By the time the get the door open I’ll be dead.

Dan dreamed of Earth: a confused, troubled dream. He was sailing a racing yacht, running before the wind neck-and-neck with many other boats. Warm tropical sunlight beat down on his shoulders and back as he gripped the tiller with one hand while the boat’s computer adjusted the sails for every change in the breeze. The boat knifed through the water, but suddenly it was a car that Dan was driving at breakneck speed through murderously heavy traffic. Dan didn’t know where he was; some city freeway, a dozen lanes clogged with cars and buses and enormous semi rigs chuffing smoke and fumes into the dirty gray, sullen sky. Something was wrong with the car’s air conditioning; it was getting uncomfortably hot in the driver’s seat. Dan started to open his window but realized that the windows had to stay shut. There’s no air to breath out there, he said to himself, knowing it was ridiculous because he wasn’t in space, he was on Earth and he was suffocating, choking, coughing.

He woke up coughing with Pancho’s voice blaring in his ears, “Recharge your backpack, boss! You’re runnin’ low on air.”

Blackness. He couldn’t see a thing. For a moment he felt panic surging through him, then it fell into place. Buried in the asteroid. Time to refill his backpack’s air tank. In the dark. By touch.

“Lemme help you,” Pancho said.

Dan sensed her beside him. The gravelly dirt shifted, crunched. Something bumped into his side.

“Oops. ’Scuse me.”

Dan pushed one hand through the gritty stuff, remembering where he’d put the cylinders.

“I’ve got the hose,” he said.

“Okay, good. That’s what I was lookin’ for.”

“Groping for, you mean.”

“Whatever. Hand it to me now.”

Dan felt her hand pushing against his side. “I can do it,” he said. “Better let me,” said Pancho. “YOU’re tired and fatigue makes you sloppy, causes mistakes.”

“I’m all right.”

‘Sure. But just lemme do it, huh? Tired astronauts don’t live long.”

“And rain makes applesauce,” he mumbled, pushing the end of the hose into her waiting hand.

“Don’t open it up yet,” Pancho warned. “Don’t want grit or dust contaminating the air.”

“I know,” he groused.

It seemed to take hours. Dan tried to keep from coughing but the air in his suit seemed awfully thick; his chest was hurting. He pictured old pantomime comedy routines as he and Pancho haltingly fumbled with the air hose, working blindly, and refilled each other’s suit tanks. They filled Dan’s backpack first, and within a minute he could take a deep breath again without it catching in his throat. Once they filled Pancho’s backpack he heard her inhale deeply. “Best canned air in the solar system,” she announced happily.

“What time is it? How long do we have to go?”

“Lemme see… seven and a half hours.”

“That’s how long we’ve been down here?”

“Nope, that’s how long we still have to go,” Pancho answered.

“Another seven and a half hours?”

Pancho laughed. “You sound like a kid in the back seat of a car.”

He huffed, then broke into a chastened grin. “I guess I was whining, wasn’t I?”

“A little.”

A new thought struck Dan. “After the time’s up, how do we tell if the radiation’s really gone down enough for us to get back to the ship?”

“Been thinkin’ about that. I’ll worm my extensible antenna wire up to the top of this rubble heap and see if we can link with the ship. Then it’ll be purty simple to read the ship’s sensors.”

“Suppose the ship’s comm system’s been knocked out by the radiation.”

“Not likely.”

“But what if?”

Pancho sighed. “Then I’ll just hafta stick my head out and see what my suit sensors read.”

“Like an old cowboy video,” Dan said. “Stick your head out and see if anybody shoots at you.”

“Hey, boss, you really did learn a lot from Wild Bill Hickok, didn’t ya?” This late at night there was only one man on duty monitoring Selene’s securitycamera network. He was a portly, balding former London bobby who had spent his life’s savings to bring himself and his wife to the Moon and live in comfortable, low-gravity retirement. He’d found retirement so boring, however, that he pleaded with Selene’s personnel department to allow him to work, at least part-time.

The uniform they gave him wasn’t much; just a set of glorified coveralls with an insignia patch on the left shoulder and his name badge clipped over its breast pocket. But at least he could spend three nights each week sitting alone and content, watching the videos his wife always complained about while still feeling that he was doing something worthwhile. He half-dozed, leaning back in his padded swivel chair, as the twenty display screens arranged in a semicircle around his desk flashed views from Selene’s hundreds of security cameras. Actually, only nineteen of the screens showed the cameras’ scenes; the screen directly in front of the desk was showing the football match from Vancouver, live. But with the sound well-muted, of course.

The computer did all the real work. The toffs in the main office programmed the computer with a long list of things that would be considered questionable or downright illegal. If the computer detected any such activity it sounded an alarm and indicated where and what was going on.

With the score still tied and only four minutes left in the final period, the blasted computer buzzed.

The guard frowned with annoyance. His central screen winked out for an instant, then displayed a ceiling-eye-view of a woman walking through one of the labs. unauthorized person blinked in red across the bottom of the screen. It took a few minutes to coax the information out of the computer, but finally the guard phoned the security chief, waking him of course, with the news that Dr. Kris Cardenas had entered the nanotechnology laboratory. The chief grumbled and cast a bleary eye at the guard, but at least had the good grace to say, “Thanks. I’ll send somebody down there.”

Then he hung up and the guard went back to watching the football game. It was going into overtime.

Try as he might, Dan could not get back to sleep. Pancho had attempted to call Amanda and Fuchs, but there was no response from them. “Must be a lotta sizzle outside,” she said. Dan thought she sounded worried. Not her usual sassy self. Or maybe she’s just tired. Or bored. How can anybody be bored with this storm only a meter over our heads? Dan asked himself. Some storm. No thunder and lightning. No noise at all, unless you count the crackle and hiss when you try to use the radio.

Quiet. Deadly quiet.

Dan found the water nipple in his suit’s collar and took a sip. Flat and warm. Like recycled piss.

More than seven hours to go. I’ll go bonkers by then: stark, raving nutty.

Then he tasted blood in his mouth.

It was like an electric shock. His entire body flinched. Everything else disappeared from his mind.

Bleeding gums, he thought, trying to fight down the terror rising in him. One of the prime symptoms of radiation sickness.

Or maybe you accidentally bit your tongue, he told himself. Yeah, sure, answered that sardonic voice in his head. You’ve had a bout of radiation sickness before, you know the drill. Only this time there’s no place to go to, nothing to do except sit here in this grave and let the radiation do its job on you. “Pancho,” he croaked, surprised at how dry his throat was.

“Right here, boss.”

“Can you turn on your suit’s recorder?”

“Yeah, I think so…”

Dan sensed her fumbling in the dirt. This must be the way moles live, he thought, depending on touch instead of sight. His stomach was fluttering, nauseous. Christ, don’t let me toss my cookies inside the double-damned helmet, he begged silently. Pancho said, “Testing, one, two, three.” A moment later he heard the words repeated.