What?"

"Calm down," Kinsman said softly. "It's going to be all right. Everything's going better than I had hoped it would. There's not going to be any shooting."

Biting his lip, "Yeah. Maybe."

"I'm going to try to get Leonov on the phone. Meantime, you call Chris Perry in here."

"Perry? What for?"

Kinsman was already punching Leonov's number on his desktop phone. "Chris is going to lead one of our missions to the space stations. His group will take Beta. I'm going to Alpha. And we've got to find a reliable guy to . . ."

Kelly's face looked stricken. He went white, his mouth hung open, his hands froze on the phone.

"Pat! You okay?"

With an effort Kelly croaked out, "I didn't know you were going to attack the stations. You never told me . . ."

"We're not going to attack them. We're going to take them over. Quick and neat and with no fuss. And Leonov's going to do the same on his side."

"You're going to leave the United States defenseless."

"No," Kinsman answered. "We're going to take over all the defenses ourselves. Then we'll make sure that nobody can attack anybody else."

Kelly got up slowly from the couch. He was visibly trembling. "Chet, I ... You've got to let me out of this. I never thought . . ."

"Hold on. Pat. Nobody's going to get hurt if we can help it."

"You can't . . ." Kelly's eyes were darting, looking for a 416 way out. "You never told me you were going to take over the ABM network, I'm not ... I can't . . ."

Kinsman stared at him. "Okay, Pat," he said at last. "I don't want you to do anything you don't want to do." But in his mind, Kinsman was startled. Pat's not on our side! I was so certain of him. But he can't make the crossover. How many others am I wrong about?

Kelly hurried out of the office. Kinsman watched the door slide shut behind him. For long moments he did nothing.

Finally he returned his attention to the phone and tapped out Leonov's number. The screen stayed blank and a man's voice said, "Sir, all communications with Lunagrad are down."

"The lines are cut?"

"Nosir. No physical damage. They've just closed down their comm center. No traffic in or out. Our monitors show no Earthside traffic, either."

They're fighting, Kinsman realized. It must be a real civil war over there. And there's not a damned thing we can do to help Pete. That's all he'd need—a bunch of armed Americans marching into Lunagrad.

But he could not stay in his office any longer. Kinsman punched out the number for the comm center and told the answering technician, "Page Captain Perry and have him meet me at the access hatch to the main Lunagrad tunnel."

There were a dozen points where Lunagrad and Moon- base touched each other: the main plaza, the hospital, the recreation dome. The main tunnel was the oldest and most strategic point of contact. It was here that the two separate bases had originally been united. And in a show of everlasting trust and friendship, much of the life support plumbing and electrical power cabling had been routed through this tunnel.

Kinsman never got there.

As he hurried down the corridor that led to the main tunnel the P.A. loudspeakers set into the rough stone ceiling suddenly blared;