"KINSMAN . . . CHET KINSMAN!"
He skidded to a stop under one of the speakers. As he stared at it, set overhead between the fluorescents and some piping, he recognized Frank Colt's voice. 417
"Chet, listen to me. We've taken the water factory. Ernie Waterman's here, and so is Pat Kelly and a lot of other loyal officers. We're going to shut down the water supply for Moonbase in exactly one hour unless you surrender yourself to us. If you try to take us here we'll blow the whole fucking water factory sky-high."
Saturday 11 December 1999:
1520hrsUT
THE HOUR WAS nearly over.
Kinsman stood at the railing of the balcony that rimmed the communications center. Everything looks so damned normal, he thought.
Down below, on the main floor of the center, the technicians were bending over the consoles and display screens. All of Moonbase seemed serene and secure. All except the water factory. And there had been no contact with Lunagrad for more than six hours.
Chris Perry came up beside Kinsman. He was taller and broader in the shoulders than Kinsman, with a wide-boned, open Norseman's face: eyes the color of a summer sky. "We've triple-checked every person in the base," he said, in a youthful tenor voice. "Only thirty-two people are missing, mostly Aerospace Force ninety-dayers. They must be the ones at the water factory."
"Thirty-two? Kinsman echoed. "So the hard-core dissi- dents are that few." But more than enough to stop us.
Diane was sitting at a desk not far from where he stood. She, too, had been working steadily. But now she got up and walked slowly to Kinsman, a plastic message sheet in her hand.
"Priority message from General Murdock," she said, looking straight into his eyes. "We just finished decoding it. 418
You've been relieved of command. Frank Colt is the new commander of Moonbase. You're ordered to report to Wash- ington immediately."
Kinsman reached out and took the plastic sheet from her fingers. It had been used so many times that the electrostati- cally formed letters looked blurred and smudged. Or is my eyesight going bad on me? The back of Kinsman's neck was knotted painfully. His chest ached.
"This just came in out of the blue?" he asked Diane.
She nodded. "They don't know that anything unusual's going on here. Not yet. The change of command has nothing to do with your revolution."
Turning to Perry, Kinsman said, "The Great White Father has relieved me of command. What do you think the Indians will say?"
The young Captain shrugged his husky shoulders. "We're not taking orders from Washington anymore. We take our orders from you."
Kinsman stared hard at the blond youth. "You're sure that you realize what you're saying? You can avoid a lot of grief. If we fail ..."
"We won't fail," Perry said with a quick smile. We'd better not! Aloud, Kinsman said, "Okay, Chris . . . here's what I want you to do . . ."
