"I'll do it," Diane said.
Kinsman blinked at her. Harriman mumbled something undecipherable.
Diane smiled at them. "Don't look so shocked. I can be a leader of men, as you so neatly put it, Chet."
Harriman's brows rose and he shot Kinsman a quizzical glance.
"Don't think that running road tours all those years didn't take leadership skills," Diane said. "I've dealt with drugged-out musicians and union bosses looking for payoffs. The people you have here are all pussycats, by comparison. I can manage the base for a few days."
It took several seconds for Kinsman to say, "You'd want to ... to take that responsibility?"
With a nod, Diane answered, "Somebody's got to. And I really am on your side, you know. I can run the base." 441
Kinsman admitted, "I never thought of you as base commander."
But Diane had already turned toward Colt. "I'd expect you not to make any trouble while Chefs back is turned."
Kinsman returned his attention to the black Major. "How about it, Frank? A temporary truce. Will you promise not to try to grab the comm center or the launchpad?"
Colt frowned and blinked and struggled visibly with himself. Finally, "Aw, shit. Okay. 1 won't make any waves. But I want to be on the first damned shuttle that goes Earthside! I want no part of your crazy revolution."
Harriman looked dubious, but for once he kept his silence. Kinsman felt uneasy and must have looked it.
"What's the matter, Chet?" Diane asked, with a know- ing little smile. "Afraid to let a woman run the show? Even for a few days?"
He shrugged and grinned and surrendered gracefully. After all, he told himself, what choice do I have?
A green light was flashing, breaking Kinsman's troubled reverie.
"Okay for egress," the shuttle pilot's voice came over the intercom.
Kinsman unstrapped his safety harness and got out of the seat—floated up, weightless. It had seemed a long thirty-six- hour journey to Alpha. Now it was too short, too soon finished. They had gone over their "battle plan" fifty times. Now he wished for fifty more.
"All right, men." Boys. "Just follow the assignments we've mapped out and they'll never know what hit them. Move fast. Don't shoot unless you have to. Good luck."
Their young, serious, scared faces looked back at him. A few nodded. A couple of others checked their weapons. They all carried pistols, nothing bigger, Dartguns, designed to stop a man with a combination of impact shock and sedative. Not strong enough to puncture the thin metal skin of a spacecraft or space station. Or to knock down a charging opponent.
Kinsman floated past them ail to the airlock hatch. He felt and heard the thumps of the station crewmen on the other side, undogging the hatch. Hefting his pistol in his hand, Kinsman pressed the button on the bulkhead alongside the 442 hatch that unlocked it from the ship's interior.
The hatch swung open, revealing a hefty tech sergeant and two airmen in work fatigues. "What . . . ? We were expectin' . . ." Then the Sergeant saw Kinsman's gun.
"Just stand back and don't give us any trouble," Kins- man said.
"What the hell is this?"
They backed the three men out of the cramped metal chamber of the airlock, into the larger area of the unloading bay. From this zero-gravity hub of the many-wheeled station the lunar troops fanned out along three main tubes, the "spokes" that led from the hub through each wheel and out to the farthermost ring. Their objectives were the communica- tions center, the electrical power station, and the officers' quarters. Five men were left in charge of the loading bay. Three teams of seven men each rushed to take their three objectives.
Kinsman remembered the first time he had come to Alpha, the day of its official dedication. Diane had sung for the assembled VIPs. Neal McGrath had been among them, not yet an enemy. The station was going to be a center for private industry, for scientific research and exploration of the heavens. How quickly it had become a purely military base, a control center for the network of antimissile satellites and their powerful laser weapons.
