can manage now!"

    "You were going to fall,” he repeated.

    One of those intuitive moments passed between them; he knew that she knew that he had a secret, something he was embarrassed about. If asked to explain how she knew this, she would be at a loss. It was a fleeting, silent communication, transmitted by body language, length of eye contact, facial clues-who knew what else.

    But whatever was wrong with him, he wasn't violent. That much she knew.

    He was her age, perhaps younger. And actually, he was pretty, sort of like Johnny Depp's Edward Scissorhands, but without the scissors and all the little scars. Like Edward, he seemed to teeter on the edge of autism or dyslexia or some sort of mental dysfunction. But he was young, and he was clean. Like her, he wouldn't have had much time to have anything resembling an adult life before the onslaught of the plague. She wondered if he was a virgin too. He was dark haired-lots of hair, so much he had to tie it back in a pony tail. And slender. His features were straight, and he had a strong chin and skin so clear it seemed without pores. She thought at first he might be wearing makeup, but no, that was his own skin.

    "My name is Jeffrey. What's yours?” When she didn't answer, he asked, “So do I pass inspection?"

    She felt herself blushing. In order to check him out, she had been… well, checking him out.

    "I guess so. It pays to be careful, you know, with strangers.” She looked around. They were in a small open parking lot, surrounded by an eight-foot cinderblock wall topped with coiled razor wire. “Where is this place?"

    "Close to downtown. It used to be a police car impound area. I dragged out all the cars and made it a sort of safe area. I have several around the city for emergencies."

    "So you just threw me in the back of the van and hauled me here to your hideout?"

    He looked down bashfully. “No, it's not that. After you fell and hit your head I was going to take you to see Marguerite. She's a medical doctor-sort of."

    "Who's Marguerite?"

    He stared at her blankly.

    "Your girlfriend?"

    "No, no.” Again the bashful look, which she was beginning to find endearing. “She's sort of my stepmom. She was-is-a doctor, really. I was afraid you had a concussion. Your head made a thump like you wouldn't believe when you fell down."

    "So why did we stop here?” Her hand searched the back of her head for a bump and found one the size of a golf ball.

    "You were coming around. Talking. I thought it would be better if you woke up without the van moving."

    "I see.” He seemed safe enough.

    "I'm really sorry I scared you. I haven't had much experience with people.” He looked up, revealing eyes that were such a startling shade of violet that a gasp escaped her lips.

    "With normal people, that is,” he added.

    "Who does these days?"

    He considered this.

    "You seem pretty normal,” she said, now trying to fill the emotional space between them. And it was true. Outwardly he appeared normal, and she had developed this gut feeling that she was safe with him.

    "Marguerite says anyone who survived the pandemic is by definition abnormal. We're all mutants, she says"

    "Well, I feel more or less like a normal girl. You know, two legs, two arms, one head. There's this little matter of having twelve fingers,” and she laughed when he stared at her hands.

    He laughed too, which was encouraging. “By mutant, she means our immune systems."

    "Marguerite sounds like a smart woman."

    "I'm responsible to her for my life,” he said.

    "Sounds like an interesting…"

    "Listen,” he interrupted. “Do you live close by?"

    "Why do you want to know?” The location of the commune was supposed to be kept secret. There were still-allegedly-biker gangs who would… well, she didn't know what they would do, but she had been told they might do anything.

    "It'll be getting dark soon. I don't like to drive after dark. You run over the things, in the dark, you know, squishy things."

    She didn't know how to drive herself, but knew exactly what he meant. The zombies came out when the sun set and the air cooled. They would be a road hazard.

    "So maybe we should stay here, you're saying?"

    "No, the van is safe enough. Come here, let me show you."

    Indeed, the front of the white utility van was shielded with a plow-like affair made of plywood. The windows were protected with metal mesh.

    Stinker, curled up on a folded towel in the center of the seat, looked up, gave her a matter-of-fact look, and went back to sleep.

    "That was your cat, wasn't it,” he asked.

    She turned to Jeffrey and smiled. Any psychopath who liked cats couldn't be all bad.

    He blushed and kicked one of the tires.

    "See, if I have to, I can just run them down. The tires are flat-proof too."

    "Pretty cool."

    "I sort of copied something I saw on a DVD,” he explained.

    "Road Warrior?"

    "No, Day of the Dead, the 2003 version."

    "Haven't seen that one."

    "Marguerite cleaned out a Blockbusters video store and hauled them back to the Gardens. She said it was a silly movie. Nearly dead people don't move like Olympic athletes, she said, they move like what they are, which is nearly dead people."

    "The Gardens?"

    "Yeah, the Dallas World Aquarium."

    "So, that's where you're going to take me?"

    "If you wish. It's safe there. We've got barricades, a portable generator and even air-conditioning."

    "And if I don't wish?"

    "Well, that's why I asked where you live. I can drive you back home if you wish-if you live close by. But I don't want to drive at night-because of them."

    "What if I wanted you to let me and my cat out that gate and walk away?"

    "I'd try to talk you out of it."

    "But you'd let me go, right?"

    "I couldn't stop you, could I? You've got your pistol."

    "That's right; I do.” She had this funny feeling that he had more reason to be afraid of her than she of him.

    "This close to downtown,” he continued, “the things will be everywhere when it gets dark. They seem drawn here. I don't know why."

    "You've got food at the Aquarium?"

    "We've got a freezer full of stuff."

    "Okay. You've talked me into it."

    "One thing.” He was back in the bashful mode.

    "And what's that?"

    "Marguerite won't allow any guns in the house. You'll have to leave your pistol in the van when we get there."

    "Marguerite sounds like a tough customer."

    "Not really. But she's most always right about these things,” he said. “But she likes cats. At least I remember her saying so once. We don't have any."

    "Won't she worry about the fish in the Aquarium with a cat around?

    "There are no fish. We live there because of the children."

    "Children?"

    "It's hard to explain. The children need to be in the water tanks a lot."

    Hannah felt a shiver at the mention of the children, as if there was something really freakish about them-wait a minute. She was about to ride off into the sunset with some freak whose name she had just learned, whom she also suspected to be somewhat abnormal, but given her choices of taking to the street on her own in a strange part of town, it seemed almost like a good idea.

    A little later, as Jeffrey drove, confidently maneuvering through streets nearly clogged with abandoned cars, she relaxed somewhat. Stinker helped; he sat on her lap and purred softly in response to her petting. Jeffrey began to open up, dispelling some of the freakish vibes she had originally felt. In most ways, he seemed a normal, though exceedingly bashful, young man. But the promise of some sort of happy ending was dispelled by the sense of something freakish under the surface. The way he talked about the children might have been intriguing, but his tone revealed that the children were somehow disabled. She had heard from John, the de facto head of the Fairground Commune, that many uninfected parents had kept and tried to care for their Low-Path children, despite the risk of infection. She imagined little zombie kids floundering in shallow pools, full of their own feces and lumps of congealed black blood. In this little scenario of her imagination, she saw Jeffrey, at Marguerite's command, having to clean up the mess. She should avoid his touch, she decided.

    Jeffrey was talking about his horror movie collection. Evidently he had started collecting years before the onset of the pandemic.

    "When you're 21 and your life sucks,” he was saying, “and it looks like a long, impossible climb up the social ladder just to make enough money to live without murdering your soul, then a horror movie like ‘Dawn of the Dead’ is a relief."

    "Except in this movie, you can't just drop your empty popcorn bag in the trash and leave the movie behind you,” she said.

    "Exactly, and all the people in the credits at the end of the movie are dead. But seriously, the idea is that the new world order is going to be turned on its head and that suddenly having a mind and body that's still able to adapt to new situations puts you on top of the heap."

    "You mean you wished this?” She gestured at the zombie he had slowed to avoid running over. It had been a cop when living and still wore its uniform and holstered gun but was ambling about barefooted. It stopped in the middle of the street and stared in their direction. They both sat rock still. Sometimes if you didn't move, the long-gone Low-Paths cases couldn't see you. But the sound of the idling motor attracted it, and it came toward them, mouth agape. Jeffrey released the clutch and swerved slightly. The plow on the front of the van pushed the zombie aside, and it fell on its butt.

    "Sorry, officer,” Jeffrey said respectfully.

    Kristen noticed that the Low-Path's feet were a bloody shambles. It would have been more respectful to run the thing over and end its indignity, she thought. In another day or two its feet would be no more than shreds, and it would have to crawl. Maybe that would kill it, maybe not.

    "No, I'd never wish this on people,” he said, stepping on the gas. “Haven't you ever wished someone dead without really meaning it? Well, I guess I wished human civilization dead without meaning it. Also, there's this thing where no matter how boring your life is in the real world, it's comfortable and safe after getting the shit scared out of you. I think the scariest movies I have now are 28 Days Later and Dawn of the Dead, the 2003 version. There the zombies are fast. I mean really fast-not invalids like ours."

    He pointed toward what looked like a pile of junk ahead. “There's the gate to first barricade up ahead."

    About a block down the street, squashed cars were stacked upon each other like bricks. The wall of cars was easily ten feet high and stretched across the street. The wall was broken in the middle with a gate made of heavy metal spiked bars. A huge padlock-it looked the size of a large apple-locked the gate shut. A couple of zombies loitered next to the gate. Another had obviously tried to climb over the gate but only succeeded in impaling itself upon one of the spikes. It appeared to have bled out and so was dead.

    "I'll have to herd them out the way. Do you think you can drive the van through?"

    "I can't drive."

    "You can't?"

    "No. I was ten when the plague came, remember? Not too many driver's permits are issued at fourteen."

    "I guess not. So do you think you can herd them?"

    "What do you mean herd?"

    "I've got an eight-foot pole in the back of the van. You just push them out the way."

    "That sounds dangerous and stupid. I've got a better way."

    Before he could say anything, she was out of the van. She shot one right in the forehead from ten feet away with the first shot. She realized she was trying to impress Jeffrey. It had been a lucky shot. She walked up to the other zombie and put a bullet through its left eye. It dropped like a rock.

    Jeffrey got out of the van, and she smiled at him. But he didn't seem impressed. She realized why. She had killed the zombies in front of the gate. Now their bodies blocked the road.

    Silently, he took a rope with a meat hook on one end out of a bucket in the van. He snagged the bodies with the hook and dragged them out of the way, then opened the gate. Methodically, he dumped the hook end of the rope into a bucket of green solution in the back of the truck, opened the gate, and climbed into the van.

    "Come on,” he said. “The sounds of gunshots attract them, too."

    As she closed the door, he said calmly, “Maybe I should teach you how to drive."

    "I'd like that,” she said, relaxing for a moment. It was like they were on a date or something. Freak or not, he seemed like a nice guy. She was trying to figure how to say this without sounding stupid when the evening sky lit up over her shoulder. She looked up at a cloudless sky. A second later God began pounding on a giant oil drum. A thunderstorm must be rolling in from the East, she thought.

    

    

    

    Initiating the main engine sequence required a heroic act of will, and Olson had never thought of himself as a hero.

    "Time to shit or get off the pot, Olson,” he said to himself and punched the enter key.

    Then he waited. The first nuke ejection was several minutes away. He opened an X-window that was linked to an external video camera. He was immediately treated to a view of the Earth four hundred klicks below. Earth's daylight side was beautiful. A huge storm cell was tumbling over the western Pacific, a lacy, swirling pinwheel that reminded him of Messier 51, the famous whirlpool galaxy that was a favorite target of amateur astronomers. Everything looked pristine. The billions of corpses, the burnt-out cities, the chaos spawned by the plague, weren't visible from this altitude.

    He shifted position in the deceleration couch, which was basically a smart waterbed, suspended in gimbal apparatus. The gimbal would swing so that he was always facing away from the acceleration, his spine cushioned.

    In a few minutes, the first baby nuke-which the engineers euphemistically called a ‘pulse unit'-would be ejected from an iris opening in the rear of the vehicle.

    Each pulse unit was a small nuclear device designed to channel the explosive force in one direction. They were encased in what resembled dense Styrofoam and capped with a tungsten pancake-shaped disk. The foam and metal disk effectively shaped the explosion-or so the theory went. About 100 meters behind the ship, the nuke would be detonated, reaching temperatures ten times that of the surface of the sun. In the first few millionths of a second, the blast would vaporize the Styrofoam and compress the tungsten pancake to about one-quarter of its original thickness. The hydrogen and carbon in the Styrofoam would absorb most of the neutrons and X-rays, preventing the crew of the Anita from being irradiated. The tungsten pancake, after being compressed, would expand in a cigar-shaped plasma jet traveling at a hundred and fifty kilometers per second toward the Anita's pusher plate. By the time it reached the ship it would, again in theory, have cooled to only ten-thousand degrees C. The thousand metric-ton steel pusher plate at the rear of the Anita, looking for all the world like a giant wok-would take the brunt of the force. The pusher plate was mounted to the Anita though some gas-filled shock absorbers. A light film of oil coating the pusher plate would ablate off with the heat and prevent the steel from eroding. As the shock absorbers rebounded, another film of oil would be sprayed over the pusher plate, the iris would open, another nuclear pulse unit ejected and detonated, the Anita would get another kick in the ass.

    And so on and so on.

    Though the crew's risk from radiation was slight, the acceleration-or in the case of landing, the deceleration-would be immense. The engineers said the shock absorbers would lessen the jolt of each nuclear blast so their spines wouldn't crack. He hoped they were right.

    The specific impulse, the change in momentum per unit mass of rocket fuel expended, would have created intolerable g-forces for the crew; hence the huge shock absorber system between the Anita's pusher plate and the vehicle itself. For an Earth-gravity born and adapted crew, the shock absorber system would have been sufficient. But all the Anita's crew had lost bone density to varying degrees from a life in micro or low-g. Hence the water-filled deceleration couches.

    At least that was the theory, as was the whole propulsion system of setting bombs off under one's ass to propel a spaceship. The temperatures and pressures were immense, and the safety involved critical timing between the various elements. There were even odd-shaped charges that would yield a non-symmetrical blast for lateral movement. And the stiffness of the shock absorbers mounted to the pusher plate could be individually adjusted by the computer for fine lateral movements. All theory.

    He opened another Xwindow and watched for error messages from the touch-down sequence.

    "Touch-down in 30:30:22."

    A little more than thirty minutes. Touch-down? Blast-down would be a more accurate description.

    "Arming sequences nuclear devices 0015-0045 now completed. Nuclear devices 0046-0054 partially armed and in reserve."

    Olson suppressed a yawn. None of that nonsense about heatshields, heat-ablating ceramic tiles, or glide paths that stretched halfway around the globe. Anita would ride down triumphantly on sequential hammers of nuclear blasts. He'd seen this movie before. What was the title? How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb? Something like that.

    And he could abort the whole sequence by hitting the ESC button at anytime.

    "First nuclear charge ejected in 12:10:01,” the screen read.

    There would be a series of five-was that right?-nuclear bombs ejected and detonated to decelerate and drop them out of orbit. Then they would coast for a few minutes, and the blasts would come quick and steady, continuing until the Anita was within a couple of hundred meters from the ground. Then the massive liquid fuel rockets, hydrazine and oxygen, would have to take over. The designers worried that if detonated too close to the surface, the nukes would dig a crater too deep for the excursion vehicles to climb out of.

    Originally, the landing command could have been remotely started from the Moon, but Olson, motivated by what he considered healthy paranoia, had commandeered the navigational computer early on. He wasn't quite sure what the Cloister could do to them without destroying the ship or the cargo, and most of the complex landing sequence instructions were lost to him in compiled code. But if things got dicey on the descent, now he could abort and start a new sequence that would take them back into Earth orbit. He wasn't much of a programmer-his understanding of celestial mechanics was pretty slim-but with the brute power of the Anita, it was easy. Just tell the ship to shit more atomic bombs. He might have erred on the side of excess, though. He and the rest of the crew might be turned to pancakes by the G-forces, but they would get back into some sort of orbit. He was pretty sure about that.

    But right now, they were just going to give the Anita propulsion system the first real test it had ever had in an atmosphere and gravitational field. No one could say with any certainty that it would work. To the best of his understanding, the biggest risk was that one of the baby nukes would stick in the ejection tube or detonate before it was ejected. A stuck bomb could be expelled by conventional explosive charge. That failing, the ship could still execute a walk-away landing-in theory-by use of the other two ejection tubes. But like a stool with two legs instead of three, it might topple. If the 4,000-ton ship fell on its side, it would be like an enormous steel turtle, unable to right itself and hence impossible to launch again. The last few minutes were also risky as the Moon engineers had never built conventional liquid fuel rockets as large as those used for the final descent. And they only had enough liquid fuel for one landing. The return to orbit would be done by nuclear charges alone.

    "First ejection in 05:20:01,” the screen read.

    Worried about the toppling thing, he had come up with his own emergency plan. Ordinarily, the launch sequence would take hours until the first nuke was fired. The engineers were a worrisome lot. The computer system would double-check everything: See if the doors were secured, perform a long series of checks and balances on everything from the tilt of the acceleration couches to temperature of the shock absorbers. There was also a sequence that involved someone to manually push switches, and then a long period where alarms sounded, before the launch occurred.

    Engineers, aware of the thousands upon thousands of things that could go wrong, tended to think in terms of redundancy checks and redundancy checks on the redundancy checks. They also tended to worry about being blamed for things that they caused by not being careful enough. With large complex machines such as the Anita, they had their ‘shit happens’ logic, and wanted everything verified to be working before launch was initiated.

    Olson, having spent the first ten years of his life on Earth, had a different concept of ‘shit happens.’ Growing up less than two-hundred klicks from the Dallas landing site, he was all too aware of such things as sandy soils and swampy areas around the site. There was even a large lake in the center of Dallas, less than twenty klicks, for God's sake, from where they planned to set down. A small error in calculation, an unusually strong cross wind, anything, could put them down in the wrong place. And unlike the Moon's surface, the Earth landscape was constantly changing. With the cessation of jet flights, an end to carbon dioxide emissions, and the continuance of fires that swept unchecked through hundreds of square miles of cityscape, weather patterns and soil characteristics had changed. Who knew if the parking lot where they were going to set down was still a parking lot? Of course, they had their contact person on Earth who had supposedly scouted the landing site for them, but there was no guarantee that she was reliable.

    So he had written an emergency launch script, cutting out all the safety checks. Ten seconds tops and the first nuke would fire. The ship would take off to a height of about five hundred meters. Another nuke charge, shaped so as to provide some lateral movement, would nudge them over, and smaller charges would allow them to land a second time, this time a few hundred meters away from the first landing.

    That was the plan, of course. He was all too aware of the potential flaws of the program, including the danger of the final nuclear charge blasting a hole too deep and irregularly shaped in the topsoil for the Anita to climb out of. But it was better than having no backup landing plan at all.

    Because it would have to be initiated quickly, he had set up a short batch file for the command. All he needed to do was type ‘shit happens’ and the script would initiate.

    He hadn't told Kristen about the ‘shit happens’ script. She said he worried too much.

    "Jimmy?"

    He twisted in his couch to see Kristen had entered the bridge.

    "You should be in a deceleration couch,” he said. “The first nuke ejects in about five minutes."

    "I know. Yours is a double. I thought we might share."

    His face must have revealed his surprise, for she explained: “In the next half hour we will have either successfully tested the first nuclear propulsion system or we will be turned into super-heated plasma. I don't want to be alone-whichever happens."

    He really didn't need a reason, but he didn't say so, and scooted over to one side of the couch to make room for her. “You ought to get out of the coveralls,” he said. “I'm not trying to get you to undress for the usual reasons, you know…"

    "I know. The seams could cut off circulation,” she said.

    She kicked off her sandals and unsnapped the seam of her jumpsuit. It was form-fitting, and she had to peel it off. A Joe Cocker song came to mind.

    "Baby, take off your coat… real slow

    Baby, take off your shoes…"

    Himself, he was wearing a pair of boxer shorts. He was conscious of his gut, a fleshy white mound; muscled, but distended. His metabolism didn't do well on synthetic carbs and limited protein. Kristen, on the other hand, was all sleek and firm flesh, with just enough padding to make her look a woman instead of a girl. But it was her nipples that really got to him. The areolas were dark brown, and the nipples themselves extended seven or eight millimeters. Who would have thought…

    She paused at the edge of the deceleration couch and looked him straight in the eye.

    "You can leave your hat on,” he said, without thinking.

    "What hat?"

    "Never mind. It's from an old rock and roll song. Just mental drivel. Ignore me."

    "Sorry about the lack of a bra; the things are getting hard to find these days. And Jimmy, my friend…"

    "Yes?” he said, trying not to look at those nipples.

    "I'm not being a tease, but most women don't need a bra in low-G, not on 1,300 calories a day anyway."

    "Don't worry. I've no fantasies in that regard. I'll keep to my side of the couch."

    It was a lie, of course, the part about the fantasies, anyway. But he wished she could appreciate how difficult it was for him not to reach out and grab her. Cocker's lyrics kept cycling through his mind:

    "Now come back here and stand on a chair… yes, that's right

    Raise your arms up in to the air… and shake ‘em."

    She smiled and slipped in beside him, and there was an awkward moment as they shifted their positions until they could both see the computer display.

    Together they watched the seconds count down. The Anita shuddered as the first nuke was propelled down the launch tube by conventional explosive charge. Then a loud clang as the massive steel iris shutters closed. Less than a second later the nuke kicked the Anita in the butt. Olson and Kristen were shoved deep into the water couch. Kristen let out a little squeak, but laughed when the word Boom appeared in the Xwindow inside a cartoon balloon.

    "Some asshole programmer had a sense of humor,” she said.

    "That asshole would be me,” Olson said.

    "Sorry."

    "Don't be. It was gay."

    "Made me laugh out loud, though."

    Moments later there was another shudder, following by another metallic clang and a second nuclear kick in the ass.

    Olson relaxed a bit. Things were working just as they should-so far. But pity any poor bastard who had the bad luck to be within a klick of the back end of the Anita. The blast wave would knock any aircraft out of the sky from klicks away-if any were still flying, which they most likely weren't. But he liked to think about such scenarios for some perverse reason. The worse effects would be at the landing site, a few klicks from downtown Dallas. The parking lot where they were supposed to land would soon be a hell on Earth. He hoped their Earth contact-someone he knew only by the name of Deep Throat-knew what she was talking about.

    "Suspicious minds are talking

    They try to tear us apart

    They say that my love is wrong…"

    But here inside the ship, things were going well. Of course any one of the next fifty pulse units could prematurely detonate in the chamber and vaporize the ship and crew, but he had more important matters to think about, such as the growing bulge in his shorts. Amazing, he wasn't consciously thinking of sex, but he was still getting a boner. Maybe it had something to do with controlling the Anita, a huge phallus of a space ship. He had a twinge of guilt about having such thoughts so soon after losing Parvani.

    Another kick from a pulse unit and Kristen grabbed his hand. He stole a glance at her breasts, and it was good. They jiggled a bit from the jolt of the nuclear pulse.

    "You give me a reason to live.

    You give me a reason to live."

    Love was a silly-ass emotion and lust positively ludicrous, a matter mainly of hormones and biological hydraulics, but he didn't care, though the lust he felt for Kristen was mixed with something that almost felt like physical pain when he thought of Parvani.

    "We're going to be okay,” Kristen said.

    "How do you know?” he said through gritted teeth as he did a mental countdown for the next pulse. One thousand, two thousand, three thousand, four thousand…

    There was another jolt, and he was slammed again into the water couch, but there was no accompanying sound of explosion, just the creaking and groan of the Anita's metal joints.

    

    

    

    Hannah looked up as the sky bloomed again with light. This time the flash was brighter, so much so that it left spots in front of her eyes. Stinker tensed in the cradle of her arms, digging his claws into her shoulder. Unlike lightning, the flash came from a point-source, and if not for the fact that the evening sky was perfectly clear, she might have thought it was just the planet Venus. The light faded as she watched, as if someone had suddenly turned on a super bright light then switched it off just as quickly. A couple of minutes later came another THUMP. The first thump had been loud, a single, sharp strike of Thor's kettle drum; the second louder, but more like an echoing boom of thunder; and now the third thump sounded like a nearby Howitzer, powerful enough to rattle the Aquarium's windows; powerful enough she felt it in her chest as much as she heard it.

    "Come on, don't look,” Jeffrey said. “Each one will get brighter and brighter, and when it gets closer, the flashes could permanently damage your eyes."

    "You know what that is?” she asked.

    "Inside first. Then, I'll tell you."

    "No, tell me first."

    "Moon men. They're landing,” he said.

    "Moon men? From the Moon!"

    "Yes, that's where Moon men are from. You know the Cloister, the colony on the Moon. Come on, we have to get inside!"

    He grabbed her arm and pulled her toward the door, but the idea of Moon men-and Moon women as well, she supposed-alive after all this time was mind boggling. She had thought them a childhood story and attributed them to the same realm as Santa Claus and fairies. An invisible string pulled her gaze toward the sky. She had to catch a glimpse of the ship itself. When the next flash came it was brighter, much, much brighter, leaving more spots before her eyes that did not fade. Stinker dug his claws in deeper and howled, waking her from a kind of hypnosis.

    "Come on!” Jeffrey was shouting. “Don't you understand? It's a nuclear ship! We have to get inside!"

    "Nuclear! What do you mean nuclear?” When the delayed sonic boom came this time she felt it not just in her chest but in her bones, her arms, her skull. “You mean like in atomic bombs?"

    "Worse-more like hydrogen bombs. Now come on, or I'm going to leave you out here!"

    She looked at him. He would never leave her out here by herself. She saw that. Felt it, as he tugged at her arm, but she was frozen, drawn to the fire in the sky. And she had a brief vision of her dad's horses that day when he set the barn ablaze. The animals had been hypnotized by the bright light of the flames too. She mentally shook off the vision and let Jeffrey lead her inside. She set Stinker down-dropped him really, for his claws hurt-and he scampered down the inside steps to a lower level. The spots in her vision from the last flash remained.

    "The walls of the foyer are thick, but the glass windows are too large,” Jeffrey said, “so we should follow your cat and go down one level-just in case."

    To punctuate his warning, another boom sounded from outside. Though muted by the concrete walls, the heavy windows rattled and undulated from the concussion. Or did she imagine that? Jeffrey led her at a trot down a plywood ramp. They were intercepted at the foot of the ramp by a wizened woman dressed in a uniform of sorts-velour shirt, black pants with funny little flares on the legs and black boots. There was something incongruous but familiar about it.

    "Jeffrey. Slow down. You'll break the young filly's leg,” she said.

    And then he'll have to shoot me, Hannah thought.

    "They weren't supposed to come down this close or this soon, Marguerite,” Jeffrey said. “Something may be wrong. They may be out of control."

    "You're right. They're early. But there was a change of plans,” she said. She had a German accent and blue-gray eyes that glittered with intelligence. “The one, at the fairgrounds,” Marguerite said.

    "The fairgrounds? You mean at Fair Park?” Hannah said, panicky. “Fair Park?” she repeated, but Jeffrey and the old lady kept talking and ignored her.

    "The Moon men say it's safe; the bombs are very clean. The wind is from the northwest. What little residual radiation there is will be swept out toward Terrell. All it'll do is roast some zombies."

    Another thump rattled the upstairs windows. Marguerite led them around a corner and down another half flight of stairs and through an archway into a tunnel. They came into a room surrounded by ten-foot high glass walls. They were inside a tunnel that passed through a huge aquarium tank. Beyond the glass, in deep green water, something large and white scurried out of sight behind an artificial rock pillar. The effect was unworldly, like an underwater ballet performed at hyperspeed.

    "What was that?” Hannah heard herself say as if from a distance. She felt trapped in someone else's dream.

    "Just life. It goes on, you know, no matter what,” Marguerite said. “Come here, sit down. Just in case there are any bursts of radiation, the water will shield us."

    Feeling sheepish, Hannah let herself be herded.

    "Radiation? You said the bombs were clean,” Jeffrey said.

    "Clean as far as fallout and residual radiation, but there is some danger with it passing so close. We'll be fine here, though."

    Jeffrey calmed down, and Hannah saw an opening in the conversation. “But what about where the ship lands? What will happen there?"

    "I don't know all the details, but I would imagine that the landing site will be quite devastated,” Marguerite said.

    "Devastated?"

    "Yes, you know. The individual nuclear blasts are small, but very hot-cooler than a regular bomb but hotter than the surface of the sun-from what I've read. There will be a huge parachute to slow it down, then some chemical rockets, but the last nuke blast will still be set off a hundred feet or so from the surface. The Moon men said things at the landing site won't cool down enough for them to leave the ship for a day or two. It will be so hot the first hour that concrete will melt. Asphalt will vaporize and burn like wax."

    "Oh, God. You've got to stop them."

    "It's a done deal now, dear. They can't stop."

    "Well, they've got to. There are people there.” Why didn't they realize she was frantic? She was in a dream, wasn't she? Trapped in a bad dream where terrible things happen and no one noticed.

    "People? What people?"

    "People at the fairgrounds! There's a commune! That's where I live! We've got to stop the landing!"

    "Oh dear,” Marguerite said. “I'm afraid it's too late now."

    "Too late?

    "Yes. They're already in entry and out of radio contact. Something about a plasma envelope that I don't understand,” she said.

    Hannah suspected she did understand. She was holding something back. Before she could say so, another thump shook the building.

    "My, that was close, wasn't it?” Marguerite said. “Would you like a soda, perhaps, dear? Jeffrey recently found some frozen concentrate, and we have our own C02, so it will taste like the real thing. We even have our own ice."

    Hannah stared at her in amazement. “Didn't you hear what I just said? That thing is going to roast twenty-five people. Real living people, not pus-factory zombies, goddamn it!"

    Marguerite stepped closer, taking funny little shuffling steps. Hannah realized her walk wasn't a put-on affectation as she had first thought but a result of the odd-looking boots the tiny woman wore. Marguerite set a hand, the skin stark white and parchment thin, on Hannah's shoulder. Though Hannah was only five-foot-four herself, and Marguerite was wearing those funny boots with the high heels, the old woman barely came up to her shoulder. Marguerite looked her directly in the eye.

    "I know this sounds harsh, but there's absolutely nothing we can do about it. The ship will land in a minute or less. We can't contact the pilot, and even if we could, there's nothing he or she could do. And even if we could get in touch with your people, they wouldn't have enough time to get away."

    "But why there?” The tears began to flow. Just a few days ago, she couldn't wait to get away from her adopted dad and the other people at the commune. She'd hated them and their constant worrying and nagging. That's why she had run away to explore the city on her own. Now, she felt a sense of loss so profound she didn't know if she could bear it.

    Another boom came, but this one not so loud as before. The water in the huge tanks sloshed and silt shifted in sluggish waves.

    "I was right. It's passed over us now. There will be one or two more blasts, and then we'll know just how good the Moon engineers are."

    "What do you mean, Margie?” Jeffrey said.

    "The ship is unproven technology. The basic design is nearly a hundred years old. The Moon men have never built anything so large, so heavy before. They've never built fusion bombs before. Most have never lived in a natural atmosphere before, much less flown anything the size of a small battleship through one. It's a miracle they made it this far. It will be another miracle if they do anything but make a huge crater on landing. If I believed in a god of the sky, I'd be praying right now that the miracle happens."

    "You didn't answer me,” Hannah said. “Why there? Why did they have to pick the park?” She wasn't sobbing, but she could feel the tears running down her cheeks. She hadn't cried since Daddy had burned himself up.

    Marguerite looked at Jeffrey. “Should I tell her or will you?"

    Jeffrey looked away, and Marguerite put her other hand on Hannah's shoulder. It was an odd pose, and Hannah didn't know if it was meant as a prelude to an embrace or a way to keep her literally at arm's length.

    "If you must blame someone, don't blame the Moon men. Blame me. I proposed the site. I scouted it."

    "That's not true, Marguerite. I scouted it too,” Jeffrey said.

    "Scouted it? What do you mean, scouted it?” Hannah said and shrugged off the old lady's hands.

    Caught off guard, Marguerite teetered on her boots. Jeffrey was at her side in an instant to steady her.

    "Stupid shoes,” Marguerite said. Jeffrey helped her to one of the stone benches near the Aquarium wall. As she began to untie the boot laces, she continued, “The Moon men were in trouble. They originally planned to land ten miles outside of town, but there was some kind of accident. Most of the crew were killed. So, to meet their schedule and to conserve the energies of the remaining crew, they needed to come down closer to the city. They asked me for advice. I suggested the fairgrounds because it was big and open and there wasn't so much chance of the fire spreading. Also, Jeffrey and I drove through it; we saw not a living soul."

    "We drove around the grounds for hours, honking our horn,” Jeffrey chimed in, “and the only thing we did was rouse a few zombies out the shadows."

    "If there were people there, I don't see how they could not have heard us,” Marguerite said. “We took an awful chance. There are some humans you don't want to meet. The gangs, you know."

    "I know,” Hannah said. “My family, especially the older ones, were terrified of some of the gangs, even though they all probably went Low-Path by last year."

    "Yes, most of the gangs are gone. Risky behavior was their trademark, not a smart move during a plague. But I understand. I grew up in the Bush era. Some leaders need fear. It binds a constituency together,” Marguerite said.

    "It wasn't like that. They're a democracy. They just wanted to stay hidden and safe,” she said.

    "That's why they didn't respond to our honks,” Marguerite said. “We could have set up a loud speaker, and they wouldn't have come out of their hidey hole."

    "I bet they're underground somewhere, aren't they?’ Jeffrey said.

    Hannah nodded. She didn't go into detail about the utility tunnels, how dark and dank they were.

    "They could survive the landing,” Jeffrey suggested.

    "They could,” Marguerite echoed, but she didn't sound convinced. Evidently she read Hannah's expression, and added, “Then they may not, but if the Moon men are right, then…"

    "Then what?” Hannah said.

    "Nothing, dear. As I said, there's nothing that can be done. We'll have to wait and see. Now come sit down, and Jeffrey will fetch us a soda. Won't you, Jeffrey?"

    Not knowing what else to do, Hannah obeyed. Jeffrey disappeared down the tunnel. Marguerite finished removing her boots and pitched them in the middle of the floor.

    "Silly shoes,” she said. “Silly outfit, too. Designed to hobble a woman. Takes an hour to get it on right. But it seemed like a good idea at the time. Ever made a mistake like that?"

    "Yes, earlier today, when I found myself naked, surrounded by Low-Paths, trapped in a zoo."

    Marguerite nodded. “So if you felt safe and hidden with your family, why did you venture out in the city? And by yourself, Jeffery tells me."

    "I was so tired of living underground like a troll. And they were always treating me like a child. And I was bored.” She didn't add the fact that there were no men there under fifty. “So I ran off. The zombies are so slow, you know. All you have to do is keep your head, think ahead. I knew that, and I nearly blew it."

    "Maybe it was your rite of passage,” Marguerite said.

    There was another thump, but this time they barely felt it.

    "That should be the last one,” Marguerite said, taking Hannah's hand. “But we won't take any chances. We'll stay down here for the night, in our octopus's garden, and wait for everything to blow over. Tomorrow, we'll drive out and see what the morning brings."

    "What's the use? They'll all be dead,” Hannah said. She felt the tears coming again and hated herself for it. Marguerite gripped her hand tighter, and Hannah didn't know if she wanted to kill the woman or be cradled in her arms.

    

   

    

    The ship groaned, squeaked, and popped as it cooled. Soaked in a cold sweat, Kristen lay listening to the metallic cacophony, amazed she was still alive. She rolled over to the edge of the deceleration couch, feeling as if she weighed a ton. Wiping the sweat off her own forehead was like hard labor. Despite all the strength training and the steroids, her arm felt like it was made of lead. Even her skin seemed heavy.

    Jimmy was already up, lumbering about in the swamp of Earth's gravity. He had left a towel on the edge of the couch; she used it to dry off. To her dismay, she had to lift each breast to dry underneath. They didn't exactly sag-she was not that large, thank Buddha, but where they had been perky, flighty birds, they now lay on her chest like dead quail. At least they didn't swing back and forth like a cow's udder as she walked, but her butt felt like it was dragging the floor. Still, she should be thankful to be of the flesh at all, even if that flesh now made her feel positively bovine.

    It had been a nerve-wracking landing. After the first few nuclear pulse units exploded, there had been a long hiatus as the ship, its orbital velocity nullified, bounced through the atmosphere like a skipping stone. Each blast delivered a kick that made the ship rattle and shake as if it were coming apart. Outside, miniature suns came into being and died. Inside, the temperature rose to more than forty degrees Celsius.

    Now landed, the ship's steel skin made new sounds every minute as it passed through different stages of cooling. Kristen had been briefed to expect this, but she still jumped when a hammering came as if a giant was banging on the side of the ship with an immense sledgehammer. The hammering stopped as suddenly as it began, something to do with expansion and contraction, she supposed. But she had a mental image of the ship suddenly falling into a thousand pieces-anticlimactically-like an abused Model-T automobile in a Keystone Kops movie. In her mental movie, Jimmy would take the role of Buster Keaton, sitting in the driver's seat, still holding a disconnected steering wheel.

    Jimmy lumbered in and sat down on a wall-mounted bench with a sigh. “Jesus, this gravity is going to take some getting used to.” He had donned a Spandex suit, part of what was officially called a Gravsuit, but which they all called Gutbuckets for the suit's main purpose was to support abdominal muscles weakened by a lifetime in Moon gravity and micro gravity.

    He didn't have the coolant unit plugged into the suit and was sweating profusely in the hot cabin.

    Nearly naked, Kristen was at once self-conscious before him. Her own vanity surprised her. As funny as it seemed, she felt herself developing feelings for the older man. She wished she were girdled in Spandex too. She wrapped herself with the towel. Like a bustier, it covered her breasts and her tummy but left her behind hanging out in the air. If she wrapped it tightly enough, would it hold things in?

    "I took a peek outside,” Jimmy announced.

    "Any zombies at the door?” she asked. They were all curious about the zombies and had absorbed any info they could on the things. There were the newscasts, of course. Though Earth societies had crumbled within weeks after the onset of the plague, there was still plenty of television footage. But objectivity of journalism, even the faux objectivity of corporate-owned news programs, didn't fill the base human need to watch carnage from a safe distance. So they had viewed the zombie movie classics over and over. First, the original George Romero films, with lumbering slow-shuffling zombies. And there was the classic “Last Man on Earth,” a film version of Richard Matheson's “I Am Legend.” The film starred Vincent Prince and the zombies were shuffling vampires, but it seemed relevant somehow.

    There had been nothing memorable until Romero did remakes of his own films in the ‘80s. Then a dearth of creativity as the Hollywood film factories rehashed everything they could steal. Then in the early 21st century, like a premonition, all the world-plague movies had come out-"28 Days Later” and more remakes of Romero's films, with zombies moving high speed like crazed gymnasts on methamphetamines.

    The truth was today's zombies were more like the Romero originals, slow and clumsy, except they weren't resurrected dead, but just barely living sick creatures, things severely brain damaged by fever with all their major physiological processes compromised. In a way it was worse than a supernatural plague. They were still human; they just didn't know it. They were the walking nearly-dead, but still dangerously infectious and violent in the way of a rabid animal.

    "No zombies. No demons either” Jimmy answered. “But it looks like hell out there. The concrete looks like it's burning, and you can't see anything for the smoke."

    "I've seen that movie already.” To her own ears, the running gag sounded a little silly. She was, after all, the ranking officer.

    "Just turn on a monitor. I've got a video feed going to main window."

    "No, I want to see the actual photons."

    "You'd be able to see three hundred and sixty degrees with the video cameras and in infrared too, if you wanted."

    Her disappointment must have shown on her face, for he said: “I understand. I've opened one of the shutters in the commons hall."

    He waited while she slipped on the jumpsuit she had shed while in orbit. It hid the insults of gravity. They climbed down a series of ladders to the galley amid-ships. When the ship was in space and they were weightless, they would use a central corridor to glide to various parts of the ship. Now, bound by gravity, they had to lug their bodies up and down the ladders. Kristen's booties kept slipping off the rungs, and she wished she had come barefoot.

    In the commons room, they found the rest of the original skeleton crew-Gayle and Jorge-already staring out the thick porthole, except that Jorge seemed to be sneaking more peaks at Gayle than at the new world on the other side of the thick quartz. She was wearing a red string bikini and flip-flops.

    The rescued crew-Crystal Karen, Tisha Smith, Bobby Randel, Daniel Kaplan, and Abraham Badr-had apparently bonded through their near-death experience and were sitting together at one of the trestle tables. Badr was saying, “…and if Danny hadn't talked me into sneaking into that storage room to smoke a doobie, we wouldn't be here."

    "And if we,” Tish said, making a gesture to include herself and the other two, “hadn't invited ourselves to share that doobie, we wouldn't be here either."

    Kaplan, a stern look on his boyish face, looked away. No, not away, but at the bikinied Gayle with what Kristen could only interpret as jealousy. Was it jealousy over Jorge? She didn't think so. Jorge was straight as an arrow, and Kaplan was reputedly far from it. But no, Kaplan's eyes scanned over Gayle, checking her out, in a distinctly heterosexual way. Curious.

    She stepped up to the porthole, and Gayle and Jorge made room for her. Outside, it was exactly as Jimmy described it, except it wasn't concrete but asphalt pavement that was burning, filling the air with thick, oily smoke. She thought of a documentary about the La Brea tar pits, a pool of asphalt bubbling out of the ground in the middle of Los Angeles. Except instead of a swamped wooly mammoth in the center, there was a charred automobile, its sheet metal body drooping like hot wax in the heat.

    She couldn't see more than a hundred yards through the smoke, but she could make out a few burned-out hulks of other cars. To the south was a huge metal framework, nearly as tall as the Anita, that had partially wilted from the heat of the ship's landing. It took her a moment to realize it had been a huge Ferris wheel. Through a hole in the smoke, she caught sight of the setting sun. The room was lit momentarily with light of a luminous quality she had never seen before.

    "Marvelous, isn't it?” Gayle asked. In a way, her outfit made a certain amount of sense. The ship was still warm; tropically so.

    "What's marvelous? That we're alive?"

    "No, I was talking about the sunset. Have you ever seen such a thing? It's not the same as seeing it in video."

    Kristen looked at the sunset again. Sol was an old friend; she had seen the sun many times from Moon orbit, from outside on the Moon's surface. But this was an alien sun, fat and obscenely orange.

    "It's Earth! Gaia. Womankind's home."

    "If you say so, Gayle, but it looks dirty and old and worn out to me."

    "That's just the works of man. Men gutted her, but she fought back and flushed humans down the drain. In a few decades, only a moment for Mother Earth, she'll take all this back. It will be green and beautiful.” Gayle slapped her thigh for emphasis.

    Kristen looked to Jorge, to Jimmy, and back to Gayle. Where the rest of them literally felt dragged down by the gravity and the precarious condition of the mission, Gayle was elated and energetic. She moved with quick sharp movements, as if she had lived in one G all her life. It was an amazing turnaround from a week ago.

    After the explosion, Gayle had been severely depressed, nearly incoherent, apparently deeply depressed over the deaths of the Anita crew. The diagnostic computer had pronounced her unstable and suicidal, and Kristen had kept her heavily sedated. Ordinarily, protocol would have called for her to be maintained on psychotropics for some time, but because they were short-handed, Kristen had put her recovery on the fast track, bringing her off the medication over a period of days instead of weeks.

    As Gayle came off the sedation, Kristen thought she had made the wrong choice. The woman talked of suicide at first-confirming the expert system's diagnosis-but when she learned the mission hadn't been scrubbed, that it was a go, even with a minimal crew, she had made a quick recovery, talking of the mission in a tone that could only be described as reverent. Kristen attributed the recovery to Gayle now sharing a camaraderie and enthusiasm for saving the human race, an act of self-sacrifice that took her beyond the grief and misplaced guilt she felt.

    During the last week, however, the four of them had been through long daily planning sessions where they mapped out who would go where and do what after landing. During the frequent meetings she had the chance to observe Gayle's behavior in a non-clinical setting, and something about the guilt and the grief just didn't ring true. For one thing, Gayle was an obvious misanthrope, though this was a not uncommon trait for asteroid miners-take Jimmy, for example. But Gayle's case was extreme. Jimmy, now that she knew him, was a misanthrope in name only. He actually liked people, women particularly, and would, she suspected, even risk his own life for the rest of the crew if it ever came to that. Yes, he was deeply cynical of the human institution of government, the Cloister specifically, but then who wasn't?

    Gayle, though, actually seemed to harbor a deep disdain for the human race. Kristen wondered how she had ever managed to pass the psych tests to be on this mission.

    And Kristen found Gayle's physical energy suspect, too. She was firm and smooth muscled. They were all taking steroids, a necessary evil to enable them to deal with Earth's gravity. But Gayle really looked good in the bikini, better than she would, Kristen knew, though the woman was at least ten years her senior. It might have something to do with Gayle being tall and a bit flat, a characteristic she made up for with spectacular legs. But, no, she suspected Gayle was taking one of the more powerful, contraband, genetically enhanced varieties of steroids, one that yielded accelerated muscle development but with risk of heart attacks, strokes, and violent behavior. Another side effect was a tendency for manic states. Kristen wished she had taken the time to do a full blood work-up on the woman while she was under her care.

    "Since we're all here, I guess it's time for another meeting,” Jimmy said.

    Though Kristen was ranking officer, Jimmy had become their de facto leader for two reasons. He was the only one with enough labia-cajones, she corrected herself-to stand up to the Regents, and he controlled the ship's computer system, having hacked the password and locked out remote control from the Cloister; a kind of computer coup d'etat. She didn't mind, though. She felt more comfortable in a support position. She suspected he was a closet idealist, one of the good types.

    They all sat down, visibly relieved to get off their feet, except for Gayle who could hardly sit still.

    "This should be a quick meeting. We all know what we have to get accomplished in the next week or so, but let's rehash it anyway-right Kristen?"

    Taking her cue, she sat at the head of the table. Jimmy didn't want the trappings of authority. He was perfectly happy to nudge things from the background. “Right,” she replied. “It looks really bad right now, but it's pretty much what we were told to expect coming down in a residential area.” She took a deep breath. It was important, for some reason she couldn't define, to show that she was in control. “Let's talk about the positive things. First we're alive, that's something."

    Jimmy applauded, slowly and demonstratively. Jorge grinned and joined in. Gayle followed, her claps like sharp little explosions.

    Kristen laughed despite herself. “And, we landed upright and in one piece."

    To punctuate this, the cooling metal of the ship let out a long, low groan.

    "At least for now,” she added. And everyone laughed again, even Gayle. “So, we'll be able to take off again and make orbit, don't you think, Jimmy?"

    "There's no indication that we can't, but who knows what will happen when we push the button. We could go up, or we could go boom."

    "Let's assume for now that we have a good chance of reaching orbit. We've got a little more than two weeks until the comet's impact. I said we knew what we were going to do next week, but just in case there's any confusion, Jimmy and I made a hard-copy agenda."

    Paper was an outright luxury on the Moon, so everyone was a bit awed by having something they could hold in their hands rather than read off a screen. Olson handed copies to her, Jorge, and Gayle. Kristen glanced at the agenda. They hadn't had much time to put the thing together, and she needed a cheat sheet herself.

    "Before the accident, there was an explicit detailed plan involving six teams,” Kristen said. “There was specific equipment to retrieve, biological material to gather, all assigned to these teams. There was even one team that was to visit industrial sites and just grab anything they could load onto a lorry, but now with only nine people, we've had to make adjustments."

    "But there's no reason to over-complicate this,” Jimmy pointed out.

    What he meant, and didn't say, was there had been not enough time to really work out a balanced plan. “Basically, we've got three teams; three people in two of the teams, and two people in the third team."

    "That's only eight people,” Tisha noted.

    "You're right. Bobby Randel is to stay on the ship and check out any damage to the nuke ejectors, and get us ready for launch."

    "And why does Bobby get such a soft job when the rest of us are out in the fucking gravity with the zombies?” Tisha asked.

    "You know, Tish, I don't know you very well, but I don't think I want to,” Kristen said. “The answer is Bobby is the only one among us even halfway qualified to service the ship. And it's no picnic either. There's residual radioactivity in that part of the ship. He'll have to wear full radiation gear-more than thirty kilos of it-in this fucking gravity."

    "Maybe you'd like to crawl down the tubes for me, Tish,” Bobby said, in his squeaky voice. “I could write you the instructions."

    "Fuck you, Bobby!” Tisha said with vehemence.

    "Enough cheerful banter,” Olson said. “Here are the teams: Kristen, Tisha, aka Miss Congeniality, and I are on Team One. We'll retrieve the frozen sperm and eggs.

    "Team Two is composed of Gayle, Jorge, and Crystal. They are going to attempt at least to retrieve a gene sequencer-that's one that fabricates DNA base sequences-millions of base pairs in less than an hour-not one that just reads them, by the way. The directions to the site and a picture of what the machine looks like, as well as its support materials, are on your handout. We're each to carry walkie-talkies and shotguns, by the way. We've been informed that there are still plenty of Low-Paths walking or shuffling around out there, and as you know, they tend to act like rabid animals."

    Everyone was silent. They'd all seen zombie movies before-plenty of them.

    "Team Three is Badr and Kaplan. We have a list of about twenty large pharmaceutical warehouses. Your job, boys, is grab all the good drugs-opiates, psychotropics, newer antibiotics, any artificial hormone you can find-and haul them back to the ship."

    Badr and Kaplan smiled at each other. Badr weakly punched Kaplan's shoulder. Kaplan winced in mock pain, then blushed as he noticed Kristen staring at him.

    "There's a list of special needs stuff there,” Olson continued. “But I'd say we're going to have so much room that you should just clean off the shelves. Throw everything in bags and haul them back here. We can sort it all out when we're back on the Moon. We were originally expecting tons with the big teams; we particularly need the opiates we can't synthesize."

    "Why break up in teams at all? Why not stick together?” Jorge said. “It's a dangerous world out there."

    What he didn't say was that there were dangerous people right here. Did he realize just how unstable Gayle was? No, probably not. Kristen realized that Gayle's clothes, or the lack of them, was a female power strategy that had been around as long as there had been men and women. Gayle bent over, ostensibly to pick up a pen from the floor, giving both the men a full presentation of her bikini-thonged behind. As hoary with age as the “she-stoops-to-conquer” tactic was, it was obviously working on Jorge. Jimmy, old goat that he was, should have had more sense, but was distracted as well.

    With a start, Kristen noticed that even Kaplan was hypnotized by Gayle's charms. Badr looked on jealously. But what could she do? Kristen wondered. She was ‘officially’ in charge, but in reality the group was a sort of headless beast.

    Jimmy cleared his throat. “There's just too much to get done, Jorge, in different parts of the city, in too short of a time frame, for us to not split up. We all have to do a bunch of quickies-I mean sorties-to collect the minimal amount of shit we came here for. You and Gayle will just have to make the best of it."

    "I'm game,” Gayle said with enthusiasm while nervously messing with the pen she had picked up from the floor.

    "Yes, I guess I will, sir,” Jorge said. He was obviously worried, but couldn't keep his eyes off Gayle's legs-the little letch.

    In a moment of insight, Kristen realized that Jimmy was as aware of Gayle's megalomania as he was of her attempts at sexual manipulation, but the sexual promise she was presenting was overwhelming his better judgment. Whoever gave the advice of not sleeping with anyone crazier than yourself was not male. As weird as Gayle's actions seemed in the face of their current crisis, the body language of the men in the room said it seemed to be working. Tish and Crystal's radar was on alert too, but they seemed more intimidated than disgusted, as Kristen was.

    Kristen picked up a pair of coveralls from the table beside her and threw them at Gayle. Fast as a cat, the woman flipped the pen up in the air, snatched the coveralls, then caught the pen out of the air before it hit the floor. She held the coveralls out from her, distastefully, as if holding dirty toilet paper and tried to stare Kristen down.

    "Standard uniform required,” Kristen said.

    "What is this, the army?” Gayle said. Her look wasn't questioning but mischievous.

    "Your Aeon Flux outfit won't work in North America in the summer. You'll be sunburned in a few hours, and we don't need you sick,” Kristen said, then added in what she hoped was an imperative tone, “Put them on."

    Gayle hesitated, then grinned as if she were humoring a child, but unfolded the coveralls, stepped into the legs, and snapped the front closed.

    "There. Happy now?” Gayle asked.

    She had left the front partially open, showing a bit of cleavage, but Kristen nodded, making a mental note to review the woman's blood and endocrine tests.

    Olson cleared his throat a second time. “Anyway, you'll notice that the sheet I've given you is basically a shopping list, complete with maps and driving directions. And before you ask again, the way the teams are made has more to do with having someone with experience driving a wheeled vehicle than anything else."

    Which was the truth. Both Gayle and Jimmy had driven carts on the Moon. Jimmy once had driven go-carts on Earth before he and his parents immigrated to the Moon. Neither Kristen nor Jorge had piloted anything with wheels. But how hard could it be?

    "But if the opportunity presents itself, I will teach Kristen the rudiments of driving. Gayle you'll do the same with Jorge-right?"

    "What's the right opportunity?” Jorge asked.

    "Streets or parking lots without a lot of cars or other junk to run into,” Jimmy answered. “Obviously, we can't spare a lot of time for this training, but it's a good idea, in case something happens to the designated driver, that the other team member be able to at least get back to the ship."

    "Why all these maps? Why not use GPS?” Gayle asked.

    "Because most of the satellites are down. We might be able to depend upon a stray locator; then again we might not. In the end, we decided it would be better if we just took our time and learned the city-or at least the major thoroughfares."

    "In fact, the first day out might be the best time to learn to drive,” Kristen said. “We'll spend the first part of the day finding some heavy-duty transportation."

    "That will be the priority,” Jimmy said. “We might go together on that one. All the teams will need large trucks, vehicles with carrying capacity and built heavy enough to push wrecked cars out of the way. There's a military reserve storage depot not far from here. We have the pre-plague inventory taken from the Cloister Web image. There's Humvees, nine-ton trucks there-you name it."

    "What the hell is a Humvee?” Jorge said.

    "It's a super SUV, got about zero miles per gallon,” Gayle said. “One of the reasons men would have killed the planet if it hadn't killed them first. It's an obscene machine.-I won't use it."

    Jimmy shook his head and sighed. “Gayle,” he said, “You know I've never fed you a bullshit line right? That I've always been straight with you?"

    "Except when you were trying to get into my pants,” Gayle said.

    "Not even then, not intentionally, but I guess that's a fair shot. My attempts at charming a lady are probably hard to distinguish from bullshit."

    "So what's your point?"

    "The point is, you're being a silly ass. Earth has been given a death sentence. In a couple of weeks a six-kilometer wide chunk of nickel and iron is going to slam somewhere into the northern hemisphere at a relative velocity of 70,000 kilometers per second. The result of its impact will make any damage done to the biosphere by our fellow homo saps look like a mosquito bite on an elephant's ass. So driving a gasoline hog of a vehicle around for few hours is trivial."

    "You just don't get it, do you?” Gayle said. “It's that kind of logic-one person's waste doesn't matter-that killed the Earth in the first place."

    "I thought you said Mother Earth was prevailing?"

    "I think she would if we would leave her alone."

    "You're a MEME, aren't you?” It was more a statement than a question.

    "My philosophy is my own business,” Gayle said.

    "We're all dependent upon each other to act sanely, so I'm making it my business. The privacy laws be screwed!” Olson's voice rose to the edge of anger.

    Philosophy? Religion was more accurate. The Moist Mother sect traced its heritage to the oldest god, the Earth Mother or Gaia. The core religion of Gaia had a life-engendering point of view and easily cohabited with other early gods, such as the sky god or sun god, and other religions, as long as they were life-affirming. It put humans into the natural scheme of things, placing them as a valid, integral part of nature.

    But the Moist Earth Mothers Evangelics, or MEMES, were a modern cult offshoot of the ancient life-honoring religion. Like many religious zealots throughout history, the MEMES had perverted the original religion, made it over to fit their personal rage and paranoia. They also confused the map with the territory and believed the means justified the end, even if that entailed violence.

    There were several sub-sects of the MEMES, varying with theological similarities to everything from Tibetan Buddhism to Southern Baptist. All believed that social Darwinism coupled with technology had turned humans into an abomination of nature. Human's creation of technology had changed the species into something that was an insult to Mother Earth's garden. It was the Garden of Eden story retold but with human invention as the serpent. Many of the converts exhibited anger verging on rage toward anyone who questioned their points of view. The worst of the lot, in Kristen's opinion, were the apocalyptic MEMES, who believed that the human race had to die off in space and on Earth before a new Eden-with a new Adam and Eve-would be created. In this new Eden, Eve, or woman, would be the dominant sex, the MEMES contended. This is what Gaia had intended in the first Eden. Not all the MEMES were so apocalyptic, but Kristen suspected Gayle was.

    Kristen had known Gayle was a Moist Mother-such facts were recorded in each of their dossiers. But until now, because Gayle had seemed an intelligent, thoughtful woman, Kristen had judged her to be a member of one of the more innocuous sects.

    "So what do you want from me?” Gayle said. “Give up my beliefs? A denunciation?” She fiddled with the front seam of her coveralls, her hand threatening to open up the decolletage wider.

    "Nothing so radical. We…” he glanced to Kristen for support. “…just want to know if you'll drive the fucking truck."

    "Why can't we use the electric cars we brought with us?"

    "Because they are too lightweight."

    "What's the matter, Jim, the electrics not macho enough for you?"

    "Don't make me sound like some kind of type-A asshole,” Jimmy said. “The carts were never designed for anything but reconnaissance. They're just souped-up electric Mooncarts. They wouldn't beat an Earth golfcart in a race. We're not going to be hauling much gear around in them. And if there are still Low-Paths walking around, the five-millimeter thick Plexiglas windows aren't going to offer any protection. With a Humvee, on the other hand, we can just run them down. Or is that against your philosophy too?"

    Gayle was silent.

    "Come on, Gayle,” Jorge said. “Be reasonable. We need you."

    Gayle smiled at him. “You're a nice young man, Jorge. Nice, but misled.” She turned to look back out the porthole. Jorge's eyes followed her.

    "What's it going to be, Gayle?” Jimmy said.

    She spun on her heel, and like a fighter, went into a crouch. Kristen jumped in her seat despite the gravity. Jimmy was visibly startled; he probably expected her to leap across the room and attack him.

    But Gayle slapped her thigh and said, “Okay, boss, I will be your Brobdingnagian cowgirl and will happily crush the zombies under my huge wheels."

    "Well yippie-yi-yo and welcome Gayle, but I think ‘Juggernaut cowgirl’ might be a better allusion than Gulliver's Travels."

    After the meeting adjourned, Kristen looked up juggernaut in the online American Heritage dictionary and found that the word referred to a Hindu image of Krishna riding a giant wheeled vehicle that rolled over and crushed devotees in its path. It also meant: “Something, such as a belief or an institution, that elicits blind and destructive devotion or to which people are ruthlessly sacrificed.” The old fart had made a double entendre.

    

    

    

    Gayle stole a glance at Jorge-the cut on his temple had stopped bleeding-and tried to calmly work out the dynamics of the situation. But her mind raced; thoughts and feelings flickering past her mind's eye like a video on fast forward.

    She had stripped off the coveralls as soon as she left the ship, and she wondered if her bikini outfit was having the desired, distracting effect on the young man.

    The landscape through the Humvee's windshield crept by as if immersed in thick syrup. Her attempts to drive faster had resulted in mini-disasters. Several times she had lost control and ran over things-two cars and a small tree-and side-swiped a building. But though the vehicle seemed indestructible, she and her young riders weren't. The jolt of one collision had rattled Jorge's head against the bullet-proof side window. And she wasn't indestructible either. Far from it. Her lower back ached from the shock of landing after sailing over a meter drop-off into a parking lot.

    She would have to be more careful. She had spent hours every day on the treadmill or doing resistance training during the last five years and had paid careful attention to diet, bought extra high-calcium foods through the black market, and all that shit. And she had doubled the recommended dosage of anti-decalcification drugs, ignoring the cancer risk. Still, she had twenty to thirty percent bone loss compared to an average Earth-bound woman her age. The use of steroids had strengthened her muscles and protected her joints somewhat, but she still had to slow down. Super steroids or not, she had six times the mass here than she had on the Moon. A fall that on the Moon would just jar her teeth might break her back here.

    But Gaia above and below, it was hard to slow down! King Kong, the slang name for super steroid she was taking, made her own body crank out hormones that affected her judgment. And like the rest of the crew she had been issued extra pharmaceutical packs, the chief component of which was Turbinat inhales, a particularly effective stimulant, a souped-up version of synthetic cocaine, prescribed to help them deal with Earth's gravity. She probably shouldn't have taken the Turbinat in conjunction with the steroid. She was having a real problem maintaining an even keel, but she feared not taking the Turbinat would put her at a disadvantage with the other crew members. She had to have the edge. She had the edge, by Gaia!

    That must be why, despite what she had told the others, she felt like the Humvee had been made for her. So much brute force power! She just needed to be out in the open where she could get the feel of the thing. She had driven wheeled vehicles before, but here, in one-G, all the variables in the driving equation were skewed. The inertia was so much different, and there were other things, such as wet spots or oily patches, that she had never needed to think about on the Moon. Even her ability to judge distances was disturbed, an effect of looking through an atmosphere instead of a vacuum. But she was getting better.

    

    WHAM!

    

    And then the sound of screeching metal. She had taken out the side of an abandoned car.

    "Are we there yet?” From the back seat, Crystal Karen's voice was mushy.

    Gayle checked the rear-view mirror. Crystal's mouth was full; she was using a plastic spoon to rapidly shovel some nasty looking gruel out of a can into her mouth. They had collected canned goods at Crystal's insistence from an abandoned supermarket. The collision had splattered some chunky red goop from the can over the front of her jumpsuit.

    "Are you sure you're not hitting things on purpose-trying to kill us?” Jorge said. The collision had banged his head against the windshield a second time, and the cut on his forehead was bleeding again. He sounded half serious. Maybe he was a bit psychic.

    Was she really going to do it?

    "No, of course not-maybe not,” she said, smiling at him, and then got Crystal's lame are-we-there-yet joke-all those old sitcoms; family road trips, impatient children. The connection caused some maternal feelings to well up for a moment, despite the fact that Crystal was nowhere near young enough to be her daughter. Moreover, Crystal was a hungry ghost; a metaphor in Gayle's mind for the human race: always hungry, never filled; ready to eat up a whole planet, or a solar system, or a galaxy in an effort to fill the bottomless pit of the human soul.

    The next bit of road-registered archaically in miles instead of kilometers by the vehicle's odometer-passed without incident. The semi-dead Low-Paths had retreated from the streets as the day heated up, but she could catch glimpses of their gray-green faces from doorways and overpasses, their eyes glittering like tarnished mirrors in the shadows.

    They soon passed out of the zone of strip malls and shabby houses.

    "Turn right,” said Jorge, who was navigating via GPS unit. Their concerns that there would not be enough satellites to make the systems still operational had proved unfounded.

    She took a right at the next street, and there it was: the parking lot of a truly mammoth industrial complex. The five-meter high-letters on the side of the building spelled out ‘Industrial Genetics.'

    "Now, we're getting somewhere,” Crystal said between mouthfuls.

    Maybe, but it took them another half hour to find the loading docks. The area was clear of zombies when they parked, except for a dead one slumped against a garbage dumpster.

    "Okay, you all know the drill,” Jorge said and handed them the shotguns. “First we target practice; then we reconnoiter."

    "We're really not going to have to use these things,” Crystal said, holding her shotgun at arm's length as though it was fecal matter.

    "Hopefully not,” Jorge replied. “But you never know. You saw how many zombies are still ambulatory."

    "I fear the living more,” Gayle said.

    "I've seen that movie,” Jorge said.

    "What movie?"

    "Never mind. Come on, let's get out. The safeties are on, but be careful."

    "I know; I know. We're not infants, you know,” and Crystal climbed out of the Humvee, tripped, and fell flat on her face. The shotgun went skidding. “Shit, what was that?” she said and then screeched.

    Jorge hopped out and landed on his feet with a grunt.

    "Ha! So much for fearing the living,” he said.

    As Gayle came around the front of the Humvee, she saw what he meant, though she didn't find it funny. A zombie corpse lay snagged to the Humvee's undercarriage. She must have run it over during one of her minor collisions. Evidently it had been dragging along underneath them for kilometers.

    "I tripped over its shitty leg,” Crystal said.

    Gayle peered under the vehicle. All that was left of the corpse was cowboy-booted feet, legs, and lower torso. The leather of the boots was red-brilliant red leather-and the toes curled slightly, as if the shoes had been a bit too large for their owner. The corpse's big-buckle rodeo belt had snagged on a bolt. It appeared to have been female. Cowgirl zombie. Only in Texas. Surprisingly, there wasn't much odor. How had she missed knowing she had run it over? Perhaps it had been in or under one of the small cars she had crushed with the Humvee.

    "Careful, Gayle,” Jorge said and stepped over to poke at one of the cowboy boots.

    "Relax, sonny boy,” she said. “These aren't movie zombies. The legs aren't going to get up and cut a Texas two-step."

    "I still think it's good to be careful."

    "Yeah, we're not in Kansas anymore,” Crystal said.

    "Maybe not, but this isn't the Wicked Witch of the West either."

    "I don't know, but I'm getting a weird case of movie deja’ viewed,” Jorge said.

    "You mean deja vu,” Gayle said.

    "No, I mean ‘deja ‘viewed,’ as in I've seen this movie before."

    "I get it,” Crystal said. “We didn't drop a house on the wicked zombie witch but…"

    "We dropped a car on her that's about the size of a house,” Jorge finished for her.

    "Let the witch keep her boots. I'm not taking them off.” Crystal leaned her shotgun against the loading dock and pulled another can of food out of her pocket.

    "Maybe if you put them on and clicked your heels together, you'll be taken back to the Moon,” Jorge said.

    "Back to the Moon, you know,” Crystal said, “I never realized how black and white it was there.” She had managed to get the can open and was using her fingers to spoon purple crud into her mouth. “You know, I think I've been hungry all my life-until now. Like I've been under a witch's spell and didn't know it,” she said between bites.

    The conversation was taking a nasty turn, Gayle thought. The Moist Mothers were considered witches by some, especially by the Zen Moonies. Though the stereotype was wrong-about the only thing Moist Mothers shared with witches such as Wiccans, for example, was their respect for nature. Still, the idea of a hidden insult was irritating. So was watching Crystal eat. She suppressed the urge to walk over and stick the shotgun barrel down the hungry little bitch's throat.

    "I guess I'd better get on with it,” Gayle said.

    "You mean, we'd better get on with, don't you?” Jorge said.

    "Yes, of course,” Gayle said, but silently wondered if she would be able to carry the plan through.

    In one quick action, she stood, flipped the gun's safety off with her thumb and fired at the corpse by the dumpster. The sound was deafening, and the kick nearly knocked her on her ass. When she regained her balance she saw that the corpse's head had been disintegrated. Speckles of brain and clotted blood were splattered across the side of the dumpster.

    "The ends justify the means-right?” she said.

    Jorge looked visibly shaken. “That depends,” he said.

    "Depends upon what?” She lowered the shotgun, but turned in his direction. It was now pointed at the asphalt about a meter in front of his feet.

    "It's like whether you see a glass of water half empty or half full."

    "How so?"

    "It depends upon whether you're the one drinking or the one pouring."

    She realized that he was afraid of her, and that he was trying to make a joke, to establish some sort of rapport. He really didn't get it. Like Crystal, like all the others on this mission, his soul was sick beyond repair.

    She also realized he hadn't carried his shotgun when he jumped out to help Crystal. He wouldn't be prepared for violence, not violence of the overt kind. He was more the passive aggressive type.

    Which fit the Moist Mother planning committee's prediction. Moon people weren't used to violent action; at some semi-conscious level they denied the validity of a violent death. Death happened quietly in space or in a hospice from radiation-induced cancers, or, as it was more often of late, from suicide as the Moon citizens’ souls continued to erode from lack of contact with the Earth. Moist Mothers had their dirt boxes-not Moon sand, but real soil brought along on the first colonization ships for agronomy experiments. Frequent contact with the soil kept the Moist Mothers’ brain souls from decaying. They could still see True Reality, unlike the rest of the Moon's population. The dirt boxes were a closely guarded secret, known only to initiates of the inner circle.

    Her Evangelical sect just took this idea of the sanctity of Earth soil to the next logical level-protecting the planet from those who would defile it, which was the entire human race.

    And here they all were, standing on the Earth, but she doubted any of the crew could be redeemed. They were just too far gone.

    The only question was whether to murder Crystal and Jorge here or wait until they were inside.

    Murder. Such an ugly word. Sacrifice was more like it. A sacrifice of a few lives was a fair trade to let the Earth regain its sanctity.

    

    

    

    On a mining expedition to the asteroid belt, Olson had traveled at speeds of more than sixty-thousand klicks per second and never broken a sweat, but driving at fifty miles per hour on Interstate 35 was scaring him shitless.

    A little mental arithmetic told him that fifty miles per hour was approximately how many klicks per second? Well, it was too much math for him to do in his head right now, traveling at this ungodly velocity, especially with Kristen sitting next to him. He kept thinking about their ride down to Earth in the deceleration couch. God, he was an idiot. What could a broken-dick old man have to offer a twenty-something young woman? Of course, the equipment wasn't all that broken, given what had happened in the couch, but get real; he wasn't young; he wasn't attractive. She was both.

    "Olson! Watch out!"

    "Shit!” He swerved just in time to avoid what looked like the rear axle of a car in the road. “Sorry, my mind was elsewhere."

    "I can imagine. Did you ever come here when you were an Earth child? I bet the memories of your youth are strong."

    "Never to Dallas. I lived about 300-hundred miles away-that's about two hundred klicks. It was a half-day drive and besides, we never had money to spend here. But I am going through a kind of nostalgia about what it was to be younger, healthier."

    "Tell me about them-about your parents, I mean."

    She had shed her gutbucket Spandex suit, saying it was too hot and that her body was disgusting in Earth gravity anyway. From his viewpoint, with her in khaki shorts and halter top and with all that pale, smooth girl flesh, she was painfully pretty to look upon. So much for “we will wear uniforms” order she had given to Gayle. But unlike Gayle, who had a manipulative side, Kristen seemed clueless as to the effect she had on him.

    "How about a driving lesson?” he said, deliberately changing the subject. “This stretch of highway is pretty clear of wrecked cars, considering it's the end of the world."

    "No thanks. There's too much stuff to run into, and my depth perception is all messed up. Something about not being able to see the horizon, maybe."

    "How about you, Tish?"

    "Maybe later. Maybe in that empty parking lot you talked about,” she said from the back seat.

    "Are you all sure? What if something happened to me-say I pulled an old man trick and stroked out-how would you two get back to the ship alive?"

    "If I drove us off one of these ramparts…” Kristen said.

    "Overpasses, you mean.” Tish from the back seat, always ready to correct someone.

    "Whatever, neither of us would make it back alive."

    They drove on in silence for a minute.

    "Marsalis Avenue, next exit. Isn't that were we get off?” Tish said.

    "Right!” He had been daydreaming. He slowed to what the speedometer said was twenty-five mph, but it still seemed fast. The exit didn't seem to be blocked, but once off the freeway they emerged onto a crowded, cluttered street. Too many parked cars; too many shadows.

    "Better roll up your window. We'll be going slow, and there may be zombies,” Kristen said.

    "You worry too much,” Tish said. “These are power-windows. They go up in a second. Besides, I've been breathing canned air all my life. This is the real stuff."

    The street jogged to the left, and they came into a small plaza with a tiny park and a few trees. Olson gradually slowed to a stop, overwhelmed by the vista before him. Brittle, desiccated corpses littered the street. In some places the bodies were piled in heaps in the middle of the road like piles of dead leaves. They filled the doorways of the shops, the gutters, even the little glassed-in building that said ‘bus stop.’ In a couple of stores, the corpses filled the show windows, their faces pressed against the glass like a pressurized mass of dried flowers. The little green park in the center, its turf overgrown, oddly enough was the only place free of bodies.

    "So many!” Kristen said.

    "There were millions of people living in this city before the plague."

    "It seems like half of them are lying here in this street."

    "I read somewhere that in the early stages of the disease, Low-Paths would congregate in large groups and move together like a mob, swaying in rhythm like their damaged brains were connected together with strings,” Tish said.

    "I saw that movie too. It had that pop singer, Michael something or other,” Kristen said.

    "No, I'm not talking about a movie,” she said.

    "You're right. It was a music video."

    "No, I mean this was the real thing."

    "Are you sure you know the difference?"

    "Maybe not anymore,” Olson butted into the exchange.

    "You know,” Tish said, the harsh edge missing from her voice. “In space, nothing ever happens so you watch videos."

    "So?"

    "I'm just realizing how much of my life I've spent watching movies about Earth,” Tish said. “This seems like some sort of dumb B-horror movie where the only fun part is figuring out who's going to be it next. Who's going to be IT."

    "It?” Olson said.

    "Yeah, it-the next one to get eaten by the zombies or chopped to pieces by the maniac or gang banged by the space vampires. You know: it."

    "Okay. Let's see… if this was a B-movie,” Kristen said. “Either I'd be the screaming ninny, falling down all the time, and you, Jimmy, the hero, would pick me up and save me from my own stupidity."

    "That was the ‘50s or ‘60s,” Tish said. “By the ‘80s, the zombies were kick-ass. Olson would be the dork. He'd do something inanely stupid about every five minutes, and you'd have to clean up after him."

    "Okay, seen that movie. That's when B-movie makers decided to become realists."

    "Sure, like when they'd have a fifty-kilogram fashion model kick the crap out of not one, not two, but three, hundred-kilo body builders,” Olson said.

    "Exactly, I am woman. Watch me kick ass,” Kristen said.

    "Right on! Take that, sexist primates!” Tish chimed in.

    Olson knew he was outnumbered and decided to be quiet. He edged the Humvee forward. The bones of the corpses crunched under the sixteen-inch tires. One of the corpses was cantilevered somehow by the weight of the tires and pitched up on the vehicle's hood.

    "Classic!” Tish exclaimed.

    Kristen let out a little scream, and he stomped on the brakes so hard he nearly pitched them both through the windshield.

    They looked at each other for a moment, then both burst into laughter.

    The corpse was so desiccated that it popped like a puffball. Neither Olson nor Kristen could stop laughing as the cloud of dust settled around them.

    Olson had to wipe tears from his eyes, and it wasn't even that funny. Tish was looking at him and Kristen in the front, away from her side window, and she didn't see the silhouette materialize as the dust settled. Olson's brain couldn't connect to his speech center. His foot froze on the brake pedal. Tish followed his gaze, turning in her seat to find herself face to face with a zombie. She had left the window down despite their warnings. But the zombie didn't move. It just stood there, a bit of drool dripping from the corner of its mouth and said, “Ma, Ma, Ma, Ma, Ma?"

    Olson laughed again, despite himself. The creature's hair stood out from the side of its balding head. Its checks and forehead were ashen, almost white. Dark circles surrounded its eyes, and its mouth and nose were smeared with blood, still red and fresh. But the overall effect was not ghoulish; it looked like-for all the Moon-a drunken, sad sack clown in full makeup.

    "Aw, does Bozo want its mother?” Tish said, laughing.

    In one smooth motion, still going “Ma, Ma, Ma, Ma,” it grabbed the edge of the window, hoisted itself up and bit her forearm.

    The next few moments were a blur. Tish screamed and clouted it on the head with the fist of her free arm. But the thing had latched onto her flesh like some sort of prehistoric lizard and wouldn't let go. Olson, feeling as if he was moving in slow motion, grabbed the shotgun, but Kristen was in the way of a clear shot.

    "Get down.” But Kristen had the thing by a hank of hair, trying to pull it off Tish. The hank of hair came off instead, leaving a bloody clot behind.

    "Shoot it! Shoot the frigging thing!” Tish screamed.

    He slid across the seat, forgetting the Humvee was still in gear. The vehicle slowly edged forward, climbing over another pile of corpses, dragging Bozo the zombie along, still with its knuckle grip on the window, its mouth still latched on to Tish's forearm. Tish looked to him for help, her face showing more frustration than fear. Kristen slouched down so Olson could get the shotgun over her shoulder, and he trained it on the creature's head but didn't pull the trigger for fear of blowing off Tish's arm along with zombie's head. Tish punched Bozo again with enough force to make a loud thunk, but it only looked up at them both with sad, runny eyes and held on. Its lugubrious expression seemed to say, ‘Man, chill out. I'm just relaxing, having a bite of this yummy flesh on a stick. Why all the fuss?’ Its jaw muscles strained under the white, pasty flesh of its face as it bit down harder.

    Tish screamed again, this time in agony. She grabbed the end of the shotgun barrel and crammed it into Bozo's right eye socket. Olson didn't have to be prompted. He pulled the trigger, and the right side of Bozo's head vaporized in a mist of blood and gray matter. But even with its brain pan shattered, the zombie's jaws kept a grip on the woman's arm. The Humvee chose this moment to collide with one of the small trees in the miniature park. To the Humvee's credit, it didn't stall but began to single-mindedly climb the tree. Either the jolt of the collision or final cessation of biological processes caused the zombie's jaw to relax, and it dropped away. Kristen had the presence of mind to stretch a leg under Olson to depress the brake and put the Humvee in neutral. She must have been watching him drive-smart girl; fast learner. The vehicle rolled back off the tree and landed with a whump, bouncing Olson's head off the roof.

    With the windows up, they cleaned and examined Tish's wound. There was a lot of blood, but only several small, though deep, wounds.

    "The damned thing must have had only had two or three teeth left in its head,” Olson said.

    "But it broke the skin. That might be all it takes,” Tish said, her voice trembling.

    They didn't have to discuss it. The current evolutionary state of the Low-Path virus was still a matter of debate among Luna pathologists-an academic debate as they had no virus samples-but many believed the virus had long since become dormant. Their reasoning was that there were still survivors in the major metropolitan centers. Earth's medical society, before it too succumbed to the plague, had declared the disease to be invincible, that natural immunity to such a retrovirus was not possible. Yet people survived. Hence, the disease must have mutated to something less virulent.

    There was historical evidence to support this theory. In 1918, a new influenza strain killed from twenty to forty million people worldwide in a matter of months, many times more than were killed by the violence of World War I. People, young and old, were stricken with the first symptoms in the evening and be dead before the next sunrise. Physicians observed that patients who in the beginning showed only symptoms of ordinary influenza would rapidly develop the most viscous form of pneumonia. In a short time, blood-tinged froth would gush from victims’ noses and mouths. They would literally drown in their own blood.

    The disease spread along with the movements of troops, racing along trade routes and shipping lines. No region was spared. People in North America, Europe, Asia, Africa, Brazil, and the South Pacific died in droves. Then as quickly as it appeared, the disease disappeared, leaving behind only corpses and thousands of brain-damaged comatose victims. It had gone dormant; that was the theory.

    But theory was one thing if you were safely ensconced on the Moon, another if you had just been bitten by a zombie.

    Kristen doused Tish's arm in disinfectant and bandaged it. No one said anything about her putting on two pairs of latex gloves, one over the over, before she started. She then gave Tish an immune system booster injection. By the time she had finished a half dozen zombies had converged on the Hummer, all looking more dead than alive, but still ambulatory. One banged weakly on Olson's window.

    "You guys were stupid to let me leave the window down,” Tish said.

    "We?” Kristen said, but didn't elaborate. Olson kept quiet too. Not taking responsibility for her own actions was standard operating procedure for Tish.

    They were less than a klick from their rendezvous point with Deep Throat. Olson put the Humvee in gear and drove on, rolling over two of the zombies in the process. In the rearview mirror he could see the others stumbling along in pursuit until he turned a corner and came upon a man and woman at a wall of crushed automobiles stacked three or four meters high. In the center was a metal gate that looked strong enough to stop even the Humvee. The young man and woman-as they drew closer Olson could see that they were just teenagers-were killing zombies. The boy was tall, slight of build, with skintight pants and a long pony tail tied with a red ribbon. He had a zombie snagged with a savage hook on the end of a long pole and held it against the wall of cars. The girl, redheaded with pigtails and wearing knee-high stockings, was methodically bashing its skull with a sledgehammer. The boy waved with his free hand. The girl finally noticed the arrival of the Humvee and stepped away from her surreal chore. The body, nearly headless, staggered a couple of steps before it fell down.

    "Great!” Kristen said. “Ichabod Crane and the headless zombie meet Pippi Longstockings!"

    "I don't think I've seen this movie,” Olson admitted.

    "Me neither,” Tish said, her voice wavering. “But I can tell already who's IT."

    

    

    

    The light inside the Aquarium was the color of an octopus’ garden, dim green with inky shadows. The concrete floors were scrubbed clean but a stale odor hung heavily in the air.

    "What's that smell?” Kristen asked no one in particular.

    "Essence of dead fish mixed with disinfectant,” Olson said, stomping his feet. Instead of a doormat at the entrance there had been a pad soaked with antiseptic solution.

    Kristen looked to Deep Throat for confirmation. After the two teenagers had let them through the gate, it had been a short drive to the front doors of the Dallas World Aquarium. Waiting for them on the front steps, dressed in an odd-looking outfit-black pants and yellow velour shirt-had been a wizened little woman who had introduced herself as “Your Deep Throat."

    "He's right, but how did you know?"

    "I spent my childhood on Earth, until I was ten. I remember its smell from Boy Scouts."

    "You were in Boy Scouts? I'm surprised,” Kristen said.

    "What, don't I look the paramilitary type?"

    Kristen shook her head, grinning. Deep Throat giggled, a young girlish sound which coming from her was like flowers blooming in winter.

    "Well, you're right. I went AWOL soon after fish camp. I didn't take to authority. Burned my cap in the campfire, cut off my own patches, and hitched home, seriously pissed off at my dad.

    "Later, when I told him I was an introvert, certainly not a joiner, you'd think I'd told him I was gay. He tried to put me in therapy."

    Deep Throat giggled again, though this time it was more controlled, leaves shaken from a tree in autumn. “Are you sure the other young lady doesn't want to come in out of the heat?"

    "She's going to stay with the vehicle,” Olson said.

    Kristen had given Tish a sedative, and after Deep Throat had assured them it was safe inside the barrier, they let the young woman sleep in the Humvee. Was Tish now infected? She didn't know. The disease might be dormant, at least as far as being contagious went, but what about infectious? And there had likely been several mutations of the virus, some less virulent, some more. No one really knew.

    Meanwhile, there was work to do and little time to get it done before the comet's impact. Deep Throat had hurried them into the cool, damp Aquarium, complaining that her “mode of attire” wasn't suited to the Texas heat. “I wanted to dress special for our meeting, and this-I found it in a gift shop downtown. It seemed to be both chic and gay, but I can tell you, it's not very comfortable. Do you recognize it?"

    "What…?” Kristen started to say, but Olson interrupted her.

    "I'm not that big of a Trekkie, but is that an original or Next Generation uniform?"

    "Actually, it's something in between, and it's not the color I wanted. I wanted a science officer's uniform,” Deep Throat said. “You know, like Spock wore."

    "Oh, Star Trek. It's a Star Trek uniform.” Kristen caught on, feeling slow.

    "That's right, but I had to ditch the boots. I was about to fall off them, so I had to switch to my tennies.” She lifted the cuff of one bell-bottom pants leg to show them an incongruous pair of black and white tennis shoes. “At least they're not slave-labor Nikes."

    Kristen had no idea what she was talking about, but the woman didn't miss a beat.

    "Here,” she said, gesturing toward a pair of motorized wheelchairs. “If you'd like to get off your feet for a while, you could tour the whole site sitting down."

    "I don't know…” Olson said.

    Kristen knew how Olson felt. She was already exhausted. The fight with the zombie had taken a lot out of her. But for some reason, she felt getting into a wheel chair was to admit defeat.

    "I think I'll take you up on it,” she said to Deep Throat. “It was lucky you had these here."

    "No luck about it,” Deep Throat said. “They're for the children. I have six of them. The chairs, I mean. There are eighteen children. That's why I put ramps everywhere. The children can only stay in the tanks so long, or they get waterlogged, you know."

    Again the reference to the children.

    "Are your children disabled?” Kristen asked.

    "Not in the way you might think,” she said cryptically. “It's a congenital characteristic they all share. Their bones tend to over-calcify, and I'm afraid they'll get brittle and break bones. In the water, they are essentially weightless, and the calcification seems to be slowed."

    "I know how they feel,” Kristen said. “I feel as if I weigh a ton and my legs are about to snap."

    "When are we going to meet these children of yours?” Olson said impatiently. “We have a launch deadline, you know."

    "What's the rush? The sky isn't going to fall tomorrow, is it?” Deep Throat said.

    Close, Kristen thought. Too damn close to the truth. Not tomorrow, but in about ten days. Deep Throat shuffled off. Kristen and Olson stayed put, and she waved them to follow. They passed through a glass tunnel. On the other side of the glass was murky water. It was quiet except for the muted whirl of the wheelchair's electric motors.

    "This was quite a place before the plague. The smallest aquariums hold two thousand gallons, and the largest, the one this tunnel passes through, holds twenty-two thousand. There was marine life from around the world-Palau, Southern Australia, the Solomon Islands, Fiji, Bahamas, British Columbia, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, and Japan.

    "You can't tell it from here, of course, but the big tank is open at the top to the rainforest area. From there, the top of the tank looks like a forest lake. You could stand above and catch glimpses of the manatees gliding under the water.

    "Now, of course, all the sea life is gone. I drained all the tanks. Francis, my late husband, and I hauled the carcasses out and then flushed the tanks with industrial-strength cleaner and rinsed it with enough water to fill a water tower. Lucky for us the water supply system kept operating for months."

    They emerged through the tunnel, and Deep Throat zigzagged through a corridor. They emerged into a small room about fifteen meters long. One of the walls was constructed entirely of glass and looked out into the murky green of deep water.

    A black and white cat lay in their path and seemed disinclined to move out of the way of the wheelchair until Deep Throat shooed it away. Instead of running off, it jumped up in Kristen's lap and began purring.

    "I thought all the cats and dogs died of the plague,” Olson said.

    "So did I,” Deep Throat said, “but evidently there were a few with natural resistance. A word of wisdom, however: though the cat is friendly, don't let him sit in your lap too long, dear. There's a reason his name is Stinker."

    Deep Throat gestured toward a large glass wall that must have been twenty meters or longer.

    "This is the twenty-two thousand gallon tank. I came here the first time when I was barely in graduate school. The great melancholy manatees were my favorite creatures. They liked to swim on their backs, right under the surface of the water. I imagined them watching the people on the walkway above. When we came here, everything was dead from neglect, and we had a horrendous job in cleaning the place up. The manatee corpses were the largest of all, more than a thousand pounds each. We had to cut them up with a chainsaw to get them out.” She paused. “It was such a cheerful place, but so many species are dead now. The only reason any humans are left is because there were so many of us to begin with. I like to think maybe the wild manatees escaped the plague, but probably not. They were mammals too, you know, and there were so few of them before the plague anyway."

    "You say all the fish are dead?” Olson said.

    "Yes, all gone."

    "Then what's that swimming around back there in the aquarium?"

    Kristen looked where Olson was pointing. There was something back there, pale white in the dark waters. A person? No, it was too slender, and the proportions were all wrong. It looked like a large white frog. As if to hide, it slithered behind a concrete pillar.

    "We moved here from the genetic center,” Deep Throat went on, either not hearing Olson's question or ignoring it. “There was everything we needed here that we didn't have at the center. A back-up power generator-two of them in fact. They had to have it to maintain the aquariums, you see-and the big tanks of course. Plus some of the last plague survivors had already barricaded the streets near here, keeping most of the Low-Paths out."

    "Is that what the wall of crushed cars is for?"

    "Yes, Jeffrey and I would have never been able to do that alone."

    As Deep Throat moved ahead and Olson followed, Kristen lagged behind to keep an eye on the back of the aquarium. She found it hard to see into the depths, not because the water wasn't clean, she surmised, but because of the shadows from overhanging vegetation on the level above. As she watched, something started to emerge from behind the pillar. She caught an impression of large eyes with long lashes, before it darted back into hiding.

    "What?” Olson was saying.

    "What do you mean, what?"

    "You screamed."

    "No, I didn't."

    "Well, maybe it was not so much as a scream as a chirp. But it was loud enough to make me jump."

    "Sorry, I didn't realize. I saw something again on the far side of the tank."

    "What did you see?"

    "I don't know, but it was watching us."

    "What did it look like?"

    "Jellyfish, albino octopus, drowned baby, Roswell alien-I don't know, but it really creeped me out. There! No, it's gone again."

    Deep Throat scurried up to the glass, bent forward and shaded her eyes with her hand like a cartoon Indian scout on the lookout.

    "Oh that,” Deep Throat squeaked. “Don't worry about that.” She patted the glass three times.

    "What was it? You said all the fish were dead."

    Deep Throat paused. “You probably saw a plastic trash bag. We store food in them; the water keeps it cool."

    "It moved,” Kristen said.

    "The filter pumps are still running. The current moves the bag."

    "I could swear I saw something like a turtle with a human face."

    "The human brain is hard-wired to see other human faces. The water is dark and inky. It's like a Rorschach test. It plays tricks on perception."

    Hesitantly, Kristen stood up from the wheelchair and touched the glass. It was cool to the touch. She wanted to ask Deep Throat why waste energy filtering and cooling twenty-two thousand gallons of water. More to the point, why set up shop here? It couldn't be just for the emergency generators. But she held her questions. Despite her offers of help, Deep Throat didn't appear all that stable. It wouldn't do to queer the deal. Without the frozen sperm and ova, the mission would be for naught. Olson was right; they only had a few days, but it was better to let Deep Throat proceed at her own pace. The woman's strangeness might be the result of her living in a state of siege while taking care of children who were apparently severely disabled. But where were the children?

    Then again, the woman could be somewhere between seriously neurotic and disturbed. Kristen wished she had more psych training. Deep Throat took advantage of the pause in conversation to lead them up a short flight of stairs.

    One side of the stairs had been made wheelchair accessible with a plywood ramp. It was steep, but the wheelchair took it easily. Olson lumbered up the steps wheezing a bit. They emerged in what Deep Throat explained was the “rainforest level.” She had set up a table and chairs near the pool. Though many of the plants were dead, enough remained to suggest that it had indeed been a cheerful place before the plague. There had been early attempts to build atriums in the Cloister, but by necessity the resources had to be reapportioned for the food algae tanks.

    "There were several exotic species of birds that were allowed to fly freely. They were all disposed of early for fear of the duck plague,” Deep Throat explained.

    Deep Throat slid a chair aside so Kristen could park the wheelchair next to the desk. There was a folder in front of her. Deep Throat handed an identical folder to Olson.

    "Don't open it yet, please. I would have had an audio-visual, but a power surge from our generator took out my projector."

    "Deep Throat, could we talk about the sperm and ova banks?” Olson began, then stopped when Kristen cleared her throat.

    "Please pardon my associate's impatience, Deep Throat. Could we know your real name, by the way? I feel uncomfortable using your alias."

    "Why would that be, my dear?"

    "Never mind. It's hard to explain. Please realize we both tire out easily in this gravity, and if we sound impatient, it's because we're tired and have a launch deadline approaching."

    "On a short leash, are you?"

    "You could say that,” Olson said. He slumped into a chair, obviously sitting as far away from Deep Throat as possible and with his back to the wall. He didn't trust the old woman either, Kristen thought.

    "Plus, as you say, you're exhausted, not used to Earth's gravity."

    "Ms. Deep Throat,” Olson began.

    "Marguerite."

    "Excuse me?"

    "You can call me Marguerite, if you wish."

    "All right, Marguerite, could we please get to the purpose of this visit? Or if you have another agenda than giving us the sperm and ova, get to the point?"

    "You are the point,” she said, opening her folder. “Or rather, you are both examples of the point."

    Now it was Kristen's turn to become exasperated. “I thought the point was that we would rescue the sperm and ova and take them to viable hosts and a safe environment."

    "I'd agree with the viable host, but I wouldn't call the Moon a safe environment, at least not safe for homo sapiens."

    "It's not without some risks,” Kristen said.

    "I'd say it's more than some, or you wouldn't have come a quarter million miles and subjected yourself to risks from Low-Path and six times the gravity your bodies are used to."

    "You forgot hostile natives,” Olson said.

    "Yes, I guess you could call the zombies hostile natives,” Deep Throat said. “And how did your friends become injured?"

    "I was beginning to think of you as a possible threat,” Olson said, interrupting before Kristen could answer Deep Throat's question.

    Deep Throat laughed. “Oh, no, dear, I'm not hostile, and I'm not as crazy as you think. In fact, given the fact that all of you are on some sort of regular regimen of tranquilizer, serotonin uptake or other psychotropic in order to deal with whatever low-gravity and radiation does to your brains, I'd guess my mental health is more sound than yours."

    The young woman from the gate entered, but kept her distance, leaning over a railing, looking at the water. Under the diffused lighting from the skylights, her red hair glistened with health.

    "The point, Deep Throat,” Olson said.

    "How about we use first names? I'm Marguerite. Is it Jim or Jimmy?"

    "I prefer Olson, but the point is, Marguerite, I thought this had all been worked out by the regents. We take the frozen ova and sperm of geniuses off your hands and off planet while…"

    "While there's still time, are you trying to say?"

    Olson paused. Kristen started to say something, anything. There was a soft ripple from the pool to her left. The sound of the water being displaced was just loud enough to draw her attention. Something white and large skimmed just under the surface. Kristen caught a glimpse of what looked like a mischievous face and thought of Deep Throat's description of the playful manatees. But the manatees were stout and wide; this had been lithe. Besides, the sea creatures were all dead. Deep Throat had said so. So what was it? Certainly not some trash bag full of frozen microwave dinners. Could it be one of these children that Marguerite spoke of? What she had seen didn't seem quite human, but the little woman had said they had a congenital defect. She started to say something, but Marguerite spoke first.

    "But that's not all I want saved."

    "You want to go with us? Is that it?"

    "No, I'm a bit old for the ride. Besides, I'm tired. And I don't think I'd physically adapt to life in space or even on the Moon. Any more than the rest of my fellow species have.” She added, “You may open the folders, now."

    "Yes, open them,” came a child's voice from behind her. Kristen tried to swivel the chair but the joystick control was unfamiliar, and she bumped into the railing. There was another ripple in the water, and from somewhere came the sound of a child's lilting laughter.

    "Are there human children or something else in the pool?” Olson had heard it too. He raised himself from the chair and lumbered about trying to look over the railing.

    "Children. More than human,” Marguerite said.

    Now what the hell does that mean? Kristen wondered.

    

   

    

    "Jorge, Jorge, come out, come out, from wherever you are,” Gayle called.

    "No way, you crazy bitch,” Jorge said, but he said it to himself, below even a whisper. Gayle had killed Crystal and was now trying to kill him. She had come close to succeeding already, in fact. The three of them-Gayle, himself, and Crystal-had just entered the main building of Industrial Genetics and were walking among giant stainless steel tanks when Gayle had shot Crystal in the back without warning.

    The blast had actually blown a hole through Crystal. He'd thought such things were only the province of special effect CGIs in videos, but he had actually been able to see daylight through the hole before Crystal's corpse had fallen to the pavement.

    Knee-jerk reactions had saved him from the same fate-so far, at least-not his quick thinking. The shotgun blast had been so loud in the confined space that he had jumped-a purely reflex action-and fallen into a two-meter-deep concrete pit. Gayle's second shot had gone over his head. He had landed, breaking his fall, on a pile of dried-out corpses. In the dim light, she must have thought that he had pulled a disappearing act. And her state of confusion had given him time to squirrel into a half-meter-wide drainage pipe that connected to the pit. He had crawled in the dark for what seemed like half a klick to emerge under the base of a huge stainless steel tank. Gayle should be far away, on the other side of the immense factory, but her voice was near. How? Peering out from his hiding place, the answer was immediately apparent. There lay Crystal, her mouth agape, a hole in her chest large enough to see through. Surprisingly little blood was visible, but he could smell it, like hot copper. And overlaying the smell of blood was shit. Crystal must have crapped her pants when she had been shot. Who could blame her? He had peed his, and he hadn't even been shot. For some reason, it made him think of the hateful zero-G toilet, and how he'd like to be there now, frustrated and bored but safe. Instead he was crouching under a vat, waiting for a mad woman to blow a hole through him. But that wasn't the weird thing; the weird thing was he had an erection. Yes, there was something definitely wrong with him.

    Okay, Jorge, think. Think! The drainage pipe must have doubled back somehow, for he was only a meter away from the murder scene.

    "Come on, Jorge,” Gayle's voice was shrill. “I'll let you fuck me from behind, whatever you want. I know you've always wanted to."

    He could see her feet. She had taken her flip-flops off and was tip-toeing about. Were her toenails painted red? No, she had stepped in Crystal's blood, and it was smeared on her toes. His stomach churned. Slowly, carefully and quietly-he hoped-he began to crawl backwards through the pipe. Gayle's feet disappeared, but he could hear the smacking sound her steps made as the congealed blood on her soles stuck to the floor. He was halfway down the hole when his belt buckle caught on a metal burr at the edge of the pipe. It made a metallic scrape.

    The sound of Gayle's sticky footsteps stopped.

    Had she heard him? Where was she? Behind him? He slipped a hand under his belly and carefully, ever so carefully, unsnagged the buckle, then continued to ease himself down the pipe.

    "Jorge?” Her voice seemed to come from over his shoulder.

    He froze. She'd found him. He braced for the blast. Would he hear it, or would he be dead before the sound reached his ears?

    "Oh, Jorge…"

    He had been holding his breath and now slowly let it out. She hadn't heard the scrape, but he could see her now, looking under the tanks next to his hiding place. He was safe for the moment, but it was only a matter of time until she found him. He began to ease himself deeper into the hole. At about shoulder level, his feet touched bottom. The pipe made a right angle at the bottom and leveled out. Now he only had to ease himself down to a sitting position and work his way through a different section of the drainage pipe. It had to exit somewhere outside-exactly where didn't matter as long as it was far away from Gayle.

    "There you are!” Gayle's face appeared in the space between the tank and the floor.

    He ducked but the front of his jumpsuit caught on the same metal burr that had snagged his belt buckle. Gayle tried to swing the shotgun to bear on him, but it caught on a snarl of electrical wiring from the bottom of the tank. They stared at each other for what seemed an eternity. Gayle smiled, a kind smile, but her eyes were wild and crazed.

    "I'm sorry about Crystal; about you too, Jorge."

    "Then why do it? Why did you want to kill her?

    "It's hard to explain,” she said. “I didn't really want to-okay, maybe she irritated me a lot, but I didn't want to shoot her-or you."

    "Then don't."

    "Don't what?"

    He saw tears in her eyes.

    "Kill me."

    "Oh, but I have to. I really have no choice, you know-unless…” She looked at the snag of wire on the barrel of the shotgun. Apparently, only the gunsight at the end of the barrel had caught on a loop of wire, but she didn't try to pull it free. She didn't know he was hung there, unable to drop out of the line of fire.

    "Unless what, Gayle?"

    "Unless, unless,” she said, and started rambling some crazy shit about the recycling of souls.

    Not taking his eyes off her, he eased one hand up to the metal burr where his jumpsuit was snagged. Murphy's law was working overtime today. The burr, a small hook of metal, had caught on a seam. His weight-and his life-hung on that small, curled piece of steel, the legacy of some slacker worker who didn't give enough of a shit to do things right. He stood on tiptoe and began to work the seam off the burr.

    "So, you see, it's really out of my control. But you have a choice,” Gayle said.

    Another tug and the seam came free of the burr. He settled a bit of his weight on his toes but tried to keep his head level. Gayle must have sensed something, either the movement of his head or maybe the relief of being free showed in his expression. She frantically jerked at the shotgun, but it stubbornly hung and went off, shredding the wiring and deafening him. But she didn't bring the gun around on him-why?

    The answer came to him in an instant. The discharge had been an accident. She now had to pump the shotgun to place a fresh round into the chamber, but she was on her hands and knees, and to work the pump she would have to shift her weight, either to a sitting position or by balancing on an elbow. And that would take a few seconds. He had enough time to duck down the pipe and… he paused. Why bother? What did he have to look forward to? If the Anita failed on launch, he would die in fire and pain. If it succeeded, they would be back in space, and perhaps live, but what kind of life and for how long? A life lived either in small concrete rooms or metal boxes, barely existing on skimpy vat-grown food. And he was never going to get laid. Women knew there was something weird about him. There had to be something seriously wrong with his body, or his brain, or both to be getting all these erections. All that pain, the uncertainty… why endure it? A shotgun blast-a 12-gauge magnum-would disintegrate his head instantly just like it had done to the zombie they'd used for target practice. There would be no pain, not even an awareness that he was dead. It would be better than a quick death; it would be instantaneous.

    He shook his head as if to dispel the vision-this was exactly the kind of thing the therapists talked about. It was brain chemistry imbalance thing, not a reflection of the real world. Somehow, knowing this wasn't the same as feeling it. On some deep level, he felt worthless. But as Gayle sat up to pump the gun, he reflexively dropped down the pipe, as if his body had a will to survive of its own accord. He felt the heat of the blast caress his scalp, then he was on his knees scurrying down the pipe like a lab rat in a maze. He paused for a moment to touch the top of his head. His hand came away dry. None of the shotgun pellets had touched him.

    Behind him, in the darkness, he heard the clank of metal on metal. The shotgun against the metal pipe, he guessed. And he began frantically crawling again. He came to the junction, this time noticing it was actually a T-junction rather than an ell.

    Another clank from behind him. Gayle must be down the pipe now. He had to choose which way to go. His eyes adjusted to the darkness, and he could see light-a faint glow-at the end of two of the pipes. That meant the drainage system opened up somewhere. Was that good or bad? The one with no visible light could be a dead end, in which case he would eventually be cornered. In either of the other pipes, he would be silhouetted as if spotlighted. But he had to make a choice, right now, and he dove into the dark pipe.

    The pipe stank of rotten meat, but he kept crawling. The shotgun blast came a moment later. The sound of the shotgun pellets ricocheting down the walls of the pipe he'd just exited continued for some time. He scrambled furiously, conscious of every sound he made. To be shot now would mean a painful, slow death.

    Another blast came, but this one was muffled. Then another, also muffled. He realized that Gayle was at the junction, shooting down each of the pipes in turn. Really, all she had to do was to sit there and fire off rounds into each one. The pipe would focus the pellets and shred his ass. He heard her work the pump action of the shotgun and waited for the inevitable.

    Instead he heard was the click of the hammer on an empty chamber. She worked the pump action again. And there was a second click of an empty chamber.

    "Crap!” her voice, a whisper down the pipe. Then louder, “Jorge?"

    Quietly, he began to move further down the pipe. She might be out of shells, but it could be a trick. Besides, Gayle was lean and mean. He wasn't sure what the outcome would be if it came down to a hand-to-hand battle. He didn't want to find out. More than likely she would whip his ass.

    "Jorge, I know you're down there. These pipes are like megaphones. I can hear your every movement."

    He ignored her and kept moving. The rotting smell increased.

    "Listen, I've got three choices, I figure."

    "You're mad,” he said despite himself.

    "By your standards, yes. But mad or not, I'm not stupid. I have three choices that I count. I can crawl down there and kill you with my bare hands-I think I'll win, but you could injure me, and I've a lot of work to do yet. Two, I can go back to the Hummer and get some more shells and wait you out-but I really don't want to take the time. Or three, I can make you a deal that ensures you're still alive when I leave here."

    "I'm listening,” he said. He bumped into something soft and wet in the dark. He didn't want to think about what it might be. There was no way to get around it; he would have to crawl over it, the bloated rank thing. Was there enough room? He poked at it. It sloshed, full of liquid. No, the question was not if there was space to crawl but how badly did he want to live?

    The answer was he suddenly wanted to live real bad for some reason.

    "Here's the deal. It's simple,” Gayle said. “You take the walkie-talkie off your belt. I know you still have it, or I'd have come across it by now. You throw it down the pipe to me."

    "Is that all?"

    "No, you also throw your pharmaceutical pouch to me."

    The reason she wanted walkie-talkie was obvious. Though it wouldn't work under all this steel and concrete, once out in the open, he could contact the rest of the crew. When Gayle got back to the ship, they'd be waiting for her.

    But the pharmaceuticals? He had to think about that for a moment. The pouch contained his Scruitol and Turbinat inhalers. He could live without either for days but would be barely able to function. As his energy levels dropped without the Turbinat, he'd be like a turtle flipped on its back in this gravity well. It would take him days, maybe a week to find his way back to the ship. Without the Scruitol, he probably wouldn't make it at all. He'd sink into a clinical depression or have a psychotic breakdown and just sit down and die.

    "I know what you're thinking, Jorge,” Gayle said. “You're working the odds. So am I."

    True, but he didn't just have himself to consider; without being forewarned, Jimmy, Kristen, and the rest would be blindsided by Gayle just as he and Crystal had been. But what could she want? What could she gain by killing them all?

    

    

    

    From behind the thick glass of the aquarium, the boy blinked with his second set of eyelids-this set was clear-and Hannah jumped a half meter.

    He smiled, showing a row of human teeth whose only extraordinary characteristic was their perfection, something an orthodontist would be proud to take credit for. Hannah tried to return the smile, but her reflection in the glass showed her effort was a cross between a grimace and a grin. She had been in braces at the onset of the plague, but as all the city's orthodontists were either dead or zombies, George at the commune had removed them. She remembered the kind old man kidding her that she might become buck-toothed, and that brought a genuine smile, then she remembered George was now burnt to toast, as was probably everyone else at the commune.

    She searched for sorrow, but found only horror and numbness. Her grief seemed to be hidden from her, just out of reach. It would probably creep up on her when she least expected it and paralyze her for days. A delayed reaction. That's how it had been when her father had burned himself alive with the horses. She had been too busy dealing with being alive-when practically everyone else was dying-to deal with her loss then. Now she had lost her second father, and what was she doing? Standing front of a humongous aquarium tank communicating by hand signals to a frog boy.

    Frog boy. That was her name for him. Before he had swum up to the glass, he had hidden far back in the aquarium, deep in the green shadows, playing a kind of hide-and-seek game. She'd catch a glimpse of a fin, then a jade-colored torso. He moved closer in stages: a quick, sinuous dart to behind a rock, from which he played peek-a-boo, giving fleeting impressions of huge glassy eyes and a neckless head.

    As he moved closer, Hannah could see he wasn't so frog-like after all. He was wearing a deep green rubber suit and swim fins, and the glassy eyes were part of a hood-like mask. He was extremely skinny, but wearing some sort of breathing bladder around his waist, giving his body a frog-like bulbous shape and making his thin arms and legs seem like sticks in comparison. Gradually, she had relaxed; he was just a normal, though skinny, boy in a funny frog man suit.

    Then he had moved closer, and she saw that there was something definitely wrong with his legs. They bent at wrong angles to his body, and when he got ready to swim-kick, they folded up under his body, reinforcing the frogginess. Again she was glad a half-inch of tempered glass separated them. He must have sensed this fear, for he did a little strip tease for her, there ten feet beyond the glass. Sitting on the rock, he first pulled off his gloves, revealing a cocoa-colored skin and long graceful fingers, those of an artist or a concert pianist, not a mutant. Then he leaned over, pulled off his hood and revealed more rich, red-brown skin and wispy waving hair so blonde as to be nearly white. As he looked up, Hannah had gasped. He was startlingly handsome, and his eyes, something about his eyes… She couldn't be sure in the green cast of the water, but they looked violet, like Jeffrey's.

    She was once again aware of the oddness of his legs, how they seemed not like legs at all but another set of arms, but she was transfixed by the unearthly beauty of his face. As he moved closer to the glass, he reached down to the bladder on his waist and drew a tube up to his mouth to take a swig of air. He smiled, not a real smile, but a bashful-boy smirk. She got the distinct impression that he was toying with her, like an adult plays with a child, but he wasn't an adult-was he? He was smaller than she, and she doubted if he weighed ninety pounds out of the water and without his suit. But no, there was something about the way he looked at her, as if he was privy to some complex riddle whose solution she would never understand. He drifted up to the glass, inches away from her face, and she saw she had been right. His irises were a deep rich violet, and his skin was without a blemish.

    She caught her breath, wondering what exactly made his face so beautiful, and he had blinked with that second set of glassine eyelids, and she had nearly fallen on her butt.

    The frog boy didn't move from the glass; his face remained serene, almost Buddhistic. Slowly, he pointed at his eyes and blinked again. Even from this distance, she could clearly see the second layer of eyelids. He winked-sort of-closing only one of the clear eyelids at a time, then the other. He then slowly-probably so as to not startle her-pointed at his hip, and rotated his leg up, sideways along his body until it was pressed against the side of his body, the knee joint in his armpit, fin over his head. The movement was like a dancer's high kick, but sideways.

    Okay, she thought, with a face like that I can accept one-hundred-and-eighty degree hip joints.

    But he wasn't finished. He reached up with his hand and took the fin off his foot, revealing it wasn't a foot at all but another hand. It should have looked freakish, deformed, but for a moment, as her gaze moved from the third hand to those violet eyes and back again, it seemed the most natural thing in the world. In a single fluid motion, he did the same with his other fin, revealing a fourth hand.

    Well, at least he is symmetrical, she thought.

    Not frog boy, but a monkey boy. But oh those eyes, that face! Not just a monkey boy-The Monkey Prince!

    He rolled backwards from the glass in a perfect somersault. Midway through the move, he bent his lower set of arms backwards and clasped his upper set of hands with his lower. It reminded her of two dancers, holding hands and spinning around a common center, except he was his own partner in this underwater ballet. As he completed the turn, she couldn't help but notice he had a full package underneath that rubber suit, and she felt her cheeks warming with a blush. He was showing off for her, and the mild lust inspired by his face and parts of his anatomy clashed violently with the innate revulsion she felt toward his mutation.

    "What do you think of Aerial, my child?"

    She turned to find Marguerite standing behind her. Did she mean Aerial was her child or was she patronizing her? She let it pass.

    "His name is Aerial?"

    She nodded. The tiny woman glowed with pride.

    "He's beautiful, but…"

    "Ugly, offensive, at the same time."

    "Well…” No, she thought. It's like having an extra set of arms where your legs should be was the most natural thing in the world. The thing was she felt deformed herself. It was as if Aerial's body was made the way hers should be.

    "That's all right, dear, you won't offend me,” she said. “They affect everyone like that at first. We all have a built-in aversion to deformity, no matter how politically correct we try to be. But once it sinks in that it's not a deformity, something clicks in the mind, and they just become beautiful."

    Aerial did another ballet-like move, something she couldn't name but that looked classic. His four arms flung out from his body, but the elbows bent, and by moving his wrists, he spun like a pinwheel. It was like that Hindu god, what's-her-name, the one with too many arms.

    "He likes you, you know,” Marguerite said, still beaming like a proud mother.

    "How odd. He doesn't even know me."

    "They're like that, the children; they instinctively like some people and come out. Others they avoid."

    "There are more like Aerial?"

    "Yes, eighteen in all,” Marguerite said, and pointed upward. “It's a common mutation caused by the Low-Path virus."

    Aerial nodded at Marguerite and swam upwards.

    "You mean he was once… once normal?"

    "Oh no, dear. But his birth mother was normal-human-and contracted the virus before the zygote became viable. Come now, we'll go up one flight. I think Aerial would like to meet you out of the water."

    They were halfway up the stairs to the next level before it fully sank in what Marguerite had said. “You mean, his mother was a zombie?"

    "Yes, dear."

    "Please don't call me dear."

    Marguerite smiled. “Why not?"

    "Because I'm not a child. Not anymore."

    "Of course, you aren't. I didn't mean it that way-well, I don't think I did.” She held a single finger to her lips as if telling herself to be still. “Let's start over. Hannah, isn't it?"

    "Yes."

    "You're right. Aerial's mother was a zombie and lived for six months after contracting Low-Path. Long enough for us to rescue Aerial as a preemie-a premature baby-by caesarean. We think that's why he's so small; you see, he's the first, the oldest of our children and entirely unexpected. We-my late husband and I-were working on a vaccine and began investigating stem cell tissue from pregnant zombies. Most of the fetuses we removed were either dead or Low-Paths, hanging on the verge of death. Imagine our surprise when we opened up one poor thing to find Aerial, so, so strange, but perfectly healthy and free of the virus.” She paused on the stairs and turned to look at Hannah.

    By the tiny woman's questioning look, Hannah intuited some sort of response was needed from her. She said the first thing that came to her mind. “He's so weirdly beautiful. He shouldn't be, but he is."

    "Yes, I'm glad you see him that way,” Marguerite said. “Some people, like I said, see the deformity first, the person second. They sort of get used to it, but not entirely. With me, it was the same way when he was born.” Marguerite continued to climb the stairs. “We thought we'd just keep the baby alive long enough to study him, so we put him on a respirator and feed him intravenously. We thought that he would either die on the respirator or that we would do the merciful thing and let him die.

    "Don't look at me that way; it was the end of the world, the apocalypse. One would have second thoughts about bringing a normal, healthy baby into the world, much less keeping alive a child whom we were sure would have horrendous difficulties, who would require a full-time caregiver."

    "But he didn't, did he? He didn't have horrendous difficulties,” Hannah said, at once seeing Marguerite in a different light, not an eccentric grandmother, but as a sharp-featured, mad scientist, making life-and-death decisions, working outside the normal precepts of good and evil.

    "Oh! Here we are, and I hear Aerial splashing about,” Marguerite said. “He'll be out of the pool soon. I'll cut to the chase. We soon found other pregnant zombies with babies carrying the same mutation. In fact, we found aborted births, so we made it our mission to find as many of the children and bring them to full term as we could. In the space of a year, we rescued seventeen children with exactly the same mutations as Aerial. It was our annus mirabilis."

    "What?"

    "Oh… it's Latin for year of miracles. Francis, my husband, and I thought of each one as a miracle. And we came to think of them-though they all have different mothers and fathers-as Aerial's brothers and sisters and our children."

    "Where's your husband now?"

    Marguerite ignored the question. “Ah, speak of the little devil, there's Aerial now."

    "Crappola!” Hannah said. Then to Marguerite, “Sorry. That really freaked me.” And it was all she could do not to say “no pun intended,” for out of water, Aerial's freakishness was magnified. The boy had emerged on the other side of a large pool that Hannah realized opened to the large aquarium below. A paver stone sidewalk ringed the pool, and Aerial was strolling along the perimeter toward her.

    He walked on all four hands, but not like a chimpanzee or an ape, because those creatures’ hind legs hinged differently. Aerial's lower extremities were hinged the same way as his shoulders. He walked by splaying his hands outward and because all four extremities were the same length, his spine was horizontal. To see where he was going as he walked, he had to arch his neck. He looked at her and smiled, then dropped his head and continued to move toward them in a slow, painstaking pace.

    "He's a fish out of water,” Hannah observed.

    "Something like that,” Marguerite said. “He's not by nature aquatic either; the weightlessness of the water suits him and is probably the closest we'll ever come here on Earth to his natural habitat."

    Hannah didn't understand this. How could anyone as physically odd as Aerial have a natural habitat? But she let it go, fascinated by the emotions that Aerial elicited as he walked-no, waddled-no that wasn't quite it either. She had seen movement like his before, but where? He passed under the warm, yellow glow of sunlight from one of the large windows, and it came to her. Pluto, or some cartoon dog, merged of parts of different creatures, almost human. The illusion dissolved when he looked up. Out of water his face was even more beautiful, though it wasn't an effete beauty. Pluto was goofy-looking. Aerial's features were male, but stunning.

    "Hi,” he said, as he reached them. “I guess Mums has told you all sorts of things about me."

    His voice was completely human, though deeper than she had expected. She was speechless. Marguerite, a.k.a. Mums, had wheeled an electric wheelchair behind him. By reaching backwards and gripping parts of the frame with all four hands, Aerial hoisted himself up into the seat. Working the joystick with one of his upper hands, Aerial led them over to a small table. He motioned for her to sit.

    There was a vacuous moment of silence. Marguerite and Aerial just sat there, waiting for her to say something, but she was speechless. Should she say, “Hello,” and shake his hand, and if so, which one?

    Finally, Aerial rescued her. “Want to see a trick?” he said, and pulling a handful of balls out of a pouch on the wheelchair's side, began juggling them with all four hands. The balls were different sizes and colors, including a large yellow one which he managed to keep centered. The others made graceful arcs around this common center. She wasn't much of a science geek, but they'd had old Discovery Channel tapes at the commune, so eventually she recognized it, the solar system and the five-no, six-inner planets.

    "What about the outer planets?” she said, sharing the joke.

    "The ceiling is not high enough,” Aerial said matter-of-factly. “If Mums would let us go outside of this fish bowl, I could do the whole solar system and throw in a few moons."

    "Soon, Aerial. Soon,” Marguerite said.

    

    

    

    "So you're telling us there is no frozen sperm or ova, just these… these mutant children,” Olson asked. He slammed the folder down so hard he nearly tipped the table over. The folder slid off on the floor. Marguerite made no motion to retrieve it.

    Kristen, who had mostly studied the pictures of Marguerite's babies, didn't feel anything particular-anger, sadness, it all seemed submerged.

    "Oh, I do have some frozen sperm and eggs, as advertised,” she said. “I have oodles of both, all neatly frozen to specifications. I'm just saying it probably won't save the human race, that you'll all eventually succumb to radiation-induced diseases, new bloodlines or not."

    She was telling them that they had wasted their time to come all this way, risking their lives, for a few hundred grams of frozen reproductive cells. Kristen felt she should be insulted. Mostly, she just felt suddenly exhausted.

    Olson, on the other hand, seemed on the edge of critical mass, and she didn't know what he was going to do.

    Marguerite smiled at them, showing extensive dental work. “I know you feel betrayed, but I'm ready and willing to follow through on our original deal."

    Kristen studied the diminutive woman, thinking they may have underestimated her intelligence because of her size and her taste for odd costumes. Her expression was without malice but full of conviction. It was the face of someone who was sure she was doing the right thing.

    "So, you will give the sperm and ova to us?"

    "Yes, but it's ‘Let's Make a Deal’ time,” she said. “It's simple. They're half of a package, a package I won't split up. You have to make accommodations on your ship for the children and convince me that you'll take them into space with you. More-that you'll look out for them, give them a chance to adapt and protect them from excesses of Moon bureaucracy. Then, when I'm sure your intentions are honorable, I turn over the sperm and ova to you.” She looked at them as if they were slow-witted and repeated, “Simple."

    "What do you hope to gain for these children?” Kristen asked. “They seem barely able to survive here. Space, the Moon, both are very hostile environments."

    "That's just the point. There's good evidence they are more adapted to life in space than here. If you'd just look at the information in the folders, please."

    Olson, still fuming, picked his folder off the floor, opened it, and fumbled through it. Kristen opened hers too. Part of the problem was that hard copy was an unfamiliar medium. She wanted to look for a zoom button to bring the small print up to size.

    "There's a lot of information here,” Kristen said, “and much of it is beyond me."

    "I'll simplify it for you. The children have several mutations, but none are life-threatening. Quite the contrary. All, as far as I can tell, are advantageous from a certain perspective. There are changes at the level of cellular processes, not just the mutations that we can see. Even deeper, right down to their DNA, where they have multiple redundant copies. I'm sure you know what happens to human DNA under hard radiation."

    Kristen cleared her throat. “The radiation raises atoms’ energy levels high enough to break chemical bonds. The ionized atoms then bind with other atoms; they're called free radicals. Such free radicals spawn a wide range of cancers and genetic mutations."

    "Pretty good. Go to the head of the class. But my children-call them Homo Astro sapiens…"

    Olson laughed.

    "Okay, I admit it's a bit lame. Call them whatever you like-but they resist such damage by utilizing these redundant strands of DNA in a way analogous to the way a computer uses backup copies of files to offset virus attacks or read/write errors."

    "And how do you know this?” Olson asked.

    "This first hint came through a standard genomic mapping. We had unlimited access to the new automatic sequence reader at the University of Texas-Dallas campus-all the researchers were dead, so there was no waiting. It was through a standard run that we discovered the multiple copies. But we really didn't suspect this was anything more than a curious oddity until Francis tracked one zombie mother into a nuclear power site. Francis didn't realize that the unattended reactor had gone Chernobyl. He brought the zombie mother back to our lab. The zombie mom died that evening from the massive dose of radiation she received, but not before Francis rescued the baby by caesarean. Francis started showing signs of Low-Path infection the next day. The baby was so radioactive that I had to use an X-ray technician's lead apron to handle it and feed it. But it lived. Jeannie-that's what we named her-should have been more susceptible to the radiation than either my late husband or the zombie mom, but she wasn't. There was enough residual radiation in the amniotic fluid for weeks to sterilize food, but the infant girl survived. In fact the baby, Jeannie, is perfectly healthy today. You'll find a picture of her in your folder. I think of her as Francis’ daughter."

    Kristen had already found the picture. It was a head-and-shoulders shot, not showing the extra set of arms where the legs should be. Despite herself, she found that the child looked frail, but it wasn't an unhealthy frailty, but a delicate visage, almost ethereal. No, ethereal wasn't the right word. Elfin fit better. High cheekbones, broad forehead, narrow chin, and ears a bit large-odd, but the overall effect was one of graceful beauty.

    "They have other attributes, too. For example, on page forty-five, you can see how they are able to go into a state of suspended animation."

    "So can I,” Olson said.

    "Yes, but you need a chilling tank with an atmosphere of eighty parts per million hydrogen sulfide and a multitude of drugs to keep your ATP levels from dropping. And you have about a six to ten percent chance of dying while in hibernation or coming out-have I got it about right?"

    Olson nodded.

    "Well, any of the children can swim to the bottom of the aquarium where the water is cool and anchor themselves. They turn off their breathing apparatus, and when they go into oxygen deprivation, something is triggered at the cellular level that puts them into deep hibernation. The only thing they need is some protection for their skin so they don't prune-up."

    "They hibernate like a bear?"

    "Or a squirrel or a beaver, but maybe more like an amphibian. They switch from being warm-blooded mammals into something like a cold-blooded creature. Think how handy that mutation would be in a deep-space environment."

    "But they're handicapped,” Olson said. “Space just isn't friendly to the disabled."

    "If you're talking about their lack of legs, then ask yourself what's the use of legs in a micro-gravity environment."

    Olson was silent. Kristen knew what he was thinking. In space, legs just got in the way. They used up oxygen, couldn't be used to carry or move things, and their bones were more likely than other parts of the body to suffer calcium loss. There had even been discussion about amputating legs for deep space miners, but there had been no volunteers. Olson looked stymied, but Kristen knew him well enough to suspect he was more angry at being duped than anything else.

    Kristen felt some of the same anger, but used a meditation technique-calm abiding-to keep an open mind and read further. She centered her attention on her breathing, found it was coming sharp and fast, and let the anger go by until her breaths slowed and became soft. Then she asked, “This section, page eighty-eight, on Protein Osteoprotegerin Mutation, you're talking about the one that regulates osteoblasts and osteoclast activity…"

    "Yes, bright and beautiful too,” Marguerite said. “But if you read the conclusion section, you'll see that's it's really an ‘inconclusive’ section. I just don't have the environment to check my hypothesis."

    Olson, his shoulders hunched, his brow furrowed, was looking at the same section.

    "So cut to the chase; tell us your hypothesis.” Kristen, despite her skepticism, felt Marguerite's excitement; it was contagious.

    "She's saying,” Kristen said to Olson, “that the children's version of this enzyme is slightly different from ours. It seems to favor less osteoclast activity; more osteoblast activity."

    "And that means what?"

    Kristen took a deep breath. It had been a long time since school. “Osteoblasts make bone; osteoclasts are cells that remove bone. The two cells work to cancel each other out; that is, under normal conditions, the osteoblasts replace the bone that the osteoclasts break down. It's sort of a recycling process, like shedding old skin cells and building new ones.” She looked to Marguerite. The old lady nodded. Kristen felt as if she were taking her orals again for medical certification.

    "But osteopro… osteoproto…” she stumbled over the word.

    "Osteoprotegerin,” Marguerite prompted.

    "Yes, osteoprotegerin, the regulator, goes haywire in micrograv. The osteoclasts continue to break down bone, but without the stimulus of gravity, the osteoblasts don't rebuild new bone cells, at least not at the rate they should. We-all us Moonies-take a synthetic hormone that counteracts this imbalance to some degree but not entirely. And there are side effects. One is a many-fold increase in clinical depression and obsessive-compulsive behavior. Real risks. But it's better than nothing. Without hormone therapy, we'd lose about one or two percent bone mass per month. That's the average. Depending upon their genetics-we think-some people would lose as much as twenty percent of bone mass throughout their lower extremities. Most of those Moon colonists in this extreme are long dead. So the one to two percent is a pretty solid number.” She realized she was rambling and stopped.

    "As I said, smart and beautiful too,” Marguerite said.

    Kristen smiled at her, not feeling either. “Not really. It's not an esoteric issue for us. It's a health threat we live with all our lives. But you're suggesting these children would not have bone loss in micrograv?"

    "That's what I suspect. Here, they don't lose enough bone. Their bone density increases. I limit their calcium intake, and there's actually a drug for a rare disorder-Van Buchem's disease-that mimics this problem. The children don't exhibit the chromosomal abnormality of Van Buchem's sufferers, but the process seems to be the same. Their osteoclast activity is low; their osteoblast activity normal. They build more bone than they tear down, but luckily, the gene isn't expressed in any great fashion until puberty, perhaps because their bones are growing so fast anyway, as normal human children."

    "And in low-grav to microgravity?"

    "There's no experimental framework that I can build here in Earth's gravity, but I suspect they wouldn't need treatment and that their bone density would remain stable."

    "Okay, drop the other shoe,” Olson said.

    "I bet your pardon?"

    "You're leading up to something, a conclusion that you want us to share, leading us by the nose, so cut to the chase and just say what you think. What you want us to think."

    Olson was getting angry again. Why? Kristen wondered. Yes, Marguerite was imposing some conditions that hadn't been part of the original deal, but his anger still seemed out of proportion.

    Marguerite just smiled and said, “If you mean I'm a believer in intelligent design, the answer is no. As a scientist, I never could buy into such supernatural mumbo jumbo. But Nature does seem to have equipped these children for a life in a micro-gravity, high radiation environment. They couldn't be better adapted for a life in space."

    "Hrmph!” Olson sounded as if he were about to spit. “Whatever you call it, intelligent design, or God fiddling with DNA, punk-eke, or equipped by Nature. Admit it!"

    "I'm not suggesting anything of the sort.” Marguerite said. “I'm just presenting the facts, and the facts suggest these children are very well adapted to an environment that homo sapiens is not. Moreover, I don't think they will live into their twenties if forced to stay in Earth's gravity. Their excessive bone growth will kill or cripple them."

    "What's punk-eke?” Kristen said.

    "Shorthand for punctuated equilibrium. It's a pseudo-science that suggests new species are created all at once rather than by gradual mutation and adaptation."

    "What's the equilibrium part all about?"

    "Just that there is no Darwinian evolution. Nature remains in equilibrium, until some unseen, mysterious force pops up a new species out of nowhere, like a magician pulling a rabbit out of a hat."

    "And I certainly wouldn't support such nonsense,” Marguerite said. “The fossil record proves to everyone but religious fundamentalists-and they're all dead now-that new species arise through gradual change over millions of years."

    "But here you are,” Olson said, calming down somewhat, “with these children, all of them at once, expressing a quantum evolutionary leap. A new race with the right body chemistry, the altered cell structure, even the extra set of hands, needed for a micrograv environment, even though they or their parents have never been in such an environment. Do you know what the odds are of that happening to one individual, much less eighteen?"

    "The chances aren't that rare, if you know genetics. Take Van Buchem's disease, for example; it's a single mutation on one chromosome. And the same holds true for children born with a single defective copy of the Hoxa13 gene; they have short toes and bent little fingers. A few more Hox gene defects and they may be born without bones in their forearms. And it was conjectured fifty years ago that the same gene that made some bacterium resistant to radiation might be hidden in the human genome."

    "Are you trying to convince me or yourself? You're still talking about serendipitous mutation. All three identical mutations in eighteen children."

    "I'm talking more than that, and it confounds me too-perhaps more. There was just me and my late husband scouring the still-living Low-Path population for women with late-term pregnancies, and just in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. We brought in nearly two hundred over a one-year period. Nearly all the fetuses were mutated, most of them unviable. The virus that caused the plague was also a very powerful teratogen. Only eighteen of the two hundred were astro babies."

    "You know,” Olson said, “I think I've seen this movie before."

    "Beg your pardon?” Marguerite said.

    "It's a game we play,” Kristen said. “There's not a lot to do, either on the Moon or in space. We watch a lot of old movies.” It seemed so stupid when explained out loud.

    "So I'll bite. What's the movie?” Marguerite asked.

    "It was a TV series, actually. One of your favorites. Star Trek, the original one. I don't remember the name, but Kirk, Spock, and Bones beam down to a planet where everyone-nearly everyone that is-has died of a plague. At first they only find a few psychopaths who have been disfigured but not killed by the plague. But later, they find some children who are healthy. It seems that pre-pubescent children are not affected by the disease, but the Enterprise crew is. They begin to spout blue splotches on their faces and wonder when they'll go insane too."

    Marguerite laughed and clapped her hands gleefully. “Miri. That was both the name of the episode and the young girl who fell in love with Kirk. It's one of my favorites. But actually, the plague caused premature aging. The insanity was just a side-effect, but Kirk…"

    "What the fuck are y'all talking about?” Tish strolled in, a little wobbly, a brown bag in hand. “You both need to take care of business. Gayle called on the walkie-talkie. There was some sort of accident at the plant where she, Crystal, and Jorge went."

    The brown bag held a large bottle of whiskey, Kristen realized. Who knew where Tish had gotten it, but it was clear she was drunk. She also saw that Tish's zombie bite wound was bleeding through the gauze bandage and wondered when the blue splotches would begin to appear.

    No, wait a minute-she was confusing the Star Trek episode symptoms-Tish would show nothing quite so dramatic if she were infected; first symptoms like a bad cold or flu, then suppurating sores, then something like, but not quite, death.

    

    

    

    "I think they're both dead,” Gayle said, her voice squeaky over the walkie-talkie.

    "Where?” Olson asked.

    "At the industrial site,” came her reply. “The zombies, a mob of them inside the building, came out of nowhere and just tore them apart."

    "No, I mean where are you now?"

    "…blood trail,” her voice broke up. Without microwave communications, the walkie-talkies relied on line-of-sight radio frequency.

    "Say again."

    "All I found was a blood trail."

    "Gayle. Where are you now?” he shouted. How could everything go bad so fast?

    "I'm… on… back to the ship,” came the answer.

    "When you get there, stay there,” he said. But there was no response.

    "A mob of zombies?” Marguerite said. “That doesn't sound right. They don't behave that way."

    Suddenly, Olson wanted to slap the old woman. Anger, he reminded himself, is just a reaction to feeling threatened. So much for anger management therapy. He was still pissed off, but the question remained: Why would he feel threatened by this woman?

    She was-despite her eccentric look and childish mannerisms-an impressive intellect and a powerful one, but he'd never felt threatened by smart women before. No, he decided, it was more a matter of control. He wasn't used to being in command and never realized before how seductive power, even limited power, was. But little matter. Within hours of landing, things had begun to go to shit. And now this. The main justification for their chancing a landing had been the sperm and ova and the DNA fabricator. Now the DNA fab unit was apparently inaccessible, he had to play let's make a deal with a munchkin, and Crystal and Jorge were probably dead. He didn't know Crystal well, but had become friends of a sort with Jorge. Poor little punk. All he wanted to do was get laid. Ha, now that he thought about it, that was pretty much how he had got himself in this mess. If not for sweet little Parvani, he would have been on board the Anita when the bomb went off and spared all this-failure.

    "We have to go back to the ship,” he said. Could they hear the defeat in his voice?

    "And do we have a deal?” Marguerite asked.

    "Yes. We'll be back tomorrow with a trailer for the truck,” he said.

    "But Jimmy…?” Kristen said.

    "We have a deal. We don't have a choice, Kristen,” he said.

    "Jimmy?"

    "We'll talk about it on the way back to the ship. Okay?"

    He knew what Kristen was thinking. How could they protect the health of fragile children during a launch? But he'd already worked out a plan. Loading a few polyethylene tanks on the Anita wouldn't be that big of a deal. From what Marguerite had told them, the children could easily ride out the G-forces of liftoff submerged in the water. But Marguerite, like many very intelligent people, was politically naive. Kristen was not. The Chancellor and the Board of Regents would see the children as a threat. Hell, he wasn't so sure he didn't feel that way himself. If half of what Marguerite had told them was true, he and the rest of plain old homo sapiens would be like Neanderthals to them.

    What would the board do with them? At the very least quarantine them. At the worst, nothing short of officially sanctioned euthanasia. Last year, they had enacted the Stillborn Act, which prevented medical personnel from prolonging the lives of severely deformed newborns, the birthrate of which were on the rise. And even if the act didn't apply legally to Marguerite's children, there were lots of ugly alternatives, such as opportune accidents.

    They could force Marguerite to give them the sperm and ova without taking the children. It was likely she had it stored on premises where she had backup generators. Thus one act of violence would spare him from being a party to another act against the children. But why split hairs? To leave them here on Earth was to abandon them to dying when Kali struck. Somehow, though, that seemed a natural death, as compared to his being a party, however indirect, to their murder.

    An hour later, he was still mulling this over as Kristen drove through the plaza near the freeway ramp.

    "Maybe you'd better drive when we get back on the freeway,” she said.

    "You're doing great. I think you can handle it. Just take it slow,” he said. The truth was, her driving scared the crap out of him. Like him, she wasn't used to judging speed, inertia, and all that under Earth conditions, but at least he'd had some experience as a child.

    More Low-Path zombies were stumbling around the little plaza as the sun set.

    Despite the day cooling, they still seemed more like sick, slow dogs than rampaging monsters. He tried to imagine a mob of zombies overwhelming Jorge and Crystal and came up dry. They didn't know all the details though. Maybe the things had cornered them inside the building.

    He glanced over his shoulder at their hitchhiker, Hannah. She sat in the back with her legs curled up beneath her, cradling the black and white cat. Tish was in the back, too, her head lolled and her body slumped in the safety harness. She had drunk herself into a stupor. Neither he nor Kristen had discouraged her from doing so. He might have done the same himself, facing a possible death sentence. Or was that an undead sentence? They had all seen too many zombie movies.

    Hannah was another matter. She was riding back with them to see if any of her people had survived the Anita's landing. She made Olson nervous. She hadn't spoken one word since getting in the truck. If what Marguerite had told them was true, the Anita had fried a small commune at the landing site-the girl's entire adopted family. He wanted to tell her that it hadn't been their fault. They had landed within thirty meters of where Deep Throat told them to land. But somehow he doubted that would do much good.

    He had been careful to remove all the weapons from the back seat.

    "Shit!"

    Kristen had let the Humvee wander over and upon the sidewalk, pinning a zombie against a light post before hitting the brake. The zombie, wearing a ragged housedress, moved its arms frenetically for ten or fifteen seconds, pounding its fists against the hood. Then it just ran down, like a wind-up toy with a short spring, and slumped there, exhausted, looking at them with the same sad eyes as the one that had bitten Tish.

    "They don't have much energy reserves,” Olson said.

    "No wonder, considering that their metabolisms are so compromised,” Kristen said.

    She put the Humvee in reverse and unpinned the zombie. It stared stupidly at them, then stumbled away, its waist bent at a strange angle, tottered for a minute and fell down. “I think I've had enough driving lessons for the day,” Kristen said.

    "Nonsense, you're doing great,” he said. “In fact you just got extra points."

    "Extra points? What for?"

    "It's Texas law. If you're driving a SUV or a pickup, you get ten bonus points for every zombie you run over."

    A half hour later, as she drove on the freeway, she was still laughing at this lame joke. It had probably been an old joke when his father used it four and a half decades ago when teaching him to drive, except instead of zombies winning points it was pedestrians. But Kristen was a fast learner and was already swerving around the derelict vehicles without slowing down. In fact, she had become fearless. He cringed as she gradually increased the speed. She was like a teenage driver, immortal for never having been in a ground vehicle accident and for not realizing how a piece of iron and sheet metal could so easily come apart at terrestrial speeds.

    Back at the Anita's landing site, the asphalt was still smoldering from the landing, but all the open flames had died. Another Hummer was parked near the Anita's loading ramp. Was it the Kaplan and Badr team or Gayle who had returned?

    Hannah was the first out of the Humvee, her knapsack slung over her shoulder.

    "Hey!” Kristen called. “Wait, and I'll go with you."

    The girl turned to look at them, but continued walking backward. “I'm going alone."

    "There could still be some of those creatures out there."

    "I can take care of myself,” she said, putting the cat down at her feet and pulling a huge pistol out of her knapsack.

    Olson almost choked. He was getting slow-witted. There was no rule that said she wouldn't have her own weapon.

    "You may not like what you find out there, Hannah,” Olson said and just barely stopped himself from doing an I've-seen-that-movie-before reference to “Planet of the Apes.” It was a stupid game, invented by a bunch of space-bound movie junkies.

    "I could go with you. Maybe I could help,” Kristen said.

    "You've all done enough,” Hannah said, leaving Olson to wonder whether she was referring to the ride or to their having roasted her commune.

    They watched her hike toward the ruins of a small cinder block building. The commune had been underground, and that must be one way in. Perhaps her people had survived.

    And perhaps I'll grow wings and fly away like Tinkerbell, Olson thought.

    "I should follow her,” Kristen said, her voice weary.

    "You're exhausted. You wouldn't do her much good,” Olson said.

    Besides, he thought, you might get shot.

    Hannah must have heard them talking and misinterpreted. She turned toward them again and called out from the smoldering parking lot. “How many points?” she called back to them.

    "How many points for what?” Olson replied.

    "If you get ten points for running over a zombie, how many do you get for nuking twenty-five humans?"

    "We really didn't know,” Kristen called. But the young woman had already turned and entered a gap in the cinder block wall.

    "Let her go. She has to do what she has to do,” Olson said. “Besides, my legs feel like they're made of jelly and my spine like a collapsing stack of dominos."

    "I'm about to fall down, too. But damn it, we ought to do something."

    "Do whasst?” Tish said, tumbling out of the Humvee but landing on her feet.

    "I think we're all ready for a meeting in the Jacuzzi,” Olson said and trudged up the ramp into the ship. He could hear Tish stumbling after him and then Kristen.

    They took the elevator to the fourth level, stripped without modesty and climbed into the large tub called the Gravity Relief Pool, a meter deep pool designed to hold water when the ship was groundside. Its purpose was to provide weary crew with some relief from the relentless burden of Earth's gravity.

    "Oops, she sank!” Kristen said.

    Tish had passed out almost immediately and sank beneath the churning water.

    "Let's just drag her out and throw a towel over her. I'm too tired to keep holding her up."

    Only after a half hour in the tank did the ache in his knees and back diminish enough to allow him to focus.

    "Computer, voice command,” he called.

    "Ready,” the computer replied. Olson had restored voice commands soon after landing. He had cured the thing of blabbering-verbose mode the engineers called it-but it still spoke in that fembot voice that sounded like something out of a B-movie. Life imitating art or rather engineers imitating what they thought was art.

    "Who's currently on board?"

    "I didn't understand that. Could you repeat?"

    "Which crew members are on the ship?” Olson spoke louder and as clearly as he could.

    "Crew members James Olson, Kristen Norman, Gayle Ring, and Robert Randel are currently logged in at the main hatch. I'm not certain about Tisha Smith. Her thumbprint wasn't used; Executive officer K. Norman logged her in by proxy."

    "That's because I'm only temporarily here,” said Tisha, suddenly sitting up. “Get it? Temporal. As in temporary.” The towel they had spread over her dropped, exposing her breasts. There was a large red pimple over the right areola.

    "Could you repeat?” the computer said.

    "Shush, Tisha. We don't know that you're infected,” Kristen said.

    "Don't start on me, Miss Normal, with that half-empty, half-full crap!"

    "Continue, computer,” Olson said.

    "Crew members Daniel Kaplan, Abraham Badr, Jorge Blanca, and Crystal Karen are currently logged out at the main hatch."

    "You know what they say about whether your cup is half full/half empty, don't you?

    "I know. I know,” Olson said. “That was one of Jorge's jokes. He told it a hundred times."

    "And he's dead too,” Tish said, her anger turning at once to moroseness.

    Olson secretly wished he had another bottle to give her, but she was correct. Two crew members, lost already, if he had heard Gayle correctly.

    "Computer?"

    "Yes."

    "Page Gayle Ring and ask her to join us in the Gravity Relief Pool."

    The page came a second later over the public address system.

    "So, what's next?” Kristen asked.

    Olson sighed. “Regroup from my screw-ups and fall back on our collective ass, I guess, but you're the ranking executive officer. You tell me."

    "Technically, I may pull rank, but I think we all know…"

    "Who got us all in this fine mess?"

    "Not that. You should really try to think more positively. True, shit happens, and you can't plan for every contingency. And leading some people is like herding cats.” She looked at Tish. The young woman was peeling off her wet bandage. The bite wound looked bad, puckered and purplish around the edges. That could be from being in the whirlpool water, but Olson suddenly did not feel comfortable in the water with her.

    "Have you ever tried herding cats?"

    "I've never even held one; I just like the expression."

    "Me too. But the fact remains we're not doing so well, and that we underestimated the zombie danger."

    "Tish's injury could have been avoided."

    "We all read the reports, including Tish. The things can go into a hibernation state and live for years, rabidly aggressive toward anything that moves, and so on."

    "You should have made me close the window,” Tish said. “It's your fucking fault."

    "What we should do now is put a dry dressing on that wound,” Kristen said.

    "You should have made me close the fucking window,” Tish repeated.

    "I think we should try getting the DNA fab unit,” Kristen said. “It would allow us to synthesize and mass produce a whole range of pharmaceuticals."

    "We are at a classic nexus. A place where potentialities are bound together,” Gayle strode into the room with a spring to her step as if she were in the gravity field of the Moon and not the Earth.

    She had ditched the coveralls and wore the skimpy bikini outfit of that morning. She looked none the worse for wear, except her flip-flop clad feet were splattered with blood. She had a shotgun slung by its strap over her shoulder.

    "For you un-initiates, a nexus,” she went on, “is a karmic crossroads, a turning point where a seemingly trivial conscious choice can launch one into an entirely new alternate timeline."

    They all just stared at her, speechless. On second look, she had changed. Her hair seemed to stand out straight from her head, giving the impression that she was electrified.

    Gayle's voice rose sharply, and her glance flickered from Olson to Kristen and back to Olson again, making momentary eye contact, then looking away. “I know I was ordered to wear coveralls, but they had blood on them, and I see you're not wearing regulation dress either."

    Kristen didn't reply. When Gayle grabbed a towel and knelt to wipe the blood off her feet, Kristen whispered to Olson, “Danger, Will Robinson."

    "Yep, I've definitely seen this movie before,” he whispered back.

    Gayle looked up at them and smiled a Martha Stewart smile.

    

    

    

    Jorge, steel pipe in hand, watched the two zombies feed on a third. Their dining was a slow and deliberate process, more a languid gnawing and gumming than a frenzied rending and shredding. The diners moved as slow as molasses, nothing at all like the carnage that movie zombies inflicted. They barely had the strength to break the corpse's fingers or pluck out an eyeball, much less twist off arms or scoop out intestines. So much for life imitating art-or rather the un-dead imitating art-but it made one wonder. So what if the movie makers missed the mark on the minor details, such as vigorous chomping. Were all those twentieth-century zombie movies some kind of prophetic vision? The future seen through a fogged window?

    The female zombie let out a low, frustrated moan that seemed to come from the pits of hell. Now that was more like it. The male feeder ignored her. He seemed only marginally more alive than the corpse he was feeding on. They were pitiful creatures.

    Yet Jorge already had observed the zombies enough to not underestimate them. Despite their physical infirmities, the creatures were capable of the mad sprint when they saw fresh meat to chase. It didn't matter if twenty or thirty meters into the chase many would clasp their heads in agony and drop to the ground in mid-stride, bleeding from their eyes, ears, and nostrils, felled by a stroke half way through their adrenaline rush. He suspected that if one of the creatures got a hold of him for even a minute, it could do serious harm despite its lack of energy reserves.

    And he had a limited supply of energy himself. What he had came in inhaler form: Turbinat, a compounded drug he carried that sped up mitochondrial activity.

    Mitochondria were organelles that resided in nearly all his cells-of all human cells for that matter-and one of their functions was to convert food to usable energy. He, and the rest of his fellow Moonnauts, had carried Turbinat with them at all times while in one-G. A regular dosage kept their cellular mitochondria churning along at turbo speed. In combination with steroids and other drugs, Turbinat allowed them to function in all this goddamn gravity. The drug allegedly had the benefits of cocaine but none of the downsides, except, of course, that it was highly addictive.

    But Gayle had made him toss his Turbinat kit down the pipe along with his walkie-talkie. Not before he'd palmed a few doses, though. Now he was on a deadline. He had about twelve hours before he ran out of energy. He would still be alive and free to make his way back to the Anita, but he'd have all the vitality of a cancer patient on chemotherapy. He had to make his way across thirty kilometers of zombie-infested urban landscape. He needed transport, he figured, and just across the street was his ticket, he figured: a motorcycle dealership. Brand new Harleys and BMW twins sat all in a row. He could see that some bikes had the keys in them.

    Of course there was the sobering fact that he'd never driven any kind of motor vehicle in the real world, but he had spent a lot of time in a motorcycle simulator program, and had driven all the models or ones nearly like them on virtual streets. How different could the real thing be?

    It was time to find out. Time to shit or get off the vacuum toilet.

    Steel pipe in hand he strode across the street, hoping the zombies would be too involved with their banquet to bother with him. The first few meters it looked as if he might get his wish. They rooted like contented hogs against the corpse's bare, distended belly, trying to tear into the pasty flesh. With the street partially blocked by disabled automobiles, his only path led him within a few meters of the feeding. They lifted their heads in unison and let out prolonged moans. He froze. Allegedly, zombies in the later stages of infection were only attracted to motion and some smells. The two calmed for a moment. The male returned to wallowing in the gore that had been the corpse's stomach, but the female, who had shoe-leather black hair, fishnet hose, and eye, nose, and lip piercings, had a bit more brain left. She looked to the corpse, then to Jorge, then back to the corpse. Off-balanced by the weight of the pipe, he shifted his weight from his right foot to his left. It was less than a stagger, hardly a teeter, but it was enough. The female jerked her gaze away from the corpse to Jorge's feet and rose with a wailing lament. She lunged at him blazingly fast, but less than two meters away she stumbled and fell flat on her face. Then she stood up and toppled over to one side again.

    As he stepped back, he could see the reason for her klutziness: On one foot she wore a strap-on stiletto heel. The other foot was bare.

    She began to crawl toward him. She might have been pretty once in a Goth sort of way, but her face was covered with blood and grease and one eye socket was empty. The skin around the piercings was weeping yellow puss. Still, Jorge needed a determined act of will to raise the pipe and club her in the head. The impact made a dull crack, like hard plastic crunching underfoot, and her fishnet clad legs crumpled. Odd how fast things like bodies fell in Earth's gravity. Viscous blood drooled from her nose, and the toe of her lone high-heel shoe drummed rhythmically on pavement. The twitching was hypnotic-it looked as if she were doing some sort of Irish jig. One leg, the one with the shoe, jerked spasmodically until the knee touched her outstretched hand, and just as quickly jerked back. Fishnet hose were unknown on the Moon except in Web art and video games. High fashion for moon women tended to be one-piece jumpsuits. The Goth girl's hose, along with twitching pose, brought to mind old hand-drawn pinup poses he had found on the Internet: Vargas girls. But those naughty imaginary girls were all sparkling clean, wholesomely so. Dying Goth girl resembled Vargas girls only because of her fishnet hose and the way her dying, diseased brain lifted her leg to show knee and thigh. She had probably never been wholesome, even in life, and now she smelled of shit and putrefaction. He was certain he'd never look at any woman in fishnet hose the same way again.

    Then Jorge was on his back, the male zombie on top of him. Hypnotized by the death throes of the girl, he had forgotten about the male until the creature brought him down with a stumble-bum tackle. Jorge threw up his forearm to protect his face as the zombie scrambled up on his chest. The zombie bit it, and Jorge screamed in panic, not pain. The zombie's bite slipped off, not breaking the skin, for he had no teeth left. Jorge brought his knees up and pushed the zombie back. This was an instinctive move, but it bought Jorge time and enough space to bring the pipe to bear. The pipe caught the zombie in the neck. Unlike its Hollywood counterpart, the zombie responded to pain. It drew back, and Jorge swung again, this time hitting it in the temple. The blow knocked the zombie off Jorge's chest and onto its side, across the body of the Goth girl. But it wasn't through. It rose to its feet again, one eye hanging from the thread of its optic nerve. It looked like it was about to charge again, then slowed, and staggered to fall to one knee. It wasn't dead, just out of energy. It mewed rather than moaned. Using a two-handed grip, Jorge brought the pipe down so hard that it sank deep into the skull.

    Jorge trotted across the street to the motorcycle dealership, pausing once to throw up. He stepped over a knee-high chain fence and walked between the two rows of parked bikes where he could lean against the thick plate glass show window. There, with his back against the wall, he could catch his breath. He threw up again, a dry heave.

    Immediately, he faced two problems. The first was which bike to choose. Here in the real world, the bikes looked just too goddamn big. And though he knew the physics involved in keeping one upright-something gyroscopic with the wheels-it seemed more a feat for advanced computer control than a human brain. Especially his human brain, which was a fragile thing wrapped in a thin shell of bone.

    Too bad he hadn't been a fan of the sedan or pickup driving simulations. It would have been comforting to have a ton or so of sheet metal between him and the road.

    With no other zombies in sight, he strolled down the line of new Harleys, over ten years old. He knew these bikes. There was a huge two-tone Road King Classic, the Electra Glide Ultra, which looked even larger because of its large saddlebags and two-tiered seat. And then there was the Street Rod, what the archived biker blogs had called the “logical evolution of the V-Rod.” It had none of the clutter of the other big bikes, but its wheelbase was still a hundred and seventy centimeters, and it massed, if his memory served, nearly three-hundred kilograms. And the keys were in it. He unscrewed the gas cap, and peered inside. There was fluid inside that smelled like solvent-gasoline, he supposed, having never smelled it before. The question was, would it still be good? The big bike had most likely been sitting here in the lot for nearly twelve years, since the onset of the plague, its single headlight pointed toward the street, its glossy paint reflecting images of zombies shuffling down in the street, its chrome mirroring clouds of black sooty smoke as parts of the city burned. It had survived all that unscathed, and except for a coating of dust, it looked brand new. But would it survive him? And would he survive riding it, assuming he could get it started?

    With the big Hummers, according to Olson, the military used a fuel stabilizer that kept the gasoline from turning to gel over time. But was that common practice on civilian vehicles? He dipped the pipe into the fuel tank. It came out wet; no sludge. That seemed a good sign. He screwed the cap back on. Either it was common practice or Olson had been full of shit.

    He grabbed the handlebar and swung a leg over the bike. Straddling the bike was different from what he imagined. The saddle seemed too wide and was rock-hard. He had expected to feel like he was sitting in something soft, immersed, as he did in the acceleration couches on the Anita. Sitting on the Street Rod, was just that-he was sitting on it, perched up high as if on a bench. A strong breeze came from the south. What an amazing feeling, being outside in all this space and feeling an unseen force strong enough to make the fabric of his jumpsuit flap.

    He couldn't put both hands on the handlebar with the pipe in the way, so he tossed it on the sidewalk. It made a startlingly loud, resonating clang and rolled over against a nearby bike. Stupid! He might as well as have set off an alarm. Hesitantly, he stood up on the foot pegs and scanned the street.

    Nothing.

    Still perched on the foot pegs, he twisted and looked behind him. Nothing there, either. No! Something had moved in his peripheral vision, just on the edge of perception.

    He dismounted, nearly falling on his face, and retrieved the pipe. Crouching behind the Harley, he peered over the seat into the showroom. He checked out the front show windows, but saw no signs of movement. A large metal box on wheels, a container for trash, called a dumpster, if he remembered correctly, partially blocked one window. Glare off the window from the late-afternoon sun made him wince.

    The showroom was clear-at least what he could see of it. Could it have been a reflection? He turned slowly and looked out into the street. No, again. Anything that would have made a big reflection would have had to be very close.

    A mystery. From what he'd read about the zombies, as they were attracted by motion and sound, they would make a bee-line toward the stimulus. A zombie inside the building wouldn't hide. It wouldn't think to make for a side door and flank him. It would slam up against the window repeatedly until it dashed out the remains of its feeble brain or ran out of energy or he, the stimulus, was out of sight, stopped moving, or making bloody fucking loud noises. So if it wasn't a zombie he saw, what was it? A survivor? Gayle had taught him to have more fear of the living than the nearly dead.

    He slowly stood up, his eyes on the window. Something moved again, white diffused, a ghost among the big machines, and he looked up and laughed. Clouds. Bloody clouds reflected in the window. He squatted, and the ghost disappeared as his angle of vision changed. He stood, and it reappeared. Having lived all his life on an airless world, the slow, lazy moving things overhead were new experiences. Living and moving around in this sea of air and atmospheric effects was like living in an aquarium. The light-and the way his brain judged distance-behaved differently than in a vacuum or even the extremely low humidity of one of the Moon's big underground habitats.

    Though something about the vision still nagged him, he straddled the bike again. He squeezed the clutch lever and shifted into neutral. Was there a primer button on these bikes? Hesitantly, he turned the ignition key to the first notch. A dim red light bloomed on the clamshell-shaped instrument panel. Another good sign.

    "There's no time like right now,” he said to the empty sky and turned the key to start.

    The engine made a slow grinding sound and stopped. The little red light on the instrument panel flickered and went out.

    "Shit! What now?” he shouted.

    "You could try a jump start,” said a gravelly voice from the shadows.

    Without taking his fingers off the ignition switch, Jorge slowly turned toward the direction of the sound.

    "Here,” came the voice again, and slowly Jorge's mind distinguished a small, frumpy figure in dark clothes squatting near the dumpster. In the late afternoon shadows, he couldn't make out if it was a man or a woman.

    "Scared the crap out of you, didn't I?"

    The voice was like two rocks rubbing together. Male.

    "Who are you?"

    "These days, ‘what are you?’ would be better question,” he said and stood, coming out of the shadows, dragging one foot behind.

    The man had dirty white hair down to his shoulders and a salt and pepper beard. His skin was as gray as concrete and punctuated here and there with large suppurating sores.

    "You're one of them!"

    "Don't freak, man,” the man said, raising an open hand in a weak wave. Two of his fingers were rotted stubs. “Peace."

    

    

    

    Kristen tried to maintain a poker face as she lifted the corner of Tish's bandage.

    "How is it?” Tish said, refusing to look at her wound.

    "Not bad, really."

    "You're just trying to make me feel better."

    "No, I'm not. Look for yourself."

    Tears in her eyes, Tish glanced at the wound and looked away. “Jesus, it looks like shit!"

    "Nonsense. It's not infected and seems to be healing well."

    Tish sneaked another peek and looked away again.

    It was like treating a child, Kristen thought. And when she thought of it, Tish was not much more than a child. What was she? Nineteen? Twenty?

    "Tish, I'm not lying. If it were infected, it would look a lot different. The skin around the wound would be red and swollen. The scab would feel boggy. It would ooze green or yellow puss when I pressed on it like this."

    "Ouch! That hurt, damn it."

    "That's another point. It was just an ‘ouch.’ You're not rolling on the floor screaming."

    "So, I'm going to be okay?"

    "You're going to be fine,” Kristen said, but the truth was, she didn't know. No one knew. Even in the early stages of the plague, when millions were dying every day, the Low-Path and High-Path viruses mutated rapidly. At some point, the viruses had lost their ability to survive as an airborne contagion and had become infectious. The question for Tish was whether it had further mutated into a benign virus? Had it pulled a Cheshire Cat disappearing act and left behind only the demented grins of the zombies? Did the multiple strains of viruses remain infectious in a zombie that had spent much of the last four or five years in hibernation? Eleven years. It had been that long since the outbreak of the plague. From what she'd seen of the zombies, it was hard to imagine that they could live a decade, as compromised as their health was. Either way, would Tish's immune system shrug off such a Low-Path infection? Would she become infectious herself?

    Kristen finished the new bandage and resisted the impulse to pat Tish on the head and say, “There, there."

    Olson came into the med room as Tish left.

    "Good news and bad news,” he said.

    "Good news first."

    "Okay, but it's a stretch. Want to hear it anyway?"

    "Get on with it."

    "You know, it could have been worse without the plague. Earth would have discovered the comet when we did. Since it was too late to do anything, there would have been mass panic. Thousands of people would have tried to emigrate to the Moon, while we wouldn't have had the resources to support them or resist them. Send us your tired, hungry, and oxygen needy. And this mission would have certainly been impossible."

    "That's it? That's the good news?"

    "My therapist told me I should try to think positive."

    "What's really on your mind, Jimmy?"

    "Gayle Ring is scaring the shit out of me. I don't believe Crystal and Jorge were killed by zombies."

    "Gayle is highly unstable, I agree. But murder?"

    "I didn't say anything about murder. But I thought about it. Evidently, the thought crossed your mind too."

    "There's no motive. Why would she kill Crystal and Jorge?"

    "You said she was crazy."

    "Unstable."

    "Whatever."

    "She's not crazy in that way. She's not a psychopath. She'd never have passed the first level of psychological screening. Other disorders she might sneak by, but something that pathological-no."

    "Remember though,” he said. “If the psyche standards were set too high, three-fourths of the Moon's population wouldn't pass. Who knows what they let slip by?"

    "She's just crazy in a religious way. And I think she's been dipping into the more dangerous steroids."

    Olson scratched his chin. Kristen wondered what he looked like under that salt-and-pepper beard.

    "Maybe she's hallucinating. Maybe Crystal and Jorge aren't dead at all, but just abandoned somewhere in Mesquite,” he said.

    "What's Mesquite?"

    "That's where the plant was, Mesquite. It's like a borough, an administrative unit. Like Queens in New York."

    "You're not making any sense."

    "Okay, think of them as adjoining habitats. Dallas is to Mesquite as Armstrong is to Conrad."

    "Okay. Gotcha. So how far are we from the Mesquite habitat?"

    "About twenty to twenty-five kilometers."

    "Do you think we should look for them?"

    "No, I don't."

    "What if you're right? That Gayle just lost it and abandoned them? We can't just leave them."

    "If I really thought there was a chance they were still alive, I'd say we should consider it,” Olson said.

    "But you admit there's a chance Gayle is hallucinating and just left them there?"

    "Yes, but remember they each had a walkie-talkie. I think if they were alive and lost, we would have heard from them by now."

    "We could just go for a look-see.” Kristen felt her anger rising.

    "We'd never find them. I said Mesquite was like the Conrad Moon habitat, in that it adjoins Dallas, but the similarity ends there. It's a huge sprawl. It would be like tooling around on a rover in Copernicus crater looking for a lost tool in the moon dust. Mesquite is just too big. It would take weeks. There are too few us, and we don't have weeks."

    "But it's just wrong, damn it, Jimmy. It's just wrong not to do something if there's a chance they're still alive."

    "Maybe so, if it was just our lives we were gambling with. But it's not. We have to consider the bigger picture."

    "Now you're starting to sound like a regent. The little guys, the underlings, can be sacrificed for the universal good."

    "Now, that was fucking cold,” Jimmy said, stood to leave.

    "Wait, Jimmy. You're right. I'm sorry,” She realized she had nearly been screaming at him. He sat there looking at her with his big, sad eyes. And she wasn't just trying to cajole him. He was right, she knew. But to do nothing made her feel so damn helpless, as if they were part of a kid's pet robot, driven by gears, springs and avoidance sensors. They had the semblance of sentience, but they were just programmed toys. She, Jimmy, and everyone else on this mission just kept spinning along, having the semblance of free will, but driven by bits of programming code.

    "We've all been under a lot of stress,” she said, feeling as if she were an actress in some hackneyed B-movie, mouthing the same old cliches used in every other B-movie ever made.

    "Seen that movie,” Jimmy said, but without levity.

    "Well, it's true. Tish may be infected, and I think I screwed up with Gayle, signing off on her medical release after the explosion. I'm taking it out on you."

    Jimmy's features softened. “Yeah, back to Gayle. I don't know what to do with her."

    "She's always carrying her shotgun, wherever she goes inside the ship."

    Jimmy nodded. “Worse,” he said, “I'm not sure I could do anything with her, even if I could decide. In a tussle, I'm pretty sure she could kick my ass with both her feet tied behind her if I tried to take her gun away."

    "Do you think she'd give it up with a direct order from me? I am ranking exec, you know."

    "In a word? Not-a-fucking-chance. And I haven't seen her sleep since we landed."

    There was a moment of silence between them.

    "Could you formulate a slight change to her daily dose of Turbinat?"

    "Two minds, but a single thought."

    "Are you sure that's not two butts, but a single mind?"

    Despite herself, she laughed at this lame joke, one which he had used a half dozen times before.

    "Hi, guys,” Gayle said from the doorway.

    They both jumped. How much had she heard?

    "Hello, Gayle,” Olson said. “We were just discussing mission re-planning."

    "We were wondering if there was a chance that Jorge or Crystal might still be alive,” Kristen said. Olson gave her a hard look, but she continued. “Did you see them both die?"

    Gayle, who was now wearing white coveralls, turned her back to them. She had the short-barrel shotgun slung on a strap over one shoulder. It was at best, an incongruous bit of body language. Kristen heard a clicking sound from Jimmy. She realized he had unsnapped the safety strap from his sidearm holster and cocked the hammer. If Gayle was aware of this, she made no sign.

    "I've already told you what happened,” she said, an odd timbre to her voice. “Twice. We were in the warehouse. The zombies-there must have been thirty or forty of them-came out of the dark and cornered us. We managed to get off a couple of shots, but they boiled over us. I managed to get out to safety in the Hummer. I could hear Crystal and Jorge screaming for a few seconds, then they stopped.” She turned. “I could have gone back and died with them. Is that what you think I should have done?” Tears were streaming down her face.

    Crocodile tears? Kristen wondered. Not quite. The tears looked real, but like everything else about Gayle, they didn't quite ring sincere. Kristen suspected Gayle was crying for herself, not for her two lost crewmates.

    "Since you didn't actually see Jorge and Crystal die, we were considering going to have a look-see ourselves,” Kristen said. She looked to Jimmy for support, but he was wearing his best poker face.

    "The zombies we saw didn't act coordinated,” Kristen said. “They didn't move in groups or even mobs. They were tripping all over each other. Did you even look for their bodies?"

    "There was a bigger picture to consider,” Gayle said.

    "What bigger picture?” Olson said. “You either tried to find them or not."

    Though he'd used the same words before, Kristen noticed he was visibly unsettled.

    Ignoring the extra chair, Gayle sat on the floor, her legs crossed, in the lotus position. The butt of the shotgun bumped the floor, and she absentmindedly un-slung it and laid it across her waist. She turned her palms up, the tip of her index fingers touching the tips of her thumbs. She closed her eyes for a minute, took a deep breath and slowly let it out.

    Still life; bodhisattva with shotgun, Kristen thought, or more like anti-bodhisattva, for the enlightened would forsake Nirvana to save others. Not sacrifice human beings for the big picture.

    "The bigger picture, if I hear you correctly,” Olson said, “was to save yourself."

    Busted! Kristen thought, and she noticed Olson's hand now rested on the handgun.

    "Sometimes you just have to cut your losses,” Gayle said, gazing at the floor, but not in regret or even humility. Her gaze was a thousand-mile stare, something Kristen saw in patients who accepted the fact of their imminent death. Gayle's hands relaxed from the meditation posture and found the shotgun.

    The tension in the room was almost unbearable; Kristen felt like she did when waiting for an accident to happen. You dreaded the impact, but when it finally happened, there was a sense of relief when it was over. Kristen felt the uncontrollable-almost manic-urge to do something, anything, to resolve the situation.

    "Gayle, I'm going to have to ask you to give up the shotgun,” Kristen said and instantly regretted it.

    "Are you going to shoot me, Kristen, to make up for the deaths of Jorge and Crystal?"

    "I don't have a gun."

    "Jimmy does."

    Kristen heard Jimmy draw his pistol. This all was going too bad too fast. Why hadn't she kept her mouth shut and avoided this confrontation?

    "No, Gayle. It's not like that. It's just new policy. No weapons on board. We'll re-issue you a gun when you're ready to go back out in the city."

    "I don't think I want to give it up,” Gayle said. She didn't look at either Kristen or Jimmy as she said this; she was talking to herself and not them.

    "It's not an option, Gayle,” Jimmy said.

    Kristen let out the breath she had been unconsciously holding. Compulsive mistake or not, Jimmy was going to back her up.

    Gayle stood up by scissoring her legs without using her hands. One would think she had lived her entire life in Earth gravity.

    Jimmy brought the pistol up and aimed it at her chest. “If your finger so much as comes close to the trigger, I will shoot you, Gayle."

    "You thought, I'll shoot you, you bitch, didn't you, Jimmy?” Gayle said, but holding on the end of the barrel, she slowly let go with the trigger-finger hand. The shotgun stock swung down, just missing the floor.

    "Are you psychic now, Gayle? You think you can read my mind?"

    "I know your type. You always wanted to fuck me. That's what this is all about."

    "Now is not the time to play the sex card,” Kristen said.

    Gayle smiled that Martha Stewart smile again. “I thought it might be worth a shot-pardon the pun."

    The sly smile faded as quickly as it came. “I just want to know what this is all about,” she said. “Maybe I chickened out, but that's no reason to treat me like a criminal."

    A collage of emotions played across Gayle's face in rapid succession like a slide show. Fear, anger, resignation, remorse, as if Gayle's brain was trying each one on to see if one would fit. Sad regret seemed to hold for a minute, and a single tear trickled down her cheek.

    She's not faking this, Kristen thought. The woman was really losing control.

    "Let me give you a sedative,” Kristen said. “We can work this out."

    "I think it's too late for that; too late for any of us, poor, sick hominids,” Gayle said. Her remorseful expression was replaced by one of determination.

    "Don't do it, Gayle,” Jimmy said. “I really don't want to shoot you, but if it comes down to you or me, it's going to be you.” He held the pistol with both hands now.

    "You always think in either/or terms, don't you, Jimmy?” she said, and turned her back to them. “There's often another solution. Another possibility: I'm going to walk out of here now, Jimmy. Out of this room and out of the ship."

    She took a step toward the door.

    "Stop, Gayle, goddamn it!"

    "I won't come back. You won't have to shoot me, but if you're going to, you'll have to shoot me in the back, and you won't be able to tell yourself that it was in self defense."

    She took another step. Kristen looked at Jimmy. He was sweating now, and his hands trembled. Another step and Gayle was out the door. Jimmy followed her as far as the door, still holding the gun in front of him. Kristen braced herself for the shot.

    "Don't do it. Let her go,” she tried to shout, but it came out in a hoarse whisper.

    But she needn't have bothered. Jimmy didn't step through the door. Instead he hit the emergency door button, and the door slid shut.

    "I couldn't do it,” he said. “I couldn't shoot her, not in the back or anywhere else. I'm a weak man."

    She stepped up to him. “You're not a murderer, that's all. That's not weakness in my book; that's strength.” She wanted to kiss the old fart, but patted him on the chest instead.

    "Stay away from the door.” He grabbed her wrist and pulled her to one side.

    "It's made of steel. She can't shoot through that."

    "She could shoot through the port hole. It's just some sort of Plexiglas. Here hold this.” He gave her the pistol, handgrip first. “Don't worry. The safety was on. I never took it off."

    "Weak man or not, remind me never to play poker with you."

    Jimmy didn't answer. He pulled a wireless keypad out of his pocket, unfolded it on a gurney, and began to frantically type in commands.

    "What are you doing?"

    "I've got to close off all the compartments, so she has nowhere to go but out of the ship. There's still Tish and the others to think about.” As he typed, she could hear doors sliding shut down the hallway.

    "But what could she do? Nothing short of high explosives could damage this ship.” She stopped herself, thinking of the explosion in space.

    "Do you think…?” she said.

    "Yes, I do think. Now shut up. I've got to keep her from killing anyone else."

    He stabbed at the enter key, and she could hear another door shut far away.

    "Now, just the doors to the lower sections,” Jimmy said, but a shotgun blast reverberated down the hallway.

    "Too late. Too fucking late,” Jimmy said.

    

    

    

    Gayle Ring floored the Hummer. Behind her the huge tires flung gravel which pinged off the Anita's thick metal fender wells like ricocheting bullets. She hit a pothole the size of a small impact crater and her bare foot, slick with Bobby Randel's blood, slipped off the accelerator pedal. The Hummer coasted to a stop before she could wipe off the sole of her foot on the calf of her other leg. Clotted blood stuck between her toes. Murder was amazingly messy, even in gravity.

    "Out damn spot,” she said out loud. “I want you out!"

    Not funny, when she thought about it.

    What she really wanted to do was to stop and rub her feet clean in real naked Earth. But here in the city plain soil was hard to find. Lots of dirt; it seemed to find its way into the cracks of everything, but living dirt-soil accumulated in amounts large enough to grow anything-was hard to find. She remembered a little park not far from the parking lot; a bit sad, populated with scraggy trees and beer bottles, but underneath the rubble was grass and that meant real soil. She would stop there to replenish her soul before going on. She felt a surge of pleasure coiling up through her spine at the mere thought but kept driving. She needed to distance herself from the ship: out of sight, out of mind, out of shotgun range. Jimmy and Kristen would think she merely wigged out and ran off into the city. There was still the slight chance-very slight-that they might be able to pull something off despite their losses and take something back into space with them. Given a little luck, she might be able to catch them unaware.

    Gayle knew that in her heart of hearts that her only friend was God. Not the Thor-like patriarch of the Old Testament, nor that randy Greek teenager who periodically impersonated cloven animals, fish, and fowl in order to impregnate virgins. Her God-who was her god? At one time it had seemed impossible to know, for as someone had said, God by definition was the reflection of a universal mystery, expressing itself in everything living, manifest in all aspects of the organic and inorganic reality that was Earth. God was unattainable, unknowable by the very nature of her omnipresence. She realized now that whatever guru had said that had gotten it mostly wrong. Her Moist Mother sisters and brothers, at least the more orthodox ones, had subscribed to a similar theology and missed the point too. To the Moist Mothers, so distanced from Earth, God was an unknowable, mysterious, perpetual enigma, but not to her. God talked to her more and more. Not in words, for the concepts were too big for the blathering, gibbering thoughts of her hominid mind, but in a kind of code. When she did something right, like extinguishing Bobby Randel, she got a rush of pure pleasure. When she did something wrong, or failed to act when she knew she should, it was like being cast out of some promised land into a pit of madness and despair.

    After only a few hours on Earth, she had become aware that God was much closer, right here under her feet, talking as though via a pipeline that led from the depths of Mother Earth, up through the soles of her feet, through her flesh and bone, channeling along the spine and deep into a heretofore unknown part of her mind. The closer she got to Mother Earth, the more intimate the contact, the clearer the code became, and each bit sang through her chakras like a pure, cold orgasm. Each time she interpreted the God code correctly, the pleasure became cleaner, purer. When she had killed Crystal, the pleasure had nearly brought her to her knees. Not a physical pleasure, but the overwhelming rush of joy from being momentarily an object of God's will.

    Not pursuing Jorge had been following God's will too. He would die eventually, either in the city when the residual effects of his last Turbinat dose subsided or from a zombie attack. He would not make it back to the Anita; he was no longer a player. There had been other work to do. And just now, when she had shot Bobby Randel as she left the ship, she had cried with bittersweet ecstasy.

    That's why she felt secure in departing from her plan, which had originally been simply to scuttle the mission and let events take their natural course.

    It was the engineers’ fault. They had built the Anita too well. Lacking the knowledge to detonate one of the nuclear pulse bombs, she saw no way to disable the ship, which had been built to withstand small nuclear blasts, with any certainty. Conventional explosives, even by the truckload, were unlikely to damage or even topple the squat, obscene thing. There were few volatile chemicals on board, so gutting the interior with fire was out of the question.

    She worried that Jimmy, Kristen, and the other three remaining crew might do something that would ensure the survival of the human race long enough to repopulate the Earth. It was a small chance, but one she had to consider. She could do watchful waiting, just lose herself in the city to see if they managed to do anything that might make a difference. She wished she knew where the frozen sperm and ova were. If she destroyed that material, the humans in space would genetically self-destruct in the two hundred years or so it would take Earth to become habitable for large mammals.

    The odds were, even with the boost promised by new DNA, the species was doomed, but it wasn't a sure thing. Her chance of killing them all now was nil. They would have to split up into teams. Kristen and Olson would go after the sperm and ova. With Bobby gone, that left Kaplan and Badr-an unlikely team-to make another try for the DNA fabricator. Tish was all but useless, had been even before the bite incident. They would most likely leave her on the Anita. Gayle knew she had a choice to make. Try to shadow Kristen and Jimmy when they went back out and either kill them or destroy the frozen sperm and ova-or both. Or follow Kaplan and Badr.

    Kaplan and Badr would be an easier target, but Jimmy was the key. In his alpha male paranoia, he monopolized control of the Anita. Without Jimmy, the Anita was Earthbound. But the old man was too wary and Kristen too smart to let down their guard again.

    A vision overwhelmed her: She was floating in space, somewhere between the Earth and the Moon. She could see the comet accelerating through space, its tail stretching out behind like a giant spermatozoa, always pointing away from the Sun. Earth, a huge blue and milky white ovum, swam in the blackness ready to be fertilized, its gravity pulling the comet seed into itself faster and faster. The comet struck the Earth in the Middle East, and a fireball erupted hundreds of miles into space. She could see shockwaves roll through the Earth's crust, boiling over Europe, while tsunamis, hundreds of kilometers high, swept across the Atlantic, pushing the clouds aside. Behind the waves, huge cracks appeared in the mantle. The comet had split the tectonic plate, and magna was streamed up through the crust. Before her eyes the time scale accelerated faster, and the Earth became a nearly sterile place, cleansed of all higher life forms, but in particular, free of the infection that had been homo sapiens.

    Millennium passed in moments, and the Earth began to renew itself. Her Cassandra sight faded, and she found herself parked near the edge of the large parking lot where the Anita had landed. Though the vision had faded, the sense persisted of her small acts echoing bigger events, and the bigger events themselves as metaphors for even larger, cosmic happenings. There was a pattern to all this, a pattern that teased her, one which would help her make the decision if she could but discern it, but something held the resolution just beyond her mental reach. She was a small version of the comet, bringing new life through destruction. She was the personification of transformation through death. She was an avatar; she was Kali.

    "Hey, you in the truck…"

    Gayle jumped. Possessed by the vision, she had lost sense of time and place. Standing by the door was a redheaded woman, a girl really, for she couldn't be more than eighteen or nineteen. It was the Earth girl, the one who had ridden back with Jimmy and Kristen.

    "What do you want?” Gayle stuttered, startled, by overlapping visions. The girl looked at once an innocent and beautiful child and a vile and parasitic, tumorous cell, a member of the species homo sapiens, an organism poised to multiply, repopulate, and consume a planet. She held a black and white cat on her shoulder and patted its back as if burping an infant.

    "I want a ride, if you're going downtown."

    "I'm not sure where I'm going…” Gayle glanced to her left. The shotgun lay there. Were there any shells left in it after Randel? How many times had she shot him? She really should conserve ammunition.

    "You guys have to go back to the aquarium to pick up the frozen sperm and stuff, don't you?” the girl said.

    There was a moment before this information sank in.

    "You're with the sperm and ova bank people?"

    "Not really, I just met them a day ago, but I have nothing here anymore.” She swept her arm to indicate the roasted parking lot. “And I want to go back there. So are you going there or what?"

    "Not originally, but a visit would fit well into my agenda-if that would make you happy."

    "Great,” the girl said. But as Gayle studied her, she didn't look very happy. Her eyes were red and puffy from crying.

    "You'll have to give me directions, though,” Gayle said.

    "No problem,” she said. “I can show you how to avoid the concentrations of zombies, too. Do I get in the back or the front seat?"

    "In front, of course. You'll have to come around. And I'll need to make room for you,” Gayle said, sliding the shotgun toward herself and switching the safety off in one movement.

    The cat looked at her with hateful green eyes. She had never seen a live cat-a cat in the flesh and fur-but she decided she didn't like the thing.

    Three, she thought, three shots. So there should be two shells left, one in the chamber and one in the magazine. That should be enough.

    

    

    

    Jorge sat in the shade, leaning against the cinder block wall of the motorcycle dealership with Francis, his new zombie friend. But he didn't sit too close, for no matter what Francis said about his only being a half-zombie, about the infection having spared his brain and higher functions, he was still a frightening apparition. More to the point, he smelled like fetid meat.

    They were watching the sunset together. Sol in space was a brilliant white ball. Here it was a glorious orange ball, looking several times larger than it did in space or from the Moon, dwarfing the city skyline to the west.

    "You Moon people must have kicked up a lot of dust and pollution when you came down,” Francis said. “I haven't seen such a good sunset since the end of civilization."

    "What's dust got to do with it?"

    "You make it sound like a Tina Turner song, boy,” Francis said. “But the dust scatters the light rays."

    Francis was currently feeding as they talked. Enlisting Jorge's help, he had set up an IV stand in the shade, and a greenish goop was running from a bag through a clear plastic tube into a hole in his stomach. Jorge tried to look away from where the tube disappeared through a crusty scab but felt hypnotized by it. The goop had just enough texture so that he could make out its slow, wormy progress through the tube. There were other IV bags as well. Francis had explained that one bag contained an anti-coagulant, the other, a broad-spectrum antibiotic. The rig was jumpered to an old car battery for power.

    "Are you sure you're all right with that thing?” Jorge asked, pointing at the little bubbles of dark blood that periodically bubbled from around the crusty hole.

    "Trust me. I was a molecular geneticist and a medical doctor in my past life. It's perfectly normal, given my current condition.” He gave Jorge what was probably meant to be a reassuring smile, but his bleeding gums had colored his teeth bright red. “It's not like I expect to live that much longer anyway. I'm just trying to keep up my energy until I tie up a few loose ends."

    "Neither do I."

    "Neither do you what?"

    "Expect to live much longer."

    "You're a young man, apparently uninfected. Why shouldn't you expect to live much longer?"

    Despite Francis’ gravelly, rasping voice, Jorge could tell he was genuinely concerned. He had told Francis of his origins, but not of the comet and the impending end of all life on Earth.

    There was a moment of silence, one of those times when the immeasurable emotional space between people seems to grow smaller. Francis smiled at him again, and Jorge got the feeling the old man was going to try to give him a hug. To dispel this moment-and thereby avoid a hug-Jorge asked, “What loose ends?"

    "What?"

    "What loose ends do you have to tie up?"

    "Lots of things, but for one, I want to see my wife again. I didn't think I would, but I do."

    Jorge pictured what his wife might look like and shuddered. “Maybe that wouldn't be a good idea."

    "Why not?

    "Well, she's dead, isn't she?"

    Francis looked at him puzzled.

    "Wouldn't you rather remember her when she was alive?"

    "Au contraire. She is most likely alive. The question is, though, would she rather remember me as when I was alive?"

    One of those long silences ensued, one that two friends can share without spoiling it by talk.

    "I've got a swell idea,” Francis said.

    Though being bottle fed old movies, Jorge had never heard anyone use the word ‘swell’ that way. Wait a minute. There was there was one about a bomb shelter kid…

    "When I finish my prime rib and salad here,"-Francis gestured at the bag of green goop-"whatta you say I give you a little real-world driving lesson? We'll hop on my trike and take a little drive across town to see my wife."

    "Sure, why not? Beats hanging around here waiting for the nearly dead zombie motherfuckers to come out-no offence meant, Francis."

    "None taken, though the difference between me and them is only a matter of a few brain cells. That and big doses of anti-coagulants and antibiotics. It's a cardiovascular disease-clots in the heart specifically-and runaway infections that finally kill most of them, you know. The brain damage has an uncanny resemblance to advanced Alzheimer's, at least in the frontal lobes. I knew that from autopsies, so I also dosed myself up on some the new drugs that stalled the progress of the disease. Think of me as my own lab-rat experiment."

    "I'll take your word for it. Tell me about your wife-what was her name?"

    "She's a geneticist-we were a team-we met and married while we worked on a secret project before the plague. After the plague, it seemed important, somehow, to carry on the work. But more important from your standpoint, she has a shortwave transmitter and a medical lab, and maybe she can contact your people,” Francis said. “Gawd, that is a sunset to die for!"

    Jorge caught a glimpse of some small animal running into an alley. It was followed by three, no four, miniature versions of itself.

    "Look! Was that a cat?"

    "What's the matter? You've never see cats before?"

    "Sure I have-I guess. I've only had virtual ones. The fur from the real ones tended to clog up air circulation systems. Also, I hear they freak in zero-G, something about them relying on their inner ear instead of their eyes to figure out up and down."

    "Virtual pets?"

    "Yeah, but even the virtual ones were hard to take care of. Keep shredding the virtual philodendrons and making new virtual litters all the time. My virtual snake was better."

    "I think you missed something having a software cat."

    "Like what? The smell?"

    "No, cats are very clean animals. But you can't pet a virtual cat, for one thing. And they have a presence, like a person or a dog."

    "It purred though."

    "Big fucking deal. Not the same thing."

    "But I thought all the cats on Earth died of Low-Path variants, along with most of the domestic mammals."

    "Most, but not all. A few had congenital immunity. Before I got sick, we had one that seemed to be immune. And I've seen a few feline eyes staring back at me at night. No dogs yet, though. Go figure. The surviving cats will breed fast; I suspect their feral offspring may inherit the cities. A pair of breeding cats, which can have two or more litters per year, can exponentially produce more than 400,000 offspring over a seven-year period. Think of it. Dallas as one great big cool cat city."

    "What will they eat?"

    "Good question. They're too smart or too picky to eat the dead zombies. All the birds are dead. I've seen plenty of cockroaches though. And lizards. Cats are survivors. They adapt and survive. I can almost hear the million-fold chorus of their caterwauls now. The meek mews shall inherit the Earth,” he said, laughing, then almost choking on phlegm. “Shit, I'm cackling now."

    Francis's maudlinness seemed to be relieved by this vision of cats, so Jorge again stifled the urge to tell him of the impending comet collision. It would likely even kill the cockroaches. Meanwhile he heard a zombie moan not far off. As the sun set and the temperature dropped, the creatures would be coming out in force.

    "If we're going to go, shouldn't we, uh, get going?” he asked.

    "Sure. Why not? I'm full up,” Francis said and began to disconnect the feeding tube.

    Francis’ ancient-looking motorcycle was a 1948 Indian Chief, Francis told him, restored to its original condition, with the exception of some technical engine modification detail-something about unleaded gasoline-that Jorge didn't understand. Lime green with white pin-striping and matching sidecar, it wasn't quite like any motorcycle he had ever seen. In some fashion, it reminded him more of a space-going vehicle, where accessories were just tacked on without regard to air resistance. Except instead of radar dishes and antennas, the Indian had bulky chrome headlamps, windshields-for both the driver and the passenger-that looked more stylish than functional. And the engine was completely exposed, including the drive chain. The seat was heart-shaped with cartoonish-looking large springs for shock absorption, like a huge bicycle seat. The bike was topped off with black leather saddlebags with white fringes.

    It was a work of art in steel, and Jorge guessed it had been turned off the assembly line long before his great-grandfather was born. He seriously doubted it would even start. Francis obviously loved the bike. “This might be my last ride on it,” he said.

    Francis painfully lowered himself into the sidecar, while Jorge practiced working through the gears with the foot shifter. Francis wedged a shotgun by his side and a stuffed backpack at his feet. He gripped the sidecar's abbreviated windshield with both hands and gave Jorge what was probably meant be an encouraging grin but came off looking like a death's head grimace.

    "Okay, son,” he said. “Start her up."

    Jorge tried not to look at Francis’ hands, what with their suppurating sores. He stood up on the right foot peg and shifted all his weight on to the kickstarter-no push-button start with this machine.

    The engine kicked over at once; the bike lurched forward. Francis grabbed his arm to keep him from having his face pitched into the windshield. Francis’ palm was moist and sticky-repelling to touch.

    "Sorry,” Jorge said. “I forgot I had it in gear."

    "Get your head on straight, and try it again."

    "Which way do I go?” Jorge said, with what he hoped was determination.

    "Straight down that street there,” Francis said. “And don't try any foolish shit. Remember, this is the real thing; your real bones and flesh and brain cells at risk; there's no reset button."

    "Gotcha.” Jorge flipped the gearshift lever up one notch, took a breath. The engine purred to life-then roared as he gave the throttle a twist. He clutched it, and holding his breath, slipped it into first. His start was a bit jerky, but the transition into second gear was smoother. And then they were cruising down the boulevard. The air temperature was dropping, and the wind caressed Jorge's scalp as gently as a woman's touch. His sense of smell was assaulted by the smell of oil and gasoline. The smell of death-the hint of putrefaction from Francis-was brushed away in the thrill of being on a motorcycle.

    "I'd imagine this is pretty tame stuff compared to space travel,” Francis said.

    "Not at all. There's no sense of motion in most cases; no wind in your face, you know."

    "No bugs up your nose either, I would expect."

    "No, just micro-meteoroids through your skull."

    "You've seen that?"

    "No… But it could happen. How am I doing?"

    "Fine, but we're going pretty slow. One of those-” he motioned to a zombie just stumbling out of the shadows into the evening twilight, “-might be able to catch up. Hell, he might be able to pass us."

    Jorge took the hint and gave it a little more gas.

    "You might try third gear. Come on now, you want to live forever?"

    No, but I'd like to live to reach the end of the street in one piece, Jorge thought, but when he checked the speedometer he found he was only traveling twenty-five mph.

    "Turn at the next corner,” Francis said.

    "How?"

    "What do you mean how? Downshift and slow down going into the curve; goose it going out."

    His hesitation must have been obvious, for Francis stood precariously in the sidecar, leaned over, and put his hands over Jorge's on the throttle and brake lever.

    "Get ready to downshift,” he said and lightly squeezed the brake.

    Jorge did as instructed, and the big transmission dropped back into second gear with a metallic clunk. He started to turn, but it seemed awkward. Francis took his hand off the brake lever and grabbed Jorge's shoulder, forcing him to lean into the curve.

    "Now gas it!” he said, helping Jorge with his other hand. The engine roared, and the rear end of the trike seemed to take on a life of its own, pushing them into the curve at just the right angle.

    "Now, next time, do that in third instead of second and at about forty instead of twenty, and we might get there before I turn totally into pus over here."

    Jorge started to mention that the man was rotting already-was that a piece of the old man's skin left behind on the back of his hand? But he restrained himself. Without the old man's help, he'd never get back to the ship. Besides, he liked the old man. The longing to be safely inside the ship, buckled up, was overwhelming, momentarily blanking the novelty of being on a real motorcycle at the bottom of a gravity well.

    "Look out!” Francis shouted.

    A zombie, female, wandered out in the street. I've seen this movie before, Jorge thought. It's the compulsory naked female zombie scene. The zombie was invariably blonde, with a good figure and only the faintest corpse-like look to her face. The scene for the adolescent boys. That's the way I like them. Brain-dead, so they won't resist. This naked zombie woman, however, wore a trench coat. The garment came down to her ankles but was open at the front, so it still counted as the naked babe scene-right?

    "What the fuck?” Francis reached for the handlebars, jarring Jorge out of his reverie. Stupid, this wasn't a movie. He had to react, but his brain seemed frozen. He tapped the brake and came to a dead stop at the zombie's feet. Up close, he could smell her over the faint hot metal odor of the motor; she smelled of shit and putrefaction. The inside of her thighs were stained dark with blood.

    "Nieman Marcus,” she mumbled and reached out for him.

    "Go around her, you idiot. Go around!"

    Francis grabbed Jorge's hand on the throttle and revved the engine. The engine roared, and the trike reared up, the front wheel of the cycle off the ground. As it came down, the rear wheel squealing on the pavement, it just missed the zombie, but the left handle bar snagged the sleeve of her coat, whipping her around to the right. Francis let off the gas and said, “Up-shift!"

    Jorge clutched it and slipped it up into third gear without thinking about it. And Francis accelerated again, but the zombie's coat, with all its straps and pockets, was still snagged on the left handlebar. As Francis continued to accelerate, the zombie was pulled along and into the side of the bike, her bare feet dragging on the pavement, the tails of the trench coat dangling perilously about the rear tire. She twisted as the bike zoomed down the street, pirouetting on her trapped coat sleeve like some mechanical toy. She looked up with that mournful zombie face. She must have been very pretty in life and not long undead or rather nearly dead. She had classic features, and remnants of her makeup persisted.

    She bit at Jorge's leg, and got purchase on a crease in the jumpsuit and some loose skin underneath. Jorge knew he should do something, but his hands seemed frozen to the handlebars. She was so pitifully beautiful, now that he couldn't see those teeth, that he smiled at her.

    Francis wasn't so smitten. Still standing in the side car, he held on to Jorge, raised a scrawny leg and kicked her in the head. Blue veins on his legs looked as if they were going to burst. Once, twice, he kicked, wheezing with the effort, and she held on.

    Jorge felt now the pinch of the bite and took his hand off the accelerator to shove at her forehead. Her skin was warm and moist, not cold and clammy as he expected, and he could swear there was a pixie twinkle in those zombie eyes. He brushed the hair off her forehead, and she relinquished her tooth hold on his leg and snapped at his hand.

    Her teeth were blackened stubs, and he saw now that her eyes were as lifeless as a shark's.

    I haven't seen this movie before, he thought, shocked into activity again. Without his or Francis's hand on the throttle, the bike had slowed, and now the zombie babe got to her feet and trotted alongside the bike, oblivious to her feet, which had been ruined by dragging on the asphalt. She leaned forward and snapped at Jorge's face, those doll-like eyes fixed on his all the time. But with the slowing of the bike, the snagged sleeve had come loose, and when Francis kicked her square in the chest, she staggered for a moment, then went down, her face hitting the pavement with a meaty slap.

    In the rearview mirror, Jorge could see her push herself up. Her Barbie-doll features were squashed and all the blackened stubs of teeth gone. He must have slowed, for Francis said, “Onward, if we want to get in the compound, we'll need to get there before dark."

    Jorge thought about apologizing for his poor behavior but instead said, “So, I forgot, what was your wife's name?"

    "Is."

    "Beg your pardon."

    "What is her name? You may refer to me in the past tense, but she's still among the living as best I know."

    "All right then. Excuse me. What is your lovely bride's name?"

    "Marguerite,” Francis said and reached over to brush some things off Jorge's leg. The somethings were the zombie babe's teeth.

    "Did it pierce your pants leg? Break the skin?"

    "I can't tell,” Jorge said. And the truth was, he didn't want to know.

    

    

    

    Hannah watched a devastated Dallas slide by the Humvee's window. This part of the city, as with parts of all American cities, was nearly laid to waste before the onset of the Low-Path/High-Path plague. As the middle class shrank, the distance between the haves, the have-nots, and the have-mores expanded. Poverty and disenfranchisement brought the middle class to its knees. Drugs, stupidity, and greed collaborated to keep most of those living in large cities suppressed. The Dingdang flu just performed the head shot.

    Travel allegedly broadens one. The same must be true for viruses. When the microscopic virus hopped from duck to pig and then to human, it became something more than just an extremely virulent influenza, more than a simple death-dealing grunt soldier. It attended graduate school, got a master's degree, then a doctorate, and followed up with very productive post-doctoral research. Along the way, it patented a new technique, one that did more than just decimate a population, it annihilated it. Instead of killing its hosts outright, it made them rabid, lumbering psychopaths who were compelled to infect their once fellow humans. That these rabid carriers were without much grace, or art, or speed didn't matter. They could play host to the infectious agent and overwhelm the faster, smarter un-infected by sheer tenacity and numbers. The influenza became a transcendental thing, a demigod of myth, a dissertation with an apocalyptic conclusion.

    The plague's effect upon this part of Dallas-an area that had once been a civil war zone-was to turn it into an urban desert. Unwatched, except by zombie eyes, whole city blocks had burned to the ground. Corpses lay everywhere, drying down through the seasons, their bodies littering the street, still not quite dead but too degraded to move, the remains desiccating further as even flies eschewed the remains of the Low-Path.

    The Humvee, a war machine, seemed completely at home here as its tires trundled over the zombie remains. Some of the very, very nearly-dead lay inside the burnt-out shells of mid-sized and small cars. The Humvee rolled over these too, crushing them like hibernating cicadas. As the cars collapsed, corpses inside exploded into clouds of puff and ash, streaming out the shattered windows.

    "Okay, which way now?"

    Hannah paused. The woman called Gayle was cheerful, almost unnervingly so, and so… what was the word?… charismatic, and it was easy to be swept away by her enthusiasm, like a twig in a river. And Hannah desperately wanted to be swept away, to live someone else's life and forget what she had seen in her commune's burrows under Fair Park.

    As she grew older, she had often wondered why the commune had chosen to continue living in the access tunnels under the park. It was little better than living in the sewers. Yes, the tunnels were vermin-free-but only because High-Path plague didn't discriminate between rat and man.

    But with the non-zombie population of the Dallas metroplex only in the hundreds-or perhaps much less-there were plenty of upscale places to where the commune could have relocated.

    She suspected it was a matter of inertia and perhaps a sense that the Burrows, as everyone called them, had become home. Sure, ventilation wasn't good, and natural light was non-existent, but many of the alcoves had been made into cozy little nests, and the whole complex was secure since zombies weren't good at climbing down the ladders that led into the Burrows or dealing with complex latches. Besides, the nearly-dead avoided hot open spaces such as the acres of fair grounds parking lot.

    As the plague peaked and the zombies became sicker and weaker, it was only inertia that kept the commune there, she suspected. But the inertia had spelled everyone's death, everyone but hers. She had been spared through an act of youthful rebellion.

    Still, when she had climbed down into the Burrows and found the lights still working, she had hoped for survivors, but all she found was the dead. They hadn't died from the heat. She guessed smoke inhalation had been the cause; everything and everyone was coated in a thick layer of black dust. The ventilation shafts had saturated the Burrows with vaporized asphalt from the Anita's landing.

    For as long as she could stand it, she had gone from room to room, counting heads. They didn't appear human anymore, more like those pictures of Pompeii victims, who seemed to be sculptures of sand. Her adopted family rendered in soot.

    "Come now, don't you know the way home?” the woman called Gayle was saying.

    "It's not home. You Moon people destroyed my home."

    "Not me. I was against the whole concept of the mission."

    "Really?"

    "Really. I would have left well enough alone and let us die off gracefully in space."

    "Then why are you here?"

    "Good question,” she said and for the first time looked unsure of herself. “That's a deep conundrum right now, whether you realize it or not."

    "What do you mean? Oh, turn left here."

    Gayle was silent, her lips pursed with concentration as she took the corner. More abandoned cars made the maneuvering tricky. As Gayle swerved, her shotgun toppled forward from behind the driver's seat, and Hannah caught it.

    "Here, I'll take that,” Gayle said as she finished the turn.

    Hannah handed it to her, glad to be rid of the thing. The barrel was sticky.

    "Now just stay on this street until we get downtown. It's clearer than the freeway. It's only about two miles. You'll come to a barricade with a locked gate. There probably won't be anyone there. What is this gooey stuff that was on your gun?” She wiped it on her pants leg. It was brownish red.

    "To answer your question, the transcendental one, about why are we here, humans, I mean, I think the answer is that we aren't meant to be still here, that we were just a minor character in an ongoing play. We were never meant to be the star, but we tried to steal the stage. Now it's time for us to exit, stage right."

    "That's what a lot of people were saying on television during the plague,” Hannah said. “That all of human affairs were pointless, despite all our advances in technology, our philosophical musings, we were doomed-or blessed, depending upon who you listened to-of endlessly repeating the same human themes, the same human comedy. That last part, about human comedy, was my father speaking; TV was more about God being pissed off about something or other."

    "And this means?” Gayle said.

    "Not long before he died, Father did a flip-flop. He said that humans were a tenacious species and that some of us would probably survive the plague. That surviving was a reason to live in itself. Sort of like thumbing our nose at fate, telling nature to fuck off-but he said it better than that. But anyway, he was right, don't you see?"

    "See what?"

    "He was right. We are going on. We are surviving, despite all the craziness, all the heartbreaking loss, there will be some who go on.” As Hannah said this, it was like reciting a liturgy. She still felt grief about the lost of the commune, but her dad knew what he was talking about. Life went on.

    "What about all the death?"

    "Individual deaths pain us, but the living go on to rebuild things.” She amazed herself saying this; they were her father's exact words. She had thought them bullshit when he had said it, but then her mother had died only weeks before.

    "That's true,” Gayle said. “Human beings are like cockroaches. They are persistent survivors. Do you know we even have a variety of cockroaches on the Moon? No one knows how they got there. No cats, dogs, or any other insects could survive in space, but we do have cockroaches and humans. Both species go on plugging away when others have the sense and dignity to just fade away."

    "That's encouraging, I think, except for the part about the cats. Right, Stinker?” she said, stroking him.

    But Stinker was like a wound-up spring. He watched Gayle, the hair on the back of his neck raised, and his tail twitching from side to side.

    "What's wrong with your cat?” the woman asked.

    "I don't know. He's usually so laid back around people,” Hannah said, but she realized that on some sort of visceral level, Gayle was affecting her the same way. If she had a tail, it would be twitching now too. But why? She studied the woman and found her pupils were dilated. And she smelled funny, not sweet, not stale, just funny, a kind of chemical odor, a smell that wasn't gross but still made her want to put distance between them. She had read that rats could be trained to smell a particular hormone or something given off by schizophrenics. Maybe she had spent too much time reading-whatever. Maybe the fact that she was repelled by women was just in the cards, but her gut told her that this Gayle woman wasn't playing with a full deck.

    "How much farther?"

    "Oh, about another mile."

    "What's that in kilometers? Let's see, about one and a half.” The woman shifted the shotgun to her other side, between her and the door and out of Hannah's reach.

    "If you say so.” Hannah wondered now if it was such a good idea to take this woman to the Aquarium. “What did you say you needed to do at the Aquarium?"

    "Ah, you mean besides take you back?” Gayle's free hand played with the shotgun.

    "This is blood, isn't it?” she asked, looking at her hand and knowing full well it was stupid of her to say so, but not being able to stop herself. “And it's too fresh to be zombie blood."

    Gayle continued to ignore the blood question. “I'm supposed to pick up the frozen sperm and ovum,” she said in a matter-of-fact tone.

    "But didn't you forget something?” Hannah said.

    "What?"

    "The old man-what's his name?"

    "Olson?"

    "Yeah, Olson. He said they would have to bring back some kind of tanks to transport the children."

    "Children? No one told me about any children,” Gayle said.

    Hannah's apprehension grew, but her mouth seemed to go on of its own volition. Despite her apprehension she outlined what she had learned about the children. “The children in the tank. The mutants. Marguerite said that God had made them to survive in space."

    "Mutants? Human mutants? How interesting.” Gayle looked at Hannah, neglecting to watch the road. “You're not kidding, are you? This is not something you got out of a comic book?"

    Hannah shook her head.

    "And Jimmy was going to take them back to the Anita?"

    "I beg your pardon? Jimmy?” Hannah said.

    "That's Olson, Jimmy Olson. You know, like Superman's sidekick."

    "Okay, but I still don't know what you're talking about.” Pleading ignorance was a lame way to stall, but it was all she could think of. Hannah's right hand felt for the door latch on the Humvee, and she chanced a glance out the window. The woman didn't know how to drive very well and slowed down to about ten miles per hour on the corners. She could jump and run. She could do it right now.

    No, she was being silly. All the Moon people seemed a little crazy. The woman, Kristen, had told her that it was due to the high dosages of radiation they received from cosmic ray exposure. Protons traveling at nearly the speed of light zipped through them all the time, not only cutting DNA and raising cancer rates but damaging cellular structure, including brain cells. All the Moon people were on one drug or another to counter the effects of this brain damage. So what was beginning to seem like lunacy-she mentally winced at this unintentional pun-was probably just the side effects of the drugs-or brain damage. Take your pick.

    Besides, Hannah really didn't have much of a choice. The day was ending, and the air was cooling off. The more able-bodied zombies would be shambling out of their hidey-holes soon. She had no desire to try to find a safe haven in a strange part of the city at night. There was just too much rubbish and parked cars out there, too many places for them to hide. Maybe bailing out of the Humvee might be an option when they got closer to downtown, at a mall maybe, where there would be open spaces. After all, she didn't owe these Moon people anything, not even a goodbye. They all seemed to be withholding something from her, some deep, dark secret.

    But where would she go? Marguerite and Jeffery might take her in, yet they too seemed to be holding something back.

    "Ah, this must be the barricade that you talked about,” Gayle said.

    And indeed, they had arrived at the wall of stacked cars. The gate was locked, but this time there were no zombies about.

    "So what do we do now, kiddo?” Gayle said.

    "I don't know,” she lied. Jeffrey had told her the combination, but she didn't trust the woman. “Someone else always had the key."

    "Well, come on; let's get out and check the lock. I can't see; by key to you mean an actual metal key or a magnetic card?"

    "I beg your pardon?"

    "Does it take a key or is there a combination?

    "I don't know. I was just a passenger when I went in and out."

    "Well, come on now. Let's look.” Gayle opened the door with her left hand and grabbed the blood-crusted shotgun with the other but didn't step out of the Humvee. Instead, she waited, posed half-in, half-out, waiting for Hannah to open her door too.

    A hollow feeling rose in Hannah's stomach, a tangible thing expanding in intensity until it reached her chest. Her heart raced. She felt like screaming but knew no sound would come out. She might have a chance if she leaped out now and ran before Gayle could bring the shotgun to bear, but her arms and legs seemed miles away. Her panic rose, like in that split second before a car accident, when one sees the other car appearing and knows the inevitable is about to happen but is unable to do anything to avoid it, and she looked straight into Gayle's eyes. What she saw there, in that compressed bit of time, the split second between eye blinks, surprised her. She expected hate or rage-or the uncaring eyes of a psychopath-but it was just a deep sadness. ‘I have to do this,’ the eyes said. ‘So sorry.’ She was reminded of the look she had seen as a young girl in her mother's eye when, on those rare occasions, a spanking was deemed in order. Except Gayle's corporal punishment involved a shotgun at close range.

    "You're going to shoot me, aren't you?” Hannah said, knowing it was another stupid thing to say. She continued to give away her only advantage, the possibility that Gayle didn't know she had broadcast her intentions. If she had continued to play stupid, then Gayle might have relaxed, become overconfident, and that might have given her a chance to escape.

    Gayle's calm demeanor changed to restrained rage. “If you don't step out of the Humvee, I'm going to shoot you where you sit and make a hell of a mess.” She brought the gun up in a movement almost too fast to follow. “But if you get out and help me with the gate, I might let you go-maybe."

    Hannah closed her eyes and braced for the shot. It didn't come. When she opened her eyes, Gayle still had the gun aimed at her.

    "So what's it going to be?” She motioned with the gun barrel. “Outside or inside?"

    Hannah paused. Should she get it over with now, or do as the woman said and maybe have a few more seconds of life? At that moment, she had an epiphany. Despite the bleakness of her world, the hopelessness of day-to-day existence, she loved life. She worked the door handle. She chose life-even a single minute more of it-over surrender.

    As she stepped down from the Humvee, she also realized she had wet herself. And she had her backpack of clothes in one hand-silly-and Stinker in the other. She dropped Stinker to the ground, and he landed on all four feet. Had he gained a little weight since she found him? And his stomach felt funny, lumpy, unnatural. If she died today, who was going to take care of him? A light rain had begun to fall, and although he didn't like the rain, he stood there at her feet. She nudged him with her toe. “Run away, Stinker. Run away."

    He just stood his ground. Stubborn cat. “Sorry about this, Stinker,” she said, picked him up with the toe of her shoe and pitched him away. He landed on his feet-of course-and ran off near the wall of wrecked cars and then stopped, looking at her, as if to say, “What the hell got into you? I thought we were buds."

    Gayle moved around the front of the Humvee before Hannah could even think about running. With the rain the air rapidly cooled. Stinker gave a miserable little howl; he didn't like the rain, but there was more in the cat's cry than that.

    The sun was shining through the rain, and a rainbow formed briefly over Reunion Tower. Beautiful. Hannah's every sense was hyper-tuned. Raindrops struck the top of the Humvee and resonated, a little tom-tom symphony. Looking up toward the heavens, she opened her mouth, drinking in the rain. Liquid manna on her tongue. Zombies would stand in the rain, looking up, their mouths open. She had seen it. They said zombies were like turkeys; if it rained hard enough, long enough, they would drown in the rain, filling up like water-bomb balloons. She hadn't seen that. She would like to live long enough to see something she had never seen before, maybe even a thunderstorm stronger than she had ever seen before.

    But the sky didn't look so promising. It was just a light rain, enough to cool things off and bring the zombies out prematurely. Maybe they would catch Gayle and eat her crazy eyes. Maybe, but she didn't care one way or the other. All she wanted to do was live. She was only nineteen, goddamn it. She wanted to live.

    "Why?” she said, looking back at Gayle.

    "Why what? Why humans? Why you? Why love? Why hate? Why anything but Mother Earth?"

    "Why are you going to kill me?"

    "Why?” Gayle seemed puzzled. “Well, I guess, because you wouldn't approve of what I'm going to do when I get to the Aquarium."

    "What are you going to do when you get to Aquarium?"

    "I haven't decided. I'm either going to wait until Jimmy and Kristen show up and kill them. Then maybe I won't have to kill anyone else. Or if things get difficult, I'll kill whoever's there and your little space children, too, just in case they are what you say they are. I wouldn't want such humans getting into space. Who knows what the outcome would be.” She paused. “You don't care about any of this do you?"

    Hannah shook her head.

    "I'm really tempted to let you go. Really. I wasn't lying about that. I don't really enjoy killing, you know."

    A shudder washed over the woman's body, and Hannah suspected she was lying about not enjoying killing.

    "It's just a nasty little job that I've been chosen to do,” Gayle continued. “Like squashing cockroaches. But I'm not saying you're a lower-life form. You're a loose-end, a variable in the karmic equation whose effect I can't calculate, so I have to delete you."

    "I'd run off. I promise. I wouldn't go back to the Aquarium. I don't know those people. They don't mean anything to me.” This wasn't true; though she'd only met them yesterday. They might take her in. She was almost as afraid of being alone as of dying. But she wasn't going to tell this crazy bitch that. “I just want to live to be twenty."

    "Oh dear, didn't Jimmy or Kristen tell you?"

    "Tell me what?"

    "Oh, I guess they wouldn't. Frying your family was bad enough, wouldn't you think? But know this; in less than two weeks a comet is going collide with Earth. Everything bigger than a cockroach-and maybe even them-is going to die. That's why they're here now-to scavenge everything they can and get off the planet before the comet hits. They're no better than vultures."

    She brought the gun up to her shoulder and stepped closer. “I wouldn't try to run, if I were you. I still could hit you with this and maybe just wound you. Then you might take a long time to die and suffer. Though I don't want you to suffer, I can't afford to waste a mercy shot. I've already had to leave one to die in a sewer pipe. I pray to the Moist Mother that yours will be a clean death."

    "Meooow!” Stinker howled once more from the wall of cars. Surprised, Gayle turned to look, just for a moment.

    Without thinking, Hannah flung the backpack at Gayle. The backpack bounced off the business end of the shotgun as it fired. Hannah felt a rush of hot wind and something slapped the tip of her ear. Then she was running away from the gate, putting the Humvee between her and Gayle. Behind her, she heard the slide and click of Gayle pumping the shotgun and bringing another shell into the chamber. Then footsteps. The woman was circling around the other side of the Humvee, cutting off Hannah's chance of escaping to the street where she would have room to really run. Now she was boxed in between the Humvee, a boarded up parking garage, and the wall of crushed cars. The woman might be crazy, but she wasn't stupid.

    "Come out, come out, little cockroach,” she called.

    And then Stinker sprang from out of nowhere, hissing at Gayle's feet. Hannah's fear was replaced by amazement. She had never seen a cat act this way, like it was part dog or something, intent on protecting its master. Cats looked after Number One and Number One only, themselves.

    "Get out of here, you rabid little shit. I don't have an extra shell for you!” Gayle screamed and lashed out with a foot, catching the cat and flinging him halfway across the parking lot.

    Hannah's paralysis passed before she could see where Stinker landed. She ducked down, using one of the huge tires as a shield, and looked under the vehicle for the woman's feet. If she just had an extra second, she might sprint to the street. Once there she could zigzag like a quail; she was fast on her feet. She'd been walking everywhere, hours a day, since the plague. She might have a chance.

    But there was no sign of the woman. Could she be behind one of the tires on the other side? Then she heard metal buckle-what?-and looked up. The woman was standing on top of the Humvee, the shotgun trained right at her face.

    "Sorry about this, I really am,” she said.

    Crouched, Hannah knew she was finished. She closed her eyes, waiting. Would she hear it? Would it hurt?

    When the shot rang out, she let out a scream, and her hands involuntarily went to her head as she fell into a fetal position. The concrete was wet, and the fall hurt her shoulder. But nothing else hurt. Was she dead? Somewhere far away, she heard Stinker howl. Another shot rang out. Hannah braced for the pain, but none came. The sound of the gunshot seemed all wrong, not coming from Gayle's shotgun but from down the street. She opened her eyes in time to see Gayle's shotgun fall beside her, clattering on the concrete. She pushed up off the concrete and looked up for the woman. All she saw was a bloody leg dangling off the side-Gayle's. Another shot and buckshot ricocheted off the Humvee's sheet metal with a zinging sound.

    The leg moved, and Gayle was beside her, blood streaming down her ankle. She looked at the shotgun. Hannah, without thinking, threw her body over the weapon.

    "Damn you, little cockroach,” Gayle screamed, and then the woman was on her feet, running. She scaled the wall of cars and disappeared inside one of the windows of a red sedan with uncanny agility.

    Hannah was reminded of one those vampire movies where Dracula scales a vertical wall like a rat. Stinker howled again as if to punctuate the horror-movie moment.

    Hannah picked up the shotgun, but it was too late. The woman was gone.

    When the motorcycle pulled up with the dark, pretty young man driving and the pus-dripping zombie beside him, she just stood there gaping like an idiot. Then she remembered her pants were wet with her own pee, and she felt her face warm with a blush.

    "Are you okay?” the young man said in a soft voice. He had a shotgun across his lap. That's where the shots had come from. They must have driven up just as Gayle was about to shoot her.

    She tried to shrug and brought the shotgun up. Did the young man know there was a zombie beside him? How could he not?

    Then the zombie said, “You're not going to use it on us, your rescuers, are you, young lady?"

    "No, I guess not,” she said, wondering where Stinker was.

    

    

    

    Olson felt like sitting down, doing nothing, and waiting for the comet to take all the worry, all the pain, away. He could be like a Buddhist monk of old, making a gesture about the emptiness of painful phenomenon, but instead of dowsing himself with gasoline and lighting a match, he would just wait for the blast wave of the comet's impact to do the job. He wanted to let go of everything, including the responsibility he had taken for the lives of the crew and the success of the mission. And why not let go? He was failing miserably. He had tried to hold things together, to be the center of an ever-widening gyre, but he, the center, had not held. The result was chaos. And death.

    Kristen, who knelt by the body of Bobby Randel, looked as if she were ready to give up too. She was mumbling.

    "What was that?” he said.

    She looked up, tears in her eyes. “It's a little mantra, I use. ‘Your only friend is God. Your only friend is the mystery in each form. Your only friend is God. Your only friend… ‘"

    "Is that Christianity or Buddhism?"

    "I don't know, Buddhism, I guess. Ram Dass, he wrote it, he was a western Zen Buddhist in the twentieth century. I think it was about not letting yourself be distracted from the true meaning of life. I need something to cover Bobby's body,” she said.

    "That would be good,” he agreed, for Bobby was missing the left side of his face. But Olson felt paralyzed. Bobby's shattered bones and shredded muscles had caused the remainder of his face to grin wickedly. Olson had to remind some reactionary part of himself that Bobby was basically a gentle soul, not the leering monster staring up at him from the floor.

    "I should have foreseen this. I should have locked Gayle up or something,” Kristen said.

    She covered Bobby's face with paper towels. The paper turned from white to crimson in seconds, outlining the man's ruined features, creating a grotesque shroud of Turin. Kristen added more towels, but they quickly turned red too.

    "It's a mystery,” Kristen repeated and sat down next to Jimmy, careful to avoid a large pool of bloody brains.

    She surprised him and reached over to hold his hand. Her grip was hard, like she was holding on for dear life.

    "The mystery is, why did the crazy bitch do it?” he said, but instantly regretted it. He shouldn't throw a monkey wrench into Kristen's coping mechanism. Besides, Kristen hated the b-word. But she didn't seem to mind. She just squeezed his hand tighter.

    "If anyone should have foreseen this, I should have,” she said. “I saw her endocrine tests results. There was something wrong with her hormonally. Something beyond all the boost drugs she was probably taking."

    "Shit, that could be said for all of us, what with the radiation damage, couldn't it?"

    "Yes and no. We all have varying degrees of brain damage, and the enzyme tests show it, including high dopamine levels. But elevated dopamine levels are a red flag for schizophrenia, and with some of the other symptoms, I should have done something. But you know what?"

    "What?"

    "I looked it up, and I found she tested the same before the start of the mission, back on the Moon. I just figured all the good doctors wouldn't have overlooked something so potentially mentally destabilizing."

    She turned, and Jimmy could see tears in her eyes.

    "I'm just a med tech. I don't have a ‘Doctor’ in front of my name, for the love of Buddha."

    "I know, but our good doctors on the Moon-the second generation, anyway-half the time they inherit the title more than earn it. Back on Earth, before all this, you'd just be a couple of years of formal residency from having your medical degree. You have seen hundreds of patients and been tested under stress. But they've abbreviated that process. And I bet you've realized that you know more than many of our so-called superiors who are actually a bit slow. But the system has us all cowed. Me-I should have been less likely to assume Gayle was okay just because she was admitted to the team. And since I accepted control of this mission, I have to take the blame."

    "Ah, with great power comes responsibility, right? I've seen that movie."

    "Me too. When it came out, my father used it to shame me into doing my household chores, so naturally I thought it was just so much bullshit. But yeah, it's a package deal. You've got to accept one with the other."

    There was a pause.

    "I guess none of our extemporizing will do Bobby any good,” he said, more to fill the silence than anything else.

    "And we have to assume Crystal and Jorge are dead, too."

    "We knew that."

    "I meant by Gayle's hand."

    The ship let out a groan, followed by an insanely loud knocking sound. They both jumped.

    "Just cooling. The ship is still cooling,” he said.

    "I know, but I was wondering if there was any way Gayle could damage the ship."

    "From outside, probably not. The hull is thick enough to withstand the nuke blasts and radiation. But we ought to check the launch tubes. A blockage there and we could get a premature detonation inside the ship on take-off. That's assuming we get around to taking off."

    "Can we? I mean with a minimal crew and all."

    "Everything is computer-controlled. I guess I should give you the root password and show you the routines in case something happens to me. Getting into Earth orbit shouldn't be a problem, just set the scripts running and stay in the acceleration couch. Nor getting back to a Moon orbit, but without some basic knowledge of celestial mechanics, going anywhere else will be problematic. That's assuming you'd want to go somewhere else other than the Moon."

    "Don't you? Isn't that what you wanted to do?"

    Jimmy scratched the stubble on his chin, then stopped. It was an old man's gesture. “I don't know. It was more of a threat than anything else, but there's certainly no future for me back on the Moon. You could claim you were coerced. I might just as well stay here. Why? Did you want to do a pilgrimage to the outer belt?"

    "I've heard there are some communities already established out there."

    "There are. I've seen them. The regents have tried to repress information about them, but I actually visited. That was ten years ago. But I hear they're still up and going. Pretty harsh conditions, though. What's the word-Spartan?"

    "So's moonlife. If we had more time, more people…” She looked away from Bobby's body. “We could fill up Anita from the shopping malls, and just… fly away,” she said.

    "Zombies. Shopping malls. I think I've seen that movie, and it ended badly."

    She laughed. “Screw the movies. We could have a life, something like normal, nothing of this mess.” She made a gesture as if to brush the corpse out of sight.

    Jimmy had a brief, intense vision of her growing up on Earth, no plague, no radiation damage to her DNA or neurons, a young, happy woman. He didn't think of himself as the sentimental type, but he felt his eyes moistening.

    "We could still do that, you know,” he said. “Sans the shopping mall, but we could load the Anita up with food and medicinals. It would be pretty easy-with a little creative thinking."

    "How? There are only five of us. Four, if you don't count Tish; she's pretty much a basket case,” she said.

    "Simple, we just grab some forklifts and a trailer truck and dump everything in the big holds."

    "But it'd take months to pick, stack and secure the stuff for launch."

    "That's where the creative part comes in,” he said. “We don't get picky; we just leave anything promising on the loading skids and dump it in the holds in a big heap. Instead of stacking and tying it all down, we just foam it."

    "Foam it?"

    "Yeah. Expandable foam,” he said becoming excited as he expanded on half-formed ideas. “We've got thousands of cubic meters of the stuff. The engineers supplied it to secure some of the heavy industrial stuff they hoped we'd get. We spray it on or into the holds. The stuff expands to about twenty times its volume and hardens into something like Styrofoam, except tougher. Instant packing. It emits some kind of gas while it's expanding, but anything bubble wrapped or canned should be okay. When we get wherever we're going, we just tunnel in and carve our canned peas and corn out of the foam."

    "Peas I've eaten-from the hydroponic garden-but I've never had corn,” she said, then, “You've got this all planned out, don't you?"

    "I thought I did, but life has a way of throwing curves,” he said “First the Aquarium children, then Gayle."

    "What are we going to do about Gayle?

    "I don't know. I'd like to think she's done all she's going to do, and we can forget about her."

    "Somehow, I don't think that's the case,” she said.

    "Me either."

    Without a word they both stood. Still not accustomed to the gravity well, Olson's legs had gone to sleep. “What are we going to do with the body?"

    "There's no place to store it on ship. I guess we'll just have to take it outside,” she said

    "Leave it in the hot sun? Seems rather harsh."

    "There's that building a little way across the parking lot-the dome. It's still standing."

    "Part of the fairgrounds,” he said. “An IMAX theater, whatever that is."

    "We could haul the body over there.” she said. “I've got plastic body bags stored in the Sick Bay, believe it or not. The IMAX thing would be sort of a crypt. It looks like one."

    "Sounds like a plan. I could use some of the foam to seal the doors."

    "You're really keen on using some of that foam, aren't you?” she said, laughing.

    "I like to watch it expand,” he said. It was good to hear her laugh. “It's real impressive in low grav. It would be good to see how it behaves in Earth grav-a sort of a test-and it would keep the animals off Bobby."

    "I thought most all mammals died from the Low-Path too."

    "Me too, but I swear I saw stray cats when we were out,” he said.

    With a plan, they made fast work of the chore. Olson spread absorbent granules on the blood pools. Kristen scraped the brains and bone bits off the wall and used a dustpan and squeegee to put it all in small plastic bags. Together, they managed to slide the corpse into a body bag, and they pitched in the small zip-lock bags of scooped-up brain tissue and skull. Getting the body out the door was another matter. The Anita's huge blast shield necessitated that the exit airlock be located thirty meters up the side of the hull. There was an extendable ramp that spanned the curved wall of thick steel to the ground. It was meant more as an emergency exit, but Moon engineers obviously weren't used to including terrestrial weather in their designs. There had been a light rain, and the ramp was wet and slippery. The body wanted to tumble down the ramp on its own. There was a larger cargo door with a powered lift, but that was on the other side of the Anita, which meant they would have had to take the body up through the crew section and back down to the cargo holds.

    They could have let the body tumble down the ramp, but doing that just didn't seem right. So one stood watch with the shotgun while the other wrestled the body down the ramp. They changed roles often, as the hot, humid air, combined with the gravity, soon exhausted both of them.

    Halfway down the ramp, it was Olson's turn to wrestle with body. The light rain had made all the surfaces, including the body bag, slippery. There were a couple ways to break the slide of the bag, but by trial and error, the best way seemed to be the ‘wishbone’ position, sitting behind the body. Olson had his legs spread wide, the sides of boots pressed against the low rails that ran along either side of the ramp. The friction of his boots against the rails allowed him a controlled slide down the ramp, but tended to put all the pressure on his inner thigh muscles. Kristen had first come up with the technique, and after his making a remark about “making a wish,” he had to explain all the sundry details of a traditional Earthside Thanksgiving turkey dinner-to the best of his childhood recollection. He hadn't told her the rest of the anecdote, how one of his past girlfriends would always say ‘make a wish’ as he spread her legs in the missionary position.

    Right now, he wished they had come up with a different plan. His back ached, and his legs cramped, but he was too proud to tell Kristen that he'd need her to take her turn prematurely. The rain changed from a light drizzle to a modest but steady downpour. Water began running off the huge outer area of the Anita, and the ship's design channeled much of it down the ramp. Soon the ramp, with its raised sides, was a canal. Bobby's body began sliding and picked up momentum fast in the heavy gravity. Before Olson knew it, he was pulled over on his side with only one hand on the bag. The rain became a torrent, and it was as if someone had raised a floodgate at the top end of the ramp. In a split second, Bobby's body was not sliding but floating, and Olson had to choose to either let go of the body or be a candidate for a body bag himself. With an acid feeling in his stomach, he let go of the bag and grabbed at the ramp railing. The jolt nearly wrenched his shoulder out of joint, but he held on-only to swallow water as the sluice washed over him. He pulled his head out of the water to see the body hit the bottom of the ramp, do a cartwheel, and narrowly miss Kristen.

    Bobby landed with a hollow thump head down. It made Olson think of the old joke, ‘I'm okay; I landed on my head.’ So much for respect for the dead.

    "You okay?” Kristen called in a shaky voice.

    She started to climb up the ramp, but the water pushed her back.

    "Stay there,” he said. “I'll work my way down.” But he found he couldn't stand against the rush of water; it was all he could do to hang on. He had an image of the flow picking him up and tossing his carcass onto the asphalt lot as it had Bobby. Then the downpour stopped suddenly, returning to a light drizzle. In minutes, the Anita had shed most of its water, and the torrent on the ramp lessened to a skimpy flow. He was able to edge down to the bottom.

    "Now that's what I call a major engineering design error,” Kristen said.

    He looked back up the ramp at the Anita. The huge ship's contours seemed to have been designed so as to channel the water off the ship down the ramp.

    "I don't know about you, but I'm making a mental note not to use the ramp again when it's raining,” Kristen said.

    Cold, wet, and now exhausted, he and Kristen lugged the body onto one of the small, souped-up electric mooncarts they had parked outside the ship. Souped-up or not, with Bobby's body in the back along with a tank of foam, and Kristen and Olson in the front seat, the pedal response was sluggish. But they only had to go a few hundred meters, so it wasn't worth lugging the body into the Humvee.

    Kristen drove and Olson sat in the passenger seat with a steadily deepening mental funk.

    He couldn't get over the feeling that he had totally screwed things up, that the whole mess was his fault. What he should have done was cut and run while they were still in orbit and made some sort of life in the belt. Gayle's obsession wouldn't have been an issue there. She believed-as did most everyone else-that the human race was doomed without some garnered resources from Earth. Besides, anyone who didn't want to go could have been let off on the Ark, and they could have made their way back to Moon orbit with the ion-propulsion system. So maybe it would have been doomed anyway, but he could have ensured the safety of a few of his friends. The Moon wouldn't have had the resources to pursue the Anita. They could have had five or ten years of life out there, maybe more, selling the services of the Anita to the belt community for food and other resources. But no, he had to get idealistic and try to save the human race. For all his bullshit about the crew getting a better deal in return for their services, he had been on a fucking crusade.

    "You know,” Kristen said, “it's times like these that I find Buddhism not just a nice little sangha but a mental technique for putting things in perspective."

    "Are you reading my mind? What's a sangha?"

    "It's something like a spiritual community but more. It's Sanskrit, and it means an ‘aggregrate of particles,’ but it also refers to a group in practice together."

    "So, half of our little sangha is already gone."

    "Yes, though most were Buddhist in name only, not practice. What I meant to say is that at the heart of Buddhism is a way to clear the mind so you can see clearly. Burning incense and hanging prayer flags are just trappings."

    "I've never been religious."

    "Neither am I, really. My parents were Baptists before they immigrated. They hid it, because it wasn't a very popular religion on the Moon, you know, after the fundies got the Earth-Centered Universe law passed and cut funding to the Moon."

    She pulled the cart over and parked under the charred remains of what had probably been a bus stop shelter before the Anita's landing. Twisted into a conical shape by the force of the Anita's pulse blast, it looked like some sort of wizened tree. There was enough overhanging sheet metal to give them a little shelter from the drizzle, which had turned colder.

    "This is probably radioactive, being metallic, you know,” Olson said.

    "As many rads as we've already received it won't make a difference, do you think, at least not for a few minutes."

    When he didn't answer, she said, “I think you're more depressed about this than I am."

    "You mean obsessed."

    "That too. While we were driving, I was practicing a little Buddhist meditation exercise to clear the mind. I'd try to stop remembering that there is a past and thinking there is a future. I just try to let my mind settle in the present, on the breath, because…"

    "You know I'm not religious, Kristen."

    "I know, but this isn't dogma. It's a method to clear the mind and put things in perspective. Western Buddhism has been called a ‘science of the mind,’ you know."

    "I know. All this is an illusion. The mind in itself is luminance. Hatred, attachment, love, all lead to suffering. I've read the brochure."

    "Yes, but it's more than that, and love is what the cleared mind does naturally, as the Dalai Lama said. It's not world denying. It just is a way of thinking that puts things in true perspective."

    He could see by her face and the way she held her body that the cloud of depression had been lifted. For a moment, he was a bit envious. It would be comforting to just lie back and pretend that this was all so much trivial detail. His remorse was like a black hole in the center of his chest, threatening to suck in all happiness and clarity of mind.

    Parvani came to mind, poor little, young Parvani; she had been a Buddhist too. When he and Parvani had these discussions, she would say, “Don't sweat the isms, we all pretty much believe the same thing; different strokes for different folks, you know.” He remembered her saying this with absolute clarity; the only woman he'd ever known who was not uncomfortable with having intellectual discussions during sex.

    While Kristen pulled out and drove the remainder of the way, Olson had the young woman on his mind. Little mental movie clips of time spent with Parvani intermeshed with frames of Kristen and himself on the acceleration couch, holding each other, sweating as the Anita dropped out of orbit. Zombie faces looked on from the background, both in the clips of him and Parvani and him and Kristen. Maybe not a waking dream, not lucid dreaming, what he was experiencing was more like a driving dream. He shivered from cool rain. Maybe his unconsciousness was trying to tell him something.

    "The sign says ‘The Science Place.’ Oh, wait, I see the IMAX."

    They both paused; the building looked as though it had escaped the tragedy of the plague, as if it was protected in some little time bubble. No bodies lay about. The trees swayed gently in the summer breeze.

    A wide flight of concrete steps led up to some heavy-duty plate glass doors. But as he looked closer, he could see one of the doors was ajar-as if someone had just passed and forgot to close it behind them. “A few dried leaves littered the steps, but otherwise the area was remarkably clean. The building was domed, white, like an observatory dome, but with the half of the dome facing the Anita's landing site blackened, though intact.

    Together they carried the body bag up the short, wide steps and left it at the front door. Then they retrieved the shotguns, the flashlights, and the foaming canister. With silent consensus, they left the body outside and went in, he with shotgun, she directing the flashlight.

    Inside, they found no need for either. There was enough glass, both in the front doors and two-story windows to the east and west, to eliminate the need for the flashlight. With nary a living, nor semi-living thing in sight, there seemed no need for the shotgun either. But there were dark corners, and as Kristen shone the flashlight into the shadows, Olson followed the beam with the aim of the shotgun.

    "It's awfully clean in here,” Olson said.

    "Hannah said her people kept it clean and had meetings here occasionally."

    "Her people? The ones we fried on landing?"

    "Yes."

    Neither said anything. It was hard rationalizing that everyone on Earth would be dead or dying after the comet struck. Murder was still murder-or rather manslaughter in this case. Maybe vehicular homicide was the right term, but they'd had few other choices for landing. They couldn't have landed in the center-city. Not only would that have been too close to the Aquarium; there weren't any open spaces big enough to set the ship down. The Anita, itself as big as a small high-rise apartment building, wouldn't have fit in between all the skyscrapers. Its landings weren't that precisely controlled either. They might have ended up stuck with a high rise up their butt. There was a park with a lake to the east, but there were issues there too. The terrain was rolling, and they worried about coming down in the twenty meter-deep water.

    "Heart of Buddha! Look at that,” Kristen said.

    Olson looked where she was shining the flashlight. The floor was made of marble chips set in dark mortar and polished smooth. Terrazzo it was called, he thought. Inlaid into the floor was a comet of contrasting pink stone chips. “Halley's Comet” was inlaid in large letters next to it. The comet was about four meters long and contrasted against the dark stone; the effect was beautiful.

    "Look!” Kristen exclaimed, pointing across the floor.

    "Now what?"

    A black terrazzo rendering of the solar system displayed throughout the theater lobby. The rendering included eleven constellations, as well as a movable marker indicating which constellations were visible in the night sky. The constellations were beautifully depicted with flecks of mother-of-pearl and other bright gemstones.

    "Gorgeous, isn't it?"

    "Pretty enough to impress us out-of-town hicks,” he said. The place was a bit shabby around the edges, but even then the rococo style and the beautiful floor were impressive. Moon life, with its limited resources, was beyond Spartan. It was a life on the edge of starvation and asphyxiation. There was art put into spacecraft, but it was a utilitarian art, designed to get the most in a limited space and mass. Here were metric tons of art, something done just to educate and entertain.

    "You know,” Olson said, as he lugged Bobby's body down a hall, “at first I thought maybe we were being silly, wasting time and resources on a dead body when we should be figuring out how we're going to get out of this alive. But I liked Bobby. He kept everything running and didn't get much appreciation. He slugged along."

    "Is this his eulogy?"

    He paused, a bit out breath. They had followed placards directing them to the theater entrance. Olson set his end down and tried opening the double doors while Kristen held the foot of the body bag. The doors weren't locked but were jammed by something.

    "I guess so, but better. Bobby was a fan of old 1930s and 1940s B-movies, like The Mummy Returns. This place is kind of like a twentieth century art deco version of a mummy's tomb.” He set down the shotgun and used both hands to yank at the door.

    "I think he would have appreciated the effort,” Kristen said.

    "Yes, but funerals are not really for the dead, you know. They're to comfort the living."

    Then the double doors burst open, and zombies spilled out on top of him.

    

    

    

    Jorge was in love. He couldn't keep his eyes off the redheaded girl they had just rescued from Gayle. Everything else was up for grabs.

    "You wounded her, boy, I'm sure,” Francis was saying, as if from a long ways off. “But where'd she go?"

    "She was hit. I saw the blood,” the girl named Hannah said. “And it looked bad. But she still scrambled into those wrecked cars like some kind of spider.” She kept a wary eye on Francis. Jorge had only been able to partially convince her that the old man, though looking like a walking corpse, was a friend, not a foe.

    Jorge realized he was expected to take part in this conversation: “And she didn't have another weapon?"

    "All she had was this shotgun, and she wasn't wearing enough to conceal anything else. It was weird though, how fast she moved. You're wearing the same coveralls as Mr. Olson and Miss Kristen. You're one of the crew that they thought was dead, aren't you?"

    "I almost was, but Gayle hadn't had enough practice with the shotgun when she tried to kill me. She missed the first time, and I didn't give her a second chance."

    "Is that why you shot at her before asking questions?"

    "Yep. The enemy of my enemy is my friend.” Which sounded stupid; he smiled what he hope was an apologetic smile.

    She smiled back.

    Jorge felt himself relax a little. Looking at the wall of crushed, stacked automobiles, he thought it seemed improbable that someone could climb up them at all, let alone someone who was seriously injured. Though Hannah described Gayle's escape as rapid, he wondered if she hadn't suffered anything more than a superficial wound. Then again, Gayle was psychotic; that much was for certain. Crazy people were capable of amazing physical feats, he'd read. But there was quite a bit of blood on the top of the Humvee. Maybe Gayle would just crawl off to a hole somewhere and die by herself like a wounded animal.

    But there were other things to think about. This girl Hannah, for instance. Especially this girl Hannah. She was wet and dirty and smelled of piss and fear, but she was the most beautiful live girl he had ever seen-maybe even more beautiful than the online simulations. Her red hair hung in waves to her shoulders. Her hair color was, he realized, natural; the few redheads in the Moon population were not. That was clear to him now. One had to see the real thing, a real redhead, to know how fake the dye jobs were.

    Her skin coloring was very light, almost white, but not anemically; a soft rose blush seemed to illuminate her skin from underneath. And he had first mistaken as makeup the freckles that scattered across her high forehead and her bare shoulder where her T-shirt was torn.

    "Here, take it,” she said, handing him the shotgun. “If you were another crazy Moon man, you'd have already shot me. I don't like these things anyway."

    He had been staring at her, he realized, leering unconsciously, and she thought he had wanted the gun. How could she not know how hypnotically gorgeous she was? All that and modest too.

    "Don't like guns?"

    "I prefer pistols.” She gave him a tired smile, and he felt his heart jump into his throat, not from the mention of the gun, but that smile zeroed in like a smart bomb, striking an emotional bunker he didn't know he had. He tried to say something and found the words wouldn't come out.

    "You know,” Francis said, “maybe we shouldn't be so nonchalant about your nutso friend."

    "What do you mean? She's wounded and weaponless,” Jorge managed to say. It was all he could do to tear his eyes away from the young redhead. She was so good to look at; Francis so horrific.

    "This is Dallas, Texas, young man,” he said. “Before the plague, there was an average of four or five guns per household and that was just the registered weapons. She'll get armed again if she lives."

    "I'll second that,” Hannah said. “Whenever I wanted a gun, I only had to search three houses, and there would be one under the bed or in a shoe box in the closet."

    Francis shuffled back to the side car-it was painful to watch him walk-and pulled out a bundle wrapped in a rag. He offered it with an outstretched arm to Hannah. “Here. I'll save you the trouble."

    When she didn't move, he said. “Don't worry; I don't bite. I just seep.” When she still didn't step forward, he bent over-his spine popped and crackled like breaking glass-and set the bundle on the asphalt. Slowly he pulled on the rag and out rolled a large, leather holster and belt, with a gunmetal blue six-shooter handgun. “There, not a bit of pus on it,” he said, and stepped back.

    Hannah stepped forward and picked up the pistol.

    It had the longest barrel Jorge had ever seen on a handgun-about twenty centimeters-and a small scope mounted on top. It looked too heavy for her, but she hefted it in both hands and sighted along the barrel at the wall of cars.

    "That may be a little bit too much gun for you, weight-wise,” the old man said. “It's a 44 magnum Ruger Redhawk. The companyThe company started making them because after the Dirty Harry movies in the 1970s, everyone had to have a 44 magnum. A bit of overkill in my opinion, but it's got range."

    "I prefer an automatic,” she said.

    "That thing will do you better, if you can handle it. Shoot right through most cars; puncture their engine blocks; all that good ‘make-my-day’ stuff."

    Without a word, she turned, set her feet apart, aimed at the wall of cars and pulled the trigger. The sound was deafening; the kick of the big gun brought her arms up, but she didn't flinch. The car clanged and dust rolled out the window. Her shot had passed through the open window and ripped a meter-long tear through the metal roof of the car.

    She turned to Francis. “Wow, I feel like I could stop a tank."

    "Well big game, like deer or elk, at least, if there were still any alive.” Francis seemed pleased, as if she were his daughter and had just said her first words.

    "Thanks,” she said. “Sorry I couldn't take it from your hand. You look like one of those things I've been running from since my dad died."

    "I almost am one of those things, my dear-except I still have fully functional frontal lobes."

    "Okay, what next?” Jorge said.

    "I guess we can search all of downtown Dallas for your crazy friend,” Francis said. “Or we can go ahead and do what we intended to do in the first place. Visit my wife."

    "So, how do we get in?"

    The huge chain and matching gargantuan padlock on the front gate looked like it wouldn't be fazed by a shotgun or pistol blast. Even if they could blast it open, that would leave the area inside vulnerable to who knew what. The padlock had both a keypad and a keyhole, but the combination Kristen had didn't work.

    "Must have changed it,” she said.

    "Leave getting in to me,” Francis said. “I built the damn wall, me and my forklift. Don't you think I'd leave myself a backdoor?"

    He shuffled over to the wall of parked cars, reached as if to pull himself up to the second layer, and sighed. He looked to Jorge.

    "You're going to have to do this, I guess,” he said. “I'm afraid my arm might fall off. No, no, I'm kidding, don't look at me like that. You two have seen too many movies. It takes a lot of force to rip off an arm. I should have said it feels like my arm might fall off. Here, boy, climb up in the second car. You should find a key to the padlock in the ash tray."

    Jorge complied, and though he hadn't minded being called boy before, now it irked him in front of Hannah.

    He had the key in a moment, and the gate was opened. Because Francis didn't want to leave the Indian abandoned, they decided to lock up the Humvee-Gayle had left the key in the ignition-and ride the motorcycle into the compound. Hannah had gotten over her squeamishness-for the most part-over touching Francis, and together they installed him in the sidecar without causing him much pain.

    "Stinker!” the girl cried. “Come here, boy."

    Near the cars, a wet, bedraggled, black and white cat was watching them warily.

    "Here kitty, kitty, kitty."

    The cat looked at her for a moment-Jorge could have sworn it was weighing its options carefully-then seemed to make a decision and strolled leisurely over to her, mewing softly all the way.

    She picked him up and cradled him in her arms. “I'm really glad to see you, Stinker,” she said, and Jorge felt a little jealous.

    "Cats; haven't seen many of those lately,” Francis said.

    "He's my buddy,” she said simply.

    "You're both good kids, I can tell; I meant you and Jorge here, but the cat too,” he said.

    She gave him one of those beautiful smiles.

    "Both of you are pretty too. No, no, I don't mean that like you think. I mean it's just a pleasure for an old man to see human beings who are young and healthy instead of falling apart pus-bags like me. And you two practically glow with health and youth. Before the plague, I was one of those huggy, weepy old men. You know, the biggest pleasure in life was to take my grandkids to the zoo and buy them things. I was a volunteer Big Brother, you know, stand-in father for kids at risk-and a good one. They're dead now, of course. The grandkids, the foster kids,” he said, looking away.

    With Francis in the sidecar, Hannah had to ride behind Jorge on the big coil spring seat. Hannah insisted on changing into a clean pair of jeans from her backpack first. Then she had put her cat in her backpack, leaving the top zipper open, and asked Jorge's help to put the pack on. Then she climbed on the bike. The seat had been designed for a big man's broad behind so there was room for both, but she had to crunch against him and circle her arms around his chest-which was just all right with him, though it made it hard to concentrate on shifting gears. He looked back to see the cat had its head out of the backpack, looking over her shoulder.

    The ride to the Aquarium was less than a block. Francis talked over the throttled-down engine all the way. “Started getting sick-didn't tell Marguerite-but I didn't have the energy to make the compound bigger,” he said.

    And though Francis thought it would be harder for Gayle to find a weapon downtown than in the residential areas, they kept on alert.

    Once Jorge got used to the scroungy parking lot, whose landscaping consisted of near-dead small trees, the Dallas World Aquarium building was kind of impressive. Four stories high, it looked from his perspective like a cubic, glass greenhouse. Behind it loomed a glass skyscraper whose top came to a sort of pyramid. Jorge couldn't decide if it was ugly or beautiful. Finally, he decided it was both.

    "Is that whole thing full of water?” he asked, pointing toward the four-story Aquarium.

    "No, no,” Hannah laughed. “You really are from out of town, aren't you? I remember this place,” she said as she climbed off the bike. “The Aquarium is in the basement and first floor. The upper part is a zoological garden. I remember coming here on a school trip before the plague. There were monkeys, stingrays, piranhas, otters, and penguins upstairs. But my favorites were the manatees in the lower level."

    "I've never seen any of those things. Are they still in there?"

    "No, by the time Marguerite and I set up shop here, everything was dead. Just a few zombies wandering around like they were on a school outing.” Francis said. “We had the devil of a time cleaning up the tanks before we could refill them for the children."

    "I've got to see those children everyone is talking about,” Jorge said.

    "In good time. Okay, here's the plan. The place is locked up tight, but Marguerite's here. That's her Jeep."

    "And that's Jeffrey's van,” Hannah said.

    "So you know Jeffrey?” Francis said.

    "He abducted me-or rescued me-depends upon your point of view. That's how I came here before. I told you, remember?"

    "My glucose must be getting low. But my, it's really become a small world,” Francis said. “And getting smaller all the time."

    The sun had come out, and the air was now thick with humidity. Big beads of sweat rolled down Francis’ forehead. He smelled like dirty laundry that had been left in the hamper too long.

    "Anyway, that should make it easier, if she knows you. I want you two to go up the door and ring the bell while I wait over here in the shade. There's a button; you'll see it. There's also a little intercom grill. I don't think the camera works anymore. When Marguerite comes to the door, you tell her I'm with you, that I lived despite our expectations, but that I look pretty bad. I don't what to shock her. Also, tell her, that as far as I can tell, I'm neither infectious nor contagious."

    At the top of a short flight of stairs, they found a strange but pretty, tiny woman in a white uniform waiting behind the heavy plate glass doors. That must be the good doctor, Jorge thought. As they came closer, he saw she was not wearing lab whites, but a white sailor's suit, complete with bucket hat, dark blue neckerchief, and naval insignia.

    She smiled but made no move to let them in, then said something that was muted behind the glass doors. Before they could signal her they couldn't hear, she figured it out and flipped a switch.

    "Who are you, and what do you want, coming here with those guns?"

    Jorge realized they must make an imposing sight, him carrying the shotgun, Hannah with the huge handgun.

    "You know me,” Hannah said. “Jeffrey brought me yesterday-or was it the day before yesterday?"

    "I recognize the young lady, and I recognize the young man's uniform from the space ship. But here's the mystery. You're riding my late husband's motorcycle, and there's someone else over there under the trees. And that scares me.” She looked calm, but her voice quavered.

    "That's what brought us here. We have information about Francis,” Jorge said.

    Marguerite's eye's opened wide. Jorge couldn't read her expression. Was that shock or anger? Shock probably, she looked as if she were about to faint.

    Hannah scowled at him. He could read that; he was an insensitive lout. He had just blurted out the name of her late husband.

    "Could we come in, sit down, and talk maybe?"

    Marguerite steadied herself with a hand on the glass. The skin of her hand was parchment thin. She was quite a bit older than he thought. The tinted glass had disguised that she was wearing a lot of makeup.

    "Maybe,” she paused, “but you'll have to leave those guns behind."

    "That's not a good idea,” Jorge said. “There could be a crazy woman from our ship out here somewhere. We don't want her to get hold of the guns."

    "Crazy woman? Miss Ring? I've heard about her from Mr. Olson and Miss Kristen, but I have a rule here. No armed people inside the Aquarium."

    "Listen,” Hannah said. “How about you open the door just wide enough that we can pass the guns through? You could put them somewhere safe, so we won't have to leave them out here."

    "And the man in the parking lot?"

    "That's why we'd prefer you sitting down, when we tell you."

    The old woman's eyes opened wide again, and she had another unsteady moment. She suspects, Jorge thought, but couldn't quite accept the fact that her husband might still be alive.

    But when she recovered, she started to unlatch the door.

    "I have your word?” she asked Hannah.

    "Yes, if Jeffrey's here, how about you call him?"

    "He's… indisposed right now. Cleaning one of the tanks."

    Jorge suspected this wasn't true. Marguerite was one of those people who have no talent for lying. But she had no trouble making choices. She finished unlocking the door and let it open a few centimeters.

    "Don't forget to put the safety on,” Hannah said to Jorge.

    After they passed the guns through, Marguerite closed and re-latched the doors. She scurried away and was back in a minute to let them in.

    Inside the Aquarium it was cool and damp-smelling. Jorge relaxed; he had felt naked standing out there without a gun, not knowing if Gayle was dead or alive and looking for an opportunity to do them harm. He hoped Francis would be okay out in the heat. Now, how to break the news to his wife? She looked so frail.

    "When did you last have contact with Jimmy and Kristen?” he asked.

    "Just about an hour ago. Mr. Olson gave me this.” She showed them one of the ship's yellow walkie-talkies. “They called for help,” she said.

    "What? What kind of help?"

    "It'll wait. First tell me who that man is out in the parking lot and what you're doing with my husband's old obsession, that damn motorcycle. I know it's his; he was forever working on the thing, even after the plague."

    "Let's sit down first.” Hannah directed her to a leather sofa in the lobby and sat with her, her arm on the woman's shoulder. She motioned for Jorge to sit in a facing sofa. There were brown stains that looked like blood in the leather.

    "Let's see… where to begin. Jorge?"

    Great, he thought, let me be the one to give this little ol’ lady a heart attack. “Well, I guess I should start where I met him. It was after Gayle Ring killed Crystal, my crewmate, and tried to kill me…” Both women looked a bit confused. “Okay, maybe I should cut to where I met the man I first thought was just another zombie. It was only hours after I escaped from Gayle, and I went to a motorcycle lot, next to a water tower that had flowers painted all over it. I think it was in a part of Dallas called Mesquite."

    "I know that place,” Marguerite said. “It's called ‘Bob's Bikes.’ Francis used to go up there all the time before the plague to get parts made for that damn bike. He made me go with him. What's that got to do with the man in the parking lot?"

    "Marguerite-may I call you by your first name? I don't know your last,” he said, intentionally stalling. There was no easy way to say this.

    "The man I met at the motorcycle shop looked like a zombie. I was about to go after him with a piece of pipe, when he gave me the peace sign and offered to teach me how to ride a motorbike."

    "Ah, people with partial immunity. They're rare, but Francis and I always suspected they were out there. We thought there might be quite a few of them, but that they were probably killed off by survivors thinking they were Low-Paths, or by Low-Paths. I would like to meet him, but you know, those kind could be infectious."

    "This guy, he ran tests on cats with his own bodily fluids. He said he isn't infectious or contagious, and he ought to know, because he was a research doctor, a pathologist, or something, he said."

    Marguerite stood up and looked toward the plate glass doors. A scarecrow skinny figure was silhouetted by the afternoon sun.

    "Francis?” She was off in a sort of running shuffle toward the door.

    In a second, she had the doors open and her arms around the man.

    "Careful woman,” he said. “I may not be infectious, but I'm falling apart.” Big tears rolled down his cheeks.

    

    

    

    Kristen watched Olson pace back and forth in front of the IMAX screen. Men were such strange creatures, mutants really, with their weird, tacked-on Y-chromosome. Warriors one moment, sad or angry little boys the next.

    It might be argued they should have known that as the rain brought cooler air, any zombies in the vicinity would become more active. But they had been busy with Bobby's body, and the IMAX lobby was clear. When Jimmy opened the jammed doors, a half dozen zombies had spilled out, toppling both of them.

    They'd had luck there, of sorts. Both she and Jimmy had managed to scramble into the theater and slam the doors, locking out all but three of the zombies. Neither she nor Olsson had been bitten, and no other zombies had been left to greet them once they were inside. Jimmy had even managed to bring the shotgun with him to take care of the three.

    They had laughed about it at first. One of the zombies wore a tight, blue security guard uniform. They had both seen that Keystone Kops movie. But once in, they learned that the doors didn't open from inside. Something or someone had destroyed the inside handles, perhaps to lock inside the very zombies who had spilled out in the first place. Whatever, with the other exit door welded shut and the heavy steel double doors impervious to a shotgun blast, they were effectively imprisoned.

    The inside of the theater would have been pitch dark, but the domed theater hadn't escaped unscathed from the Anita's landing as they had first thought. The blast wave had driven a piece of wrought iron fence through the dome, leaving a half-meter long jagged hole. A shaft of light streamed through in the breach and reflected off the screen to cast a soft light over most of the interior.

    Kristen sat in the half-lotus position, trying to clear her mind and enter a light meditative state, nothing hard, just concentrating her awareness on the breath touching her upper lip at first, then moving that same spot of awareness over her scalp, her face, her torso, her arms, and legs right down to her toes, creating a sort of mental scan of her entire body. But Jimmy's pacing was distracting-it shouldn't be-and if it were merely maddening, she would have been able to get past it. But Olson kept turning into that angry little boy-fuming and muttering, like he was on the edge of throwing a tantrum. Despite the seriousness of their situation, his fussing made her want to laugh. She would just verge on the edge of the eternal now of meditation, that point where awareness allowed her to get past the pain of sitting for an extended period in Earth gravity, and Olson's barely restrained temper tantrums would dredge up some memory of her childhood. She tried not to get stuck on these memories, but they were just too seductive.

    She was a poor meditator. In space, she couldn't meditate because she was too comfortable in zero-G. Here she had problems because she was too heavy, and after even a half hour her knees and her butt throbbed with pain.

    Outside, a determined zombie or two thumped feebly on the other side of the entrance doors. That was like her mind, she thought, banging on the gates of true reality but too weak and blind to work the mechanism. Their entrance to the theater had been laughable too, now that she thought about it.

    Olson stopped pacing for a moment, looked at her, and said, “If we could get the seats loose, we could make a pile with them and climb up and out the hole in the roof. Sorry, I forgot you were trying to meditate."

    He climbed down from the platform in front of the screen and began digging underneath one of the seats.

    The thumping, though still feeble, grew louder. There might be three or four zombies out there now. The air was cooling, and that brought them out of their stupor and out of doors. But the zombies outside the door weren't the problem. They could deal with the poor, sick things. The problem was she and Jimmy were locked in. If they were lucky, one of the zombies outside would accidently put enough weight on the handle to open the doors-unlikely, but it might happen. That was why they decided that one of them should sit by the doors with the shotgun at all times. In case one of the brain-dead creatures managed to get the door open, she'd be there to keep it open. Because Jimmy wasn't good at waiting, she had done most of the sentinel sitting.

    "Goddamn it! Everything is bolted to the floor,” Jimmy said. “I can't believe I was so stupid."

    He got up and began pacing again. She took a breath and let it out slowly, allowing her sense of space and immediacy to expand outward with the exhale. She didn't want to go into a deep meditative state, but just to skirt the zone where her sense of perspective returned.

    As Jimmy paced, she noticed how much weight he had lost in the last few days. They had all lost weight and gained muscle mass from the steroids and the heavy gravity, but he looked as though he had lost fifteen kilos or more. She hoped he wasn't dipping into the more dangerous contraband drugs. No, that wasn't it. She had come to know him better than that. He was just a worrier. Before this mission, she thought him a sort of old slacker, a practitioner of the ‘what-me-worry?’ philosophy. But she saw now that was his reaction to caring too much and not being able to make things better. The bureaucratic caste system of the Cloister had made anything except going through the motions impossible. So he had given up caring about anything, including himself.

    Now that he had accepted responsibility for the welfare of the crew, he let himself give a damn again. As the mission turned sour, he blamed himself. Ironic, for if anyone should have predicted that Gayle was a danger to the mission and to the crew, it should have been her. She had seen the irregularities in Gayle's endocrine tests. She told herself that with practically everyone suffering from some sort of radiation-induced mental issues, that Gayle's problems had just seemed a little more exaggerated. Was that true, or had she, like Olson, given up and simply slacked along? Whatever, she was over it. Sometimes shit happens; sometimes we make bad judgment calls; sometimes karma dictates that we replay the same three-act play again and again.

    From the other side of the doors, outside in the hall, she could hear the zombies shuffling around. There was no sign of them leaving. Either the creatures knew she and Olson were inside and were waiting for them to come out, or perhaps they had no place else to go, no reason to leave.

    Jimmy dared not raise any of the ship's remaining crew-either Kaplan and Badr or Tish-on the walkie-talkie channel for fear Gayle might be monitoring the frequency. Besides, they hadn't been able to reach Kaplan and Badr since yesterday. Gayle may have already gotten to them. And Tish could not help herself, much less them.

    Luckily, Jimmy had assigned a separate walkie-talkie channel to Marguerite at the Aquarium. He had been more suspicious of Marguerite at that time than he was of Gayle.

    The tiny woman had answered in her chirpy, cheerful voice when Kristen called, but said she couldn't help, as she didn't drive. She did promise to send the young man, Jeffrey. That might happen; then again, it might not. Kristen found reading Marguerite difficult. She was a bundle of complex motives, kept carefully hidden behind the eccentricity and scientific professionalism. Kristen intuited she had hidden agendas and emotional ties to the children that went well beyond the simple scientific interest that she proclaimed.

    She changed her position. Here in the full Earth gravity, the lotus position put a strain on her ankles and knees. The idea was to concentrate on the breath and not let thoughts carry one away from the moment. The same technique should hold true here, but she hadn't realized until now how much easier it was to lose oneself in the breath in low gravity. She let the breath out and her mind seemed to follow, expanding, filling up space. One of those split-second moments of perfect clarity followed, a moment that promised to hold eternity.

    Meanwhile, Jimmy was flustered.

    "Do you think we should try to call Tish?” he asked.

    Kristen shook her head. “Let's give Marguerite a little more time."

    "I don't trust her."

    "Neither do I completely, but she loves those children and wants to get them off planet. We're her only hope, Obi-Wan Kenobi, so she'll find a way."

    "Ha! I've seen that movie. I just had an image of her dressed like Princess Leia.” He smiled, and scratched his chin. Kristen wondered again what he would look like without the beard, or better, with a neatly trimmed beard and ten or fifteen years ago before the ennui of space travel and senselessness of Moon life had taken its toll.

    Maybe like Obi-Wan Kenobi with strong shoulders.

    He strode up the stairs to where she sat. “Here. I found it under the seats.” He put a plastic red flower in her open palm. “I think it's supposed to be a lily,” he said. “Too bad it's not a rose."

    "That's very sweet.” A plastic bee sat on the lily's plastic lip, posed to gather plastic pollen; some pre-plague child's science toy lost in the hustle and bustle of a school field trip. Her eyes moistened.

    Jimmy sat down beside her. “Someday, if we get through this, maybe you could teach me meditation. What's the matter? Why are you crying?"

    "Nothing, oh it's nothing.” But the truth was the sad little plastic flower had touched her in a profound way.

    "I'm sorry I screwed things up,” he said and put his arm around her.

    "Stop it. Just stop it."

    "Sorry,” he mumbled and withdrew his arm.

    "No, not that.” She grabbed his arm and drew him back to her. “I meant stop playing the blame game. None of this could have been predicted. We're just playing out some karmic game, don't you understand?” She snuggled in under his arm and laid her head on his shoulder. He smelled of sweat, but it was a comforting place to be nonetheless.

    The next thing she knew, they were kissing. Without speaking, she unfastened the magnetic seam on the front of her coveralls. As she stood, he was on his knees before her and began kissing her stomach. She blushed, thinking what her butt would look like in this gravity, but his hands lovingly traced the contour of her waist, down over her hips along her thighs, and steadied her as she stepped out of the one-piece garment. He stood and did the same with his coveralls. In only a couple of days, he had lost so much weight that the coveralls practically fell off him. He pulled her to him gently. He was hard against her belly. He lowered her to the carpet, already inside her. Her legs wrapped around his buttocks as he thrust. It was over quickly, too quickly for her to reach orgasm, but that was okay too. He didn't roll over and turn away afterwards as some men do, but turned onto his side so his weight was off her, and they were facing. Then they just held each other.

    "I'm not as quick on the rebound as I used to be, but give me a minute,” he said.

    "It's not important. Just hold onto me for a while."

    Outside the door, the zombies moaned pitifully, and they both laughed. A half hour later, they still embraced each other, and she could feel him hardening against her leg when a shotgun blast sounded from outside, followed by the report of a big caliber handgun or rifle. Kristen and Olson were on their feet, hurriedly pulling up their coveralls, when a voice called out from behind the door:

    "Mr. Olson, Miss Norman? Are you in there?"

    Kristen looked at Olson. “Jorge?” she said.

    "Yes, it's me. Are you two okay?” They could hear him rattling the door, but it was jammed again.

    "Put all your weight on the handle,” Olson said. Kristen smiled. In his hurry to get dressed, he had put his coveralls on wrong side out. She decided to say nothing. He caught her smiling at him and leaned over to kiss her on the forehead.

    "Thanks,” he said. “You have no idea what that meant to me.” Then to Jorge on the other side of the door: “Hold down the handle while I give the door a kick from this side."

    He kicked it, and the door freed. Jorge started to come in, but Olson stopped him.

    "Hold it. If you let the door swing shut, we'll all be locked in here again."

    Kristen followed him out the door. The floor was sticky with the nearly black blood from the zombies that Jorge had shot. She found it amazing that things so sick could even still walk, much less be a threat.

    Outside, Jorge stood looking sheepish. Beside him was Hannah, holding a huge chrome pistol at her side.

    Olson surprised Kristen and Jorge by giving the young man a hug as if he were a long-lost son. “I thought you were dead,” Olson said.

    Jorge, though he wouldn't look Olson in the eye, was clearly glad to see both of them as well. “Me too. I mean, I thought maybe Gayle had killed you too."

    Kristen had a sinking feeling at the pit of her stomach. “Crystal?"

    "Gayle shot her in the back, close range.” His voice cracked. “Her next shot was at me, but she missed, and I didn't give her a second chance. I hid in a drainage pipe."

    Hannah said, “She was going to kill me too, but Jorge here shot her first."

    "Is she dead?"

    "I don't know,” Jorge said. “I thought I hit her good, but it was with buckshot from about twenty yards, and she ran away pretty fast."

    "That woman's on something. She moved like a freaking rat up a wall of wrecked cars,” Hannah said and took a step closer to Jorge.

    Nice, Kristen thought, there's something going on between the two, some sort of bonding.

    "We think it's a mixture of intolerant religious fanaticism and super steroids,” Olson said.

    "But why?” Jorge asked. “She's not intent on killing just us; she wants to kill off the entire human race."

    "But that's stupid, She can't kill off the whole human race,” Hannah said. “There's got to be pockets of people like me, people with resistance to the disease, all over the planet. She can't believe she can kill us all. I've talked to her; she's crazy, but not stupid."

    Jorge, Kristen, and Olson exchanged glances.

    "You haven't told her?” Olson said.

    "Tell me what?” Hannah said.

    "I was sworn to secrecy-I would have told you, I think, but there hasn't been time."

    "Tell me what, goddamn it?"

    Jorge looked pleadingly to Olson and Kristen.

    "Go ahead,” Kristen said. “We owe her."

    Jorge took a deep breath. “Let's get out of here first. I feel claustrophobic."

    "No, damn it. People have been keeping me in the dark since I was a kid. Not you people too."

    "Okay, but remember, you asked for it,” Jorge said. “There's comet on a collision course with the Earth. It'll hit in about what-ten days from now?” He looked to Olson.

    "That's about right,” Olson said.

    "Depending on where it hits-land or sea-it will either kill everything above cockroaches or small mammals. Either way, it's unlikely to spare any humans unless they live deep underground. That's why we're here. We're on a salvage mission. To grab everything we can and get off-planet before the comet hits."

    "So it's true.” She hung her head. “Gayle told me the same thing; I didn't believe her. I thought-hoped-it was just more craziness."

    The redheaded girl turned and left the theater. Kristen and the others followed. Outside, Kristen watched Hannah walk silently down the steps of the IMAX exit. Below, parked next to Jimmy and Kristen's electric cart was an ancient-looking green motorcycle, complete with sidecar. Though of antique design, its paint and chrome fittings looked brand new.

    Hannah's black and white cat sat in the sidecar, waiting patiently. Odd behavior for a cat, Kristen thought. It almost seemed to exude what Buddhists called mindfulness, a characteristic of old souls. Her imagination must be working overtime.

    "Why?” Hannah said.

    "Why what?” Jorge said, trying to close the distance that had opened between them.

    "Why was it forbidden to tell us Earth-bound that we were doomed to die?"

    Olson spoke: “Because it was feared you'd swamp the ship. We thought there would be many, many more plague survivors than what we found."

    "When Worlds Collide-we have all seen that movie,” Jorge explained matter-of-factly.

    Kristen and Olson laughed, both having seen the movie many times. Hannah looked at them as if they were all from another planet, which, as Kristen thought about it, they were.

    There was an awkward moment, and Hannah said, “That seen-that-movie thing is some sort of running catch phrase with you guys, isn't it?"

    "There's not a lot to do on the Moon,” Kristen said. “And no one is making new movies, so we all tend to watch a lot of reruns."

    "Thanks to a little act of a U.S. congresswoman from California before the plague, we have pretty much every movie ever made on digital archive,” Jorge explained.

    "I see. So you guys spend a lot of time watching videos,” Hannah said. “I guess I could get used to that."

    Kristen waited for Olson to tell the young woman the rest; that they were expressly banned from bringing back any Earth survivors. It was feared those immune might also be carriers.

    Hannah sat down on the last step, set the big gun down and covered her face with both hands. “So that's it.” Her voice was muffled. “Not only is everyone I've ever been close to dead, anyone I might have known will die, too."

    Jorge sat beside her, and tried to gently pull her hands from her face, but she resisted and turned away from him.

    "You have us, now.” He gestured to include Kristen and Olson.

    Olson shook his head at Jorge. “We should get back and secure the ship,” he said. “Gayle might still be out there."

    The drive back to the Anita was uneventful. Hannah rode in the motorcycle sidecar holding her cat while Jorge drove. Kristen wondered where Jorge had learned to operate such a machine. As he idled the big machine alongside the electric cart, the only trouble he seemed to have was going slow enough so they could keep up. Operating the motorcycle didn't look easy. There were levers he had to work with each foot, plus levers to work with his hands on both ends of the handlebar.

    Hannah seemed to have quickly recovered from the shock of learning the planet was doomed. She was made of tough stuff, this girl-woman, tempered from being surrounded by death and tragedy for years. She was also, Kristen thought, very, very pretty, more than just cute or attractive-gorgeous in a natural sort of way. At first she thought the girl was wearing makeup. But no, her skin was perfect, and evidently her hair was not only naturally red, but naturally wavy. She had that elfin-like elegance that many redheads shared. Jorge kept glancing at the girl as he drove. Obviously, he was smitten, and the girl's movements around him hinted that she was attracted to him too. But talk about star-crossed lovers-Romeo and Juliet only had to contend with disparate families. The Chicxulub impactor, the one that killed ninety percent of life, including the dinosaurs, was by best estimate only ten to sixteen kilometers in diameter. The comet Kali was more than thirty-five kilometers in diameter. The atmosphere might be stripped off the planet. And they were ordered to leave Hannah behind.

    But they had disobeyed orders already. And though she knew Olson was angry at Marguerite for the bait-and-switch, he was seriously considering taking the Aquarium children back into space. What difference would it make if they added one teenage redheaded orphan to the manifest?

    The cat turned its head and looked at her as if reading her thoughts.

    

    

    

    Hannah watched with mixed feelings as Kristen, wearing latex gloves and a plastic visor, examined the sores on Tish's forearms.

    "Does that hurt?” Kristen asked Tish, as she used a pointy chrome instrument to poke at a lesion on the girl's snow-white forearm. The lesion didn't ooze-for that Hannah was grateful-but it was surrounded with little nodules-it looked just like the lesions sported by some Low-Paths. It looked like a frigging bleeding nipple.

    "No, it's sort of numb, actually,” Tish said. Her voice was hoarse and her nose stuffy. “And I have a pounding headache and feel like I'm about to hurl."

    "So you feel like you have a bad cold?” Kristen asked.

    "Yes, yes, yes. Just give me something so I can I go back to bed now.” She paused, the feigned indifference faded for a moment. “Or build me a time machine, Mr. Spock, so I can go back and tell myself to roll up that fucking window."

    Let's see, Kristen thought. How does the mental death dance go? Anger, resentment, denial-what was the next stage?

    Olson came in. “I've been up on the top deck. What's the prognosis?"

    "I don't know,” Kristen said. But when Tish wasn't looking, she shook her head slowly.

    To Hannah, this was an unnecessary nicety. She had seen the onset of the disease too many times in the Burrows. At first, the family had tried to simply lock the infected one away, but the outcome was always the same. First the suffering, then the sores, then waiting until a loved one become a slobbering, drooling caricature of the person they once had been. Then the fear as they turned into a rabid animal. The kind thing to do, for everyone, would be to kill the poor girl in her sleep before she became demented. That's what Hannah would want for herself. But then there was Francis, who might know how to prevent the disease from eating Tish's frontal lobes. But if she were in Tish's shoes, she would prefer the first option.

    "I was just up on the command deck,” Olson said, changing the subject. “I thought I saw someone moving over by the melted Ferris wheel. Too quick for a zombie."

    Tish sighed. “I'm going back to bed."

    Kristen said, “I'll help you back to your cabin."

    "I can do it by myself,” she said.

    When she had left, Kristen said, “She moves like an old woman. Everything is crashing, her joints, her immune system, and I don't know if she's contagious or infectious."

    "Just infectious,” Hannah said. “My father said it doesn't survive long in the air. Something about the viral coat. But when she goes demented, don't let her spit on you or bite you."

    "How long will that be?” Olson asked.

    "Depends. It could be a couple of days or a few hours.” Kristen and Olson were quiet, waiting for her to explain. Hannah found herself fidgeting with her hair. “My father was a doctor of veterinary medicine, a professor. He specialized in poultry diseases.” She was going to add that he was dead, but she feared she would start crying if she continued.

    "So, you've seen this before,” Kristen said.

    Hannah noticed Kristen was fidgeting too, only with the huge rodeo belt buckle she wore.

    "Yes, at the commune we had two-no, three if you count the new guy, Karl-infected. Karl and a girl, Katy, were bitten. It was only a matter of a day or so before they got sores like your friend, Tish. Karl lasted nearly a week; he gradually just became stupider and stupider after bouts of fever. But Katy turned overnight. She attacked her mother and bit her, but her mother never became sick.” Hannah felt a little weak in the knees and sat down on a metal bench built into the wall. It was hard and cold.

    "What about the third?” Olson said.

    "Third?"

    "The third person who became sick."

    "Oh, we never figured that out. She just got sick one day. She used to be a prostitute, you know, before the plague. John, my adopted dad-he'd also been a doctor, but a doctor for humans-he said she might have had AIDS, and her weakened immune system made her susceptible."

    Kristen came over and sat down on the bench beside Hannah and put her arm around her shoulders.

    "It must have been hard, losing two fathers."

    Hannah began crying silently. She couldn't stop. “John used to say all the time-crap happens-we should just be happy it hasn't happened to us yet.” She paused, trying to assess her feelings. “I'm all alone now."

    "No, you're not. You're with us,” Kristen said.

    "Kristen…?” Olson said. “You know we can't…"

    "And why not?” she snapped at him. “We can do anything else we want. We can defy them about everything else, why not this?"

    Hannah felt Kristen's hug tighten. What the hell were they talking about?

    Olson sighed. “I'm going to see if I can figure out a way to lock Tish's door from the outside. Don't you have an isolation cubical in the clinic?"

    "Yes, but it doesn't lock either."

    "I'll rig up something for now. We're talk later-okay?” he said.

    "There's nothing to talk about. I've decided,” she said.

    Olson stared at Kristen for a long moment, then shook his head and left the room, muttering again.

    "What was that all about?” Hannah asked.

    "Don't worry about it,” Kristen said. “Listen, we've got a couple of spare cabins. Would you like one?"

    "I'd like a bath."

    "We have showers, but it's recycled water, and the shower heads only let out a mist."

    "Beggars can't be choosers."

    "Come on then. I have to show you how to use the thing,” Kristen said, smiling. “It's designed for zero-G, and it's a bit complicated. Follow me."

    Kristen led her down a hall, up a ladder, down another hall, around a right-angle turn, until Hannah felt completely disoriented. There were colored stripes on the floor, some sort of coded guide, but she was too tired to figure it out. She wasn't too tired to wonder about the interior of the ship. On the outside, the Anita, shaped like squat bullet complete with fins, looked like a 1950s sci-fi version of a space ship. It departed from the mold by having a huge inverted dish at the tail end. But inside, where she expected something like a submarine, all metal and low bulkheads, it was quite modern. Everything seemed to be made of extruded plastic and painted in bright colors.

    Kristen opened a door and motioned her to go inside. “This was to be one of the officer's cabins, so it has its own shower and lavatory. Oh-that's another thing-the zero-G shower will seem simple compared to the zero-G toilet."

    "Why all this zero-G stuff?” Hannah said. “We're not in zero-G."

    "I guess the logical answer is they didn't want to have to pay for two sets of everything, but I suspect it's because our engineers don't know how to build anything else."

    Kristen led her to another little room. “This thing is possible because the Anita uses water for radiation shielding.” She pulled aside a curtain to reveal a Plexiglas cylinder tall enough to step inside.

    "Everything is pretty much automatic, sort of like one of those car washes on Earth where you drive through.” Kristen laughed. “I guess I don't have to tell you about that movie. We are on Earth, aren't we? Now get undressed."

    Hannah looked at her. “Now? In front of you?"

    "Well, yes-oh!” Kristen blushed. “It's not like that. I'm not like that. Honest. See the latch on the outside of the sliding door. That's a design flaw. It should be on the inside. At the end of the cycle all the water is vacuumed out-can't have water droplets floating around inside the ship at zero-G, you know. A human being can withstand a few minutes of vacuum-there's even a breathing mask that comes down. But sometimes the thing gets stuck in the vacuum cycle or doesn't replace the air, so you need to get out. Only the engineers put the manual release on the outside of the door. We all take showers with someone else in the room.

    "I'll tell you what, though. I'll sit over here with my back to you while you undress. Just strip down, get inside and push the big red button. If something goes wrong or you think something is wrong, just pound on the door. I'll hop up and let you out."

    With trepidation, Hannah undressed. She stepped into the shower and pushed the button as instructed. The door slid shut and a computer synthesized voice said, “Close your eyes, please: soapy water,” and in a second she felt the warm mist cover her. Then, “Rub a dub-dub.” She interpreted this to mean she was supposed to scrub. There was no washcloth so she rubbed herself down with her hands. The water was slightly slippery with soap. After a minute, the voice said, “Rinsing,” and another misting came, this time slightly cold. “Prepare for evacuation,” the voice said, and she felt her ears pop as the air-and the water-was sucked out of the chamber. The vacuuming seemed to go on too long, but just before she panicked, the chamber was filled with air again, and the door slid open.

    "There's a towel next to the door. While the shower was running I fetched some clean coveralls,” Kristen said. She was sitting with her back to the shower as she had been when Hannah had entered.

    "Wasn't that great!” Kristen continued. “On all the other zero-G ships, all we get to do is take sponge baths."

    It was the worst shower she had ever taken, but Hannah didn't say so. Instead she said, “It's all right, you don't have to turn around anymore. I'm just freaked, you know. The commune I lived in was pretty conservative. John, my adopted dad, said that we all should be modest, because everyone was stressed out anyway."

    Kristen turned around. “Goodness, girl, you're a mass of bruises. Wait before you get dressed. I have some salve that will help.” She scurried out of the room and was back in a minute with a tube of cream.

    Kristen was right. Everywhere Hannah looked were patches of skin the color of blue velvet.

    She was sitting, treating her bruises when Jorge barged in. She had a towel over her lap, but her breasts were exposed; they were bruised too, from when she had dived to the asphalt to escape Gayle.

    "Oh God,” Jorge's jaw dropped, and he just stood there, frozen.

    He had such an outlandish expression on his face that Hannah almost laughed. Then as he continued staring, she became embarrassed. She pulled up the towel, which exposed her pubes. That didn't help. Jorge looked as if he were about to pop a blood vessel.

    "I'm sorry…” he started to say, and Kristen was up half ushering him, half pushing him out of the room.

    From outside, Hannah could hear Kristen say, “You're supposed to knock."

    "Sorry, I didn't know.” Then, “God, she's so beautiful, I didn't mean to stare, but it was like I was nailed to the spot. Oh yeah, Jimmy said to come to the top level. Something's happening. I think he got a call from Daniel and Abraham."

    "Why didn't he just call me?"

    "He said he did. The intercom system is down again."

    Kristen came back in the room. “Sorry about that. When you live in space, most ships are a lot smaller than this, and you get used to a lack of privacy. Listen. I've got to go forward to help Mr. Olson. And Jorge, he's a good kid-young man, I mean-and he didn't mean anything."

    "I heard,” Hannah said. So he thought she was beautiful.

    "Anyway, Jorge is going to wait outside until you get dressed,” she said loud enough for him to hear. “Right, Jorge?"

    "You betcha,” came the reply.

    "Then he can show you where to get something to eat.” Kristen reached over and gave her a motherly pat on the shoulder. “It's going to be all right. Trust me. You're with friends.” Then she was out the door.

    Hannah finished with the salve and slipped into the coveralls. She half-wished there was a mirror in the room. “Beautiful,” Jorge had called her. She suspected he had been in space too long, but then there was Kristen, who, though older, truly was very pretty, in that kind of a tomboy sort of way that female paramedics and nurses had. And she suspected Tish had been pretty before the infection had taken hold, so it wasn't like he was only around old women and skanks. But looking down at herself, she didn't see it. For starters, she was freckled, and though her breasts were perky, her nipples-ugh! They stood out like pencil erasers. She looked over her shoulder, and she could see her reflection dimly in the Plexiglas of the zero-G shower stall. Her butt looked humongous, and her skin, being so pale, was blotchy red from sitting. No, there, must be something mentally wrong with the boy. But she decided not to question it; maybe all the Moon males were deranged.

    She pulled up the coveralls and fastened the front. The fastener was magnetic, not Velcro. A clean bra would have been good; her breasts had grown large enough to bounce a bit in the last year or so, but Kristen had only left the coveralls, some panties that felt like cotton (but probably weren't) and some soft boots made of synthetic leather, kind of like ankle-high moccasins but with non-slip soles. She put on the boots and struggled with the laces. She hadn't noticed until now-but there was no Velcro on anything; just laces and magnetic snaps. There was a funky quality to all the clothes, like handmade hippie stuff. Maybe they didn't have a Velcro factory on the moon. Maybe they didn't have factories at all.

    The handgun presented a problem. They had let her keep it-a good sign-but the holster belt was too big for her waist and kept sliding down over the slippery material of the coveralls and past her hips. She settled on slinging it over her shoulder. It was uncomfortable; the weight of the big weapon kept pulling the belt off her shoulder, but it seemed the only alternative other than holding it.

    Something was missing. She puzzled over this for a minute, then realized that Stinker was nowhere in sight. He must be exploring the ship, she thought and hoped he didn't leave a mess somewhere. She suspected she was on thin ice where the old man with the stubble beard was concerned, and his stepping in a pile of cat crap wouldn't help things.

    "Okay, you can come in now,” she shouted.

    Jorge opened the door and stepped inside, his eyes lowered, his shoulders slumped. He looked as though he had cleaned up too. Before he had been handsome in sort of a grunge way. Now he looked as if he should be modeling men's clothing. His slightly curly, dark hair was combed and his face scrubbed. His nose was straight and aristocratic, what her father would call a ‘High Spanish’ nose. His skin was light brown. He wore the same kind of coveralls as she wore, only blue instead of red. And he filled them out well in the shoulders. He came in with his hands in his pockets, like a little boy caught in the cookie jar.

    "Sorry, really sorry about earlier."

    As he stumbled over the words, it dawned on her how bashful he was. Being a kid in space must be like going to private school, but without the nice car.

    "That's okay; it was an accident."

    He looked up and shyly smiled at her, showing perfect teeth. She had expected bad teeth. She caught her breath. And this guy was attracted to her!

    "But don't get any ideas, all right?” she said. Now why had she said that?

    "Of course not, I'm not some perv, you know."

    "I'll take your word for it,” she said, not knowing whether to pretend disdain or smile at him. Let's face it; she was clueless in this stuff. All the romance novels she read weren't really helpful. Everyone in her old commune was either twenty years older than she or sick or both.

    She decided on indifference, then chanced a slight smile at him.

    "Thanks,” he said, managing to look happy and sheepish simultaneously. “I'm supposed to show you to the galley and help you fix something to eat.” He motioned toward the door. It took her a second to realize that she was supposed to go ahead, and he would follow, like something out of an old, old movie.

    She felt herself relax a bit as she stepped through the door, and said, “I never introduced myself. And you told me your name, but not your age, or anything else about yourself."

    "I'm twenty,” he said. “I've lived on the Moon all my life. I got drafted for this mission. Before I got drafted, I was supposed to be studying zero-G mining. There's not much else to tell you. My life is pretty dull. The Moon is dull, in between emergencies. Now we go up the ladder."

    "I feel like I'm in a maze,” she said.

    "In zero-G, it's a lot different. There's a central shaft that travels nearly the entire length of the ship. When there's no acceleration, you can just sort glide down it from one level to another. I know your first name is Hannah; I don't know much else about you, except you're a good shot."

    Well, you've seen more of me than any other adult male has, including my late father or my stepfather, she thought.

    "My last name is Alman,” she answered.

    At the top of the steps they made another couple of turns and entered a small room that hardly looked like a kitchen at all. There was a metal trestle table bolted to the floor and appliances that looked like a freezer and a microwave. But the trestle table had seat belts and a big ventilation hood hung over it. And everything was padded.

    Jorge retrieved something out of the freezer. “Here, these are not too bad. They're burgers made of soy. At all costs avoid the soy cheddar cheese or the vegetable protein hotdogs.” He pointed to his open mouth with an index finger, the universal sign of gagging. He showed her how to microwave the burger and rooted in the freezer for some of the other options including freeze-dried tomatoes.

    "Grown hydroponically,” he explained. “Just be glad we're not in zero-G; then you'd have to eat everything out of a tube."

    He sat across the table and served her a beverage that tasted mildly alcoholic.

    "Rice wine,” he said.

    She took a wary bite of the soy burger.

    "How is it?” he asked.

    "Tasty, but I like real hamburgers better."

    "I've never tasted beef."

    "I haven't had one since the plague killed nearly everything warm-blooded, but I still remember what a FatBurger tastes like."

    "FatBurger-there actually was such a restaurant?"

    "Yep and Whataburger and a little chain called Juicy Lucy's-they had their own cow herd."

    "Gawd! Some of these Buddhists would pee in their pants."

    "Are there a lot of Buddhists on the Moon?"

    "They're the majority, but a lot of people are Buddhist and have other religions too. The Buddhists say they're not a religion, but I think most people work it like it's a religion. Ritual chants, praying to little statues and so on."

    "I went to grade school with a Buddhist kid. He used to sneak his father's whiskey into school to show us how cool he was."

    "He doesn't sound much like the Buddhists I know. My parents were very serious about it. I felt like I was living in a monastery. Me, I was always praying to Buddha for something to happen-anything! A disaster would do, just something to end the monotony."

    As if in answer, there was a loud thump, and the ship shuddered violently, throwing them both off the trestle seat and sending her veggie burger and rice tea flying.

    As she got to her feet, klaxon alarms went off.

    

    

    

    Hannah followed Jorge as he made his way up to what he called forward; to her it just seemed like up, not forward. They finally emerged into a small room with thick portholes, a funny-looking couch, and lots of flat-screen monitors.

    Olson and Kristen were sitting in weird-looking chairs mounted on gimbal rings, peering at one of the monitors. Kristen was working a joystick.

    "There, there!” Olson said. “I see movement. Zoom in."

    "Patience, Jimmy,” Kristen said. “This thing wasn't made to move quickly."

    Jorge stepped up and looked over their shoulders. Hannah mentally shrugged and looked over their shoulders too. After taking a second to get oriented, she realized she was looking at the cab of a semi-tractor trailer. Smoke-no, it was steam-billowed from under the hood, obscuring vision through the cab's windshield. A gust of wind cleared the steam away for a second, giving her a glimpse of movement behind the steering wheel. Kristen zoomed in further for a better look, but the breeze died, and the steam returned to obscure the view.

    "Okay, I saw it too,” Kristen said. “But who is it?"

    "I think it's Badr,” Jorge said.

    "All I could see was a hand, maybe an arm,” Olson said.

    "It was Badr, all right,” Jorge said. “I recognized that big nerdy calculator wristwatch he wears."

    "Wristwatch. You're imagining things. All I could see was a bloody hand and arm,” Olson said, raising his voice.

    Though she found Olson a little intimidating, Hannah was going to say she saw it too, but Kristen spoke first, “Young eyes, Jimmy, young eyes."

    Olson cleared his throat. “Yeah, you're probably right. If he and Kaplan commandeered a truck, it would have been Badr who learned how to drive it."

    "He didn't learn very well,” Kristen said.

    "Maybe. Maybe not. Did you see the pattern on the passenger side windshield? That looked like a shotgun blast to me."

    "Shit! I've got to get down there.” Kristen started to get out of her chair.

    Olson grabbed her arm. “Wait. What about Gayle? This could be a trap."

    "We can't just leave him there to die."

    "Agreed, but I think I should go."

    "And why is that, because you're the man?"

    "No, no, no. Because I'm more dispensable."

    Kristen gave a short laugh. “And how do you figure that?"

    "Because all I do is work my mouth and swagger around. You, at least, have medical skills."

    "And who is going to launch the ship if you get killed? We'll all die on this planet."

    Olson nodded, pulled a slip of paper and a pen from his pocket, scribbled something down and handed it to her. “Here's the Linux launch computer root password. Just type ‘launch dash’ and ‘dash h,’ all lowercase. Once you log on, it'll tell you what commands to issue. It's pretty fucking simple. I can do it."

    Kristen stared at the paper.

    "You might share it with Jorge too,” Olson said. “Now I'm going down the ramp to see if I can get Badr out of the mess. Jorge?"

    "Yes."

    "You can cover me from the top of the ramp right?"

    "Yeah, I guess so."

    "You're all using shotguns-right?” Hannah said.

    "Yes,” Olson said not looking at her, but rummaging in a soft red case with a big white cross on it.

    "Well, shotguns are fine for short range, but me and my little friend here… well.” Hannah patted the big handgun. She had given them her best Al Pacino imitation, but they looked at her blankly. Maybe they hadn't seen every movie ever made. “It's got an eight-inch barrel and magnum loads. It has better range than the shotgun, and I'm a pretty good shot.” She didn't add that without much else to do, she had spent a lot of time on the very parking lot where the Anita had landed putting holes in tin cans at fifty paces.

    Olson and Kristen looked at each other for a moment, not saying anything. Hannah was reminded of that strange, non-verbal communication among parents, stand-in parents, anyone in charge of her fate.

    "Okay, you back up Jorge. He'll do the close range stuff; you keep an eye out by that fused chain-link fence-or if there's anyone else in the truck who might not be friendly.” Olson said. “I'll go down the ramp and see if I can do anything for Badr. You two will stay at the top, behind the doors. Kristen…?” His tone of voice changed from ordering to asking. “How about you stay here and use the remote cameras to scan the other side of the Anita for anyone trying to blindside us? We'll leave our walkie-talkies on.” He paused. “Sound like a plan?"

    "Except I could do more for Badr-if that is Badr-than you."

    "Do you think you could carry him back up the ramp by yourself?"

    "Do you?"

    Olson scratched his head and smiled at her. “I think I'm up to it."

    For a moment, Hannah thought they were going to start yelling at each other. Kristen, however, smiled back at Olson, and on tiptoes, gave him a peck on the cheek. “Reason rules out. Take care of yourself, old man. We'll watch your back, but one thing."

    "What's that?"

    "Use the little camera on your walkie-talkie to give me a picture of Badr before you move him."

    "Why?"

    "It's the first rule of paramedics-used to be part of the Hippocratic Oath-'First, do no harm'-if you move him you could kill him."

    "I don't think we're in a position to do triage. Somebody-probably Gayle-shot him, and she's still out there somewhere. We need to get him to the ship fast."

    "Jimmy?"

    "Okay. Okay, if no one is shooting at me, I consult with you first."

    Jorge, Olson, and Hannah made their way down the ship to the ramp exit. Once they were at the hatch, Kristen called them on their walkie-talkies.

    "No one in sight,” she said, simulcasting to all three walkie-talkies. “The steam stopped. I can definitely see that it's Badr. He's not moving any more, though."

    The hatch was the second door of a small air lock. Olson had Kristen seal the first door remotely, then Olson instructed Hannah and Jorge to stay back as he spun a wheel that looked like it belonged in a World War II submarine. The door, as thick as a bank's vault, opened with a clank. Olson strained to pull it open-the ship wasn't exactly sitting level, and the heavy steel door wanted to swing shut. Jorge moved to help him, but Olson waved him back and stepped through the half-open hatch.

    In silent agreement, Hannah and Jorge moved to the door, weapons ready. With Jorge taking the lead, Hannah laid on her belly on the deck alongside Jorge's feet. Her hands shook. Olson strode the ramp. The coolness brought by the rain had been turned back by the Texas heat, and warm, humid air rolled in through the doors. The air was nearly palpable. By the time he got to the bottom of the ramp, his coveralls were soaked with sweat. He kept his walkie-talkie on and gave a running commentary as he approached the truck.

    Hannah was reminded of bomb-defusing crews telling each step they took. Unlike a bomb crew, if Olson's progress ended in disaster, neither she nor Jorge was supposed to follow. Instead, they would close the hatch and hunker down. She wasn't sure whether Olson was brave, self-destructive, or out to prove something, either to himself or to Kristen. She suspected the latter. He was ‘John Wayne-ing’ it as her communal stepfather used to say.

    'John Wayne’ was gasping for breath as he reached the cab.

    "I can see him! His eyes are open. He sees me,” Olson exclaimed.

    "Good,” came Kristen's reply. “Take his pulse like I showed you."

    "I feel awfully exposed out here,” Olson said. “The pattern on the windshield was definitely made by a shotgun. I can see pellets embedded in the glass. Looks like some of the pellets entered Badr's chest and face. Gayle could still be out here somewhere. Hell, she could even be in the truck somewhere."

    Then came a painful gasp, barely audible to Kristen over the walkie-talkie. “Not Gayle-went crazy.” Then a liquid cough.

    "Where's Kaplan?” Kristen asked.

    Olson repeated the question to Badr, and then reported, “He didn't answer. He's buckled in and the airbag deployed, so there's no reason to suspect spine injury. I'm going to bring him in."

    "Ah…” Kristen started to say something but was interrupted.

    "It would be more merciful to let him die,” said another voice over the walkie-talkie channel.

    Hannah recognized the voice at once-Gayle.

    "Where are you, Gayle?” Olson said. In the background, Hannah could hear him unsnap Badr's seatbelt. Then a grunt. She could see him as he stood on the running board of the truck and wrestled Badr out of the truck.

    "I could kill you, you know,” Gayle said.

    "If you could do that, you would have already."

    Jorge nudged Hannah with this foot. He showed her his walkie-talkie; he was pressing the mute-talk button. She followed suit.

    "I don't see her; do you?"

    She shook her head. He motioned with the barrel of his shotgun. She got it. He would keep an eye to the right, she to the left.

    Meanwhile, Olson managed to sling Badr over a shoulder and was starting back up the ramp. His labored breathing grew louder over the walkie-talkie.

    Kristen's voice: “Where are you, Gayle?"

    "Where you can't see me, obviously,” came the reply.

    "That's good news, that Kristen can't see her,” Jorge said.

    Olson was now a third of the way up the ramp. His face was red and his coveralls now drenched with sweat. His breath came in gasps.

    "I'm going to help Mr. Olson,” Jorge said. He laid the shotgun beside Hannah and stepped out on the ramp. “You stay here.” And he was off down the ramp.

    He met the old man about midway down the ramp.

    "I told you to stay put!"

    Olson had clipped his walkie-talkie to his belt, so his voice was faint, but his anger came through loud and clear.

    "If Kristen can't see her with any of the remote cameras, then she's not close enough to do us harm,” Jorge said.

    Olson didn't argue, but swung Badr down so Jorge could take his shoulders. Olson held onto his feet. Together, they began working their way up the ramp. A shot rang out across the parking lot. Both men ducked down, though the railing didn't offer much protection. Desperately, Hannah looked for the location of the shot. The few trees and landscaping in the parking lot had been blasted to matchsticks by the Anita's landing. So had the low wooden fences. There was no cover for at least a hundred yards. The shot seemed to have come from the north, where all the old concession stands had once stood. They were burnt-out rubble now.

    "Show yourself, Gayle,” Olson said. “You and I can have this out now!"

    Gayle's laughter came over the walkie-talkie channel. “Tsk, tsk, Jimmy. Such anger."

    Somehow Olson had carried his shotgun up the ramp along with Badr, and he was scanning the area with it, looking for a shot.

    Hannah turned off the mute on her walkie-talkie. “She's bluffing, guys. That was a shotgun we heard. I can see for a hundred yards. She's nowhere close enough to reach us."

    "Is that you, Hannah?” Gayle said. “Did you sign up or did they draft you?"

    "Fuck you, you crazy bitch,” Hannah said.

    "Such language from a teenager,” Gayle said. Her voice sounded as if she were genuinely offended.

    Olson and Jorge were now most of the way up the ramp. Another shot echoed across the parking lot. They both ducked, but kept on climbing.

    "To the left…” Kristen said.

    But Hannah had already seen the muzzle flash from behind a small pile of rubble. The rubble, a few charred boards, was too small to shield Gayle's entire body. She must be in one of the manholes that led down to the Burrows. Hannah's indignation got the better of her. It was one thing to be shooting at her new friends or to have tried to kill her. But the lunatic was trespassing on what had once been her home and was now standing on the graves of her adopted family.

    Without thinking, she stepped out of the hatch and braced the big pistol on the railing. Olson and Jorge saw her and kept on coming. Sighting through the little scope, she could see the manhole cover now, tipped up and leaning on the pile of boards. A bank shot? Aiming high, she took a deep breath and let it out slowly as she squeezed the trigger. With the ship behind her reflecting the sound, the report of the big pistol was deafening. The kick threw her arms up at nearly 45 degrees, and she nearly fired off another shot in the air from the force of the recoil. The bullet went high; she could see a puff of black dust as it impacted the charred asphalt.

    "Not even warm,” came Gayle's taunting reply.

    Hannah brought the gun back down to the support of the railing, and aimed a bit lower to offset the gun's kick. Again the deafening report, making her ears ring. But this time she was rewarded with a satisfying metallic CHUNK, followed by a cry of pain. The bullet had ricocheted off the iron manhole cover. It was a second before Hannah realized she had heard the sound of both the ricochet and the cry through Gayle's walkie-talkie.

    "Great mother! You've fucking shot me, you little cockroach!” Gayle shouted.

    Olson and Jorge passed her and went into the hatch.

    "Come on, Hannah!” Jorge said.

    Hannah ignored him and brought the gun down for another shot. This time, she pulled to the right. Too late anyway. If Gayle had been hit by the ricochet, then she was probably hunkering down, going deeper in the catacombs. Hannah followed Olson and Jorge into the hatch.

    As soon as she was inside, Jorge pushed the heavy door forward and began spinning the latching wheel. They had laid Badr on his back on the floor. The front of his coveralls had several splotches of blood; worse, she could see a tiny hole, crusted with blood, over his left eyebrow. He didn't look good. He had the kind of grayish-blue cast that people of color get when they're sick or dying.

    Olson sat on his haunches beside Badr, catching his breath. “Good shooting,” he said to Hannah.

    "I don't think I hit her solid."

    "You made her duck, that's for sure. You're first string."

    "Ditto on that,” Jorge said. His smile said he was referring to more than her shooting. She felt herself blushing and looked down. Now it was her turn to be bashful.

    The space between the outer door and the airlock door was limited, and she had to straddle Badr's legs. She noticed the hammer was cocked on the big pistol, and, aiming it at the ceiling, she slowly relaxed it. Her ears still rang from firing the gun. Sad, she thought, how human affairs too often degraded to the use of guns. She used to think it was just something about Texas, but these people were from the Moon, a place of Buddhists and Earth Mothers, and here they were shooting at one another like so many mad zealots.

    The inner door opened, remotely controlled by Kristen. “Take him to the Sick Bay amidships. That should be closer."

    It took the three of them to wrestle Badr up three ladders. They were all bloody by the time they got him on a gurney. Kristen, who was waiting for them, must have noticed Hannah's unease.

    "Don't worry about the blood,” she said. “No AIDS or Ebola on the Moon. Those diseases were screened for and quarantined from the beginnings of the colony."

    "Too bad y'all didn't quarantine for craziness,” Hannah said.

    "Hah!” Olson snorted. “Actually, there was such screening, but radiation, and bad diet, and a shallow gene pool has taken its toll."

    Kristen began work on Badr, first opening the magnetic snaps on the front of his coveralls, then running a pair of shears up each sleeve until she had bared his chest. There was quite a bit of blood. Then she did the same on his trouser legs, quite proficiently; it only took her seconds. She had done this before. In a minute she had him down to his tighty-whities. Hannah felt embarrassed, wondering if she should leave, but she didn't know how to get back to her cabin. Besides, she didn't want to be alone, and Jorge, one slender hand held to his perfect mouth, was obviously intent on the unfolding scene.

    Badr stirred, lifted his head, tried to speak but lost consciousness again.

    Kristen began wiping away the blood from his chest. It had streamed down his legs to his knees. She examined each wound carefully, wiping away more blood as it oozed out. Taking a small pistol-shaped object from a cupboard, she pressed it to each wound in turn.

    It was, Hannah realized with a little disappointment, some sort of hypodermic. Pretty ordinary; she had expected something higher tech from Moon men, like a tricorder.

    Kristen began digging around in one of the chest wounds using a pair of long, sharp tweezers.

    "Aha,” she said, and dropped something in a metal cup. It made a tiny ping. “Got one.” She began working on another wound. Badr groaned but did not move. “Don't worry,” Kristen said over her shoulder as she worked. “I gave him a local anesthetic around each wound. He doesn't feel a thing-well, not much anyway.” She noticed Hannah for the first time, pulled a sheet out from under the gurney, and covered her patient from the waist down. “No wounds below the sternum; that's good. And these in his chest must have been slowed by the windshield. They're superficial."

    "What about the ones to his face?” Olson asked.

    "Those are the ones that worry me, particularly the one above his eyebrow, but there's not much I can do about them. Let me treat these lest he lose more blood and go into shock. Then I'll see to them.” She pressed a Band-Aid over the wound she had just cleaned.

    She stopped for a minute and turned away from Badr. “The wounds to his forehead look deeper. I think the first shot was slowed by the windshield, but the second shot wasn't, for the windshield was already shattered. I hope none of the pellets penetrated his skull, but I'm afraid they did."

    Badr suddenly sat straight up. “Mother lode!” he shouted. “I found the mother mart! We can finish the mission!"

    Kristen turned and tried to press him back down on the gurney. “You can tell us about it later, Badr."

    "No, you don't understand.” Blood began streaming from the wound on his forehead. “There may be no later… I found it… a warehouse, metric tons… canned food, pharms, tools, hectares of… one place, all ready for the taking… close…” Then his eyes rolled to show the whites, and Kristen had to catch him before he fell off the gurney.

    

    

    

    "No, I don't think he was delirious,” Kristen said, as she continued to treat Badr's wounds.

    "I don't know,” Olson said. “I just don't know anything anymore."

    In a brief flash of epiphany, Olson realized he had lost all faith in his own judgment, but he had to continue to lead anyway because there was no one else to do it. Jorge was too young. Badr would be lucky to last the day. Kristen was smart enough-smarter than he was, he suspected-but lacked the resolve. First hint of pressure from the Chancellors and she would roll over.

    Which posed the question: Why bother? Most of the crew were dead or would be. There was just Jorge, Kristen, and the new girl, Hannah, if they broke the rules and took her.

    There were, though, the space children. Could they really be what Marguerite said they were: the next stage of human evolution, destined for life in space?

    "I'll be back in a moment,” he said and stepped out of Sick Bay. He found an empty storage room, just large enough to sit down in. As he opened the door, Hannah's black and white cat stepped out and looked at him. Olson tried to grab it, but the cat scurried off down the hall out of his reach. Something would have to be done about the animal. Cats were bad news in zero-G, and it would have to be expelled before they launched. They should have never let it on board in the first place. But that would come later. He went into the closet and closed the door behind him. The closet stank of stale fart, but he stayed. He could hear Kristen talking from down the hall, then Jorge.

    He was reminded of an incident long ago where the family cat had come in handy. Like a cascade, that snippet of memory brought back a flood of other recollections. His early childhood, time spent in Southern Baptist Sunday school, the bully there who took exception to the questions he asked during Bible study.

    This was one of the times when he wished he had some sort of faith-the ability to let himself believe in what his logical, ratiocinating mind said was either highly improbable or impossible. Christianity demanded too much of him in this regard, as did every other monotheistic religion. Buddhism made fewer demands in that way and was entirely logical, but had built its foundations on a set of unprovable suppositions: reincarnation and the law of Karma. So to his thinking, it also was a religion.

    And the space children? That demanded a leap of faith too. If they were the next stage of human evolution, that would be reason for the mission to continue, justification to chance more failure.

    "Jimmy, are you in there?” Kristen's voice.

    The door opened, and Kristen stood there, outlined by the hallway lights. “I heard you mumbling. Are you alone?” She looked around the little room. “I guess you are.” She had stripped off her medical scrubs and was wearing a pair of incredibly ugly men's Bermuda shorts and a blood-spattered T-shirt, and she still had on those silly paper sanitary booties. She looked beautiful.

    "Is this a private mental breakdown, or can I join you?” she said.

    Olson laughed despite himself. “Come on in. Misery loves company, especially when company looks like you."

    "I've got Badr sedated and strapped in…” she started, then, “Did I hear you talking to yourself?"

    "No… yes,” he admitted. “Hannah's cat brought back an old memory."

    "Go on,” she said.

    "It was a memory from Earth, before we emigrated. My mother was Southern Baptist, so we all went to church once a week whether we needed to or not, and I had to attend Sunday School. I had doubts about religion even then, and I asked too many questions for the comfort of one of my classmates. He was your typical religious bigot, even at eleven, who took my challenge to his faith personally, and he caught me outside my house, planning to beat the fear of God into me. I had the family cat on my lap, and I threw it into his face-a cat missile. The creature damn near blinded the little bastard."

    "The cat or the bigot?” Kristen said.

    "Pardon me?"

    "Was it the cat or the bigot you nearly blinded?"

    "The bigot,” he laughed, “but I always felt a little guilty for abusing the cat."

    "Charming story,” Kristen said, laughing with him. “But there's more to you hiding away here than just a painful childhood memory, isn't there?"

    "Kristen, I just don't know what to do. Or if I-we-should do anything. That bitch Gayle-she's just another flavor of religious crazy bigot. It's her way of seeing things or nothing-that my way or the highway is the essence of bigotry, you know. Anyway, she seems to pop up everywhere we turn. If we try a mission to the Aquarium, will she be there waiting for us? If we try to find Badr's mother lode-assuming it's real-will she pick us off one by one?"

    She gave him one of her sad smiles and stepped into the little room and shut the door behind her. She sat down on her haunches, mirroring him. In the cramped space, she had to bring her legs up and over his. “If I make love to you here, will you quit your fucking whining?” she said.

    She pulled the baggy Bermuda shorts aside to give him access to her. He didn't have to be asked twice. The T-shirt slipped up easily.

    Afterward, he leaned back against the wall, and she put her head on his shoulder.

    "God, men are such dogs,” he said.

    "Thanks a lot,” she said, “What does that make me-your bitch or a dog groomer?"

    "A trainer, you know that. That's how the saying goes. Men are dogs, but they can be trained and housebroken."

    "You really know how to sweet-talk a girl."

    "No, I mean it sincerely. We're dogs. We think we're these deep-thinking philosophers, ass-deep in gloomy existentialism or nihilism, but all it takes is a little physical attention from a beautiful woman, and we're happy puppies.” He stroked the outside of her thigh with the back of his hand, wondering as he always did, how the mere texture of a woman's skin could be such a joy. Her skin was covered in a light sheen of sweat and a tremor ran up and down her thigh as he stroked it. She signed. He felt he'd done good by her and was more satisfied by this thought than the orgasm he'd just experienced.

    "If I were religious, I'd thank God for you,” he said without thinking.

    "Okay, thanks for the compliment-I think.” She smiled at him. “But why not just thank me for taking pity on such a lout as you?"

    "That too,” he said. “Listen, you know, I think we should take the space children after all-IF we can figure out a way to accommodate them."

    "That's easy,” she said. “The water-shielding tanks."

    "Of course,” he said. “They'd be right at home in there wouldn't they?"

    Radiation was a big issue in space anyway, but when small nuclear bombs are being shot out the back of one's space ship and detonated a hundred meters away, then shielding becomes ever more important. The big risk in space travel-other than the risk of a propulsion system failing-was from cosmic rays and solar flares. Atomic nuclei stripped of electrons, accelerated to nearly the speed of light by supernova explosions, cosmic rays can pass through many centimeters of steel, aluminum, or titanium.

    One of the worst choices for shielding against galactic cosmic rays is metal. When struck by a cosmic ray, the nucleus of a metallic atom can become fissile, producing secondary radiation that is a bigger hazard to human health than the cosmic ray itself.

    Some of the best shielding materials are hydrogen-rich materials such as plastics. But the hydrocarbons needed to make plastics were in short supply on the Moon and in space. Asteroid mines and to a lesser extent, meteorite recovery mining on the Moon, provided a plentitude of iron, nickel, and other metals as well as ice. That's why the Anita was built of steel; and for shielding, it relied on water, which was also hydrogen-rich.

    The Anita not only slightly resembled a twentieth-century submarine inside, but it was built much like one. It had a double hull, filled with water, providing shielding from the day-to-day radiation. In addition, it had a water-tank shelter, a large water tank nearly twenty meters in diameter, with a relatively small, inner cabin where as many as fifteen people could take refuge during a solar flare.

    The Anita's nuclear reactor meant there was no shortage of power, so the shielding water was constantly filtered and could be used for bathing, even drinking.

    Though maintenance of this system had been Bobby's province, Olson was somewhat familiar with the layout.

    "It could work. There's even a double door system, built something like an air lock, in the shelter cabin. It's there so a maintenance crew can enter with the tank filled."

    "We'd have to provide air just long enough to reach orbit. From what I understand, they could withstand ordinary accelerations.” She swung a leg up and over his, then stood. She laughed at his feigned pout as she pulled the T-shirt back down over her breasts.

    "Air shouldn't be a big problem. We can safely drain the shelter tank down a half-meter and pump air in there,” he said. “I think there's a circulation system already in place for a maintenance crew."

    "And what about the supplies?"

    "If Badr wasn't raving, then it sounds easy.” He caught himself scratching his chin like an old geezer and stopped. Time to shave again so he wouldn't rub Kristen raw. “Gayle may not know of it. I think she was waiting out in that hidey-hole in the parking lot to ambush you or me, but when she saw Badr, she took the first target of opportunity."

    "Maybe…” Kristen continued straightening her clothes as he used his shirt to wipe the result of their love-making off her thigh. She slapped his hand and said, “I can do that,” then continued with, “But we still don't know what happened to Kaplan or where to find this ‘mother lode’ of his."

    "Ha. You mean mother mart."

    "Whatever,” she said, shaking her head.

    "Maybe it was Badr who killed Kaplan. They were always arguing about religion, he being Muslim, Kaplan Jewish, and all that crap."

    "Oh, but their relationship wasn't like that-not at all.” She read his expression. “Oh, you didn't know. I thought everyone did. It was so obvious."

    Olson went “harrumph,” before he could stop himself. They both seemed too hairy to be gay. He certainly was getting old and mentally dense. “A lovers’ quarrel then. That's another reason for violence."

    "I don't think so. They loved each other deeply. Everyone-everyone but you-knew that.” She tousled his hair as if he were a twelve-year-old. “The Jihad/Zionist thing was kind of an inside joke. They were like two peas in the same pod."

    "Or it could just be a dangerous place out there. Or Kaplan could be still at this warehouse that Badr was raving about. Or…"

    Olson resisted the impulse to slap his forehead again. “Or Kaplan could still be in the truck. I didn't look in the sleeper section.” He rose to his feet. “I'm going to have to go back down there and check out the truck."

    "Now?"

    "Yes, now. Gayle's smart-crazy, but she won't suspect us back down so soon. Besides, for all we know Kaplan could be in the truck and wounded. If the back of the truck is filled with supplies-something other than just one-of-a-kind pharmaceuticals-then we'll know Badr wasn't off his nut."

    "I'll go with you this time,” she said.

    "No, I…"

    "Jimmy, I'm not taking no for an answer."

    "I just don't think it's a good idea. If we both were killed, who would launch the ship?"

    "I gave Jorge a copy of the password."

    "But it's like Kirk, Bones, and Spock-all the command officers beaming down to the planet. It's just not a wise thing to do."

    "And since when have either of us let that stop us?” She tried to put her hands on her hips, but the cell was too narrow. “Come on. Gayle's probably licking her wounds and not expecting us. Besides, it'll be dark soon. We'll make poor targets."

    Olson gave up. One thing about getting older, he thought, was that you knew when a battle was lost and fighting was just a waste of time. Badr had once told him, with the authority of someone quoting a holy text, that though a man might win an argument with the Devil, he shouldn't even try to debate a woman. Of course, he had just learned that Badr had some issues with women. Still, it was with some trepidation that he followed Kristen back down to the exit. When they got to the outside door, they realized they would have to leave the inner door unlocked. No one was on the bridge to lock or unlock it remotely. If they failed, if Gayle was still hiding out there like a trapdoor spider to ambush them, then afterwards she could just walk into the Anita and finish off the rest of the crew.

    He really needed to get out of this gloom-and-doom state of mind.

    They took turns going down the ramp, one standing with shotgun at the ready while the other advanced.

    "I feel like I'm in a Tom Clancy movie,” Kristen said.

    True, neither of them had much experience at armed conflict. They were just imitating what they'd seen on countless cop and war movies.

    They reached the cab of the truck without incident. Before Olson could stop her, Kristen was in the cab, pulling back the curtain of the small bunk bed that sat behind the front seat.

    "Empty,” she proclaimed.

    Still doing the cops movie, they worked their way to the rear of the truck. There was no moon, and the streetlights were out, of course, but without light pollution, the Milky Way stretched across the heavens like a giant, luminescent storm cloud. Lit by the galactic light, Kristen cast a clearly definable shadow on the side of the trailer.

    "Shadow puppets,” Kristen said, striking an elaborate pose like a Thai dancer.

    "There's this Buddhist imagery that compares this life, the life we think is real, to the shadows cast by puppets,” he said.

    "Why, Mr. Olson, you're well-read.” She turned playfully and spun-a bit awkwardly on one toe-and the shadow puppet turned into a ballerina.

    "Now come on before Miss Gayle aerates your shadow."

    She stopped suddenly and pointed to the sky.

    "Look there, about ten or fifteen degrees below that bright star-I think it's Vega."

    Olson found Vega, and there, where Kristen pointed, he found a small bright patch of fuzzy light, the comet Kali, the Earth Killer.

    "Doesn't look like much, does it, compared to the Milky Way?” he said.

    Against the pitch black canvas of the night sky, the Milky Way stretched from north to south, so bright it seemed to cast its own shadow.

    "It's all lined up and ready to ram us. It's coming in so fast it'll look bigger and brighter in no time."

    "A sobering thought; we don't have much time left. Let's check the back."

    Feeling exposed even in the darkness, they moved quickly and as quietly as they could to the back of the truck. The back doors were latched but unlocked. Standing on the back bumper, Olson lifted up the latching lever, wincing as the rusty hinge gave a loud shriek. He froze, but no gunshot came. He stepped down and swung the left door open; it too complained with a rusty squeal.

    "If she's out there, she's deaf,” Kristen said.

    "Or waiting for a clear shot.” He hoisted himself up and climbed in the truck. It was nearly full, leaving standing room only. Then he offered Kristen a hand; she took it, and they were both in the truck. Careful to not make any further noise, they swung the door closed and turned on a flashlight.

    The trailer was filled with plastic-wrapped bundles on wooden skids-stacked three high to the roof. Kristen produced a scalpel from the first aid fanny pack she always carried. Under the brightness of battery powered LEDs, they slit the plastic wrap surrounding one of the skid bundles and found boxes of canned food.

    "Nitrogen packed corn, peas, asparagus, peaches-God, how long has it been since I've tasted a peach?” Olson said.

    "I don't think I ever have,” Kristen said.

    In the next bundle, they found medical supplies. The names were literally Greek to Olson, but Kristen identified them as high-grade antibiotics, steroids, anti-depressants, and pain killers.

    "There's even morphine, in drip-line pouches here!” Kristen's excitement was contagious.

    On the third skid they found seeds, all nitrogen packed. On the fourth, they found hydroponics equipment.

    "The whole trailer-it's fifteen meters long at least-must be full of this stuff. Badr really did find the mother lode,” Olson said.

    "If there's a whole warehouse of this stuff, it's like someone was purposefully stocking up for the end of the world."

    Olson pulled a packing slip from one of the bundles. It was on U.S. letterhead, with the words “ReGenesis Project” underneath. He handed it to Kristen. “Maybe they were, what with the plague and everything."

    "You know, if we skipped trying to find the DNA fabricator and could keep Gayle at bay, we could fill up the Anita with tons and tons of this stuff,” Kristen said.

    "With it being already on skids, we'd barely have to foam it at all. For Badr to load this on the truck, there must have been a forklift at wherever he found all this stuff,” he said.

    "Or it was already on the trailer and all he had to do was hitch up and drive it off."

    Olson felt his spirits lifting. For the first time in days, he felt they might a chance to pull this off. With tons of supplies, they could write their own ticket in the asteroids.

    Kristen's and Olson's walkie-talkies began buzzing simultaneously.

    Olson started to answer his, but Kristen grabbed his hand before he could press the talk button.

    "What if it's Gayle?"

    "What if it is? She either knows we're in here, or she doesn't."

    She shrugged. He pressed the talk button. “Hello?"

    Instead of an answer, they heard in the miniaturized voice of the walkie-talkie: “Stay away! Stay away from her; don't let her bite you!"

    Hannah's voice.

    Then Jorge's: “We need a long stick or pole or something. Then we could push her back into the room."

    Olson was confused. “There's no way Gayle could have gotten on the ship…"

    "It's not Gayle they're fighting; it's Tish,” Kristen said.

    

    

    

    Sometimes old technology was the best, Jorge thought as he used the mop handle like a spear and shoved it into Tish's mouth. She clamped down on the plastic handle so hard that the muscles in her cheeks stood out like cords. He pushed harder, until the end must be back in her throat, and from her clenched mouth came an inarticulate growl.

    The growl encouraged him. He found it hard not to think of the thing before him as still being Tish. On some level, he knew it was now a rabid, sick animal. But it still looked like Tish. It still walked on two legs. It still ate. They had come on it in the galley, gnawing on tray of frozen food. But now it seemed intent on eating his face.

    At his side, Hannah was picking herself up off the floor from where Tish had knocked her down moments before.

    "I thought zombies were supposed to be slow and sickly,” he said. Tish now had the mop handle in both hands and was trying to extricate it from her throat. Streams of blood-red, not blackish-oozed from her nostrils. He pushed harder, with a satisfying, though guilt-ridden, feeling. He hadn't liked Tish much when she was human and often wanted her to just shut the fuck up, but there was something wrong about cramming a plastic mop handle down her throat.

    "They are after a few days. But when they first turn, they still have a lot of energy reserves, and their metabolism is still high.” Hannah had her gun in hand. “Can I shoot in here?"

    "No, too much metal… ricochet.” As he started to explain, Tish-zombie suddenly jerked back, yanked the handle out of her throat and lunged at him. He stepped back but ran into the wall. Tish was in his face before he could call out or bring the mop handle up. Her hands found his neck, and she snapped at him, spraying him with bloody spittle. He dropped the mop and got his hands up to push against her chest. Her breasts were soft and womanly underneath the T-shirt. He drew an involuntary breath and brought his hands back in embarrassment. She lunged farther forward and snapped again, her teeth missing his nose by inches. Her breath smelled of sugar and hot copper.

    Then Hannah was behind her, bringing the butt of her pistol's handle down on the back of Tish-zombie's head with a solid thunk. The zombie's eyes jerked back and forth rapidly-like a shaken doll's-but she didn't loosen her grip. Hannah cursed and hit Tish-zombie again, this time in the face. There was a loud crunch as the pistol butt met bone. Tish-zombie let go and fell into a boneless heap on the floor.

    Hannah nudged the body with her toe. “She might get up again but no time soon,” she said matter-of-factly. Then, looking at him: “She didn't bite or scratch you, did she?"

    "No, no,” he examined his hands. “No, she just sprayed me."

    "You better wash that off."

    He was wiping off his face and hands with a sani-wipe when Kristen and Jimmy stormed into the room and assayed the situation.

    "Looks like you two have it under control,” he said.

    Kristen knelt beside Tish-zombie.

    "Careful,” Hannah said. “I cracked its skull, but I'm not sure I killed it."

    "It? You mean she,” Kristen said.

    "I think it pretty much describes what Tish became,” Jorge said. “It was like fighting off Cujo."

    "What's a Cujo?” Hannah asked.

    "It's from a movie,” Kristen answered. “About a hundred years before your time."

    "Figures,” Hannah said.

    "About a rabid dog the size of a small car,” Olson finished.

    "You guys really do watch a lot of movies."

    "Was she really that bad? She was sick this afternoon, but lucid.” Kristen said. She had slipped on some latex gloves and was examining Tish's mouth.

    "I wouldn't get my hands that close to its mouth if I were you,” Hannah said.

    "Do you think I shoved a mop handle down her throat just because she was grumpy?” Jorge said.

    "No, I just didn't realize they turned that fast,” Kristen said.

    "My father said-I feel weird talking about my father all the time."

    "It's okay. It sounds like he knew what he was talking about,” Olson said.

    "Yeah, he said it was like the virus suddenly zeroed in on parts of the brain, like a meningitis smart bomb. It destroys all the parts that have to do with personal identity. Sometimes the brain swells, and the zombie dies-you know, completely dead, not just nearly dead… But most of the time it's so brain damaged, all that's left are the animal instincts and motor control."

    Kristin felt the back of Tish-zombie's skull. “You really walloped her-it-whatever. This is the part of the brain that controls the autonomous functions, respiration, all that."

    "Really, I wouldn't get my hands that close. They're awfully hard to kill when they're new."

    "She's bleeding from her ears,” Kristen pointed for emphasis. “See?” She grabbed Tish-zombie by the ear to turn her head.

    Tish-zombie snapped at her, barely missing a finger, and was on her feet in a second. In fighter's crouching position, she hissed at them and was out the door before anyone could stop her.

    "Buddha, have I ever seen that movie before!” Jorge said.

    "Yeah, the angry white baby in Aliens; where it breaks through the guy's chest and scurries out the door."

    "Actually, I was thinking of…"

    "Would you guys stop this movie shit?” Hannah said.

    Olson laughed despite the situation. “You've got us there. We're all space couch potatoes."

    Kristen, her hands shaking, removed the gloves. “Okay, what do we do now?

    "Is there any way you can seal her off in part of the ship?” Hannah said. “She'll slow down in a day or two and be easier to deal with."

    "Translation: easier to kill,” Jorge said. Poor Tish, but the real Tish was long gone. This was just Tish-zombie, he told himself.

    "First, let's secure Badr's room. I need to check in on him. All Tish's higher brain functions are gone, right?"

    Hannah nodded.

    "So she won't be keying in door codes."

    "No, she won't be able to do that. But she-it, really-y'all have got to stop thinking of it as your friend, Tish. It will be angry and try to break things. It would be better if we had a way to kill it now, but since we can't use guns…"

    "We can use the shotguns inside if we're careful,” Olson said. “Otherwise, we'd better find something to beat it off with."

    Jorge still had the mop handle-it had one of Tish-zombie's teeth embedded in the end. Kristen found a frozen thing that looked like a half-meter of salami from one of the freezers. “Soya Cheese Loaf,” its label read.

    "I'd rather use it as a club than a meal,” she said.

    Hannah holstered her pistol and scrounged around in a utility cabinet until she came up with a shiny mallet with serrated teeth on one end.

    "Cool, it's a space meat tenderizer,” she said.

    Jorge didn't contradict her, but if that was so, he wondered what it would be doing in a meatless kitchen.

    Olson kept the shotgun. “If any essential equipment becomes collateral damage, it's probably going to be me who has to fix it,” he rationalized.

    They proceeded down the hall. Tish-zombie wasn't hard to track at first as she had left a blood trail. The trail stopped at a hatch door.

    "Crap!” Olson said. “It would go in there!"

    "It leads to the shock-absorber chamber. It's no worse than anyplace else-or is it?” Kristen said.

    Jorge explained to Hannah. “The shock absorbers were actually huge pistons, made to absorb the shock from each nuclear pulse. Without them, the crew would be crushed by acceleration forces with the first blast."

    "It's mostly empty space now, to give the pistons room to compress, but there are lots of hidey-holes down there,” Olson said.

    "Can't you just lock the hatch?” Hannah said. “It'll only take a couple of days. Believe me, I know."

    "But there's the central corridor that passes through the area."

    "I thought that was only used in space,” Hannah said.

    "Fast study, aren't you?” Olson said. “Yes, that's what it's for, but it has recessed handholds throughout. Some brave soul will have to go down and figure out a way to lock Tish-zombie out of the corridor. There's no regular lock."

    "I'll do it,” Jorge said, wondering why he was volunteering. Was he trying to impress Hannah?

    "I'll go with him,” Hannah said. “I've dealt with new zombies before."

    Olson scratched his chin. “Okay, I guess.” He handed Jorge the shotgun. “Careful with it. Each of those shock absorbers is a meter in diameter, but they're like big plastic bags. They're made of tough stuff, but I don't know what would happen if you hit one at close range."

    "And we can't stand any more losses,” Kristen said. “We need both of you. Right Jimmy?"

    "Right,” Olson said. But he didn't sound enthusiastic.

    "We're all that's left of the team now."

    "If you can do the lock-out, Kristen and I will see if we can get Badr's truckload up to one of the storage holds. I wish there was some way we could prevent Gayle from using the underground tunnels."

    "Why?” Kristen asked.

    "Because she can use them to sneak up on us,” Olson said. “For all I know, one may pass right under the ship."

    "Why not just drop a small nuke down a hole?” Jorge said, then realized that he was talking about nuking Hannah's old home.

    "Not an option,” Olson said. “The nukes are controlled by the ship. There's no way I know of to detonate one independently of the propulsion sequence. Besides, if it's a catacomb like what I hear, we could undermine the surface where Anita sits. It's four hundred-thousand tons unloaded, you know, and more than a hundred meters tall. If we lay it down on its side, we'll all be stranded here watching Kali's fireworks in a few days."

    "How about parking the Humvees over the manhole covers?” Jorge said.

    "Not good either,” Kristen said. “That would just give Gayle cover to hide behind. Hannah, could you draw us a sort of map from memory, showing us where the manhole covers are?"

    "Sure. There are only four that are close by. Five, if you count the one the ship is sitting on."

    "I don't think we have to worry about that one. I can program the video cameras to scan those areas, and if there's any motion detected, to alert us. That way, you two can concentrate on not getting bitten by Tish-zombie."

    Lacking paper, Hannah used a ballpoint pen and sketched out the general location of the manhole covers on the back of Kristen's hand with a ballpoint pen. Jorge was surprised when Kristen gave the young woman a motherly hug and said, “Be careful down there.” And still hugging Hannah, said to Jorge, “You too, randy-boy. You both watch each other's back."

    "We'll leave the walkie-talkies on the protected channel,” Olson said. “But Kristen is right; don't take any chances you don't have to."

    Kristen and Olson were beginning to remind Jorge of his parents. (Do as I say; not as I do.) They left for the bridge before he could say so, which was probably a good thing.

    Though he knew it was silly, Jorge felt protective of Hannah and found himself insisting on entering the shock-absorber compartment first.

    "You're not used to this gravity; you've no experience with zombies to speak of, other than your friend, Francis,” she said. “It makes more sense for me to go."

    He answered her by slinging the shotgun over his shoulder and climbing into the hatch before she could stop him. It was only five meters or so to the bottom, but it was awkward carrying the shotgun and the recessed handholds were shallow. The shaft was dimly lit with blue LED lamps, but Hannah shone the flashlight down the shaft as she climbed down behind him. No Tish-zombie.

    Jorge waited until Hannah reached the bottom of the shaft before opening the hatch that led into the shock-absorber compartment. He took a deep breath and edged the hatch open with the barrel of the shotgun. Nothing leaped out at him as he stepped in, and he realized he had been holding his breath for a minute or more. Hannah followed.

    The compartment was the only one in the ship that spanned the full twenty-five meter diameter of the Anita. All the others were broken up into smaller compartments. The central shaft, through which they had just entered, had an accordion-like section in the middle so that the shaft could shorten when the shock absorbers compressed. The shock absorbers themselves were large-a meter or so in diameter-and stretched from the floor to the ceiling. They were amorphous looking things, made out of some kind of black shiny plastic. They bulged slightly, like giant trash bags filled with water. And there were many of them-too many to count in the shadowed interior of the compartment-with just enough space between for a zombie to hide.

    "God, I'm glad we don't have to find her in here,” Jorge said. “It's like the Black Forest."

    "I don't understand why we had to come into the compartment at all,” Hannah said. “Aren't we just supposed to figure out a way to lock the hatch?"

    "Yep, but how are we going to do that without tools or something? There's supposed to be a maintenance cabinet in here somewhere."

    "Okay… But you know, I can play ‘seen that video before’ too."

    "Seen that movie."

    "Beg your pardon?"

    "It's ‘seen that movie,’ not ‘seen that video.’”

    "Whatever, but in the videos-"

    "Movies."

    "Okay. Okay, in the MOVIES, this is where the stupid-ass teenagers-us-go down in the basement where the monster is, and everyone watching the MOVIE says ‘How can they be so stupid?’”

    "Yes, but they don't usually go heavily armed, do they?"

    "Sometimes, sometimes not."

    "You don't think I can handle it?"

    "I'm just saying I don't feel good about it."

    "I'll be careful, honest,” he said. She looked angry, but it was true what they said about redheads; they were more beautiful when they were angry. There was a zombie lurking about somewhere in here ready to rip his throat out or infect him with a bite, and it was all he could do to take his eyes off a girl he had met yesterday.

    "Well, don't just stand there gaping at me. Let's get it done."

    Jorge shrugged, hoping she couldn't see how embarrassed he felt. God, he was pitiful. “Stay behind me,” he said.

    "What!?"

    "I mean watch my back. There's the cabinet against the wall, over there."

    "You mean back there in the shadows?” She shone the flashlight against the wall.

    "Yeah, there it is."

    Between the columns, he could just make out a part of a steel-gray cabinet, about two meters tall. The door looked ajar, which was good. He had been afraid it would be locked. But they had to pass through a forest of the shock absorber columns to get to it.

    Without speaking, he worked his way through the columns. Hannah followed close behind, her silver mallet in one hand, the flashlight in the other, shining it over his shoulder then to the left and right.

    "I'm stupid,” Jorge said. “We should have grabbed some tools before we came in. Then we wouldn't have to be digging around in the dark in here."

    "Whatever,” Hannah said. “But then we would have to schlep the stuff down what passes as a ladder in the central shaft."

    To their left, a flash of something was caught in the scan of the flashlight.

    "What's that?” Hannah said in a panicky voice. Jorge brought the shotgun up, or tried to, but the gunsight at the end of the barrel snagged on the seam of a piston. By the time he disengaged it, the flashlight revealed a large white numeral 7 nearly a meter tall, painted on one of the columns; some engineering arcanum, obscured in the dim light.

    One thing was clear: The shotgun, with its long barrel, was ungainly in these cramped quarters. What he needed was a sawed-off version.

    They made their way to the cabinet. The door indeed was unlocked and partially ajar.

    "See, no sign of Tish-zombie,” Jorge said. “After the encounter with the mop handle, she's probably as scared of us as we are of her."

    "You're clueless when it comes to zombies, you know,” Hannah said.

    He leaned the shotgun against the wall and took the flashlight from her. “I'll need that,” he said. “We're not really sure she's in here. All we have to go by is a few blood splatters."

    He opened the door, and the flashlight revealed Tish-zombie, crowded into an incredibly small space between air hammers and hand tools. For a moment, they just stared at each other. Her left eye was caked with dried blood and swollen shut from the blow Hannah had delivered with her handgun. But the other eye rolled slowly in its socket, like a big frog watching a fly in midair. The eye turned to him and focused, and she sprang out of the cabinet as if launched by springs, knocking him back. He fell against a column, then slid off the slick surface onto his back. Tish-zombie didn't snarl this time, but her hands found his throat, and though she seemed weaker than before, there was the same single-mindedness to her movement. A stupid joke crossed his mind as she tried to maneuver her mouth close enough to bite him. “She wants me, but as a meal."

    She snapped, surprising him by going for his hands, and managed to latch on to one before Hannah brought her hammer down on Tish-zombie's head with a solid CLUNK. The single eye rolled up in its socket, and the teeth let go of his hand. Then there was another clunk as Hannah struck again, and Tish-zombie's body went slack.

    Wedged in the narrow space between columns, he had to wait until Hannah dragged Tish-zombie's limp body back to free him. He winced, hoping she was really dead this time as her head brushed over his crotch. Then Hannah had the body off him, but before coming to help him, gave the zombie three more double-handed whacks with the mallet, leaving the back of her head a bloody pulp of skin and bleached blond hair.

    Once he was up, they examined his hand.

    "I can't tell if she's broken the skin or not. I can't tell until we get her blood cleaned off your hand.” She was careful not to touch the bloody area with her bare hand.

    "If the skin is broken, does that mean…?"

    "It doesn't mean anything for sure. Everyone reacts differently to the various Low-Path strains.” He could hear the concern in her voice. “But it's not good. We should disinfect right away."

    "You know, I should have listened to you,” he said.

    As they made their way back to the central shaft, he looked back at Tish's body. “We shouldn't just leave her there."

    "She's not going anywhere. She's dead,” Hannah said. “Let's take care of your hand first. We can come back later."

    "I guess."

    "Why didn't you?” she said.

    "Why didn't I what?"

    "Listen to me?"

    "I don't know. Maybe I was trying to impress you."

    "Well, Mr. Clueless, I can tell you what impresses me: honesty and the ability to listen."

    "I'll try harder in the future,” he said, wondering if he had a future. Somewhere in the back of his mind, though, he wondered if he could get some mercy sex out of this before he died. He really was a pitiful case.

    

    

    

    Gayle reconnoitered the Aquarium from the fifth level of the abandoned parking garage. The lower levels were concrete and more concrete. What small windows there were had been filled with concrete. The front doors, made of heavy security glass, might be knocked down with a Humvee at ramming speed, except there was a flight of steps leading up to them. She'd never get the Humvee up there fast enough to do much damage, even if she could get such a vehicle through the wrecked car barricade. Lacking a ground-to-ground missile or a large truck fertilizer bomb she wasn't likely to make much of a dent in it. She didn't know where to start looking for a missile and frankly, without access to the Anita's database, didn't know how to make a fertilizer bomb.

    Outside the Aquarium steps a lone zombie ambled about, staying in the shade.

    Her attention was momentarily drawn to the building in the background, a glass skyscraper with a pyramid-like top-also of glass. It glistened in the early morning light, pristine, as if there had never been a plague; as if humans might still be swarming about inside, oblivious to the coming comet.

    She returned to the problem at hand, which was that she didn't know how much time she had left. She shifted position, grimacing at the various pains. She touched her hand to her temple, finding the tender spot under the scab. Her head hurt, but it was, as they said in the movies, only a flesh wound, a near miss by that young girl, Hannah, that merely grazed her scalp. Flesh wound or whatever, she had a splitting headache.

    What concerned her more was the wound in her side, which Jorge had given her with his shotgun at long range. She had stretched out a brown army blanket on the parking garage floor, and she rolled over on it now, careful to stay on the blanket and away from the half-inch of dust, grit, and who-knew-what-else that covered the concrete. Gingerly, she lifted the edge of a large gauze bandage over the left side of her waist, just above her hip. The wound didn't look good. The pellets hadn't penetrated very far, just barely under the skin, but her side hurt more today than yesterday, and the skin around the entry wounds was inflamed-probably infected. She needed to get the pellets out somehow, soon. She really knew very little about such matters.

    But there were more pressing issues at hand than her own personal survival.

    She had been lucky that Badr had chanced along when he did. He had even been so obliging as to put his truck in idle only a few meters away from what she thought of as her duck blind. But thinking back, she realized she had been stupid to shoot him. Olson and Kristen were the keys. If she had waited and shot one of them instead, she would have been more likely to scuttle the mission once and for all. Kill Olson, and the ship wouldn't launch. Kill Kristen, and Olson probably wouldn't bother. She knew the old man would just give up without someone to focus his attention on, someone other than himself. He was weak that way; putting everything in terms of ephemeral human relationships. He couldn't see the Big Picture. None of them saw the Big Picture.

    She turned her attention back to the Aquarium. Though the building's sign said “Dallas World Aquarium,” it obviously had either an atrium or menagerie tacked on top, about three stories of it. Though breaching the lower two stories appeared out of the question, the upper levels were another matter, being essentially a greenhouse. The panes looked like ordinary glass-fragile enough-but she'd need a ladder at least five meters long to reach them. She might be able to improvise something. Who knew, however, what sort of response she would receive when she crashed through the glass. She smiled. If it was indeed a menagerie, she would be a sitting duck.

    Another choice was to just wait. She had water and food, and she had found a rifle of sorts, though it was a weapon with which she was unfamiliar. Olson and Kristen were bound to show up sometime. All she had to do was kill or critically wound one of them.

    She doubted she would have a chance back at the Anita. She had considered finding another truck and ramming it at full speed into the Anita. It would be a suicide mission, a sacrifice she was totally ready to make-if there was a chance in hell of success. But she would only collide with the huge pusher plate at the base of the ship, a construction designed to withstand small nuclear blasts from fifty meters. She would die; the truck would disintegrate; and little if any damage would be done to the Anita.

    No, her only chance was to wait for Olson or Kristen. But how long would that be and what could bring them here?

    "Shit, what a monkey brain I have,” she said. Her voice sounded large in the empty garage.

    Of course! What she needed to do was create an emergency that would scare what's-her-name in the Aquarium-Marguerite, that was it-scare her enough to call Olson and Kristen for help. When they arrived, Gayle would be there waiting for them.

    The thought was exciting, and she sighted through the rifle's scope on the front door. Now just what would such an emergency be? Simple. Breach the wall of cars; let the zombies in.

    The lone zombie kicked a soda can in the street. The sound of the can bouncing on the concrete echoed through the canyon of buildings. Wait a minute. This area was supposed to be zombie-free. Where did the zombie in the parking lot come from?

    She trained the rifle's scope on the figure. It was male, she believed, from the way it held its shoulders. It had snow-white hair down to its shoulders and a neatly trimmed salt-and-pepper beard. It wore a blue, double-breasted suit. It stepped forward, wavering a bit, and kicked the can again. Strange, she hadn't observed that many zombies and wasn't an expert on them, but this zombie's actions seemed too purposeful, too mindful. She twisted a knob on the scope and zoomed in. His skin was as gray as concrete and punctuated here and there with the same large suppurating sores many zombies exhibited. But it looked as if those sores had been recently cleaned and treated with some sort of reddish antiseptic. One sore even sported a fresh band-aid. Odd-a zombie with a health plan. It brought something up its mouth as she watched, then exhaled a smoke ring-it was smoking a cigar.

    As she watched him-she thought of the zombie now as a person rather than an ‘it'-he dropped the black cigar on the pavement, crushed it out with a twist of a booted toe, then turned and labored up the steps of the Aquarium to the doors. She expected it to impotently pound on the doors, but he simply pushed one open and went in, to be met by a strange-looking creature in full-length ball gown.

    The two figures embraced, and the blue-suited figure bowed and kissed the hand of the small figure in the big dress. Gayle felt she had entered some alternate dimension, where dead people acted like Southern gentlemen and women spent hours every day on getting the pleats in their dresses just right.

    Wait! The front doors had been unlocked all this time! She brought the scope up, but too late. Scarlet O'Hara and zombie Rhett had disappeared into the shadowed interior. She had missed her chance, distracted by the weirdness of it all.

    But it was such an odd sight. The only thing she could think of was the zombie in the parking lot had not been a zombie at all, but merely wearing some kind of elaborate makeup.

    Oh well, she thought. The glass of the front doors looked several centimeters thick. They probably would have stopped the bullet anyway. No, the better plan seemed to be to breach the wall of cars and let in the zombies-the real ones, not fake ones like the one that had just entered the Aquarium. If that didn't work, she could always start shooting out panes of glass in the upper stories.

    She got painfully to her feet, wondering if she had the energy to carry out any plan. She could take more Isistrol, but feared it. She had already taken several times over the maximum dosage, and though it gave her boundless energy, she suspected it was the cause of her not completely thinking things out, like shooting Badr.

    She squeezed her left breast, and felt the small bump right under the skin. All she need do was give the bump-pump three pinches in quick succession and a measured dosage of Isistrol would enter her bloodstream in seconds.

    Her hand worked by its own volition, squeezing the bump-pump, not just three times for an average dose, but five or six times in rapid succession. There was a moment of disorientation; a chill rippled from her head to her toes. Her legs weakened, and she sank to her knees and dropped the rifle in the dust. A brief but intense moment of pure ecstasy followed, an orgasmic-like rush that started at the base of her skull and flowed down her spine in waves. When the rush passed, the world was so clean and focused that she could see the individual grains of the dust in which she knelt. The air itself was comprised of vivid particles.

    She grabbed the rifle and quickly stood up. Her side still hurt as much as it did before, but pain was-enjoyable, there was no other word for it. Even the feeling of the dust that had worked its way between her toes was almost too pleasurable to bear. The side of her head tingled, and when she rubbed it, a bit of hair came away on her hand. No worries. Though the side effects of the steroid component of Isistrol were predictable, she wouldn't have to worry about them. Kali would be here long before they became unmanageable.

    She trotted down the stairwell of the parking garage, reveling in the smooth working of her muscles, the warm, fetid air, the abrasive feel of the concrete wall as she ran a hand along it, of everything. The air itself seemed full of sound, little packets of it, residing on the edge of visibility.

    At street level, she stopped to peer around a corner at the front of the Aquarium. She thought she caught a glimpse of a small white form at the windows, but it faded like a ghost. She looked up. The sky was filled with white fluffy clouds. If she stared at one for a moment, she could see faces, forms, then Olympian figures, grappling one another either in sex or battle. It was all so disgustingly human on such a huge scale, she wanted to stretch her hand, the one with a mind of its own, up to the clouds and wipe them away. She saw instead the hand of Kali clearing the sky of blue, of white clouds-of everything. When the comet struck, it would vaporize the atmosphere itself, sterilizing everything in preparation for a new beginning. If Kali struck ocean, as was more likely, the events would only be slightly less catastrophic; the atmosphere might prevail, though it would be a gaseous envelope greatly changed, dark with pulverized crust and steam, but either way, there would be no blue sky filled with fat, giant white grubs.

    She found this thought refreshing, and as if in tune with her thoughts, the sky darkened until she couldn't see the willful hand in front of her face.

    She shook her head to dispel the vision. The sky and clouds returned. Reflections, that was all she saw in the window, reflections of the obscene clouds. Of all the unfamiliar things about being on a planet with an atmosphere and weather, clouds trumped everything.

    She trotted out in the street, then picked up the pace until she was in a full sprint. She could hear the crunch of cartilage in her knees, but it felt wonderful to just run. She was at the wall of cars in less than a minute. She couldn't remember the path she had used before to climb through, but her accelerated brain puzzled out another way through the maze as she climbed.

    On the other side of the wall, she paused. There were several cuts on her hands and bare feet from the sharp metal, a couple quite deep. She had left her flip-flops somewhere, she realized. No matter. She really should get some more appropriate clothes and shoes, but the warm air felt so good on her bare skin. Everything felt good on her bare skin.

    The Humvee was only a few meters from where she had left it, driven just far enough to clear the entrance to the gate. But the tires were flat and the dash was riddled with large holes from what looked like a large caliber weapon. She fondly patted its broad fender. There were millions of vehicles in this city. She could find something, but she would miss the Hummer. Despite her feelings about such vehicles, Isistrol and the Hummer fit together like testosterone and hand guns.

    In the back of the Hummer she found a first-aid kit, one of the ubiquitous Anita coverall uniforms, this one orange, and her boots. Nice of Jorge and his new friends to leave them for her. With a great act of will, she forced herself to slow down and dress the deeper wounds and spray some antiseptic on the minor ones. Her errant left hand kept reaching for her breast bump-pump, and she had to slap it away several times. Finally, it gave up and helped her dress the wounds. She discarded the bikini bottom-it was beyond filthy, encrusted with her own blood and grease from the wall of wrecked cars. But she kept the bra on, though it wasn't much cleaner, hoping it would serve to deter her junkie hand. She ought to find someplace to wash off. She transferred her walkie-talkie, which had been clipped to the bikini bottom, to one of the many coverall's pockets. Had Olson and Kristen been smart enough to switch to another channel? Probably, unless they were too busy with the mess she had left them. But they still had to communicate with the people in the Aquarium.

    She found a broad-spectrum antibiotic in the first-aid bag, and she swallowed a couple of pills dry, hoping to stave off whatever bugs might be growing in her wounded side. It wouldn't do for her to succumb to septic shock before her mission was done. Her hand, thinking she wasn't watching, snaked toward the breast bump-pump again. She used the tip of the rifle barrel to push it away as one would a rude pet. It obeyed, and slipped into her pants pocket, clutching the walkie-talkie, sulking.

    Her walkie-talkie vibrated in the palm of her hand.

    Now who could that be?

    She let the hand bring the unit up to her ear, and she pushed listen.

    "Gayle? Gayle Ring, are you there?” a familiar voice said.

    "Reverend Mom-Dad?” she answered, then remembering she had the mute button on, she switched to speak and said, “Martha, is that you?"

    "Yes, my child."

    "But how…?” Martha Munger-Moss, a.k.a., Reverend Mother-Father of the Moist Earth Mothers Evangelics, should be at the sect's headquarters, ten meters below the far side of the Moon, more than four hundred thousand kilometers distant. The walkie-talkies had a range of ten kilometers, tops. She drew the walkie-talkie away from her ear and stared at it suspiciously.

    "Gayle? Gayle?” Martha's voice was tiny, persistent-and irresistible.

    She brought the instrument back to her ear. “How is it you are talking to me, Reverend Mother-Father?"

    "How is a minor detail, a bit of technological trivia,” Martha said. “What's important is that we've reached you in time."

    "In time for what, Reverend Mother-Father?"

    "In time for intervention."

    "Oh, it's about overdosing on Isistrol, isn't it?” Gayle felt tears fill her eyes. Martha wasn't just her superior, she was her sister, her brother, all wrapped into one. And Martha cared about her, for all the MEMES, with the combined passion and love of both a mother and a father. Martha appeared to be a dowdy little woman, but it was rumored she was a hermaphrodite.

    "It's the hand, my left hand. It seems to have a mind of its own."

    "Oh, it's not that, my daughter,” Martha said. “We know your sacrifice in that regard. It's about your heart."

    "My heart, Reverend? Do you mean my physical heart or my spiritual heart?” Now that Martha had mentioned it, she felt her heart beating hard and rapidly like a steam engine racing up a hill-chug, chug, chug.

    "What made you think there's a difference?” Martha said.

    Because that's what you taught me, Gayle thought. You taught me about how to reach my spiritual heart through trance-state chant meditation. But she didn't say this, realizing that the Reverent Mother-Father was now trying to teach her something new.

    "But seriously,” Martha said.

    Was that a drum roll in the background?

    "You must realize that if you damage your physical heart, the spiritual heart is damaged as well."

    "May I ask where you're calling from, Reverend Mom-Dad?"

    "Why from here in the nest, of course."

    "But that's impossible, isn't it?"

    "Why, of course you're right, dear,” and the line went dead, to be filled with white noise. Then she heard a muted chuckle-Olson? No, it couldn't be. How could he so perfectly mimic Reverend Mom-Dad's voice. Shit! He shouldn't even know she existed.

    Gayle's evil left hand grabbed at the walkie-talkie. She held it out of its reach, knowing what it wanted to do: If your walkie-talkie offends you, cast it out.

    No, it might still come in handy. Kristen and Olson would get careless. In fact, they already had with this little prank, for now she knew what they were capable of.

    She slipped the walkie-talkie into a pocket on her right hip, out of reach of the stupid left hand. She did give it the rifle to hold. It seemed happy with its heft and power. She just hoped it wouldn't shoot her in the foot.

    With things in balance again, she set off to find a truck big enough to ram through the wall of cars.

    

    

    

    By dawn, they had finished unloading Badr's truck. Olson and Kristen sat side-by-side in the hold, leaning against a wall, sipping some “Texas Hill Country Natural Spring Water” from one of the skid loads.

    "This is the best water I've ever tasted,” Kristen said.

    "It probably came from someone's cow pond,” Olson observed, but she was right. It did have taste. Moon water, melted from ancient ice, subjected to charcoal filtering and reverse osmosis, countlessly recycled, did not.

    Olson surveyed the results of their work. The trailer contents had seemed like a lot while it was packed tightly. In the Anita's first hold, it was a lonely little pile. Sweat-soaked, he felt that for the first time in days he had actually accomplished something. Unloading the semi-tractor trailer had only taken two hours, not all night, as he thought it would. That everything on the truck had been bundled and strapped on skids made it easy. They had spent more time and energy figuring out how to drop the built-in ramp on the trailer than anything else. After that it was a matter of learning to use a forklift in Earth's gravity. The Anita's freight elevator proved to be well designed. At first, they had taken turns, painstakingly, paranoid, standing guard, one watching the Anita's remote cameras scan potential sniping positions, while the other worked the forklift, riding the elevator up to the Anita's hold, then using the Anita's forklift to stack the skids. As the night wore on and Gayle showed no signs of interfering, Kristen had programmed the remote cameras to sound an alarm if any motion was detected at the manhole entrances. Then she stayed in the hold to stack, and Olson worked to keep up with her, loading the elevator with skids.

    He was content to savor the moment, but Kristen said, “We'd better go check on Badr and the kids, don't you think?"

    "Kids?” For a moment he was in an alternate reality, one where he and Kristen were a married couple, wondering what the pre-teens were doing. “Oh, you mean Jorge and what's her name?"

    "Hannah. What did you think I meant?"

    "Nothing. Just tired, I guess. What's the quickest way from here?"

    "Probably down the freight elevator, then up the passenger ramp. But I don't want to go out there now that the sun is up as tired as we are. Come on, I know the short way."

    They got to their feet at the same time, and Olson, following Kristen's lead, made the convoluted, weary way to Sick Bay. When they walked in, to Olson's amazement, they found Badr sitting up but Jorge lying on a gurney with Hannah attending to a wound on his hand.

    Olson went to Badr, but Kristen was at Jorge's side immediately.

    "Badr, ol’ man, we'd given you up for lost."

    "Hard to kill, that's me,” Badr said.

    On the other side of room, Kristen was, in her fashion, keening over Jorge. “Shit, shit, shit,” she said. “Didn't we tell you to be careful?"

    Badr said, “Did you look in the truck?"

    "Yeah, we unloaded it already."

    Hannah was saying, “…and I told him too, but he just didn't listen."

    Olson realized she was crying. He wondered, as he always did with women, whether they were tears of sadness, joy, or anger.

    "Already, what about Gayle?” Badr asked.

    "That young woman, there, the one bawling over Jorge…"

    Hannah shot him a lethal look.

    "…she nearly took Gayle out with her six-shooter. A real Texas Annie Oakley."

    "I don't understand this ‘Annie Oakley,'” Badr said.

    Now Kristen gave him one of the same looks. Then she and Hannah exchanged looks and shook their heads.

    "Listen, Badr,” Olson said. “Hang in there for a moment. I think I'd better go apologize."

    "For what?” Badr said.

    "I'm not sure, but I'd better."

    "I understand, my brother,” Badr said.

    Kristen and Hannah ignored him as he moved to Jorge's gurney. Kristen had removed the bandage applied by Hannah and was examining Jorge's hand with a magnifier. Olson could see teeth marks on Jorge's right hand.

    "I don't know,” Kristen said, “but it looks like she just bruised you and didn't break the skin."

    Jorge let out a sigh of relief.

    "As soon as we got back here, I doused it down with about a gallon of antiseptic,” Hannah said.

    "Good job,” Kristen said.

    "What the hell happened?"

    They all jumped. Badr had gotten off his gurney and had sidled up behind Olson.

    "Tish became zombified and attacked Jorge."

    "Zombified?"

    "She got bitten.” Kristen said.

    "My brain seems a bit numb.” He rubbed the ugly hole through the transparent bandage.

    Olson winced. “Do you remember where you loaded up the truck?” he asked.

    "There can be time for that later, Jimmy,” Kristen said. “Badr, you should lie back down and take it easy for a while."

    "There isn't time to take it easy,” Badr said. “And yes, I do remember where the warehouse is. It's a mother lode."

    "You're really fond of that word, aren't you my old friend?"

    "If the word fits…"

    "How about writing down some directions?” Olson said. “We'll tell you if it's fitting."

    "I'll do better than that, I'll take you there,” Badr said, and then his eyes rolled up in his head, and he dropped, the back of his head making a hollow thud on the floor.

    They all stared at the heap of Badr's body on the floor for a minute.

    "That's beginning to be a habit with him. Now what?” Olson said.

    "Now we put him back on the gurney and strap him down."

    Olson and Kristen lugged Badr back to his gurney. The first try, they nearly dropped him, not quite getting him up high enough. They had to set him back on the floor.

    "For a skinny man, he sure is heavy,” Olson said.

    "You just need your beauty rest,” Kristen said. “Me too, really."

    Before Olson could tell her she was beautiful without it, Hannah was there helping. The three of them got the little man up on the gurney-but barely. The bandage covering the hole in his forehead had filled with blood like a big red blister.

    "Bleeding from the brain is usually a bad sign-right?” Olson said.

    Kristen didn't say anything. She didn't have to.

    "This sounds harsh, but I wish he had stayed conscious just a few minutes longer."

    "I wish I had strapped him in the gurney in the first place."

    "Sir… Mr. Olson?"

    "Just call me Jimmy, Hannah.” Olson said. “Sir and mister make me feel even older than I am."

    "It's a Texas thing,” Hannah said. “To show respect for your elders."

    "There you go. My point. Elders makes me feel like a senior citizen."

    Hannah laughed. She probably considered him a senior citizen, Olson thought. “Okay, but I get to call you ‘young lady’ if you're going to call me ‘sir.’”

    Hannah nodded, missing his joke. In the circles he traveled, ‘young lady’ made a man automatically guilty of being patronizing.

    "Sir,” she continued, unabashed, “I was thinking. Mr. Badr was never on Earth before. Like you, this is his first time in Dallas. Am I right?"

    "Pretty much,” Olson said. Explaining how he had made one trip to Dallas as a pre-teen didn't seem worth the effort.

    "Well, then, either this warehouse was on one of his scheduled stops or someone had to give him directions. Either way, he probably wrote down directions or had a map, don't you think?"

    Kristen smiled. “Of course. His clothes should still be in the disposal bin.” In a second, she had re-gloved and had Badr's bloody coveralls spread out on a countertop. Going through the pockets she came up with a sweat-stained paper map of the city. She unfolded it on a clear space. Three locations had been marked in red ink with big X's. “Eureka-maybe,” Kristen said.

    Olson patted Hannah on the shoulder. “Bright, very bright."

    "Does this mean I get a ticket to ride back to space with you?” Hannah said.

    "Listen,” Olson said, “it's about regulations-shit! What am I saying? Fuck the regulations."

    Hannah looked shocked.

    "Sorry, pardon my Teutonic,” he said. “But, yeah, how could we leave you behind? Hell, we'll even take Marguerite if she wants to go. And the space children. We'll take everyone."

    "Everyone but Gayle,” Jorge chimed in.

    "That goes without saying,” Olson said, “Unless she agrees to ride strapped to the rear pusher plate, facing the nuke pulses."

    "Gayle is mentally sick, guys,” Kristen said.

    Hannah said, “In Texas, we shoot rabid dogs. And that's what she is. A rabid dog."

    Kristen shook her head. “We're all a bit crazy from too much radiation to the brain, with the exception of you, Hannah. Gayle is just further along."

    "I don't think so,” Olson said. “I think in this case, it was a conscious choice on Gayle's part. Sure, she's got a bit of the ol’ space madness like the rest of us. But you and I don't go around killing people over a bit of warped ideology. There's a difference.” Olson stopped, realizing he was on shaky philosophical ground at this point. “Anyway, we don't have a choice. If we had the resources, maybe we could track her down, capture her without anyone else getting killed, and take her back for a good, humane chemical lobotomy. But we don't, so it's a moot point. Agreed?"

    No one argued further, whether as a matter of politeness or because his logic was irrefutable; he wasn't sure.

    "Now who wants to go with me to check out these locations?” Olson asked.

    "Oh no, you don't,” Kristen said. “You're too tired."

    "Who are you? My mother?"

    "Just somebody who cares about you. If you go out now, as tired as you are, you'll just screw up and maybe get yourself killed. What you need is at least a few hours sleep. So do we all."

    "I'm too wired to sleep,” he said. It was true. If he tried to sleep now, he would just lie there and worry about things. Better to keep busy.

    Kristen rummaged around in her medkit and brought out a small hypodermic pistol, the type that sprayed right through the skin. Before he could react, she brought it up against his bare forearm and fired.

    "What the fuck?"

    "It's a melatonin facsimile, with a sedative mixed in. In about five minutes you'll get very sleepy, so I'd advise you to find a place to lie down.” She made a setting on the hypodermic and gave herself a shot. “Me too,” she said and smiled at him.

    Olson tried to get angry with her but couldn't. “I really don't have time for this."

    "You don't have time not too. Don't worry so much, Jimmy. The stuff degrades in about four hours, then there's a wake-up drug that activates. When you-and I-wake up, we have a couple of hours of REM sleep under our belts.” She yawned, and it was contagious. He yawned too. “And we'll get twice as much done as we would if we were exhausted.” She got up and took his hand. “Come on, I'll tuck us both in."

    "What do we do?” Jorge said.

    "Get some rest as well. If Badr wakes up, give him some of this magic potion too.” She laid the hypodermic on the counter, a respectable distance from Badr's salvaged uniform, and started down the hall. Olson let himself be led. She was probably right about the nap, but he didn't like being managed. He felt as if he were being punished with a time-out.

    

    

    Olson came instantly awake as the chemical time-delay fuse fired a neural firecracker in his brain. Kristen lay snoring softly beside him, one leg over one of his ankles. He savored the moment. Her ankle was soft and warm, and she nearly woke at his touch, stretching her toes, the tendons in her feet standing out, like steel cords under the smooth flesh. His other ankle was trapped under the blankets and her other leg. To extricate it, he would risk waking her, and he wanted to watch her sleep a little longer. For a tough, independent woman, she looked remarkably vulnerable in her sleep, and he felt a rush of male protectiveness. Was he falling in love with Kristen? Had it gone that far, that quickly? He didn't even believe in romantic love anymore. So what was it he was feeling? Was it a function of the camaraderie made by surviving near-death situations together? A hormonal side-effect of sex? Imprinting like some mindless duckling? He didn't believe in the soul-partner thing. Or did he?

    He carefully pulled his trapped leg out from under hers. As he pulled it out from the blanket, a small bundle moved and crawled over his leg, sinking in claws as it went. He yelped, nearly falling out of the bunk, dislodging Hannah's black and white cat in the process. It eyed him indignantly.

    Note to self, he thought: catch cat, drive it across town, and leave it. It wasn't that he didn't like cats. He'd had a pet cat-what was its name?-as a kid on Earth, before he emigrated to the Moon with his father. But cats in zero-G just didn't do well. For one thing, they usually freaked; for another, even if they adjusted to weightlessness, they didn't housetrain in space. Kitty litter wouldn't stay put, of course, and there was no way a cat was going to put up with a vacuum toilet.

    The cat sneezed and, as if anticipating Olson's motives, escaped out the cabin door.

    Catching the cat would have to wait.

    He padded across the room to the automatic coffee maker and started it up. It wasn't, of course, real coffee, but some hydroponic, gene-ripped caffeine clone. He made a mental note to find a whole skid-load of real coffee-Hawaiian or Brazilian, he didn't care-and stow it in a special place in the hold.

    Kristen woke as the ersatz coffee began to perk.

    She checked her wristwatch. “Almost four hours to the minute,” she said.

    "Wonderful, I'm an alarm clock."

    "What's gotten into you?"

    "Nothing. Let me get some caffeine in me."

    "You shouldn't need caffeine. The mixture I gave you should have you bright-eyed and bushy-tailed upon waking. It does me.” She sprang out of bed, all Teflon and spring steel.

    "Okay, call it psychological. Call me Ishmael."

    "More like Captain Ahab,” Kristen laughed.

    "More like a great white whale and my grand obsession,” he said.

    "Moby Dick was a book about evil obsession. That would make Gayle our Captain Ahab, and Anita, Moby Dick."

    "Then call me Starbuck,” he said.

    "I had an impoverished childhood when it came to the classics. Which one was Starbuck?"

    "He was the calm, sensible first mate. He died, too."

    "And Ishmael?” she asked.

    "The narrator. He didn't do much but tell the story. Starbuck tries to counter-honorably-the mad, self-destructive craziness of Ahab. He died too, though."

    "You're in a cheerful mood.” Her tone was accusatory.

    He crossed the small space between them and hugged her. She was stiff in his arms. He kissed the top of her head, and she relaxed a bit.

    "Sorry,” he said. “What do we do first today? Find Badr's mother lode or go back to the Aquarium?"

    "I say we call Marguerite and assure her, but that we spend the next day or two cramming as much stuff as we can into the Anita."

    "Aye, aye, captain."

    "Stop that, Ishmael,” she said, giving him a playful slap on the shoulder. He moved to put his arms back around her. “No time for that. I need to check on Badr and see how Jorge and Hannah are doing."

    "Of course. How about I fix us a lunch to take with us?"

    "If Badr's mother lode is all he says it is, we won't need it."

    Back in Sick Bay, they found Badr sitting up, with Hannah giving him sips of water from a cup. The bandage on his brow had leaked a bit and crusted blood covered his temple.

    "I should have stayed here with him; I don't know what I was thinking, abandoning a patient."

    "He just woke up,” Hannah said. “I don't think you missed much."

    Jorge came in then, stripped to the waist, clad in only some medical scrub pants. Hannah was wearing the top to the same set of scrubs and nothing else. It appeared the young couple hadn't missed much either. Hannah caught Olson looking at her and blushed. Even her knees blushed-charming. Kristen nudged him with her elbow.

    "Ah, Badr old man, think you'll live?” Olson said.

    Badr laughed, then grimaced and held a hand to his temple. “Every son of Adam keeps hoping until he is carried away to his grave."

    "Hah! I thought you were going to say ‘It only hurts when I laugh,'” Olson said.

    "Oh-I nearly forgot,” Hannah said. “There was a call from the lady at the Aquarium."

    "She said it wasn't an emergency-maybe,” Jorge said. “But she thinks she saw someone who looks like Gayle watching the Aquarium."

    "Someone who looks like Gayle…?"

    "Dark hair, muscular woman in a next-to-nothing red bikini running barefoot through an alley-that's what she said."

    "Okay, that's Gayle, but I guess she got rid of the stupid flip-flops,” Kristen said.

    "Deep Throat has security cameras, motion detecting like ours,” Jorge said.

    "Deep Throat?” Hannah said.

    "I'll explain later. She said the woman looked pretty messed up: a head wound, big dirty dressing on her waist, talking to herself. And there was something I didn't understand, something about her fighting with her own hand."

    "Is she still there?"

    "Gayle? I didn't ask. This was a couple of hours ago,” Jorge said.

    "You should have woken us up."

    "We tried,” Hannah said. “You were so deep asleep, we thought you were dead at first."

    Olson looked at Kristen.

    "We really needed some deep sleep,” she said, a little sheepishly.

    "She said she'd call again,” Hannah said.

    "Which of you actually talked to her?” Kristen asked.

    "I answered,” Jorge said, “but she wanted to talk to Hannah. I think she likes her."

    "I don't know why. Miss Marguerite and I only talked for a little bit. It's not like she's family or anything."

    "Maybe Jeffrey gave you references.” The jealousy in Jorge's tone was unmistakable.

    "Jeffrey is just too weird. He's like the space children but not quite: space children-lite."

    "Who's Jeffrey?” Olson asked.

    "A young guy who lives in the Aquarium with Deep Throat-I mean Miss Marguerite."

    "Oh yeah, there was another thing I was supposed to tell you.” She paused. “Marguerite said it was essential I tell you exactly: ‘Don't worry about scrounging up a DNA fabricator,’ she said.” ‘I had Jeffrey bring one home from Francis’ university lab.’”

    "Those were her exact words?” Olson asked.

    "Pretty much."

    Olson didn't know what to say. He looked at Kristen. She was dumbfounded.

    So was he. Not so much that Deep Throat could find such a device-it was her field, after all-but he wondered how she knew it was on their shopping list to begin with. Nonetheless, it meant, along with Badr's mother lode, that they might get off-planet with much of their mission accomplished.

    While this was going through his mind, Jorge's walkie-talkie buzzed. He answered it, listened with a shocked look on his face, then put it back in his pocket.

    "It was Miss Marguerite,” he said. “She said there was an explosion nearby. She thinks Gayle is behind it and asked that we come to help."

    Olson shook his head. He should have known things were going too smoothly.

    

    

    

    Kristen felt like they were the cavalry coming to the rescue and was about to say so, then thought that she had seen this movie before, and it always ended badly.

    When they arrived at the wall of cars they found it had been blown inward, leaving a blackened scar stretching inward toward the Aquarium and outward to where they were parked; Gayle had obviously been busy.

    "How did she do that?” Olson asked.

    "I think I know,” Hannah said. “Propane."

    "Propane? I've seen that movie. How could one of those little tanks do this?"

    "You're thinking small,” Hannah said. “Look over there. See the front end of that truck? Read the door."

    Olson and Kristen looked at the cab of a large truck thrown up against a nearby building. The undercarriage had been sheared away by the explosion, the windows blown out, and the rear of the cab flattened, but the logo on the door, in red letters on a scorched white background, was clearly visible.

    "Snyder and Newman Propane Services,” Olson read out loud.

    "It's a propane delivery truck. Haven't you ever seen one?"

    "Guess I haven't seen that movie,” Olson admitted. “When you said propane tank, I was thinking of the little things that were used in backyard barbecues when I was a kid."

    "So how did she set it off?” Kristen asked.

    "My guess is,” Olson said, scratching his chin, “that she just stood off and started putting bullets through it."

    "Miss Marguerite said she heard gunshots right before the explosion."

    "Whatever, it did the job,” Kristen said. “You could drive this Humvee through that hole."

    "But the mystery remains,” Olson said. “She doesn't know about the space children. She doesn't have a reason to kill Marguerite. She only wants to-thinks she needs to-kill us."

    "Then why do this…?” she gasped.

    Hannah started to say something, but Kristen interrupted her. “Oh, Jimmy! It must be a trap!"

    He gunned the Humvee, driving it through the rift in the wall of cars. He had come to the same conclusion she had. And not a moment too soon, for a bullet whined off the front bulletproof windshield. The glass remained intact, but a crack spread from top to bottom. Another impacted the door on Olson's side with a thunk.

    Olson skidded the Hummer around a corner and stopped it. “Did anyone see where the shots were coming from?” he said.

    Kristen had scrunched down and now, feeling safe with a building behind them, grabbed her gun and stuck her head up. She didn't see either Jorge or Hannah in the back seat, then peered over the seat. Both looked up at her from the floor of the Hummer. No fools they. They had ducked for cover when the shots came.

    Satisfied the two young people were okay, she scanned the adjoining buildings for any sign of their ambusher.

    "You okay?” Jimmy asked her, which she found touching. The shots had obviously been aimed at him. If not for the bulletproof glass and the Kevlar lining of the Hummer's body panels, he would have been wounded or killed. Yet he seemed more concerned about her than himself.

    "I'm all right. Shouldn't we be moving?"

    "The shots came from behind us, outside the compound."

    "Then if we get on it, we should be able to get to the Aquarium and inside before she can reposition."

    "Right,” he said. And they were in motion.

    Kristen called Deep Throat-she thought she should stop thinking of the aged scientist in such derogatory epithet.

    "Hello?” came the answer.

    "Miss Marguerite?"

    "No, this is Jeffrey."

    "Jeffrey?"

    "One of her children,” came the reply, and Kristen could hear the familial connections in the rhythm and timbre of his voice, but she wouldn't have guessed it was the voice of a male.

    "This is Kristen and Jimmy Olson."

    "The Moon people?"

    "Yes, we're here to answer Marguerite's distress call. We're less than a minute away from the Aquarium, and we're being shot at. Can you be at the front door to let us in?"

    "Is Hannah with you?"

    "Yes, as a matter of fact, she is."

    "Okay, I'll have to find Marguerite. She's in the building somewhere.” And with that, he broke the connection.

    "What did he say?"

    "He said okay, but he has to find Deep Throat-Marguerite to first open the door."

    "Good."

    "Jimmy, that could leave us sitting out in the parking lot too long."

    "Those shots were from a high-powered rifle,” Hannah said from the back seat.

    "Thank you, my young cowgirl,” Olson said.

    "Don't patronize me,” Hannah said. “My father liked guns; he was a collector. He had tens of thousands of dollars worth of guns. He hunted elk and brown bears."

    "Your father was a man of many facets,” Olson said.

    "Yes, he was, until the damned Low-Path made him blow his brains out.” She paused and took a deep breath. She didn't want to think that maybe her father had burnt to death in the barn. She hoped he had shot himself first. “Anyway, with a scope she could just pin us down. She could sit off and be out of range of the shotguns-my pistol too-and take pot shots at us."

    They pulled up in front of the Aquarium.

    "Now what?” Kristen said.

    "I don't know; I wouldn't want to be stuck out in front of those doors,” he said.

    "That's where she'd be, if she's as crazy-smart as you say,” Hannah pointed toward a large skeletal structure, a building without its skin, that was to the south of the Aquarium.

    "What is that thing?"

    Hannah looked at her curiously, as if she were from another planet, which, of course she was.

    "It's a parking garage, I think,” Olson said. “But what's with all the netting across the openings?"

    "Suicide netting,” Hannah explained. “When it became clear that Low-Path was the end of practically everything, people were jumping out of anything more than a few stories high."

    While they watched there was movement at the third level, then a flash seen through the netting, and there was a sound like someone hitting a steel drum with a sledgehammer. Kristen's ears rang. She didn't see the flash of the barrel for the second shot, but the sledgehammer sound was repeated and a fractal pattern of hairline cracks spread across the window beside Hannah.

    "Jimmy?"

    "I see it.” He positioned the Hummer so Hannah's window no longer faced the parking garage. “There,” he said.

    "What good will that do?” Jorge was clearly shaken. “I thought this thing was bulletproof."

    "Bullet resistant is more like it,” Olson said. “She was going to keep shooting at one spot on the window until she undermined it."

    Another shot-Kristen's ears had stopped ringing, and she could hear the report now-and a bullet whined off the front glass without effect.

    "And she might have done it as long as she was shooting straight at the windows instead of obliquely,” Olson said. “At oblique angles, the shots tend to bounce off."

    "I can't believe how quickly she made it from outside the compound up to the garage,” Jorge said. “We weren't parked here for more than a couple of minutes."

    "I can't believe what a lousy shot she is,” Hannah said. “We were sitting ducks, and the second shot was a foot off the first."

    Another bullet ricocheted off the windshield. Kristen was expecting it but jumped anyway.

    "Be glad she is a lousy shot,” Olson said.

    "She's yanking the trigger, not pulling it. And she's probably not breathing right either,” Hannah said.

    "If she could hit the same place in the window twice dead on, I don't think the windows would hold."

    "Can't we do something besides just talk about how we're going to be killed?” Jorge said. “I've escaped her once already, and I didn't do it by sitting around to give her an easy target."

    "I'll drive around the block…” Olson started to say, but a trail of smoke streaked from the door of the Aquarium over their heads toward the parking garage. The ‘whoosh’ of its passage was followed by an explosion in the garage that showered the Hummer with pieces of concrete and wood.

    As if their heads were connected by invisible strings, they all turned toward the parking garage. Dust rolled out of a jagged hole where they had seen the muzzle flashes.

    Kristen heard someone screaming and realized it was herself. She made herself stop.

    "What the fuck was that! What the fuck was that?” Jorge shouted.

    Olson was laughing. “Shit, I think I wet myself. How about it, Hannah. Did your father have one of those in his collection?"

    "One of what?"

    "I think it was an anti-tank missile launched at our friend Gayle."

    "Hey in the truck!” someone shouted from the Aquarium.

    Kristen turned from the parking garage to the front doors. A young, dark-haired man stood on the front landing. On his shoulder, he held a long, green tube with a gunsight on top. One end of the tube smoked. But the surprise was that a zombie in a tuxedo stood behind him, patting him on the head.

    "Good shooting, son,” the zombie said. “Good shooting."

    

    

    In the cool, green light of the lower level of the Aquarium, Marguerite served glasses of iced Pepsi.

    "How does it taste? Like the real thing?” she asked. “I wasn't sure the carbonation canister was fully charged."

    "I've never tasted it before. So I guess it's okay,” Jorge said. He sat at Hannah's right. The young man, Jeffery, sat to her left. Jorge shifted uncomfortably in his chair, sweating though the air was damp and cool. He cast a wary eye at Jeffrey, who couldn't keep his eyes off Hannah. Kristen was amused, despite her sympathy for Jorge. If there were only three people left in the world, would they form a lovers’ triangle?

    As for the cola, Kristen found it too sweet and syrupy, but also had nothing to compare it to. Such sweet luxuries were rare on the Moon, and the sweetness tended to be artificial, whereas this was probably plant-based.

    Francis, the over-dressed zombie, entered the room and stood by Miss Marguerite. Kristen resisted the impulse to pull her chair back and further distance herself from him. Francis was clean-well-groomed even-and his eyes bright with intelligence. But the sores on the backs of his hands, his face, and neck hinted at larger malignancies and suppurations under the cummerbund, the starched sleeves, and the creased, black trousers.

    "I found this in the parking lot,” Francis said. He threw a bundled-up towel on the low table in front of them.

    When no one else moved, Kristen reached across the table to a corner of the towel and rolled it open.

    Lying in the center of the white fabric was a piece of meat and bone. Kristen found it hard to resolve the nature of the fleshy offering. Then, like an ink blot, it became a piece of human skull, the temple and part of a shattered jaw. A deflated eyeball, part of the brown iris clearly visible, dangled from the eye socket.

    Jorge jumped up and left the table. Everyone else seemed fascinated, leaning forward to get a better view. The smell reached Kristen, a strange smell, not of blood, to which she had become accustomed as a medical officer, but of something similar, a dull acrid smell. Fresh meat she realized, and wondered if the meat of animals smelled the same as that of humans.

    "I'd say Jeffrey here was right on target,” Francis said. “The Stinger must have gone right up her ass."

    "Francis! How crude and insensitive,” Marguerite admonished.

    "I'd say murder is the height of insensitivity and crudity,” Francis said, wiping a bit of cloudy drool from the corner of his mouth. Kristen resisted the urge to get up and spray the old man from head to toe with a powerful disinfectant.

    "But it seems so disrespectful of the dead, no matter what they did in life,” Marguerite said.

    "Yes, you should always speak well of the dead,” Olson said.

    "She's dead, and I say that's good,” Jorge said, still standing across the room, away from Francis's gruesome offering on the table. “But could we get rid of that thing?"

    "Sure, if it'll bring you back to the table,” Olson said. He reached over and flipped the edge of the towel over the remains. “Now that our hosts have taken care of Gayle for us, we can talk about how we're going to proceed and meet our launch window."

    Marguerite stood up. “By launch window, you mean before the comet strikes?"

    Olson looked at her, speechless. Kristen suspected he was going to deny the existence of the comet, and before he could speak, she said, “How did you learn of it?"

    "Let's call it an educated guess,” Francis interjected. “You can see it in the night sky. I was just a kid when Hale-Bopp was in the sky. I don't remember it, but I've seen pictures."

    "Francis’ hobby was amateur astronomy-that along with those damned motorcycles,” Marguerite offered.

    "This thing-does it have a name?-is larger than even Hale-Bopp ever was, and though I don't have an ephemeris, it wasn't too hard to figure out why y'all were on such a tight schedule."

    "It's named Kali,” Olson admitted.

    "The Hindu goddess of death,” Marguerite said.

    "Yes, there's that,” Kristen said. “But it was named after its discoverer, a nineteen-year-old observatory student worker named Kalimantan."

    "Son of the head of the physics department,” Olson said. “I have it on good authority that it was an untenured, non-degreed young woman named Indre who actually made the discovery."

    "Whatever, Kali is a fitting name,” Marguerite said. She waved her arms about so as to simulate the four-armed goddess of death, then, apparently caught up in her own illusion, stood up and did a little dance.

    Kristen, along with Jorge, Olson, and Hannah, watched in wonder. Jeffrey seemed to hardly notice, and Francis’ smile, once one got over the corpse-like grimace, could be seen as a smile of love. For her part, Kristen found it hard to believe that the petite, female eccentric hosted a first-class scientific mind. Of course this was just conjecture on her part, Kristen knew, but she suspected the origins of the space children were more complicated than the fairy tale Marguerite had supplied.

    As if cued by her thoughts, three of the space children, ensconced in motorized wheelchairs, entered the room with electric whirls. They wheeled up in a row in front of the group and waited as if for inspection. They all carried small valises in their laps.

    Marguerite continued her little Kali dance. She was amazingly spry for an elderly woman; the children clapped their hands. The effect was spoiled by Marguerite being dressed in a Gone With the Wind hoopskirt, though. Kristen wondered if the next time they visited-if there was a next time-Marguerite wouldn't be dressed in ancient Hindu garb, with ankle bracelets of gold and a necklace of tiny skulls. If so, would Francis be Shiva? She smiled at this, then had a vision of Marguerite as Kali holding Francis's severed head in one hand. No, they were an odd, odd couple, but not that odd.

    "I thought we might send a few of the children back with you to the ship,” Marguerite said. “They could check out the accommodations. See if they're fitting."

    "I'm not sure there's room,” Olson said.

    "But you have agreed to take them,” Marguerite said, the concern evident in her voice.

    "Oh yes, as we said, they can survive the launch in the water ballast tanks if you have the breathing gear. I meant room in the Humvee."

    "Oh, that's a relief,” Marguerite said, smoothing her gown.

    "We-Marguerite and Jeffery, that is-” Francis said, “have outfitted a utility van so it can carry four children and their chairs. You can get the DNA fab unit in the back of your Hummer, I think,” he added.

    Kristen couldn't help staring at the children. It was the first time she'd seen them out of the water for more than a brief moment. They all looked of a type; frail, dark hair, small of stature. Thinking of some old 1950s British sci-fi video, she half expected them to have piercing metallic blue eyes and light, nearly white, blonde hair. “Village of the Damned.” That was the film. But no, their eyes were large, either brown or the most amazing shade of violet, and they looked wise for their years. But as she examined them, she decided their eyes were more like those of yogis than demons.

    Or perhaps this was just a perception, a projection of her expectations on children who were just that, merely children.

    But one thing was certain. They were related, closely. And moreover, the chance that they were from different mothers and different fathers, their genes tweaked randomly by a killer virus, seemed highly unlikely. And now that she saw them in the same room with Marguerite and Jeffery, it was hard to ignore the common family resemblance. She wondered if Jimmy saw it too.

    Olson was staring at the children, scratching his chin in that absentminded way of his.

    "You know, Miss Marguerite…” Olson said.

    Oh no, Miss Marguerite, Kristen thought, recognizing Jimmy's tone. Here it comes.

    "…I look at these beautiful astro kids of yours, and I realize that you've just been blowing smoke up our collective ass, haven't you?"

    Francis laughed-or rather cackled-but Marguerite seemed upset.

    "Mr. Olson, I'll thank you to watch your language around the children,” she said, indignantly.

    Olson turned to look at the young people in the wheelchairs. “Were you offended, guys and girl?"

    "No, not really,” the young girl answered.

    Kristen saw she wore a name tag stuck to her red polo shirt. “Call me Jeanie,” it read.

    "Why not?"

    "Well, we hear a lot worse when Mommy lets us watch DVDs."

    "Mommy? You mean this lady here?” Olson gestured toward Marguerite.

    "Yes, of course,” Jeanie said.

    "By mommy, you mean the woman who gave you birth?"

    "I'm the only mother they've ever known,” Marguerite said, but she seemed resigned to let Jimmy's confrontation play itself out.

    "We're not stupid, sir,” Jeanie replied. “Just different."

    "But then, young genius that you are, you must know that you're not a genetic accident as Miss Marguerite says, but the result of DNA engineering of her own ova fertilized by-now I'm guessing-the sperm of our Mr. Francis here."

    "Elementary, my dear Watson,” Francis said in a derogatory tone.

    Jeanie nodded. “Of course, as you and your friend-is it Kristen?” Jeanie asked, “…have already surmised, they are our parents. I think they must have used surrogate mothers, though."

    "Why do you say that, Jeanie?"

    "Well,” she raised herself in her chair and pointed at Miss Marguerite with the prehensile thumb of her foot. It was at once a very human and a very monkey-like motion. “She's too old, now and even twelve years ago, to carry even one of us to term. And there are eighteen of us in all. So logically-if the smoke up your ass that you're referring to is the background booklet she gave you-that much is true. We were brought to term in Low-Path women's wombs; therefore we must be immune to the virus. Wouldn't you say so, Mr. Olson?"

    Jimmy didn't answer. He just shook his head and smiled. Had the girl been so astute in reading human personalities to have been aware of this, or had she just been lucky?

    To answer her question, one the boys-his name tag read “Call me Theodore"-said to Kristen, “Yes, we can read people, but we don't read minds, we are sensitive in other ways. For example, we know that you suspect that you're pregnant, Miss Kristen."

    Though the boy had only said what she had been afraid to allow herself to think, she nearly fainted when he said it.

    

    

    

    By some sort of legerdemain dealt by the senior members of his team, Jorge found himself in the back of the van with the space children. Though there was room in the back, Hannah had chosen to ride up front with Jeffrey, who was driving. Olson and Kristen rode in the Hummer. Marguerite and Francis had elected to stay behind in the Aquarium, watching over the remaining space children.

    Jorge felt banished to the kiddy table while the adults spoke of serious matters.

    The ride in the back of the van was rough, and there was the faint smell of oil, a dirty odor, foul and mechanically feculent to one who had never smelled petroleum products before this visit to Earth. On the Moon, lacking millions of years of organic growth and rot, the only bad smells were those of too many people in too small of spaces with too many synthetic chemicals. But none of those smells compared to the stink of the van and the city. Did the cretaceous period smell like this, or were millions of years of swamp rot required to make something so disagreeable to the nose?

    The three space children, in their wheelchairs with the brakes locked, rocked in unison when the van took a corner or hit a pothole. Hannah's laughter drifted back, through the thin metal wall that separated the rear of the van from the driver's compartment. Now what could that freak Jeffrey be saying that was so amusing?

    Jorge was sure he didn't like him. They were about the same age-perhaps Jeffrey was a year or two younger-but Jeffrey had grown up on Earth while Jorge had spent his life on the Moon. But it was Jeffrey who looked more as if he had spent his life spirited away in an artificial environment, all pale white skin and coal black hair with a lost child cast to his features.

    "Don't worry. She cares for you too,” Jeanie said, shifting her position in the wheelchair. Like Jeffrey she was pale, paler than Jorge, though of course, he had a natural tan with his mixture of Cherokee, African, and Latino heritage. Jeanie was beyond pale, but her eyes were a rich, chocolate brown, and her hair was coal black and very fine. He would have found her attractive except for those feet which weren't feet but hands, and legs which were neither jointed like legs nor arms but something else.

    And these freaks, Jorge thought, were definitely creeping him out.

    "Romantically,” she added.

    "What?"

    "Hannah cares for you in a, you know, romantically physical way,” the mutant girl said. Was she leering at him?

    For reasons he couldn't divine, Jorge felt saddened by this revelation. The sadness quickly metamorphosed to anger. Then why, he thought, is she sitting up there and I'm back here with these freaks?

    "She's sitting with him because she wants to understand us,” Jeannie said.

    "Stop that. Stop reading my mind."

    "Oh, but I'm not. I said that before. I'm reading your facial expressions, your body language, and making some good guesses. It's a talent. Nothing supernatural, more like having perfect pitch in music."

    "Can all of you do it?"

    "Somewhat, but we girls are much, much better at it than the boys."

    Her brother crossed his arms at this bragging and looked away. Jeannie laughed.

    "Then if Jeffrey is like you, why doesn't he have hands for feet? Why is it he can walk in Earth gravity and you can't. What is he? Some sort of prototype?"

    "More of an intermediary; and we can walk around in Earth gravity quite well, though you would find it quite disturbing."

    "Try me,” Jorge said.

    She lifted herself by her upper arms, and stretched her lower extremities out straight. She held the position, extremities taut, like a gymnast on parallel bars. She curled and uncurled her digits on her lower extremities, making tiny fists.

    "They've gone to sleep,” she explained. “I shouldn't sit on them."

    There were yellow and roughed calluses on these other hands, but the ‘fingers'-for that was what they were, definitely not toes-were completely flexible. She extended one lower hand and made a fist again, only this time uncurled the index finger and made a “come hither” motion.

    He must have looked freaked, for she said, “Don't worry. Just kidding.” And then she flipped him the bird with the other hand.

    "Still just kidding?” he asked.

    "You figure it out,” she said and hopped to the floor, landing on all four hands, then looked up at him. She pranced-there was no other word for it-about the carpeted floor. Jeffrey hit a pothole so deep the wheelchairs jumped, and Jorge nearly fell off his perch. Jeanie didn't seem to notice. Like a sailor with sea legs, she instantly compensated for any jolts or weaves.

    He was reminded ever so much of a cat, a large female cat with a pretty human face.

    "Ugh, this floor is sticky. I wonder what Jeffery has been doing back here with his friends,” she said evilly.

    She turned and wagged her backside at him, giggling. Her behind was not at all like a cat's. Under her tight pink shorts, she had a very feminine human butt, though a diminutive one. That she actually had a butt-a derriere, he thought, for it seemed too elegant to be called just a butt-was a surprise, as it would seem having arms instead of legs would mean the anatomy was different in the butt area too.

    Jorge found himself trying to spy where the bottom arms joined this butt, but the shorts were just long enough, barely, to hide this juncture.

    "Floors are so nasty. I usually wear gloves,” she explained. “Leather gloves.” And without warning, she jumped onto his lap.

    He was shocked, not so much by her leap, though it was so fast it made him sit back, but by his own reaction. He was aroused. She seemed to exude sexuality that triggered something at his very core. It was an odd type of arousal, as if it were chemical instead of visual or tactile.

    "What's the matter?” she said, but it was a coy act. She knew what he was feeling. One of her under hands grazed his crotch. She didn't have to read his mind to know how he was responding to her.

    "Stop it!” he said, and tried to disentangle her from him. “Get down. Get off me.” But no matter where he touched her it was worse. She didn't feel like a child. She was womanly softness over firm muscle.

    She laughed. “Why?"

    "You're too young,” he said. He looked to her-brothers, cousins?-for help, but they were purposefully averting their gaze.

    "We mature earlier than mainstream humans,” she said. “I may be only eleven, but I was fertile a year ago. Not only that, I could beat you at chess, I bet, and out-wrestle you too."

    "Great,” he said. “It's like dog years.” He had no doubt, though, about the wrestling. He managed to grab her waist and tried to pluck her off, but it was impossible, as she seemed to change from a cat to a little octopus. Two hands gripped his shoulders with surprising strength, another the seam in his coveralls, another one the edge of the seat.

    "Well, to me you're a child, and I'm twenty. It's just not done. It's not only considered immoral and perverted, it's illegal."

    "Give me a little kiss anyway, and I'll get down.” She reached up with her fourth hand, an under hand, and tweaked his chin. He cringed; her fingers were indeed sticky with something from the floor.

    "Leave him alone, Jeanie,” one of the boys said. He leapt from his chair with the same grace the girl had demonstrated. A second leap and he was beside Jorge's chair. With an odd dexterity, he stood on his lower limbs, turning them somehow into legs, and grabbed her near the neck with his upper hands. His fingers strained and dug into her flesh.

    "Ouch!” she said. “You're clumsy, you and your Vulcan neck pinch; you're a joke.” But she let go, retracted her lower limbs from around Jorge's waist and stretched them to the floor. She stood for a moment, transformed by her posture into a normal human being, and it was apparent she was telling the truth about maturing early. She had hips, breasts and curves. She was more like a small, well-shaped, athletic woman than a precocious pre-adolescent girl.

    The boy-his name tag identified him as Theodore-let go. Without warning, she swung an open hand to slap him. Her movement was a blur, but he was faster and ducked. The slap went over his head and before she could wind up again, all four of his hands hand found and pinned all four of hers.

    "I'll tell Marguerite,” Jeanie threatened.

    "Go ahead, and I'll tell her you were trying to fuck a Moon man,” Theodore said.

    "I wasn't.” She looked at Jorge and addressed him. “Really, I was just teasing."

    Jorge thought the hand on his groin didn't seem like a tease, but kept his mouth shut.

    Getting no encouragement from him, she looked back to Theodore. “Men!” she said in disgust and walked upright back to her chair, swaying a bit with the van's movement.

    Theodore gave him a sympathetic nod and returned to his own chair. “We're not all like Jeanie,” he told Jorge. “She's a bit oversexed, we think. Too much radiation when she was in the womb, probably."

    "Idiot! Freak boy,” Jeanie said, and Jorge wondered if the epithet was addressed to him or to Theodore.

    

    

    Once at the Anita, the children had to leave their wheelchairs behind as the entry ramp was too steep for their motors. The wheelchairs would have been like landlocked ships inside the Anita, with its weaving narrow passageways. While the ship was planet bound, access to some levels was only possible via ladders.

    None of the three children seemed troubled by this. Instead they seemed to be glad to leave their wheelchairs behind, and Jeanie led the other two up the ramp, all going on all fours, reminding Jorge of the mother cat with kittens in tow he had seen only a couple of days earlier. There was an anxious moment as the sound of a gunshot reached their ears, but it was too far off, some little drama being played out among people none of them knew.

    Inside, the mutants were just like kids on a field trip, excited at everything, no matter how mundane. At one point, Theodore seemed transfixed by a flat panel display that rotated to allow viewing from any angle, an essential and routine fixture for any craft in micro-gravity, but apparently novel to the young man.

    As they moved to the upper levels and had to take to the ladders, the children's extra hands proved their worth. They ascended the ladders much more quickly than their apparent frailty would suggest. At one point, Jeanie climbed a ladder backwards as fast as Jorge could climb forwards. She halfway climbed over him and bumped her butt against his, nearly dislodging him.

    Theodore slipped back from his litter-mate role to that of a big brother and admonished her, threatening to tell Marguerite again.

    "You'll have to excuse her,” he said. “She just grew hips and boobs this year, and she thinks it makes her a woman."

    The other boy, whose name tag identified him as Isaac, said, “She's just showing off to get attention. Ignore her and she'll stop."

    Jeanie responded by turning completely around, climbing directly over Jorge and disappearing into the hatch above.

    "Young lady, stop!” Kristen, bringing up the rear, shouted in a tone that made Jorge nearly lose his grip.

    Jeanie stuck her head back through the hatch, and said, “Ma'am?"

    "You will behave, or I'll have you put back in the van and lock you in,” Kristen said.

    Looking sheepish, Jeanie started to climb back down the ladder.

    "No, you wait for us there,” Kristen said.

    Jeanie nodded. Theodore whispered something to Isaac, and they both laughed. Jeanie looked at them with pure, unadulterated ire but waited until they all were at the next level. Kristen had cowed her somehow. Maybe, Jorge thought, Jeanie just responded better to female authority. In a minute they were in the Sick Bay and found Badr's bed empty. Kristen was worried at having left him behind, even though she had sedated him, and they'd only been gone a few hours.

    "It's a good sign; if he's wandering around, then he isn't dead,” Olson said. “I bet we'll find him either in his own bunk or in the kitchen brewing some coffee."

    True to Olson's prediction, Badr was in the galley, pecking ineffectually at something resembling a burrito entree with a spoon. He appeared to have managed to clean himself up, but seemed a bit confused.

    "There you are,” Kristen said, sitting beside him. “Feeling better?” Her anxiety was clear.

    Jorge hoped they weren't going to have to listen to another account of how guilty she felt.

    "How did I get here?” Badr said. “Where's Kaplan?"

    Olson sat across from Badr. “That's what we were hoping you'd be able to tell us,” he said.

    Badr looked at him curiously.

    "You and Kaplan went out together to gather pharmaceuticals, remember? But only you came back."

    Badr shook his head as if to clear it, then groaned and put both hands to his temples. “Kaplan, you idiot.” He closed his eyes and began to shake, his hands dropping to the table, blindly searching for something and knocking his burrito plate to the floor.

    Olson reached across the table and grabbed one of Badr's trembling hands. “Calm down, old man. Calm down. We need to know what happened to your pal."

    "No pal of mine. Uh-uh. Turncoat.” Badr began to sob. Kristen put an arm around him.

    "Now, now,” Kristen said, as if comforting a child.

    "Life without a friend is death without a witness,” he said, between sobs. “We lived together like brothers, but we were really strangers. How could I know? He and that bitch! How could I know?"

    It was a pitiful sight, not just because of Badr's grief, but the hint of brain damage. Not knowing what else to do, Jorge picked up the burrito from the floor. It was still frozen hard. No wonder Badr was chipping away at it. He'd forgotten to microwave it. Badr's mind had evidently cratered, either from the shotgun pellet clicking around in his brain or from the delayed effects of too much radiation or both.

    "Now, now,” Kristen repeated.

    Olson let go of Badr's hand and leaned back, scowling. “Crap. He's checked out,” he said, echoing Jorge's thought. “Now we have an invalid on our hands."

    "Maybe not,” Kristen said. “It's not like the usual radiation dementia. I'm wondering if his brain isn't inflamed from the pellet. I'm going give him a cocktail of antibiotics and steroid anti-inflammatories."

    "Do you really think that will do any good?” Olson said.

    "Well, at this stage, it can't hurt. I think we should confine him somehow."

    Deja vu all over again, Jorge thought. “There's no place to lock anyone up on this ship, remember?” he said.

    "What happened to him?” Olson demanded of Badr. “What happened to your… partner?"

    "Jimmy, stop it. Hollering at him won't help."

    But Olson's strategy worked. The yelling seemed to bring Badr out of his stupor.

    "Kaplan, my brother, wasn't my partner. He turned on me for that lying bitch, MEME nun."

    "What?” Olson said, dumbfounded.

    "Dead cow. Two legs up in the air,” Badr said. “Shots fired prematurely."

    Jorge chuckled. Olson, Kristen, and Hannah looked at him with disapproval. But his chuckle had a will of its own, and he couldn't stop. Then Hannah caught it and began to laugh.

    "Sorry,” she said.

    Olson began to laugh. Kristen turned away to hide her amusement, either from them or from Badr. Jeffrey and the space boys seemed immune, but Jeanie began laughing, without understanding, probably just wanting to join in the fun.

    "It's not funny,” Badr said, with surprising clarity. “May Allah protect me from my friends; my enemies I can handle.” Then he tumbled out of the chair. Kristen was there to catch him as he fell.

    "Grab his feet, Jorge,” Kristen said, and together they hauled the unconscious man to the Sick Bay. Kristen buckled him onto a gurney, then set up a drip line IV.

    "It's mostly a saline solution, but I've got a sedative drip to keep him asleep. He's GWB'ed, I think."

    "What's GWB'ed mean?” Theodore asked.

    "It's an acronym for Gone Waste Brained,” Kristen said, “though there's supposedly a double-entendre in there somewhere, but it's lost on me. It happens to people who spend too much time in space, sometimes. The radiation damages the synapses. The theory is since memory and other functions are holographic in nature, there can be a lot of damage with only minor effects. Then a threshold is reached, and it's like a keystone being pulled out of an arch. Everything just crumbles."

    "But,” Olson said, “I wonder what was all that about Kaplan and Gayle? Did I hear that right? Was he trying to tell us that Kaplan went over to Gayle's side?"

    "Maybe they were in collusion all along,” Kristen said.

    "I just remembered something,” Jorge said. “It was Kaplan who persuaded Badr to go into the utility closet right before the explosion. Remember? He had a doobie and the others-Bobbie, Tish, and Crystal-tagged along uninvited. That's what saved them, going into the storage room."

    "It also almost killed them,” Olson said. “We got there just in time. They were running out of air."

    "But that's because there were five of them. If it had just been Kaplan and Badr, they would have been okay for another half hour."

    "What are all you fussing about?” Jeanie said. “I thought you were going to show us the water tanks."

    Olson ignored her and said, “You know what this means?"

    He didn't have to finish the thought, at least for Jorge and Kristen. Kaplan was an unknown risk. Would he continue to be a threat without Gayle to goad him on? He could still be out there somewhere, armed and dangerous.

    Theodore broke this gloom-and-doom chain of thought by clearing his throat theatrically. “Excuse me, sir,” he said to Olson.

    "What is it-Theodore, isn't it?” Olson said.

    "Call me Ted,” he said. He pulled off a glove he wore on his lower hands and clenched and unclenched the fingers. “Cramps,” he explained. “Hope this doesn't gross you all out."

    "Not at all,” Olson said, but his expression said otherwise, Jorge thought. And he had to admit that he felt the same aversion. The ‘fingers’ on Ted's lower hands were only slightly shorter and stouter than his ‘normal’ upper hands. It wasn't so much xenophobia as the feeling of being near someone who had been severely injured, such as a double amputee.

    "I've been looking at your acceleration couches-those things that look like big waterbeds,” he said.

    "And?"

    "I don't think you'll need to stick us in the water tanks. If there's enough couches-and I think there is with two or three of us per couch-then we'll be better off there than in the tanks."

    "I thought your bones were so brittle that you couldn't take the full acceleration."

    "They're not so much brittle as smaller and lighter than yours. And if we were strapped down in hard chairs, we might get injured. But those couches-they look like they were developed for invalids."

    Jorge almost laughed. With bone loss because of extended periods of weightlessness, many Moon men were essentially invalids. The couches had been developed not for Earth humans, but for men and women with advanced osteoporosis.

    "Actually, because we've grown more bone than we lose in Earth G, I think most of us kids have stronger bones than y'all,” he said.

    "I don't understand,” Olson said. “You're telling me Marguerite doesn't know what she's talking about and to ignore the stuff about putting you in the tanks."

    "It's just that Marguerite,” Ted shrugged, “is like our mother, though we were born of those other women. And she's always erring on the far side of caution."

    "But what about this fragile bone thing?"

    "That might be true of a few of us-mainly a couple of the younger ones who haven't had time to build up extra calcium in their bones-but I believe even they are strong enough to ride it out in a couch."

    "I think he's talking about Jeanie,” Jorge said.

    Ted nodded. “I don't know why Marguerite sent her with the advance team. She's not a very good example. But I think even Jeanie's bones are in better shape than yours."

    "So…?"

    "I don't think Marguerite realized how poor your physical condition is, and that you'd have those really great water-filled couches. We'll all be fine in those things."

    "And it would save us a lot of work in not having to get the water tanks ready for them,” Jorge said. “More time to load supplies."

    Olson thought for a minute. “Well guys, I see your point, but I don't like going back on my word to Marguerite.” He paused for a minute, thinking of how Marguerite, a.k.a., Deep Throat, had done a bait-and-switch on him with the space kids. But he mentally shrugged off the ‘what goes around, comes around logic’ and went on. “But if you can get a picture of our acceleration couches and maybe some specs to Marguerite…"

    Jorge's and Ted's demeanors visibly brightened. They were in this together, Olson realized. He had been the victim of a two-stage attack, Ted coming straight on and Jorge flanking. It made him happy, for some reason, that two young men-boys really-from such disparate environments could bond so quickly.

    "…And if she agrees with your evaluation of the couches, then I'm good to go on it,” he finished.

    Jorge's walkie-talkie buzzed. He glanced at the unit's display.

    "It's Marguerite. She wants to speak to The-o-dore,” he said, stretching out the syllables and lifting a hand with the pinkie outstretched. “Here,” he said, handing the walkie-talkie to the space kid. “Your mother's calling."

    Ted shook his head, embarrassed, but took the walkie-talkie. He talked for a moment, mostly replying in single words. “Yes, ma'am. Yes. Understand.” After a moment, he said to Olson, “She says you're all invited to a farewell party and wedding reception."

    "Wedding reception?” Olson said.

    "Who's getting married?"

    "Marguerite says she and Francis are renewing their vows, and that you, as captain of the Anita, are the only one left on Earth to perform the ceremony.” Ted was grinning.

    "Tell her we don't have time, and see what she says,” Olson said.

    Ted just looked at him, an amused look on his face.

    "Well, tell her that,” Olson said.

    "I don't have to,” Ted said. “She already me told me she isn't taking no for an answer."

    "She's not, is she?” Olson felt his anger rising.

    "She-mother-said if you want the sperm too, you'll take a few hours and do it. So far, all you got was the frozen ova."

    Olson sighed.

    Kristen laughed. “Screwed again. I think she's got you by the short hairs, there, ‘Captain,'” she said.

    "Just get on line and find me a marriage ceremony to be given by a ship's captain; the briefest one you can. Then print it out,” he said.

    Jorge and Theodore were talking and snickering between themselves.

    "What's so funny?” Olson said.

    "I was explaining what ‘short hairs’ meant,” Jorge said.

    Despite himself, Olson began laughing, too.

    "But you know, I'm not captain,” Olson said. “I'm first mate. I'm Starbuck; Kristen is Captain Ahab."

    "I was wondering when you'd remember that,” Kristen said. “But no problem. I can perform the ceremony.” She smiled wickedly at Olson. “You can be a bridesmaid."

    

    

    

    Francis, dressed in a white-tie tuxedo with tails, advanced to the little makeshift altar, a spring in his step. Olson stood to the left of the altar, which was really a small metal table covered with a red blanket. In the large foyer of the Aquarium, about forty folding metal chairs had been arranged to form an aisle.

    There's more seating here than there are people alive in the whole city, Olson thought.

    In the back, Jeffrey operated a video camera which was transmitting back to the ship. Marguerite had insisted on this, saying it was getting too dangerous in the city for the astro children, who had all been moved to the ship, to keep traipsing back and forth to the Aquarium from the Anita. Jorge had stayed behind as well, but Hannah had insisted on coming.

    The near-zombie now moved along the makeshift aisle. He carried an ornate cane, and its brass-tipped end made little click, click, clicks as he walked. Olson was amazed at the transformation. Francis showed no signs of the oozing sores, his skin tone looked normal, and he even had a rosy glow to his cheeks. But as he came closer down the aisle, it became apparent to Olson that the metamorphosis was artificial. The sores were still there under deep layers of stage makeup. A thin line of puss trickled down his cheek, giving away the hiding place of a greenish sore under the face cream and powder. The eyebrows looked authentic, but as Francis hadn't had any the day before, Olson suspected they were glued on falsies. And each jaunty step was accompanied by a snap and pop, as if some sound-effects artist behind a curtain was breaking celery each time the old man took a step.

    "Hi,” Francis said to Olson. “I wanted to go for a Fred Astaire look, but I couldn't find the right hat.” When Olson didn't reply, he said, “What's your part in this little play?"

    "I'm the ring bearer-or something like that.” He held up a large ring, silver with inlaid turquoise.

    "I thought you were supposed to follow behind the bride in the processional."

    "I don't know. I was told to stand here and wait and not to lose the ring,” Olson said. “But, if you're talking about one of those affairs where a whole team of people march down the aisle, I doubt if we have enough people to do that."

    "You're probably right. We don't have enough for a baseball team,” Francis said. “I wonder which finger I should put the ring on since I'm sort of shy a few.” He raised his white-gloved left hand and waved it back and forth. The ring finger flopped about, empty.

    "Ask Emily Post; don't ask me,” Olson said.

    "Who's Emily Post? One of your crew?"

    "Never mind, I watch too many twentieth-century movies,” Olson said. “Where am I supposed to stand; do you know?"

    "Beats me. Marguerite and I got married by the Justice of the Peace the first time. Took about five minutes. Then we went right back to work in our respective labs."

    "I've never been married,” Olson said. “I've generally shunned these ceremonies."

    "Me too-except Marguerite was too much the good thing to pass up. To have and to hold, you know. Besides, there were issues with insurance and job benefits. I guess she always wanted something more… “He scratched his head, and his white glove came away with black fingertips and a few strands of hair. “Ritualistic, symbolic,” he finished. “And it's important for me to make her happy, especially in these last days."

    "Look here,” Olson said. “I know we owe you for helping take out Gayle Ring."

    "The woman as mad as a bird?"

    "Yes, that pretty much describes her. What's that from?"

    "Dylan Thomas. Love in the Asylum, I think."

    For a moment, Olson pondered how a man who could quote Dylan Thomas had never heard of Emily Post, then said, “What's that smell?"

    "Don't like it?"

    "It's not bad,” Olson said, thinking it was a lot better than Francis’ natural smell of rotting meat. “I remember it from childhood, but I can't quite place it."

    "It's patchouli. Hippie perfume. Marguerite drenched me in it.” Francis took the fake carnation out of his lapel. “Here,” he said. “Live long and prosper."

    Olson laughed. It was hard not to like Francis, despite his appearance. Olson cleared his throat and said, “You know as much as we would like to, we can't take you with us. We'll have a hard enough time convincing the Powers That Be to accept the astro kids-we may never succeed-but a Low-Path infectee? Forget it. I'm sorry but no way."

    Francis stared at him patiently. Olson found it hard to read his expression under all the makeup.

    "I heard you were thinking about blowing off all those asshole bureaucrats and heading out to the asteroids,” Francis said.

    "'Assholes’ is about right, but who told you that we might mutiny?"

    "Jeanie."

    "Hhmm, loose lips sink ships. But yes, it may be our only course, but I want to keep our options open. I'm sorry about you. It just can't happen.” He gave the old man what he hoped was a sympathetic look but felt kind of phony doing so.

    "No problem,” Francis said. “Cool your jets. Not going your way, anyway. Wouldn't if we could. Ah, here comes the blushing, zombie bride."

    Olson looked and a loud laugh escaped before he could contain himself.

    Sure enough, Marguerite advanced down the aisle, dressed in an expensive-looking conventional white wedding gown, all filigree lace and billowy chiffon. Hannah followed behind carrying the train.

    Though wearing white, the typical blushing bride she was not. Where Francis had been made up to look as human as possible, Marguerite had covered her face with greasepaint and put deep black shadows around her eyes. Her lips were painted blue, and vivid green tracings of veins showed through the white greasepaint. Over her heart, a splotch of rose red stage blood bloomed on the gown that had probably worn a price tag in the tens of thousands of dollars before the Dingdang Flu. She looked like a zombie, but not the sad-sack Low-Path creatures outside, more like the spawn of a Hollywood makeup artist.

    Should have worn a veil, Olson thought.

    Kristen stepped up, wearing a red velour shirt and trousers. It was a Star Trek uniform, officer level, Olson suspected but wasn't quite sure. He sighed again, for the third or fourth time that day. Things seemed to be stacking up to make for a long affair, though Kristen and Marguerite had promised the ceremony would be short. Jeffrey picked up the camera, tripod and all, and set it up behind Kristen and to the side.

    "We're ready.” The greasepaint was so thick, it cracked when she smiled at Olson. “Don't worry. I promised a quickie wedding, and that's what we'll have,” she whispered in an aside to him.

    Kristen cleared her throat. “Everyone, thank you for coming and participating,” she said toward the empty chairs, then turned and nodded toward the camera. Olson imagined Jorge and all the space kids huddled around one of the flat displays on the Anita. He hoped Jorge's video camera was transmitting strongly enough. Its antenna looked rather puny.

    "Since Marguerite and Francis never divorced, what we're here for today is not technically a wedding, but a renewal of vows. I found this ceremony on our ship's computer and tweaked it a bit. Remember, we didn't have much time to put this together.

    "Marguerite and Francis, you come here today to reaffirm your love for each other. When you first joined hands and hearts thirty years ago, you did not know where life would lead you, but you wanted to follow that path side by side. You promised to love, honor, and cherish one another. You believed that though you belonged together, you did not belong to one another. Life has surely brought you both wonderful blessings and difficult tribulations, but through it all, through plague and the coming end of the world, you have honored your covenant to one another. So, as you reflect back over all the years as husband and wife, do you now reaffirm the vows you took thirty years ago? Marguerite, you first."

    Marguerite turned to Francis. “I do reaffirm my love. We will watch the end of the world together in love, knowing our children will carry on in space."

    Francis took his own piece of paper out of his pocket and said, “I never stopped loving you, baby, But I decided to change the script a little at the last moment."

    "Somehow I expected you would-you always depart from the script. That's one reason I love you,” Marguerite said.

    Francis smiled, his makeup cracking, and read:

    "Search we sky or Earth

    There is nothing out of Love

    Hath perpetual worth:

    All things flag but only Love,

    All things fail and flee;

    There is nothing left but Love

    Worthy you and me."

    "That's from a poem called Love by Christina Rossetti, a nineteenth century poet. I thought the ‘Search the sky’ bit appropriate."

    "Whatever, my love,” Marguerite said. She stood on tiptoe and kissed Francis on the lips.

    Olson had to turn away, not because of the romanticism of the moment, but because he feared part of Francis’ lips might come away with the kiss.

    Marguerite turned back to the camera. “Children, as you may have guessed by now, neither Francis nor I will be joining you on lift-off. We know there would have been weeping and that you would have tried to convince us to go, or threatened to stay with us. That's why we did this ceremony remote."

    And Olson did imagine the children-particularly the younger ones like Jeannie-wailing at this moment.

    "But there are many good reasons for us not to go, and really none for us to leave Earth,” Marguerite continued. “First, let's face it, we're frigging old. We wouldn't live long in a weightless environment, and our deaths would likely be neither gentle nor dignified.

    "There are other, political reasons… “Francis said and glanced at Olson for moment."But the real reason is that we've decided we'd rather go out together, with a BANG! than die in our own vomit in space."

    Marguerite shook her head. “As always, your father likes to cut through the hooptedoodle and get right to the point. But what he said is true. We'd like you to remember us as we are now, still thumbing our noses at fate."

    "While we still have noses,” Francis said.

    Marguerite ignored him and continued, “We don't want to rot away in space. We were not made to live in space; you children were.” Tears were running down her greasepaint-covered face now, and she reached out and put her hand over the camera lens. “Turn it off,” she said. “Let's have a drink, and then all you should get back to the ship."

    Over a glass of wine, Olson wanted to ask her about the “made to live in space” part of her speech. He had never accepted that the children's mutations had just happened as Marguerite claimed. That was too much like intelligent design for him to expect. He suspected there was an untold Frankenstein-ian horror movie back story here. There must have been a lot of aborted failures among the trial and errors of cloned experiments cast off in a dumpster somewhere, and zombie mother hosts carted away by the dozens, if not hundreds. There always had been a lot of trial and error to cloning and gene insertion. Scientific selection of the fittest could be just as heartless as evolutionary selection but in a compressed time frame. Human feelings about right and wrong were disregarded by both science and Mother Nature, though science often did it willfully, thoughtfully, while evolutionary selection was as impersonal as gravity.

    He was certain that chance had little to do with the children being made to live in space. And along with a curiosity about the process, he wondered why Francis and Marguerite would chose to hide it under a deux ex machina alibi that resembled intelligent design. There was no one left on Earth to prosecute them as there had been when they had to have created Jeffrey. The zombies out in the street were unlikely to march on the Aquarium with picket signs reading “Baby Killers!” in hand.

    But he couldn't figure out a way to broach the subject with them. Finally, he gave up and had another glass of wine. What did it matter? Perhaps in this case, the ends did justify the means. Perhaps it was that unselfish gene at work, forcing people to do terrible things in the name of survival of the species. As the wine warmed his brain, he decided it really didn't matter. With the coming of Kali any evidence would be burned away.

    Whatever ethical compromises Francis and Marguerite had committed, they seemed genuinely happy, though their life spans were numbered in days now. Who knew how history would judge them or their legacy? Would there even be any history in a few more decades? But at this moment they were happy. What more, he thought, can we ask, other than love and the feeling that our lives, our work meant something? He should be so lucky. By whatever means, the two aging scientists may have saved the human race. It was an ending that belonged in a B-movie, but one he couldn't remember having seen anywhere.

    

    

    

    Bits of flesh, bits of bone, splatters of blood and skin over the parking garage floor. “Poor Kaplan,” Gayle said out loud, but it didn't ring true. She tried to find some compassion, some remorse, but all she could discover in herself was anger that he had failed her by being stupid and slow. Which had got him killed. She imagined that he had maintained the illusion that because he was motivated by love-love of her, love of some undefinable god-that he was charmed, immune from even shoulder-launched missiles.

    She had to admit that it was outrageous that the old man who looked like a Dawn-of-the-Dead poster boy would be packing a laser-guided, shoulder-launched, anti-tank missile. Still, Kaplan must have had time to see that a weapon was trained on him, time to see the flash of the guiding laser, time to drop his gun, and at least try to get out of the way. Instead, he had apparently just laid there on his stomach, his gun propped up on an old plastic bucket, persistently and incompetently taking pot shots at Olson in the Hummer, believing himself secure, his mission a grand one.

    That was his weakness and his strength: his capacity for self-delusion, the ability to believe he was the center of the universe, one of God's favorites. His love for her had been a self-induced illusion that he clung to for reasons she couldn't fathom. And though she was clumsy at showing or even pretending to show love, he had grasped at any pretense to believe she did so. It was pitiful.

    She had capitalized on that illusion, nonetheless.

    We all, she thought, live an illusion, a carefully fabricated self-deception designed to shield us from the harshness and senselessness of human existence. Here she mentally stumbled; what was her illusion? What reality might she be shielding herself from?

    For a moment, a black hole of despair opened, threatening to swallow her. The black hole sucked away any meaning to her life, her existence, her every act. She cried out in the shabby parking garage, strewn with the remains of Kaplan, but in a meaningless universe, there was no answer.

    She screamed and sank to her knees, her left hand on her breast, squeezing it rhythmically.

    As the drug entered her system, she took a deep breath. The pleasure washed away the emptiness. At the same time, a carefully constructed mental mechanism kicked in, and she rejected this notion of illusion without any further thought. Gayle wasn't even aware of it, but the Moist Earth Mothers Evangelicals, like most religions, had a built-in means to prevent converts from questioning the basic tenets. Patriarchal religions labeled some thoughts sinful enough to deserve eternal damnation. In matriarchal counterparts, such thoughts were considered the enemy too, though the enemy, instead of a trickster Satan, was the mindset of the patriarchal establishment, the way of linear empirical thinking that had led to the corruption of holy Gaia in the first place. So she brushed the idea away as a patriarchal assault, a sort of mental virus devised by the other side.

    After years in religious conditioning, Gayle didn't-couldn't-question the palindromic illogic of this line of reasoning any more than a monk or a nun after a lifetime of service could question that Satan was always behind them, always present, ready to take any opportunity to divert them from the true path.

    But Kaplan's illusion was the most departed from reality, she told herself.

    He had loved her, he said. It was an unselfish love, he continued one night, after she let him sodomize her. He had promised he would do anything for her, including helping her sabotage the mission and whatever that involved, including killing his crewmates, including killing his longtime lover, Badr.

    When the time came to kill Badr, however, he had hesitated, and Badr had escaped. Luckily or unluckily, depending upon one's point of view, she had chosen to watch the approach to the ship and managed to get off a shotgun blast through his windshield. Still, everything would have gone much better if Kaplan had done what he was supposed to do.

    She could imagine him now, crying, telling Badr he didn't want to kill him. And Badr, sly little fart that he was, talking his lover out of doing so.

    She should have guessed, knowing Kaplan as she did, that he wouldn't be up to the task. Shit! She kicked a piece of plywood out of the way and found a piece of Kaplan's head. A piece of shrapnel had taken away one eye and part of the cheekbone, pulverizing his skull and blowing the brains out the other side. What was left looked like a bloody, deflated balloon with hair and facial features drawn on.

    He seemed to be smiling at her, leering, infatuated even in death.

    One way to look at it was that he stood his post and kept firing at the Hummer until the missile shredded him. But she wished he'd had enough sense to get out of the way. Now she was going to have to watch two areas at once, the ship and the Aquarium. Wait, three places, if Olson and Kristen decided to return to the storehouse Badr had found.

    Unselfish love? No such thing. There existed in the human makeup an unselfish gene, an altruism gene, perhaps; that much could be deduced from observation. But in reality, the unselfish gene was a selfish gene. For altruism on the genetic level was a molecular legerdemain designed to insure the survival of a gene. An individual gene rarely existed in a single host individual, a single family member, but was distributed throughout the community, copies, passed on from generation to generation through offspring. In that light, an altruistic behavior such as sacrificing oneself for the good of the community was in fact a selfish act. The host-a single human-might die, but the community of humans, and thus multiple copies of the gene, could go on. Love was a function of the selfish gene, a means to insure that copies of itself might go on.

    Better to die for an idea than for some illusive, idealistic dream that another human being loved you.

    Kaplan had believed in a weird, mutated form of reincarnation that paralleled the selfish gene theory. He believed a very limited number of souls existed but that reincarnations were independent of time and space. In any given human population and at a single moment in time a specific soul might be spread among a dozen, even a hundred bodies. Love consisted of locating the other hosts for one's soul parts and merging with them. It was a form of self-love. Substitute gene for soul, and something very similar to the ideal of love was actually a form of self-preservation. An interesting thought, but with Kaplan, it was more than a casual belief system; it was what held him together, kept him from taking off his helmet in a hard vacuum. Knowing this about Kaplan, it had been a simple matter to convince him that she was another one of his soul fragments. That, and his guilt over his homosexual relationship with Badr along with her Moist Earth Mother Evangelical training of advanced tantric sexual techniques, and he had been hers, both body and soul.

    There wasn't much left of the body now, of course, and she had always doubted the existence of the individual human soul. Group souls, yes. The Moist Earth Mothers Evangelicals taught there was only Gaia, who was composed of all of Earth and all of its creatures, including humans. But the human component of Gaia had become cancerous and must be excised. That was her job, her duty, and she'd best get on with it. Now she had to make a choice, to guess where Olson and Kristen would go next and be ready for them. If she guessed wrong, they might complete the mission and the human colony would live, in dormant fashion, like a cancer in temporary remission, on the Moon and in space, waiting to return to Earth. The time had come to make a decision: stake-out the Aquarium or the warehouse? She made it, thinking there was no turning back.

    Below, in the parking lot in front of the Aquarium, three zombies wandered about, a disordered macabre pack. One stooped to pick something up and almost fell. It steadied itself and brought its find to its mouth. She realized with a start that the thing had found a piece of Kaplan to snack on. The others must have smelt the fresh meat and were doing likewise. They were too stupid to be guided by their eyes but were following their noses like rabid dogs. When one found a good piece, the others gathered and weakly tried to take it away.

    Amidst the usual suspects, however, was a walking trash barrel. Either by enterprise or accident-most likely the latter-it had become encased in a large, upended trash barrel. All she could see was its ankles and feet. One shoe was missing. It would walk a bit, then set the trash barrel down, hiding even its feet. Then it stood up, feet scurrying forward, then setting down on a big chunk of Kaplan.

    Trojan zombie, thought Gayle, wondering if some zombies might have a bit more brain left than others.

    Yes, she had made her choice. But it was time for a different tack. She needed access to the inside of the Anita, and she had an idea how to get it.

    

    

    Kristen unsuccessfully tried to meditate as Jimmy drove-drove badly as a matter of fact, cursing as he ground the gears and stalled out.

    They had driven the Hummer to Badr's discovered warehouse, but before loading a tractor-trailer with goods, Jimmy wanted to practice driving. He had taken the truck out of the parking lot and was circling the industrial park.

    "Why the fuck couldn't they put an automatic transmission in these things like the Hummer?” Jimmy said. “And a real computer guidance system, not some souped-up GPS microprocessor, goddamn it."

    He paused. “Sorry, I have a foul mouth when I'm frustrated.” It was about his third apology in the last couple of city blocks.

    "It's okay,” she said, thinking ‘the second noble truth is that craving causes frustration’ and tried to love him when he was like this. But in truth, she wished he would just go on about his business, cussing when needed, and let her alone. Maybe she could center if he would just cuss more quietly.

    Of course, she should practice this truth too, she thought. She was, in effect, craving that Jimmy live up to expectations-that he would grow up a bit and develop a bit more patience-so of course she was destined to be frustrated.

    She was having one of those days, when for no reason she could fathom, she seemed to be on the verge of lapsing into uncontrolled weeping. And the Somatau-a drug named by a Buddhist without a doubt-didn't seem to be helping. Ordinarily, in this situation, she would prescribe herself a dosage of Valium, that old-time drug that turned the whole world into a velvet cushion. This had worked just days before-though it seemed like ages ago-shortly before the bomb killed nearly everyone aboard the Anita. Then, in the ensuing chaos, she had been able to perform her emergency duties, but barely. She had chosen to stay aboard the Ark while Jimmy and Jorge made the rescue mission to the Anita. Now, given the circumstances and the uncertainty of the day, as well as the need for her to be functional, awake, and mentally flexible-that didn't seem like a good idea.

    She resisted the idea of using such a brute-acting drug; it was like using a grenade to kill a cockroach. Effective, but messy. The only remaining alternative was to enter that meditative state. The meditation techniques-if she practiced them properly-allowed her clarity of mind and peace that she couldn't get from the best psycho-active drugs. It wasn't just a means of calming the mind. When things clicked, she was more aware, and she had often felt as if she was on the verge of leaving her fragile ego behind and emerging into a spaciousness and clarity that made all her human concerns trivial. The trick was to get past the feelings of anxiety and loss where she could focus. She told herself that these feelings were a result of her organic brain's chemical imbalance from gamma radiation but telling herself that and feeling it were two different matters.

    Jimmy put the truck in neutral at an intersection and intently studied the pattern engraved on one of the gear shift knobs. Kristen watched a few poor, tired-looking zombies mill about. It was mid-morning and not Texas-hot yet but getting there.

    Funny, her meditation teachers would often devise thought experiments for her to do. In one, she was asked to consider the possibility that she had countless interactions with everyone she knew. Her loved ones might have been adversaries during past lives, her lover, one of her parents. In a past life, she might have been the boy who tried to rape him in one of his past lives as a female. This was an exercise to promote compassion and reinforce the concept that the mind was primordial, that this life and its perils and conflict were but clouds on a pure sky-mind.

    A zombie pounded feebly on her door, stirring her from her reveries. It was-or had been-a young woman and was dressed in low-slung jeans and tank top. She looked a bit pinker than many of the zombies, and Kristen wondered if this meant she was a fresher case or if it was significant of anything at all. Her belly button piercing was infected, concentric purplish rings of festering skin spread out from it like a bulls-eye tattoo.

    She smiled and winked lasciviously at Kristen, startling her. It took her a moment to realize the zombie wasn't winking at all, but blinking from the bright sunlight. Relaxing, Kristen remembered a meditation exercise where one was to consider being a zombie-and this was long before the Low-Path plague when zombies were a thing of B-movies and not a reality-that could be programmed to carry out all the actions, good and bad, of a sentient human. Moreover, unlike the zombie at the truck's door, the meditation zombie could not be distinguished visually from a real human being. The zombie differed only because it had no internal mental subjective states such as elation, revulsion, or appreciation of the beautiful or the infinite. The meditator was asked to consider how he or she might be able to distinguish the zombie from a real person.

    The answer she came up with was that the zombie, besides having no inner life, had no free will. It made her think of a famous quote…

    "A token for your thoughts,” Olson said.

    "I was trying not to have thoughts,” Kristen said, “but I was thinking about a famous excerpt from the Kama Sutra by the Buddha.” Which was mostly true, she thought.

    "My mind is open,” Olson said, but his tone said otherwise.

    Kristen cleared her throat. “It may not be an exact quote…"

    Olson shrugged. He started the truck with a lurch, and Kristen could have sworn the zombie girl's face in the rearview mirror showed both sadness and loneliness.

    "The Buddha said, ‘Do not go by revelation or tradition; do not go by rumor or the sacred scriptures; do not go by hearsay or mere logic; do not go by bias toward a notion or another person's seeming ability; and do not go by the idea he is our teacher. But when you, yourself know a thing is good, that it is not blamable, that it is praised by the wise, and when it is practiced and observed that it leads to happiness, then follow that thing.’”

    "Really? He said that?"

    "Supposedly, he said a lot of things."

    "What do you believe?” Olson asked.

    "You mean about free will?"

    "No about reincarnation and permeability of the soul? It seems pivotal to Buddhism, in my opinion,” he said.

    "I'm on the fence,” she said. “I like what works, and sometimes I can make meditation work, and I catch a glimpse of something that gives my life meaning."

    "We're here-the budget shopper's Nirvana-I think,” Olson said, as they pulled back into a parking lot. The sign on the huge warehouse read, “Wal-Mart Distribution Center."

    "I think,” he added with resignation, “we'll just use one of the trucks already backed up the loading dock."

    

    

    

    Olson leaned against a loaded skid of cases of cans of Spam, surveyed the cargo hold of the Anita, and wiped the sweat off his brow with the back of his hand. The last five days had been a Herculean challenge, comprised of sixteen-hour, sometimes twenty-hour, days of loading trucks full of goods at the Wal-Mart center, then driving them across town to unload them in Anita's cargo holds. They had been running a relentless race to fill the Anita's cargo bays with as much tonnage as possible before liftoff. And there had also been the ordeal of getting the space children trained in the use of the acceleration couches. Hannah had been invaluable in that regard. Once trained in the use of the couches and layout of the ship, she had assigned the children cabins, and still had time to help with the unloading.

    Olson was exhausted-dead tired was the phrase-but it was, nonetheless, oxymoronic as it sounded, a good tired.

    Working like slaves, powered by caffeine and desperation, he, Kristen, Hannah, Jorge, and even the mutant children, nearly filled the hold with every kind of non-perishable good imaginable. There were a lot of canned goods of course, but also nitrogen-filled packs of irradiated meat, and even a few metric tons of military meals ready-to-eat, MREs. There were skid-loads of pharmaceuticals, canned hams, freeze-dried vegetables, and at his insistence, three skid-loads of organic gourmet coffees.

    Sometime during the early stages of the plague, the Wal-Mart Distribution Center had apparently been used as a military emergency staging base. Even skids of assault-weapons and ammunition were to be found, all pretty much useless where they were going, but they loaded them anyway. There were other surprises, such as the MREs and vacuum-sealed emergency medical supplies, dehydrated blood substitutes, field-hardened laptop computers, and hundreds of kilos of garden seeds of all types. And since Anita's holds were huge, they had taken everything, using the Wal-Mart forklifts to fill one after another of the trailer trucks.

    Then Olson, with Kristen following in the Hummer, had driven the trailer truck back to the Anita. On the first truckload, they had also taken one of the Wal-Mart forklifts with them. They stayed only long enough to park the truck and give Hannah and Jorge a ten-minute short course on how to use the forklift, Olson and Kristen returned to the Wal-Mart Center for another load. While they were gone, Jorge moved the skids to the Anita's freight elevator. Hannah used the Anita's on-board forklift to take the skids off the top of the elevator and stack them in the hold. The space kids, who seemed to have a highly developed spatial sense, helped too, stacking the skid pallets in a stable mass that at times resembled a giant Rubik's cube.

    Yes, things had come together better than he had ever let himself hope. They might just pull this thing off after all. With Gayle blown to bits in the parking garage, things might not be a cakewalk, but they had been doable.

    Jorge and one of the male space children came up. The door to the cargo hold remained open to the outside while they worked. Jorge's orange coveralls were soaked, and his usually carefully groomed hair was matted.

    The space kid, Theodore, who had been working alongside Jorge, looked as cool and neat as when Olson had met him at the Aquarium. He walked on all fours as they approached, his head held up like a cat's, and Olson, despite himself, was really creeped out.

    "Hey, Jorge. Hey, Theodore,” he said in an attempt to dispel the awkwardness.

    Jorge nodded and plopped down beside Olson.

    "Call me Ted,” Theodore said in a perfectly normal teenage voice. He wore tan leather work gloves on his “upper” hands, and mitten-like coverings with an articulated thumb on his rear hands.

    Olson knew that with those silent communications composed of body language, eye flickers, and sub-vocal sounds, he revealed his physical aversion to the space child. Similarly, Ted communicated that he was aware of that revulsion. Maybe that's why Ted stood up on his hind legs and removed his upper gloves. For a moment, he was just a slim teenage boy, high of brow and sharp of eye, wearing funny footwear. He sat down on the other side of Olson. And Olson realized with another start that the boy cared what he thought of him. Maybe it was, Olson posited, that the boy needed a father figure to fill some sort of vacuum. As poor a stand-in father as he might be, he had been elected to fill that vacuum by default.

    "So,” Olson said, clearing his throat and feeling like a phony, “did you guys have the time to check out the water tanks?"

    "That's what we wanted to talk to you about,” Jorge said.

    "Problems?"

    "Not really,” Ted said, “except like I told you before, we don't really need all that special care."

    "Ted and his brother and sister…” Jorge began.

    "Don't say that."

    "Why not? Aren't you siblings?” Olson said.

    "I guess, but we came from different mothers-I don't know, it's just weird."

    "Marguerite says you are."

    "Marguerite says a lot of things that aren't quite on the mark."

    "For example?” Olson asked, now in familiar territory. The father gone, Marguerite was the mother, the boss of young children, the authority figure, therefore to be rebelled against. Olson hadn't been drafted into the role of father figure but as the friendly, somewhat irresponsible but approachable uncle, the adult one could talk to, a confidant. To his surprise, this was a role he was more than comfortable with.

    "Like, she still thinks we're babies who have to be protected from the nasty G-forces,” Ted said disdainfully.

    Behind the sarcastic facade, Olson could hear a bit of the lost boy in Ted's voice. All the astro kids were taking it well that Marguerite, the only mother they had ever known, was staying behind. Now they had to grow up in a hurry. He suspected that Marguerite had been surreptitiously preparing them for this event for some time, that her decision had pre-dated the return of Francis for months.

    "I thought we had convinced her that putting you in the water tanks during launch wouldn't be necessary,” Olson said. After watching the kids pounce around the ship on their first visit, he had himself come to question such worries by Marguerite that the kids’ bones were too brittle to survive much stress.

    As it turned out, Marguerite, though a first-rate scientist and most likely a genius, was something of an obsessively over-protective mother.

    There was a clunk from within the stack of skid pallets. They all jumped.

    "Something must have shifted,” Olson said.

    "It was packed tight,” Ted said suspiciously. And all three looked to the wedged-in blocks of goods, waiting for another sound.

    Jorge broke the silence. “It was probably something collapsing in one of the skids."

    Or maybe it was Hannah's cat.

    "Come on, Ted,” he said. “I've got a camera. Let's go capture some photos of the acceleration couches. I think I can retrieve the specs from the engineering database."

    And they were off, Jorge walking, his feet dragging a bit in the heavy gravity. Ted walked upright beside him for a while, a bit bowlegged, then dropped to an easy four-legged-or was it a four-armed?-gait? Olson watched them disappear into one of the passageways that led to the forward levels of the ship, now curious to see how Ted and the others would take to micro-gravity. He was becoming a convert, he realized, putting faith and hopeful thinking over moderate caution. The space kids could be just as susceptible to the dual deteriorating effects of micro-gravity and gamma radiation as standard human stock, perhaps even more so. But damn it! He had in his mind a vision of them like Aquarium-born dolphins released into the ocean-free and at last in their natural element. What was that movie? Had it been fiction or a documentary? The thousands of hours spent before the video screen now seemed to meld together in his weary brain.

    Bang! He jumped at the sound, coming from amidst the pile of skids. Jorge was probably right; it was more than likely a stack of water bottles or something collapsing under the weight of a skid-load of canned goods stacked on top of it. He should really check it out, but he was so tired, and the thought of dragging his sorry carcass over to the mountain of skid pallets seemed like a Herculean task.

    He got heavily to his feet as the freight elevator arrived. Kristen and Hannah stepped off the elevator. They were talking and smiling, and Kristen gave him a friendly, girly-girl wave, one those all-wrist waves that seemed genuine when a woman did it, and it lightened his heart. His reflex was to return the wave in kind, but if he did, he'd feel a bit silly. If he gave her a manly-man wave, no wrist but all shoulder, then it seemed stiff and robotic in comparison. He waved back anyway, trying to strike a balance, but true to form, felt like an awkward ass as he started toward her.

    Shit! he thought, I'm acting like an adolescent in puppy love. In love at his age, with a woman more than twenty years his junior? What a fool he was to think that she might return his love! Hers was more likely a matter of clinging to someone kind-he was a kind man, he had that going for him-but they were in the midst of a storm. No matter, he'd take what he could get, but wondered if once they were off-planet, whatever feelings she had for him would disappear.

    When they met, she surprised him with a hug, and his self-censure evaporated, leaving him feeling like a lucky old man, at least for the moment.

    Mission accomplished, and he got the girl too, and with all the canned meat, good coffee, and booze, they could have a happy life together in the asteroid belt. Of course, as a good Buddhist, she would try to convince him to give up the meat and booze, but as a general rule, Buddhists didn't tend to be pushy like fundamentalists. All he would need to do is practice moderation, and things would probably be okay. Happy ending accomplished.

    "I drove the Hummer,” Hannah announced proudly.

    "We had a driving lesson,” Kristen said. “And she did very well."

    Olson wanted to ask why a driving lesson, when in a few days they would all be going where there weren't any roads and wheeled vehicles were rare. His expression must have given him away, for Kristen explained, “I thought it would be a good idea if we had another driver, and besides, she wanted to learn to drive."

    "My dad was teaching me to drive on the county farm when the plague came,” Hannah said. “It seemed unfair that I never got to finish-what was that sound?"

    The center of the skid stack emitted a squeak.

    "I don't know,” Olson said. “We-Jorge, Ted, and I-decided something in one of the skids was collapsing under the weight of one on top of it. We decided not to worry about it."

    Kristen said, “It wouldn't be good if something full of liquid breaks when we're in zero-G."

    Olson understood; a lot of liquid floating about would be sucked into the ventilation system and distributed throughout the ship. Water or soda would just be an inconvenience. Solvents, such some cleansers, or pharmaceuticals, would be another story.

    "I'll climb over the stack and check it out, but later,” Olson said. “I'm just too frigging tired right now."

    "I can do it,” Hannah said. “I'm not tired."

    "That's okay,” Olson started, but Kristen interrupted him.

    "Hannah and I will make sure nothing is leaking. Why don't you go get some rest?"

    "I should help,” he said, but all he wanted to do was lie down.

    "You could check in on Badr. Then take a rest. That's an order,” she said.

    "How long has it been since anyone looked in on him?"

    "A few hours,” Kristen said. When he waited, she added, “I really didn't expect him to last this long. He has bleeding in the brain. I'm sure of it. But there's nothing I can do. I'm not a neurosurgeon. Maybe the bleeding will stop on its own. If not…” She shrugged.

    He must have looked dejected, for Kristen gave him another hug. “Jimmy, why don't you go get some rest. You may need it for later this evening,” she said and patted his butt.

    "When you put it like that, how can I argue?"

    As he started up a short ladder to the next level, Hannah and Kristen both made their way across the pile.

    "Was it here or more toward the center?” Kristen asked.

    

    

    In the Sick Bay, he found Badr cold to the touch, colder it seemed than the air temperature. Dead. Too bad, but in a way it was good. The man had been in a coma for the last five days. If he had awakened, then he would likely have been a vegetable. It was better this way. He had liked Badr. He was a man who got things done, did what he promised, and didn't expect much in return. Whatever his sexual orientation, get-it-done people like Badr were becoming rare in the increasingly bureaucratic culture of the Moon, and Olson would miss him.

    He covered the body with a sheet, and though he knew Kristen was right about taking a nap, decided to look for the cat. It would be good if he could just make the creature disappear before launch, thereby avoiding a confrontation with Hannah.

    He started to the bridge, taking time to peak at the sky through one of the outside video cameras. A few days ago, Kali was high in the night sky. Now, coming along the plane of the Earth's orbit, it was catching up, though washed out by the solar glare, it wouldn't be visible at this longitude until the early morning.

    Xemphem, a Linux-based planetarium and celestial mechanics program, had it hitting the Pacific on 2056, June 16, at 6:34 p.m.-about thirty-two hours from now. He wanted to go outside and see it, but Xemphem showed it coming in from the sunlit side of the planet, so even though large, it would be obscured by Sol's glare. But the ephemeris he had plugged in were from weeks ago. There had been no updated information from the Moon, and there were many variables that could affect Kali's path, such as loss of mass as parts of the core boiled off as it neared the sun. And there were extremely complex interactions between the Earth's, and Moon's, and Sol's gravitational field. So the exact impact time could be off by a few hours.

    No matter; they would launch tomorrow afternoon. That would still give him plenty of time to secure the cargo and be well out of the Earth's atmosphere and nearly at the LaGrange rendezvous point. They would have a box seat to the impact.

    But back to the immediate problem. He still needed to find the cat and expel it from the Anita, or they would be sharing the view of the end of the world with floating cat crap.

    If he were a cat, where would he hide?

    He searched five cabins and came up nil for cat. In the toilet next to cabin assigned to Hannah, he found a little heap of cat turds. Surprisingly, the pile was on the hose to the vacuum collector.

    Olson winced. Was the cat psychic? Please don't leave me on the Earth to die. Honest to god, I'll learn to use the vacuum toilet. Or maybe the cat just smelled fecal matter from the last one to use the device.

    But other than the strategically placed turds, there was no sign of the cat. Where else would it go? Either somewhere dark or somewhere there's food.

    He checked the galley. No cat. He fixed himself a taco. The food made him sleepy, and he decided to put his head down just for a moment.

    He woke from a nightmare where he absentmindedly overslept and was rushing to start the launch sequence while the comet was minutes away from impact. The panicked feeling persisted until he checked the time display on his walkie-talkie and found he had been asleep at the galley table for only about an hour. His walkie-talkie was vibrating; he hadn't remembered turning it on silent mode. The LCD display said it was Kristen calling him, but when he pressed the call button, there was no response.

    He tried paging Hannah's walkie-talkie and got the same result, aaan indicator showing the device was on. There was a hollow feeling in the pit of his stomach. Olson reassured himself that the young woman was probably off with Jorge and didn't want to be disturbed. After all, what could go wrong? When he had left the cargo hold, the ship's doors had been sealed. Gayle was blown to bits, and if Kaplan was alive and still out there, there was no way he could get in. The Anita was built like a fortress.

    Still, some little voice told him that something was wrong. He got to his feet, his knees crackling, feeling tired right down to his core, and started toward the cargo bay. Now where had he left his shotgun? Somewhere, while looking for the cat, he had set it down and forgotten it. He retraced his steps and found it in the toilet with the cat turds. He was just being silly anyway, but he was still apprehensive as he entered the cargo bay a few minutes later.

    In the middle of an open space, Hannah lay unconscious or dead, her forehead covered in blood. Before he could go to her, a familiar voice came from behind. “Put the gun down, Jimmy."

    "Hello, Gayle,” he said. “I thought you were dead.” He felt oddly relaxed and wondered why.

    

    

    

    "Put the gun down, Jimmy. Let's talk,” Gayle said.

    "I'll put mine down, if you'll put yours down,” he said, standing very still.

    "I don't believe you're in a position to negotiate,” she said.

    He knelt and laid the shotgun at his feet. He turned slowly, to find the woman sitting on top of one of the skid pallets, holding a large handgun on him. Hannah's handgun.

    "Why, what's wrong, Jimmy? You don't look glad to see me."

    "You should take better care of yourself, Gayle. You look a fright,” he said. And she did. The hair on one side of her head was matted with blood. She was wearing loose pants that looked clean and new. But the red bikini top looked to be the same one she had worn a week ago, and she had a blistering sunburn where the bikini stopped. Like her hair, the top of the bra was matted with blood and dirt. The edge of a bloody bandage showed above her waistband, and a huge ominous-looking purple bruise spread out from under it to her rib cage.

    She had a black leather belt with lots of loops and a holster slung over a shoulder, bandito-style.

    "I thought you had the hots for me, Jimmy,” she said, trying to rest her left hand on the hip, elbow akimbo, but the hand slid off and dangled limp at her side. He was reminded of a stroke victim.

    "You usually clean up real good, but did you get the name of the truck that ran you over?” he asked her.

    "Such a charmer,” she cackled.

    In truth, he was being kind. She was ashen and looked more like a movie zombie than the poor, sick creatures wandering the streets of Dallas. It was as if she had died but hadn't realized it yet.

    "You look confused, Jimmy."

    "I am. I'd thought you were dead, but I'm guessing now the pieces we found in the parking garage were Kaplan."

    She nodded. “Badr told you that Kaplan came over to the Dark Side.” And she laughed, for a moment becoming the Gayle Ring he had thought he'd known before all this craziness.

    He nodded. “And I'm wondering how you got in."

    "Simple. One of the oldest tricks in the world: Beware of Greeks bearing gifts-or in this case, beware of Wal-Mart stuff being too easy to get."

    It took him a moment to understand. “You were inside one of the skid pallets-like a Trojan horse?” he said.

    "That's right, and you didn't even get the joke."

    "Excuse me?"

    "I was inside a crate covered with a layer of boxes of rubbers-Trojan brand, no less. But you almost crushed me when you set another skid with about a thousand cans of tuna on top of it. Any other questions?"

    He shook his head. “I'm wondering why you don't just shoot me."

    "Good question,” she said, cocked the hammer of the pistol and pointed it at his chest. He braced for the impact, but she didn't pull the trigger. Shit! She hadn't cocked the pistol until now. He might have had a chance to turn and beat her to the draw with the shotgun.

    "Have you started the launch sequence yet?” she asked.

    He understood now. “Yes,” he lied, without thinking, trying not to blink, hoping it was the right answer.

    "Then that's why I don't shoot you."

    The Anita would automatically shut all outside hatches upon launch, overriding manual controls. Even if she managed to block one hatch open, the Anita was built to endure even an un-pressurized launch. The passengers might not live, but the cargo would survive, and the ship would make orbit. She wanted to shut the system down, but the computers were hardened and protected. Even if she destroyed the terminals, the central processor, locked away on the bridge, would continue the countdown. Not knowing the root password to the launch control computer, she had no way of knowing that he had streamlined the launch sequence code. With the new code, the sequence only took about three hours, and that was why he hadn't initiated it. With thirty-some hours of leeway, he had wanted to double-check that the cargo bay stacks were stabilized first.

    "Go ahead and shoot, Gayle. I'm not giving you the password. And I locked the bridge before I came down here.” That last part was true. He had sealed the doors to the bridge to keep the space kids from getting in and pushing buttons they shouldn't.

    "I see,” she said, leaping off the skid and landing on her feet with a grimace. Her left hand twitched, and she stepped closer but not within arm's reach.

    Her eyes were wild, crazy wild, but she wasn't stupid enough to let him grab for the gun. Her left hand crawled up her chest spider-like, as if it were only incidentally connected to her body. Without pause, she pistol-whipped the hand twice, and it obediently dropped down to her side. He noticed the hand had a number of bruises and cuts, some of them quite deep.

    Jimmy couldn't help himself. He'd seen this movie before, but at least he stopped himself from saying the title, Dr. Strangelove, out loud.

    "Aren't you going to ask me where Kristen is?” she said.

    His heart skipped a beat and began pounding in his chest. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly, and his fluttering slowed. He imagined strangling Gayle until her face turned purple, and his heart slowed some more. He never remembered feeling such murderous thoughts before.

    "Oh, if looks could kill, Jimmy. Didn't Kristen teach you to love your enemies?"

    "She's Buddhist, not Christian; she would say there are no enemies, merely bad karma."

    "Well then, she is reaping some bad karma right now,” she said.

    "Cut to the chase, Gayle. Quick fucking with my head."

    "I'm not fucking with your head. I'm fucking with your heart, and you know it."

    "Why, Gayle? Why are you doing this?"

    "You wouldn't understand.” She motioned with the handgun toward a small door in the side of the cargo bay. “Over there."

    He did as he was told and walked toward the small room adjoining the cargo bay. It was the same room where he and Jorge had found the five survivors of the explosion: Crystal, Tish, Badr, Bobbie, and Kaplan, all of whom were dead now. And Jorge? Had Gayle killed the boy and Kristen while he'd slept?

    As he walked past Hannah's supine form, he could see her chest rise and fall ever so slightly. She was still alive and breathing, but it was hard to tell just how badly she was hurt. Even slight head wounds bled profusely, he reminded himself.

    "Keep moving,” Gayle ordered.

    The door to the storage room was unlocked. Inside, he found Jorge and Kristen. Both were sitting against some crates with their hands bound behind them. Their ankles were tied with electrician's cinch straps, linked to each other with the same kind of plastic strap.

    Jorge looked up, then stared at the floor. He looked as if he were about to cry. Kristen looked at him, then at Gayle. Her eyes were calm. “Hello, Jimmy,” she said.

    "Go sit by them,” Gayle said. “I want to keep a respectable distance between you and me. None of this ‘go for the gun’ heroic crap."

    The room was crowded with crates. He obeyed, squatting on his haunches by Kristen. There was barely enough room to sit. Gayle stayed by the door, leaving a good three meters between them. Kristen shifted her position. He could see that her hands were bound by the same electrical tie-straps used on her ankles. Unbreakable stuff, he would need a sharp knife or some cable cutters to free her. He wanted to hug her, but held back, fearing what Gayle would do.

    "You two have become quite close of late, haven't you?” Gayle said.

    "What do you mean by that? We're just crewmates.” Olson said, fearing where these hostage dynamics were likely to lead.

    "I can tell by your body language,” Gayle said. “I'm very sensitive to such things."

    "That stuff will make you psychotic, Gayle,” Kristen said. “Don't you know that?"

    "My MEME training helps me maintain an even strain,” Gayle said. Her gun hand was steady, but the left hand was doing something strange, jiggling nervously as if trying to rid itself of something sticky.

    "Bullshit! How did you do it, Gayle?” Kristen said. “How did you smuggle explosives on board?"

    "Don't rile her,” Olson said to Kristen. “Jorge? Are you okay?"

    Jorge looked up. “We're going to die,” he said, then looked back to the floor.

    "I think his medication wore off,” Gayle said. “That's why I never leave home without mine. Hey, pay attention, Jim. Look here!"

    She hooked the thumb of her gun hand in the center of her bikini bra and pulled it down. “Mystery solved."

    Her right breast was a flat sack, crusted with blood, while the other was round and perky, even in the heavy Earth gravity.

    "Implant?” Olson said.

    "Right. I had them done years ago, but not for the reason you think. It's in my med records. Kristen would know my med records. Right, Kristen?"

    "The women in her family have a history of early development of breast cancer, even those who never went into space,” Kristen said. “The cancers were always the very aggressive, non-treatable kind."

    "Right,” Gayle said. “And with all the time I spent in hard space and exposed to hard radiation, my best bet, it seemed to me, was to have the buggers cut out before they became cancerous. And as long as I was at it, I had some nice big implants-breasts are power, you know. And you know how cramped the luggage compartments are on a miner, so I decided not to waste the space."

    "So you had pouches installed,” Kristen said.

    "That's right. Dual saddle bags, if you will."

    "That's how you smuggled the explosive on board the Anita."

    "Yes, but I didn't plan to kill everyone. Just scuttle the ship. Who would have thought a couple hundred grams of C4 would have done so much damage? I replaced the C4 with a little inflatable sack, but…” she poked the flat, wrinkled skin, “a piece of shrapnel from that Hannah girl's lucky shot deflated me."

    "But the other breast?” Kristen said.

    "It's a med pump,” Gayle said, then paused. “You know, this is stupid. How many movies have we seen where the villain talks on and on, feeling the need to explain why he did such terrible things to everyone, but you know, I really do feel the compulsion to explain. Isn't that odd? Life imitating art, maybe, or is it something else?” She used the same gun-hand thumb to scratch at her matted hair.

    Olson was certain now that the left hand was either useless or out of her control. It seemed to be exploring the texture of the wall behind her, crawling along on its own, a big spider. That would be his only chance-if he had any chance at all-to come at her from her left.

    "So explain then. Why did you do it, Gayle?” Kristen said.

    "Stalling for time, Kristen."

    "I'm not going anywhere."

    "That's true. You're not. I'll shoot you all in the head and dump your bodies on the tarmac if I can't stop the launch."

    "The launch can't be stopped now,” Olson said, hoping Kristen wouldn't give away his lie. “The sequence is automatic."

    "Now I get to say, ‘BULLSHIT!” Gayle screamed. “All you need is root permission, and you can kill a clocked process."

    He considered, however, telling her that he had rewritten the launch routine and that the software process was now un-killable, but he doubted she would buy it. Besides, if she thought she had no alternative, she would probably do just as she said: kill them all and let the ship launch without them. He could tell her that he had programmed it to reach a LaGrange point, where someone from the Moon could retrieve it at leisure-another lie she wouldn't believe-and then again, she would have no reason not to kill them.

    "You have some sort of deal in mind, I'm guessing,” Olson said.

    Gayle smiled. “Yes. Let's make a deal. I'll give you the lives of Kristen-and Jorge-for the root password."

    "Gayle…” Olson started.

    "That's a shit deal,” Kristen interjected. “Either way we die. One way we die now; the other we die in about a day."

    "Thirty-two hours, give or take ten minutes,” Olson said.

    "Whatever, when the comet hits. Either way, we're dead, sooner or a little bit later,” Kristen said.

    "Maybe. Maybe not,” Gayle said. “Last I heard there was some controversy about just how bad the impact will be. Whether it comes in nearly horizontally to the Earth's surface or at an acute angel-I mean ‘angle’ not ‘angel'-whether it hits land or sea; how much of the comet core boils off before it hits."

    "We've all seen those projections, Gayle,” Kristen said. “But human survival doesn't figure into them. Only whether it kills everything down to bacteria or just cockroaches."

    "I think the point is, Kristen,” Olson said, “that we can't be sure that being stranded on Earth is an immediate death sentence. I think we might be able to make a deal, Gayle, if there's a chance it'll buy us a little time."

    "Jimmy!” Kristen said indignantly.

    "But I have some conditions of my own,” he said, seeming to ignore Kristen, but hoping she would guess what he was up to.

    "Ah, Jimmy,” Gayle said. “You've restored my faith in the self-centeredness of the male human animal. What do you want?"

    "My conditions are that after I give you the password, you not try to further scuttle the ship. That you don't evict any of us-including the children from the Aquarium-from the ship. And that you not harm any of us, of course."

    "Why?” Gayle said suspiciously.

    "Simple. We've got our best chance of survival in the Anita. It's hardened against nuclear explosions. It's got its own nuclear power plant. And we've chocked it full of food and supplies, enough to last us years if we're frugal."

    "And what's to prevent you from hacking in and launching later?"

    "Well, it's a secure system, so it's not going to be hacked overnight. And though the Anita might allow us to survive even an impact on this continent, it's unlikely it will remain upright. There's no chance of it launching if it topples-and it's almost certain that it will."

    "What if it doesn't?"

    "It's only thirty-two hours until impact. Hang around. If the ship remains standing, then execute your plan-B."

    "Which would be?"

    "I don't know. Something besides shooting us in the head, I hope. That's if we're still alive after the impact."

    Gayle's left hand jerked up and reached over her head. Startled, Gayle tried to bat the hand away but was too slow. The hand began to scratch the right side of her head, and she relaxed.

    "Got a little domestic rebellion going on there?” Kristen asked.

    "What do you mean, dear?” Gayle asked.

    The hand stopped scratching, extended an index finger and began fiddling with the top of Gayle's ear. Olson wondered if the woman was really not aware of how schizophrenic the thing with the hand looked. Apparently not, for she made no apology.

    "I don't know,” Gayle said. “You're a tricky old bastard. Who knows what you'll do?"

    "Don't do this, Jimmy,” Kristen said. “Let the ship launch. She's had some sort of drug-induced psychotic break, and there's no way we can trust her. She'll probably shoot us anyway. There's not much she can do to stop it. It'll make orbit."

    "Oh, I might not be able to stop the launch, but I bet I could get a pretty good bonfire going in the cargo bay."

    "Probably not,” Olson said. “There's both a sprinkler system and an automatic fire-extinguishing foam system. You'd probably just get everything soaked down. Most of it would survive. If you want to prevent the supplies reaching orbit, your best bet is to take my deal."

    "Jimmy?” Kristen pleaded.

    The renegade hand gave Gayle's ear a painful pinch, and she turned quickly to the right, as if expecting someone there. Olson took the opportunity to shake his head at Kristen, which would, he hoped, convey that he had a plan. But did he really? Could he log on as root and start the script that would actually begin the launch sequence before she could see? She knew a little Linux/Unix-practically everyone did as it was the most commonly used operating system. And even if he did have time to start the sequence, would Gayle know enough to kill the process after she had dealt with him? Shit! He wished he had run the launch script before coming down here, for he agreed with Kristen. There was no trusting the crazy woman. He was certain she would shoot them after she was sure the launch was aborted.

    But he actually did have a plan: to charge Gayle, when the time and the place were right, maybe bringing her down before he died. But what he needed was a way to get Kristen or Jorge untied, at least their legs. Probably the best that he could hope for, given the caliber of the handgun that Gayle was wielding, was to knock her unconscious. If he died before finishing the job on Gayle, then untied, they might have a chance. But how to get Gayle to untie them?

    

    

    

    Olson made his way to the bridge, pausing to groan and clutch his left arm.

    "The gravity of my situation, you know,” he told Gayle. “Chest pain."

    The truth was he didn't have chest pains. His heart was fine-as far as he knew. And although the situation had actually energized him, it seemed like a good excuse, as it was one of the problems the Moon medics had predicted would strike some of the crew on Earth, young and old alike, and therefore had the air of believability. Gayle, of course, couldn't care less, except that she needed him.

    "Take your time,” Gayle said. “Can't have you popping a gasket before we get to the bridge, now can we?"

    "Where's the pain?” Kristen said from above. Olson had insisted that part of the deal was to re-tie Kristen's hands in front of her so she could come along. Gayle had at first balked but relented only, he suspected, because she feared leaving Jorge and Kristen together, even bound as they were. Gayle had re-tied Kristen's legs with a short cable between two anklets so she could hobble along. When they came to a ladder, the going was slowed, as Kristen had to pull her weight up each step with her hands. There was not enough slack cable between her legs to allow her to move each foot individually up a rung. Though it was slow going, it was not slow enough for Olson, because he hadn't had a chance to come up with any plan that didn't hinge on a moment of serendipity.

    Gayle had promised she would shoot Olson in his belly, password or no password, if Kristen tried anything. They both believed her.

    Now with Kristen above and Gayle below, was this such a moment? If he let himself drop, would she be able to get out the way fast enough?

    Below him, Gayle was moving slowly up the ladder too, not getting much help from her wayward left hand. She appeared at times like a stroke victim, the left hand hanging useless at her side. Stroke victims were common among the Moon populace, another occupational hazard of long periods in zero-or low-G. But Gayle's left leg showed no similar disability, nor was there the telltale droop of the features on the left side of her face. The symptom seemed to be confined to the left hand. And at times, of course, the left hand was highly mobile, even dexterous, as if it had a mind of its own.

    As much as anything, Olson wished he could have a few seconds alone with Kristen to confer about the hand. If he understood what was going on-perhaps what triggered the episodes where Gayle seemed to be fighting her own hand-then he might have a chance.

    But maybe he thought too much. He was at the end of the ladder.

    "Stop, Jimmy!” Gayle ordered. He started to take another step and heard the pistol trigger cock. That was something to know; she climbed with the pistol un-cocked, which meant it would take a split second longer to fire. He stopped though.

    "Now Kristen, do you hear me up there?"

    "Yes, Gayle, I'm waiting,” Kristen called.

    "I want you to lie down on the floor, on your back, so the back of your head is in sight from the ladder."

    "Why…"

    "Just do it. Now!"

    There was a scuffling sound as Kristen got to the floor. She scooted on her side until her head dangled over the edge of the tube through which the ladder passed.

    "That's good. Now, over on your back, like I said."

    Kristen obeyed. She was now in a totally vulnerable position.

    "Go ahead now, Jimmy,” Gayle said. “I'm sure you get the picture. Any shenanigans from you once you're topside and Kristen's head will be my first target. Believe me."

    He did believe her, and he did as he was told.

    "Tell me something, Gayle.” He hefted himself up over the edge of the opening.

    "Anything, dear Jimmy."

    "Was all this violence-and murder-part of your original plan?"

    Gayle snorted and started up the ladder. “It shouldn't have been necessary. But I think what happened was someone had their fat ass up against the damn porthole when the charge went off. At least that's what it looked like. Like they were mooning the Ark from the Anita."

    "What does that have to do with anything?” Olson's heart sank, remembering Parvani's promise to moon him at midnight. But that wasn't until an hour after the explosion. Maybe she was practicing.

    "The charge was shaped. It was supposed to knock out the hatch. Make it impossible to repair in time, but not explosively decompress the bay. Not blow everyone's ass away, so to speak.” She stuck her head through the opening. The left hand was helping her climb now, but she looked at it as if she didn't trust it. She motioned with the gun for him to step back, and then hauled herself painfully up. She seemed to be slowing, like a clockwork mechanism running down. She looked at Kristen with distaste and loathing. Her moods seemed to be switching erratically from one extreme to the other.

    On a hunch, Olson said, “You know, Gayle, though you could definitely use a little cleaning up, you are still the sexiest woman on the Anita."

    Kristen started to laugh but stopped herself.

    Gayle looked at him through drooping eyelids. Then the left hand became snake-like again and reached up to and squeezed the left breast-hard. Gayle tried to intercept it but was too slow. Her eyelids fluttered, and she sighed. A full-body shiver washed over her. She closed her eyes. Olson judged the time it would take to leap at her, but then her eyelids popped open as if they were spring-loaded. She stood up straighter, and her features looked sharper, eyes brighter.

    The wayward hand was now back at her side, twitching a bit, then up, fiddling at the tie-string of her pants, threatening to pull the pants down, to show a bit of black pubic hair.

    "Stop that, you whore thing!” Gayle shouted and hit the hand with butt of her pistol. The strike was clearly audible as a loud whack. The errant hand dropped back to her side, and Gayle hitched her pants back up with the thumb of her gun hand. The errant hand was bleeding now from a gash between the knuckles. Gayle had pistol-whipped it so hard that Olson suspected she had broken a bone or two.

    "Don't let this little inner rebellion give you ideas, Jimmy,” Gayle said. “I've been practicing on those staggering creatures in the street, and I can put a bullet in your eye from ten paces."

    "I bet you can, Gayle. But that won't be necessary,” he lied, knowing it was likely to come to just such a showdown. Feeling she wasn't convinced, he added, “I don't owe the Moon and the Cloister anything. I'm just trying to look out for those I care about."

    This seemed to mollify her a bit, but with those all-too-bright eyes, it was hard to read her face. A drug-rush was a drug-rush, whether it was administered by hypodermic or embedded breast pump. She was weak, disoriented for a second or so when the rush came. If he could be prepared next time it happened-but how?

    Before he could follow this logic further, Gayle said, “Enough fucking around! Get going. Kristen, you first. Stand up!"

    Without speaking, Kristen got to her feet. Because she was exhausted and her hands hobbled, her movements were slowed, but she glanced at him to show she wasn't beaten yet. She started toward down the hall and to the short ladder-the last one before reaching the bridge.

    A pinging came from above followed by a series of metallic echoes. It rang like a metal cup falling off the table. In the Anita, almost everything was steel or aluminum-floors, walls, tables, even utensils, such as cups and plates.

    "Stop!” Gayle said. “You know what? I thought this seemed too easy. I think we'll take the promenade."

    "Gayle, listen to me…” Kristen said.

    "Shut the fuck up,” Gayle said, pointing the pistol at Kristen. Something had turned in Gayle's mind with the sound from above. Where before she had seen Kristen as an asset to be bargained with, she was now more suspicious.

    "Why?” Olson asked before he could stop himself. But his voice made Gayle swing the gun away from Kristen and toward him. “It's not made to be used in Earth gravity."

    The promenade was the central shaft that stretched from the ship's stem to stern. In a weightless environment, it was the easiest way to transverse the ship. One simply launched herself or himself along the tube and drifted to the desired section, slowing down with little handheld jets of bottled air or by snagging onto one of the handholds. Olson thought back to the last time he had used the promenade on the Ark: shortly after the explosion on the Anita when they had rushed Gayle to Sick Bay.

    "I can keep you both in sight as we go,” Gayle said. “None of these blind moments when you both have to go through a hatch."

    Though it was the easiest way to go under weightless conditions, under gravity, the Anita's promenade was a hundred and thirty meter-long death trap. There were rungs recessed in the side wall, but the rungs had been meant to tie snag lines to, short, yellow nylon loops of rope that could be caught while drifting along the tube.

    Gayle was paranoid and thought they had set her up. But how? Did she believe someone was waiting to ambush her as she stepped into the bridge? But who would she think that would be? Or maybe her crazed, psychotic mind was imagining new crewmen. What or who had made the sound? Olson thought he knew and debated telling Gayle. Should he try to talk her out of the idea? He looked to Kristen. She looked frightened and nodded at her shackled feet. He understood.

    "Gayle, there's no way Kristen can climb the promenade ladder with her ankles tied that way. You'll need to unshackle her."

    Gayle considered this, casting a quick, furtive look at Kristen's bound ankles, then making eye-to-eye contact with him, then to Kristen again. “No, I don't think so,” she said and nodded at the entrance to the promenade.

    "Gayle, it's like a death sentence,” he said.

    "Take your choice. A chance in the shaft or dead here.” She brought the pistol up to bear on Kristen.

    "Gayle,” he said, “I swear to your god, whoever the fuck that is, that if you shoot Kristen it's over. Nothing you do will make me disable the launch sequence.” He meant it, but now more than ever wished it wasn't an empty threat.

    She considered this.

    "Just put her above me,” he said. “That way I can spot her. Or tie my ankles and untie hers."

    "I think you'd be more likely to fall than she would, you old fart,” Gayle said. “And I need you. Wait a minute… You,” she waved the gun at Kristen. “You don't know the password do you?"

    "No, she doesn't,” he said before Kristen could answer.

    "And I would never give it to you if I did,” Kristen said.

    "I don't know about that,” Gayle said, grinning.

    Her features worked weirdly, as animated by an inner conflict, one side of her face was fighting other. Eventually, her features became less animated, and she said, “She'll go first, then you, and I'll follow, just like we did up the short ladder. Or you both can die here. I'll take my chances on finding a way to disable the launch some other way."

    An alternate plan was dawning on him. He shook his head as if she had won. No, Br'er Fox, don't make us go in there. If Gayle were below him and Kristen above, then he could fall and take Gayle with him. He'd die in the fall, of course, but it would be worth it to take Gayle with him, and he didn't have that many years left anyway. Fifty-five was old for space. If Kristen could only move a few rungs, she could get back in the ship. She was a smart woman; she'd soon figure out that he hadn't initiated the launch sequence. He was glad-almost elated-that he had given her the root password days ago. He had a mental image of himself, a vignette in his imagination-like looking at a dim image in a telescope-yelling out to Kristen as he fell with Gayle in a death grip; “I didn't start the sequence yet.” And Gayle, as she fell to her death, would know he had won. With a hundred meters to fall, he'd have plenty of time to call out.

    "Can you start?” he asked Kristen.

    Sensing something in his tone, she looked at him without fully comprehending.

    "Can you start the climb?” he said, inwardly cursing himself. Had he given himself away?

    "I think so,” she said. “It's only about a twenty-meter climb from here. I can inch-up if I'm not rushed-I think,” she said and started shuffling toward the hatch.

    "Wait a minute,” Gayle said. “I've changed my mind."

    They both looked at her.

    "Jimmy, you'll go first. Kristen in the middle."

    His heart sank. Kristen looked at him. He wondered if she had guessed his intention to sacrifice himself. Would the same thought occur to her? He hoped not. But now, he couldn't take a dive without taking Kristen into oblivion with him. If he pushed out toward the center of the shaft and away from Kristen, then he would overshoot Gayle too.

    He opened the hatch, looked back over his shoulder at the two women, at the gun in Gayle's hand, and climbed inside, grabbing a rung above his head to pull himself up. The recessed rungs were slippery with condensation since the promenade was also used to circulate cooled air through the ship. He moved up a couple of meters, careful to get a good grip on the rungs and wiping his hands dry before reaching for the next. Below him, Kristen awkwardly started up the rungs. Unable to move her hands independently of each other, she had to develop a technique to make progress up the tube. She bent her knees, wedged her toes in a bottom rung, and made a quick grab with both hands for a rung above while straightening her legs. Olson winced at what would happen if she missed the grab for the rung above or her hands slipped off. She would go tumbling backward, like a diver doing a back flip from the high board. Except there would be no splash, just a thud when she landed below.

    The promenade was dimly lit with LCD lamps, leaving deep shadows contrasted by bright white circles of light. Bright yellow loops of nylon rope dangled here and there, nearly useless as emergency grapples. In zero-G, they tended to stick out at random angles, easy to grab, but Earth's gravity plastered them nearly flat against the curved wall.

    "Everything's slippery as snot. I'm going to kick off my shoes,” Kristen announced.

    "Go ahead,” Gayle said, as she entered the promenade.

    Leaning out a bit so he could look around Kristen, he could see Gayle. She had the pistol tucked into the waistband of her pants and was holding on with both hands. Evidently the errant hand was cooperating.

    Kristen used her toe to lever one shoe, and it bounced off the opposite side of the promenade, then dropped out of sight in the shadows below. Seconds later-many seconds later-it hit bottom with an echoing clunk. Kristen levered off the other shoe with her big toe, but she kicked too hard, and the short tether between her ankles yanked her other foot off its place on the rung. She gasped, and Olson's heart seemed to stop, but she held on to the rung above her head and just below Olson's feet with both hands. She dangled there for a moment. He couldn't step down to help her. The rungs were so narrow that there was not room for her hands and his foot on the same one. Olson felt helpless, wondering what he would do if she lost her grip and fell. Would she scream? Would he? Maybe he would just give up and follow her down, taking the chance he might be able to take Gayle with them to their deaths below.

    Kristen found some reserve strength and slowly did a chin-up, the muscles in her arms straining, until she could get both feet on a rung.

    The moment Kristen slipped, Gayle had swung out of the way, holding on to the rung with her trustworthy right hand. Like a gymnast doing a routine, she also had swung one leg out, her body in an X-shape, with only her right foot on a rung, offsetting her body entirely to the right. As the rungs were recessed, if Kristen had fallen straight down, she would have likely missed grabbing at Gayle. Olson noticed this, making a mental note to fall to the right a little-if he could bring himself to make the big leap into nothingness.

    But before he knew it, his time to make a decision was upon him. He was at the entrance hatch to the promenade from the bridge.

    "What are you waiting for?” Gayle called from below. He thought about telling her that if she meant to sneak up on anyone in the bridge in the back way from the promenade, yelling would defeat any element of surprise, but one didn't argue logic with a psychotic.

    "It may be locked,” he said instead.

    "Try it,” she said.

    He did as he was told, and the stainless steel lever moved easily. The hatch swung open, and Olson found himself staring into a familiar face.

    

    

    

    Jorge heard a gunshot, followed by thirty seconds of silence, then another gunshot, then a drawn-out muffled scream, followed by the dull thud of something heavy hitting the bottom of the promenade.

    He had been quietly and unsuccessfully trying to scoot across the floor where Gayle had left him. His hands were tied behind his back and his ankles bound so tightly that the circulation was cut off, and his toes were becoming numb. His progress had been exasperatingly slow. The goal, the liquid crystal computer terminal on the other side of the room. The idea was to break the display with his feet, then try to use one of the shards to cut his bonds. He knew it was a long shot-the display face wasn't made of glass but acrylic, and the plastic ties that held his feet and hands were incredibly tough. What he needed was a pair of industrial-strength wire-cutting pliers. But doing something-anything-was better than just sitting there, waiting for Gayle to come back and put a bullet through his brain.

    Shortly before the thud echoed from the promenade, he had fallen over on his side. Like a turtle, he was finding it next to impossible to right himself. The storage room had an access hatch to the central promenade, but it was closed. He had been lying on his side, his ear was against the metal floor, and the sound was magnified. Confusion reigned as he tried to interpret what he had heard. He gave up and some unconscious part of his mind took over and played a little imaginary movie for him, that of a faceless person, high above him in the promenade, hands and legs flailing as gravity relentlessly accelerated his or her body down toward the bottom of the shaft. The loud thud, he guessed, was the sound of a human body hitting the bottom.

    He lay there wondering who Gayle had killed this time. The tone of the scream had been distorted by the metal walls, but it had sounded like a woman's. Kristen, probably. His heart sank. Olson would be next.

    He waited for another gunshot. None came. Who knew what gruesome scene had been acted out above his head? Gayle could have shot Olson, then pitched Kristen down the promenade. Or she had shot Olson, and the scream he heard had been the old man's, its timbre distorted by the metal walls. Little matter which; the crazy bitch would soon come for him. And Hannah, if she wasn't dead already, would be killed also. He wanted to cry but couldn't. The tears wouldn't start. But as a combination of sorrow, fear, and anger overwhelmed him, an involuntary keening sound rose from his throat.

    "Jorge?” A plaintive call from outside.

    "Hannah?” he called back. “I thought Gayle had killed you."

    "It was her? She did this to me?"

    "She came out of nowhere. Before I could warn you, she cold-cocked you with the butt of her pistol."

    "That explains this horrible headache. What was that sound?"

    "I think,” Jorge said, nearly choking on the words, “that was Kristen falling to her death."

    Silence for a moment.

    "Where are you?” she called.

    "In the little storage room, near the center of the bay. See the round door?"

    "I see it."

    "Are you hog-tied too?"

    "My hands are tied behind my back. My ankles are tied too."

    "Same here. Can you move?"

    "Sort of,” she said. “I can sort of worm my way-like an inchworm."

    He didn't know what an inchworm was, but he got the idea. “Let's crawl toward each other."

    "Why?"

    "I just want to see you,” he said, which was true, but he also thought they might be able to free each other. He didn't want to broadcast his intent to Gayle, though. Thinking they were secure, she might take her time getting down to them.

    He rocked from side to side until he could roll over on his back, then sat up. Faintly, he could hear Hannah dragging herself across the floor outside in the cargo bay. He began moving as before-though this time more slowly and carefully-by drawing his knees up to his chest, digging his heels into the floor and scooting his butt forward. He tried not to think about how futile any effort was, or that Gayle would soon arrive to finish the slaughter she had begun with Olson and Kristen.

    

    

    Only minutes earlier, Olson had opened the hatch from the promenade to the bridge and found a little furry face staring back at him. The furball gave him a muted mew, an open mouth, a nearly silent expression of cat angst. A strong odor of fart wafted from around the cat, and Olson remembered his name now. “Hello, Stinker,” he said quietly. “God, you smell rank."

    The cat stepped from the relative safety of the bridge and put his front paws on Olson's shoulder, then nuzzled his ear affectionately. Despite himself, Olson was glad to see the cat and regretted his earlier attempts to expel it from the Anita, as sensible as doing so might have been.

    "What's going on up there?” Gayle called from below.

    Stinker hissed at the sound of her voice. Apparently fearless when it came to heights, he took a step forward, now with three paws on Olson's shoulder, and looked down. The hackles stood on the back of his neck, and his tail twitched rapidly back and forth in feline rage.

    "You got that right, buddy,” Olson said.

    He looked down, meaning to explain, but found Kristen looking at him, an odd expression on her face. Though her hands were still tied, she had looped her arms through one of the nylon grappling ropes. How had she done that?

    She was mouthing something without speaking. What?

    "Cat missile,” she said exasperated.

    And he got it. She expected him to toss the cat at Gayle the same way he had at the religious bully all those years ago. She had looped her arms through the rope and was ready to swing out of the way.

    Could he do it? The cat stepped onto his shoulder now with all four feet, still hissing at Gayle below. Could he toss the trusting creature at Gayle on the remote chance that it might dislodge her so she would fall to her death? It just seemed wrong, but he would do it, he decided, and be prepared…

    "Is that a fucking cat up there?” Gayle asked. “It's that rabid little shit of a black and white cat, isn't it?"

    She had moved to the right again, so as to see around Kristen. And at that moment, Kristen swung out to the left, her breath going out of her with an ‘oof!’ as the yellow rope snapped taunt with a jolt.

    Olson, feeling like he was moving in thick molasses, reached for the cat, but his hand met empty air. Stinker had leapt off his shoulder of his own accord, missing Kristen by centimeters and plummeting down, kamikaze fashion, toward Gayle.

    He landed, a hissing, screeching ball of fur and claws, onto Gayle's face.

    "Blind her, Stinker! Blind her!” Olson shouted without thinking. He twisted and leaned out, his toes hooked on to a lower rung, one handhold away from oblivion, looking for the right moment to fall into the fray.

    "No, Jimmy, wait!” Kristen shouted. “You don't need to.” She kicked at Gayle but her feet missed the woman's head by a hair's breadth.

    Olson paused in his leap. The darkness of the promenade loomed beneath. No, maybe he didn't need to sacrifice himself. While Gayle's psychotic left hand fought like a wild animal with the cat, she held onto a rung with the other. The gun dangled from the finger in the trigger guard. With Kristen to the side, if he could climb down only five or six rungs and deliver a quick stomp to Gayle's gun hand. That would end it. He wouldn't have to die to save the mission.

    With his muscles cramping from the climb, he stepped down a rung, then another, and still Gayle fought with the cat, the hand beating against it, trying to get it off her face.

    "Grab it! Grab it by the neck, you fool, don't pound on it!” Gayle screamed.

    She was trying to give the hand verbal instructions, as if it truly did belong to someone else. Maybe it did. One more rung and his foot slipped on the wet surface. He was only one handhold away from falling.

    "I'm losing it,” he heard himself say.

    "My feet! Grab my feet,” Kristen screamed and tried to extend her legs out for him to catch, but the motion only caused her to swing uncontrollably. Her knees hit him squarely in the ribs.

    He fell, clawing at the rungs for a grip, missing, clawing again. Kristen's feet passed by his face as if in slow-motion, and then he hit Gayle. His hands tried to find purchase on her shoulders, but her bare skin was clammy and wet from perspiration. He slid down, and one hand found the waistband of her trousers. The elastic band of the trousers wasn't substantial enough to stop his fall, but slowed him enough that he got an arm around her waist.

    At the same time, the errant hand, apparently paying heed to Gayle's instruction, clutched the nape of the cat's neck, pulled the animal off her face, and flung it into the darkness. The cat fell without making a cry, hitting the wall below on its way down.

    Olson looked down. His feet were suspended over the abyss.

    He looked up and saw Gayle's face, and they hung there together, both suspended only by her right hand, and only three fingers of it, as she doggedly held onto the gun with trigger finger and thumb. The errant hand, now free of Stinker, grabbed for a rung-and found it. Her gun hand now free, Gayle fumbled with the pistol. Olson tried to pull himself up to where he could reach the gun, but slipped again on her wet skin and nearly lost it. He reached again and got a hand on her shoulder, and Gayle fired the gun. They had been fighting quietly, and the sound of the pistol was deafening in the confined space. Gayle had fired upwards, toward Kristen. He looked up, expecting to see Kristen dead or dying.

    Kristen stared back at him, apparently unhit.

    Gayle steadied her arm, taking aim again, “I'll kill her, Jimmy. Just let yourself go, and she can live."

    "The breast!” Kristen screamed, “Squeeze her breast!"

    Uncomprehending, he started to ask why. But there was no time for questions; he reached up found the roundness of the breast, the uninjured one. It was round and firm underneath his hand. Gayle tried to shrug him off. His fingers found a small lump and squeezed it hard. There was a mechanical click when he squeezed. And he gave another squeeze-and another.

    Gayle's gun hand dropped to her side, and he felt her muscles go lax. Then they were tipping backward as the errant hand let go of the rung above. Gayle's toes were wedged in a rung, and they held at that point, bending her feet until they made a dry, snapping sound. Roused by the pain of her ankles being broken, Gayle's awareness returned at that point, and she tried to grab one of the nylon loops but missed. Olson still gripping her waist with one arm, wrapped his legs around hers, determined to take her with him.

    "Kristen, I didn't start…” He started to shout that he hadn't initiated the launch sequence, but as he and Gayle pivoted, his back slammed into the wall. The impact knocked the wind-and the words-out of him.

    Hanging upside down by her broken feet, Gayle let out a screech and both the errant hand and the gun hand flailed at him. Then the toes slipped free, and they were sliding head downward along the wall of promenade.

    It was done, he thought. I have to tell Kristen about the launch. He had one hand free and instinctively it found and grabbed a nylon loop. Their fall was halted with a savage jerk and a popping sound from his shoulder. They were dangling again. He still had hold of her waist, and she twisted in his grip, trying to bring the gun up.

    "Drop the gun, Gayle, or I'll drop you,” he said. His shoulder was sending excruciating jolts of pain through his arm. He might drop both of them anyway.

    She looked up at him defiantly. Her eyes were bright and not so much cruel, as indifferent, like the stone eyes of a statue. An understanding passed between them: Both were resolute to a course of action that left no room for compromise.

    Still he tried. “You could plead insanity; letting go of the gun doesn't mean death."

    Why was he doing this? She had done terrible things to people he cared about. Perhaps the answer was because there were so very few human beings left, and even the ones that acted like monsters should be preserved. His father had told him once that country folk were more friendly to strangers because where they lived, there were more trees than people. That's the way it was on the Moon: more of everything else except people. Maybe that was it. Maybe it was because they had all gone a little bit crazy in space; Gayle had just gone a lot further. Whatever, but he couldn't just let her go.

    "You may be a monster, but you're one of us,” he said.

    But she didn't drop the gun. “You've got that right. We're all of us-all us humans-monsters,” she said. Slowly, deliberately she began to raise the gun toward him, and he let her go.

    As she fell away, he expected the stoic look to be transformed to one of hate, but she just smiled sadly. It was nothing personal, her eyes seemed to say.

    She fired the gun again but didn't bother to aim. She knew she had lost, he guessed, and killing one of them wouldn't matter. The ship would still launch.

    Nothing personal.

    The echoes from the gunshot had just died away when he heard her body slam into the bottom of the promenade, more than a hundred meters below.

    

    

    

    "Seven minutes and counting,” came Olson's voice over the PA system.

    As the countdown proceeded, Kristen Anita Norman's sense of foreboding began to pass. All morning, she had been fighting the feeling, a dark little voice in her head, that kept repeating Gayle's last words, “We're all of us-all us humans-monsters."

    Kristen knew in her heart that this couldn't be farther from the truth-didn't she? Buddhist teaching was that if you stripped away all superficialities, the ego, the learned culture and habits, that the mind was a thing of clarity, love, and spaciousness-the Buddha nature, the soul, pure and unadulterated lay at the center of every sentient being. But Gayle's sick ego was an infectious thing, the concepts seemed to get lodged in her brain and replicate themselves, running on like some sort of automaton. Zombie ego, she thought, pesky thing, be gone.

    But it refused to dissipate. Seen in this light, humans truly were jealous creatures, consuming everything, filling worlds with shit, breeding themselves into extinction. Some dark creature that hid in her brain seemed to feed and grow on such nihilism.

    No! That was Gayle's craziness taking hold, the craziness of anyone who placed ideas and ideals over human happiness. They were going to make it; the ship was only minutes away from launch. The space kids-who knew? They very well could be humankind's future, a new thread that allowed the long cosmic dance of souls to continue. Life was change, an impermanent thing, but it would go on.

    There. That thought did it. She concentrated on her breathing, not controlling it, but simply focusing on the air coming in and the mental space that seemed to expand on the exhale.

    She calmed, a moment of peace, but Gayle's last words as she fell to her death kept intruding: “We're all of us-all us humans-monsters.” She labeled the thought “delusion” and watched it pass away as if it were a cloud. The trick was not to resist the idea forming but to observe it. The labeling helped.

    After Gayle's death, Kristen had been too concerned with saving herself and Olson to think much about it. Olson had dislocated his shoulder in his fall and had to make the climb back up one-handed. The rope had cut off the circulation in her arms, and she couldn't use her hands to regain a hold on the recessed rungs. Olson had managed to climb back to her level, then pulled her feet somehow back into the rungs so she could take the weight off her arms. It had taken them a good twenty minutes to traverse the three meters to the bridge, Olson screaming with pain every time he boosted himself up another rung.

    Once up, they had heard the pitiful mewing of the cat below. A flashlight procured from the bridge showed the cat had also managed to snag onto one of those yellow ropes and was dangling a dozen meters below, a precarious spot for there was no way for the cat to climb the recessed rungs.

    Olson had insisted she set his shoulder-which she did-then he managed somehow to climb back down to retrieve the cat.

    When she protested, he had said, “You of all people should understand karmic debt. I owe that stinking cat our lives."

    She couldn't argue with that, but he had made sure she knew the root password before he started his rescue mission.

    "Six minutes and counting,” came Jimmy's voice. “We're committed now folks,” he added. “Look here.” The monitor screen mounted to the wall showed an outside view. It was a bright, sunny morning in Dallas, and despite it being in the line of sight near the sun, the nebular spray of Kali was clearly visible though the thin clouds. “It's going to hit either on the West Coast or not far out in the Pacific Ocean in a couple of hours,” he said.

    A couple of hours-not even a close call for them. Of course, this would be the first time a nuclear bomb ship tried to launch from the surface of a planet. No one knew for sure what would happen. She wished Jimmy would quit futzing around and get back down here to the acceleration couch. If she was going to die, she wanted to die holding on to him, she decided.

    

    

    Jorge Blanca knew he might be turned into a cloud of radioactive gas in the next few minutes, but he sang a cheerful little tune under his breath.

    "Happy, Happy,

    Joy, Joy,

    Boy, oh Boy,

    I'm Just Happy to be Your Joy Boy."

    Hannah, lying beside him, laughed. They had just made love: a sloshing, slippery act on the water-filled acceleration couch. And though he was quicker than he wanted to be, she seemed satisfied.

    "Good for you, I guess,” she smiled. “But who is Anita?"

    He had cried out “Anita!” on orgasm. He felt himself blushing. Damn that zero-G toilet. “Was it that obvious?"

    "You have an ear-to-ear grin. That's how I know,” she explained.

    "You were the best,” he said and marveled at how good she looked, even with her hair tousled and damp with their mutual sweat.

    "Better than anyone else?"

    He started to tell her that the only anyone that came close to being a previous lover was the ship's vacuum toilet but stopped himself. He nodded.

    "How many?” she said and seemed actually jealous.

    "Only one,” he lied. “You?"

    "Well, it was a little painful at first,” she said.

    "I mean anyone else?"

    "Oh! I thought you could tell I was…” She looked away; it was her turn to blush “…a virgin.” Before he could reply. “So tell me, who was Anita? That's the name of this ship-right?"

    "Yes, like the ship,” he said, knowing sometime he'd have to tell her the truth. “But she was cold and much larger than you.” He wanted to tell her he loved her, but the words wouldn't come. He snuggled closer, and she turned away, so they were lying spoon fashion.

    "I bet you're lying,” she said.

    "How can you tell?"

    "See, I knew she was better than me."

    "Five minutes and counting,” came Olson's voice over the PA system.

    "Hannah,” he said, loving the sound of her name. “There's no comparison. Really. She weighed tons."

    No, he was getting himself deeper and deeper into the shit. If he confessed now he would sound like a fucking, jack-off idiot-which he was, of course. But he didn't want her to know that, couldn't stand the thought of her thinking so. He thought about asking if Jeffrey counted, but decided to let the matter rest. After all, Jeffrey had bunked down with his space children brethren; Hannah was here with him, not with the competition.

    A loud “CLANK” came from somewhere deep in the bowels of the ship.

    "What was that?” Hannah said.

    "That,” he said, drawing a deep breath, “was one of the nuclear pulse units being loaded into the ejection tube."

    "It sounded like something breaking."

    She was scared now, he could tell. So was he, when he thought about it. The Anita had never been tested in a launch from a solid surface-there had been no way really. In space, the nukes didn't detonate until they were hundreds of meters out. To launch from the surface, the first nuke would have to be exploded directly under the pressure plate. No one knew what would happen. A second nuke would have to be exploded rapidly thereafter. Supposedly the engineers had done their math, but in truth, there seemed to him a lot of things that they just couldn't predict, such as the nature of the Earth's surface-concrete and asphalt in this case-wind shear, whatever.

    "Four minutes and counting,” came Olson's voice, and there was something else said, but Jorge's thoughts clung to Hannah and the words didn't register.

    Since he and Hannah had made love leading up to and during the countdown, he felt content that if he died, he would at least have that experience. He could accept death, he reasoned, if he had experienced physical and emotional love together at least once. But now he loved the girl so much, that he couldn't stand the thought of being separated from her, and he had no illusions of them being together in some sort of fairyland after death. Death would be harder for him to accept now than at any time in his life. Death would be the ultimate separation.

    He hugged her harder and waited for the countdown to proceed.

    

    

    Jimmy Olson patted Stinker's head and scratched him on his furry cheek. He still inwardly cringed at the thought of dealing with a cat in zero-G, but it was too late. He and the goddamned cat had bonded now. Besides, how could he leave behind a creature that had not only saved his life but perhaps the entire human race?

    Stinker's purr stopped for a second, and he rewarded Olson's kind thought with a rancid fart.

    "We really have to look into changing your diet,” Olson said, his eyes watering. “Or maybe some sort of colonic cleansing."

    He picked up the cat and put him in the cradle formed by his arm sling. Stinker settled down and lapsed into a deep cat nap almost immediately. That was good; when he slept he didn't make bad smells.

    CLANK! And Stinker was instantly awake.

    "That was the launch tube loading, Stinkeroo,” Olson said, feeling a bit moronic explaining to the cat. But the cat relaxed, perhaps attuned to the sound of Olson's voice.

    A little more than three minutes to go, Olson thought, and we'll find out if all this was for nothing, if we'd have been better off just making a run for the asteroid belt and never coming to Earth.

    Distantly, he wondered if these same thoughts were going through everyone's head. Though with Crystal, Kaplan, Badr, Tish, Bobby, and of course, Gayle, dead, everyone was a bit of an overstatement. Only Kristen, Jorge, and himself remained of the original crew. One could extend the everyone to include Hannah, and maybe even-he smiled at the thought-Stinker. Everyone aboard knew if the initial blast went wrong, if the parking lot surface beneath them deformed in an asymmetrical fashion, then the Anita might not be propelled straight up. It might topple or be projected at an odd angle. In theory, the ship's computer would eject the second nuke at such an angle to correct for a severely lopsided initial launch. That was only theory though. If the initial blast started them in a trajectory that was closer to the horizontal than the vertical, that second nuke, no matter how close it followed on the heels of the first explosion, wouldn't be enough to right them. They'd topple over to crash and burn, pretty much imitating those old grainy black and white movies of early mid-twentieth-century failed V2 rockets.

    "But you know, Stinker, I'm not going to sweat it. It'll either work, or it won't. We'll either be dead in the next few minutes, or we'll be on our way to orbit and off this doomed rock."

    He had pre-recorded the countdown, and, still holding the cat, keyed in the commands that would continue the countdown in his voice. The launch and the bridge would take care of itself now. Hurriedly, he made his way to the lower level and Kristen. Stinker kept one eye on him warily as he began to sing:

    "Baby, take off your coat… real slow

    Baby, take off your shoes…

    Now come back here and stand on a chair… yes, that's right

    Raise your arms up in to the air… and shake ‘em."

    He was still humming this tune, off-key probably, when he climbed into the acceleration couch next to Kristen.

    "I thought you were going to watch the launch from the bridge,” she said.

    "I decided I'd rather be here with you,” he said, setting Stinker on the foot of the couch and leaning back beside her. “If something goes wrong, it'll go wrong so quickly that there's nothing I can do. It'll either happen or it won't."

    "One minute and counting,” came his own voice over the intercom.

    Kristen eyed Stinker suspiciously as he arched his back and extended his claws in a cat yoga stretch. “Aren't you worried he'll puncture the acceleration couch?"

    "This stuff,” he patted the couch, “is too tough for that. I just hope he doesn't freak if we reach orbit and are in zero-G."

    "You mean, when we reach orbit,” she said.

    "If we hear the third blast, that means we'll be okay,” he said. “After that, we should be traveling faster than Mach 1 and will outrace the sound of subsequent blasts."

    "You're such an optimist,” she said.

    "Ten, nine, eight, seven…"

    It was creeping him out now, listening to his own voice do the countdown, like a ghost of himself.

    "Three, two, one…"

    WHAM! The entire ship banged like the mammoth tin drum it was. Stinker jumped a foot straight up and was immediately flattened back into the couch by the same massive hand that slammed Olson and Kristen in their chests. Then they were floating free for a couple of seconds. Olson feared Stinker would take the opportunity to jump off the couch. He should have held the cat, he thought, and risked getting the crap bitten out of him.

    Then came the second blast, and they were all slammed into the couch again, harder this time it seemed.

    Olson looked at the monitor. He had linked it to the forward-looking camera. It still showed blue sky and clouds, not the Dallas skyline rushing up to meet them. Kristen squeezed his hand. He squeezed back and felt love for her. Whatever happened, he would have that. Stinker raised his head and howled at both of them. Olson counted ‘three, two, one,’ silently, holding his breath.

    And then came the third blast, a booming echo, not rattling every bolt and weld in the ship like the first two, but a solid boom nonetheless, and pushing them straight down into the couch.

    Next came the gunshot hammer of the hydrazine stabilizer jets. Bang, bang, bang!

    "The jets are only for minor corrections-right? That means we're okay-right?” Kristen said.

    "Maybe,” Olson said, thinking of all the things that could still go wrong.

    "You're such an optimist,” she said.

    More nuclear pulses followed, each one slamming them into the couch.

    "Watch the view from the forward-looking monitor,” Olson said. “When you see stars instead of a blue sky, you can believe we have a future."

    "I know the three of us have a future,” Kristen said.

    "The three of us? You mean you, me, and Mr. Stinker?"

    "I wasn't speaking of the cat, and by the way, it's not Mr. Stinker. It's Ms. Stinker."

    "What…?” he started to say, but the breath was forced out of him by the next nuclear pulse. As the couch rebounded, he thought he could see stars in the monitor, the background darkening. Or did he imagine it?

    "Stinker is a she?"

    "Not only a she, but a pregnant she,” Kristen said. “I had a chance to examine him-her-earlier."

    "Imagine that,” he said, at once pleased at the thought of new life and disturbed at the thought of the Anita being filled with tiny furballs and miniature cat turds. Stinker's cocky look now seemed one of motherly content.

    "And you know what?"

    WHAM! Another nuclear pulse, but this one seemed lighter. The monitor now definitely showed a star field. They were beyond the Earth's atmosphere.

    "What?” he said.

    "I can't be sure yet, but Stinker may not be the only one on this couch who's pregnant."

    It took a moment for her words to sink in. He turned to look at her. Her face was joyful.

    "I didn't think you could have babies, or-I'm assuming here-that I would be able to make one."

    "Me either, but maybe Gayle was onto something about humans and Gaia and all that. Or maybe it has something to do with gravity helping out sperm motility. I don't know, I just know that I'm pregnant. I don't have a single test to prove it. I just know it."

    "So the space kid wasn't shitting us. He knew. Imagine that."

    She started to cry, and this time he didn't have to wonder if the tears were from anger, joy, or sadness.

    "There's been no one else? At least recently?” he said, compelled to ask.

    "Well, bunko, who do you think it might be? Jorge? I don't rob cradles, and certainly not Badr or Kaplan. Of course, it was you. I haven't had sex with anyone else in more than a year."

    He pulled her closer. “I guess this changes everything."

    "I guess so,” she said, laughing and crying at the same time.

    "You hear that?” he said.

    "I don't hear anything."

    "Exactly. No more pulses. We're in orbit. Look at Ms. Stinker."

    The cat was floating free, a puzzled look on her face. Olson lifted a foot, and Stinker clutched it with all four legs, digging her claws in a little but not much.

    "Now that's something,” he said. “Cats are supposed to go berserk when weightless. But Stinker seems hardly put out.” He paused. “How long have you known?"

    "Known I'm pregnant?"

    He nodded.

    "It sounds weird, but I think I knew a few hours after the first time, back at the planetarium. I haven't had time to run a test-shit! I don't even know how to test for it or if it's too early or what. I just know that I'm pregnant. I know it at the cellular level."

    Her conviction was contagious. A thousand thoughts and worries sprung up. Could he devise some sort of extra radiation shielding for her during gestation? Would he be a good father? Would he live long enough to see the child grow to become a teenager? Would he be able to tolerate a version of himself as a teenager?

    "Now Stinker is a different matter,” Kristen said, jarring him out of his daydream. She reached down to pull the cat off Olson's leg, nearly drifting off the couch herself. “Feel her belly."

    "I'd rather feel yours,” he said but did as instructed. Underneath the long silky fur his fingers found small lumps. Stinker gave an indignant howl and sprung from their hands. Still howling, she spun around and around, her legs splayed outward, a whirling furry dervish.

    "That's what I was afraid of. Early free-fall experiments with cats in airplanes showed this. NASA decided that cats’ inner ear function was more highly developed than humans. The same instinct that allows them to always land on their feet makes them freak in weightlessness."

    Stinker howled louder and continued to spin, trying to find down. But there was no down.

    Kristen reached for the cat.

    "No, don't!” he said. “She has claws and teeth."

    "I don't care. This is cruel."

    "Let me get a blanket or something. We'll wrap her up and find a box or something."

    "No, look."

    Stinker's spin had slowed to a slow roll, and she was looking around curiously. Her tail still twitched, but she had stopped howling. She extended her legs again, and her spin slowed. Then she pulled her legs in, and her spin sped up again. As they watched, she repeated her action, drawing her legs in to speed up, splaying them out to slow down.

    "Hah!” Kristen said. “She's learned to conserve angular momentum-like an ice skater."

    "So much for the NASA experiments,” Olson said.

    "Those experiments in free-falling high-altitude planes only lasted a few minutes. Maybe they didn't give the cats enough time to adapt."

    "Maybe they only tested dumb cats. Maybe Stinker is some sort of genius cat."

    Stinker drifted to a wall and sank her claws into the fabric. In a kind of jerky motion, she began walking across the wall, extending and retracting her claws. Though he had clipped her claws, she still had enough to sink into the fabric.

    "Look,” Kristen laughed. “Built-in Velcro!"

    "Who needs space kids? We'll just populate space with cats,” Olson said.

    "Don't forget little Jimmy here. He'll have a pet to grow up with, something no other Moon kid has ever had."

    "Do you know that too? The baby's sex,” he said.

    "No, no,” she said, patting his arm. “I'm bullshitting you now. All I know is that I'm pregnant, and it's yours, and I love you."

    He stretched to kiss her, but the squawk of the PA system interrupted him.

    "Hey in the bridge. Do you know you're live on the whole ship?” It was Jorge.

    Olson cleared his throat. “No, I didn't. You okay down there?"

    "Yeah. We're fine. The space kids are having a ball. They're doing the same thing your cat is; learning to get around in freefall and loving it."

    "That's terrific,” Olson said. “They were supposed to stay strapped in their couches until we trained them."

    Hannah's voice joined Jorge's. “They were born to this. It's sooooo obvious. They don't need any training. Me either, I think.” She floated free of the couch and did a head-over-heels slow roll. “Wheee!” At that moment, she sounded like the little girl she'd never had the chance to be on Earth, with a view of a future full of wonderment and promise.

    Olson switched camera views, and a happy Jorge and Hannah appeared on the monitor. Holding Jorge's hand, Hannah was floating free. Behind her, Jeanie was holding onto the wall with all four hands, gripping the fabric and walking along, her face ecstatic. Her movements and grace reminded him of Stinker.

    "I didn't want to interrupt you, but I thought you guys might want to watch the end of the world,” Jorge said.

    "Smartass,” Olson said, but he switched views to a wide-angle view of the Earth. They were treated to an apparently normal view of Europe, a clear view with only a few scattered clouds.

    Olson checked the time.

    "The impact happened a little less than ten minutes ago, somewhere off the coast of California."

    "When will we see it?” Kristen said, then started to answer her own question. “The blast wave will travel at the speed of sound, won't it?"

    "Yep, about three hundred and forty or so meters per second, depending upon the air temperature."

    "That's…” she paused, trying to do mental arithmetic.

    "About twelve-hundred kilometers per hour,” he said, keying in the command to show a calculator overlay on the monitor.

    "We're orbiting at…” she asked.

    "A westerly orbit. At an altitude of about four hundred kilometers and a speed…” He checked the display in his hand, not wanting to project a lot of numbers on the monitor's view of the Earth. “…of twenty-eight thousand kilometers per hour, so we should see…"

    "The answer is right about now,” Kristen said, nudging closer to him. “Look."

    He looked to the monitor. Ripples-hundreds of kilometers wide-were sweeping across the Atlantic Ocean.

    "Giant tsunamis,” she said. “They must be ten kilometers high!"

    "Higher,” he said, “because,” but she shushed him. “Just watch. Compute later,” she said.

    As the curve of the Earth's horizon raced toward them, they could see North America bathed in fire. It looked like the soil itself was burning. All features, mountains, plains, the Great Lakes, were hidden by the red and orange of magma.

    "It must have disrupted the continental shelf,” Kristen said.

    Together, hand in hand, poised on the edge of a new world, they watched the death of an old one.