Shaking his head. Kinsman said, "You'll be lucky if I can remember 'Chopsticks.'"
He sat at the bench and stared at the keys. Black and white. Like morality. His hands were shaking. Why? Scared or excited or both?
He touched the keys, plucked a few experimental notes, ran through a few scales. The hands remember. Then he knew what the first piano music played on the Moon should be.
He actually closed his eyes. Involuntarily. He was sur- prised when he realized he had done it, and snapped them open again. By then his hands were well into the opening bars of the "Moonlight Sonata."
The crowd was absolutely silent. The soft, measured notes floated through the dome, nearly three hundred years and almost half a million kilometers from their place of birth.
Kinsman got about halfway through the first movement and then flubbed. He tapped out a few notes from a childhood exercise and then stood up. Everyone applauded.
Leonov came up to him. "Congratulations! But you must move the instrument from this dome. Too humid. It will never stay in tune here."
Kelly said. "We can put it in your quarters, Chef. We checked. There's enough room."
"No," Kinsman said. "Everybody ought to be able to use it. Put it in the assembly hall downstairs."
"They'll ruin it in a month. And the kids . . ." 312
"No, they won't. And we'll borrow Pete's tuner when we need him."
"Agreed," said Leonov. "On two conditions."
Kinsman cocked a brow at him.
"First, that you allow my frustrated musicians to use the instrument now and then."
"Of course."
"And second," Leonov raised two fingers, "that you keep it here on your side of Selene so that I don't have to listen to them!"
"Sure," Kinsman said. "And your secret police can plant their bugs in it, too."
"Wonderful. That will make them very happy."
Harriman was standing beside Diane. "Regular Renais- sance man, aren't you. Kinsman? Musician, soldier, astro- naut ..."
"I used to be a swordsman, too. On the Academy's saber team."
