"No," Leonov was answering. "Nothing has been launched yet. But the standby orders have gone out. It's only a matter of hours now. Perhaps minutes."

Can't do it from here. Kinsman realized as he watched the Russian's dismal face in the tiny display screen. Got to go down to the comm center.

A clattering noise made him jerk his attention away from 467 the screen. One of the young officers had let a plastic food tray slip from his hands. He was visibly shaking as he knelt to pick up the mess. The others were fixed on Kinsman: standing, sitting—one of them leaning his fists on the comput- er terminal, his face a tense death mask, white, taut, unblinking—all of them staring at Kinsman, waiting for him to act, to tell them what to do.

"Pete, get on all the broadcast frequencies you can manage and tell your people Earthside what we've done. I'm going down to our comm center and do the same thing. We can stop 'em if we yell loud enough." You think! "But we've got to tell 'em now!"

"Yes, yes, of course. But do you think—"

"Tell 'em we're prepared to shoot down any missile launched from anywhere on Earth. Make 'em believe it!"

"But can we really do it?"

"You tell me!"

Leonov rubbed a hand over his forehead. "I don't know! We have teams of technicians working, but how can we be certain that all those satellites will respond correctly?"

Forcing a grin, Kinsman answered, "The machines don't care what your politics are, Pete. If the lights come on green, then everything's working."

"Sheer materialism."

"Yep. And you thought I was a romantic. Get moving. There's no time to spare,"

"Da . . . Good luck, tovarich."

"Godspeed, friend." Kinsman pushed up from the chair and started across the padded gym floor for the hatch that led to the downward-spiraling ladder. "Get the comm center on the horn," he commanded the youngsters around him. "Make sure they understand what's happening. Tell them I'm on my way down there and the techs had better be able to use every fucking laser on every fucking satellite we've got!"

"Yes, sir\" yelped one of the officers as Kinsman yanked the hatch open.

Level Three was iike slogging through knee-deep mud. One-half normal Earth gravity, and Kinsman was quickly out of breath. By the time the comm center crew made a chair available for him, his legs ached and his heart was thumping 468 heavily. Even the air felt soupy, humid and thick, hard to breathe.

The comm center reminded Kinsman of a string sextet flying through a Mozart allegro: wildly ordered activity, measured frenetic action. The comm techs were buzzing commands into their pin mikes; the giant insect-eye of display screens—bank on bank of them—showed strangely incongru- ous scenes.

The bright, soul-thrilling beauty of the broad Pacific, a globe-spanning expanse of blue water decorated with intricate patterns of dazzling white clouds, swirls of giant storms, files of cumulus puffs marching dutifully in response to sunlight and earthspin. How many submarines hidden in that beauty? How many missiles with hydrogen bombs tucked inside their nose caps?

The tense, sweat-streaked face of a technician urgently yammering into the earphone of a comm tech who sat nodding in front of that particular screen.

Captain Perry, standing in front of the elaborate fire control panel aboard Space Station Beta, talking to someone in what seemed to be an easy, professional, competent tone. Kinsman could not hear what he was saying, of course, unless the audio from that individual circuit was piped into the earphones that rested in his lap. The fire control panel's idiot lights were almost all green, Kinsman saw. The ABM satel- lites were in operational condition.

Display screens showed lovely rural Earthside scenery, where ICBM silos dotted the countryside. Half a dozen major cities. A Russian comm tech frowning as he talked with his American counterpart. No, Kinsman corrected himself. Not Russians or Americans anymore. Luniks. Selenites.

Kinsman took all this in with a single glance as he slumped heavily in the seat near the comm center's hatch.

"Reports look good," said the officer sitting next to him. "And we've got a dozen or so volunteers from the station's crew helping us. They decided to stay with us."

Kinsman nodded, and even that was an effort. For the first time it registered in his mind that three of the six techs working the consoles were women.

"1 need to be patched in to the top-priority network right 469 away/' he said wearily. "White House, Pentagon, SAC headquarters, commanders of the Atlantic and Pacific strike forces—the works."