Brigadier General Robert G. Murdock rose from his desk and walked unsteadily to the bathroom off one side of his handsome office. Idly, he thought how much easier it would be if he had a gun. But he had not fired one in years and had never used one in anger.
"I've never tried to hurt anyone," he said to himself. His voice sounded little short of whining. "Not even Kinsman. All these years he's laughed at me, made a fool of me. And now he's killed me."
He turned on the hot-water tap, then reached for the medicine chest above the sink for a razor blade.
Thursday 16 December 1999:
2250 hrs UT
"RETROFIRE IN FIVE minutes. Please prepare for landing."
The pilot's voice coming through the tiny speaker in the seatback in front of him woke Kinsman. For an instant he did not know where he was; disoriented, he felt a flash of panic surge through him. Then everything settled into place: the lunar shuttle, the young officers around him, the safety harness crossing his chest and thighs, the windowless metal tube of the spacecraft's passenger section.
'T must have dozed off," he muttered.
The kid sitting beside him grinned, "About four hours ago, sir."
Kinsman grunted and rubbed his eyes. It had been a long flight, a minimum-energy boost, but a busy one. He had spent more than twenty hours straight in urgent communications with Selene, the space stations—where he had left Chris Perry in charge—and with Ted Marrett, going into deeper and deeper detail on the politics of global weather control.
There had been a flood of messages from Earthside; urgent, angry, inquisitive, apprehensive. Kinsman had Perry or Harriman answer most of them. He refused to speak to anyone lower than the President of the United States or the General Secretary of the USSR's Communist Party. With an inward grin, he admitted to himself that such haughtiness guaranteed he would not have to take any calls. The heads of state would not speak with him, that would be too big an admission for them to make. It simply was not done in the protocol-conscious world of international diplomacy.
He spoke briefly with Diane at Selene, using the compact display screen before him. All was quiet. Apparently both sides were still on red alert, but there had been no further warlike incidents, no further rocket launches, no further 486 threats or blusterings from Washington or Moscow.
They're playing wait-and-see. Kinsman knew. They're digesting the new situation, running it through their comput- ers and think tanks, trying to figure out what to do next. The calm before the storm.
"Retrofire in thirty seconds."
We've got to get Marrett back down to New York, Kinsman realized. He's got to talk to De Paolo. We're going to need weather control, even if it's just a threat or a promise, to give us some leverage on the big powers. Of course, we could knock out their commsats and other satellites if we had to. And we've got the Russians' orbital bombs . . .
He shook his head. Dismantle the bombs. Take them apart so that nobody can use them. We got into this business to prevent a nuclear war, not to start one
The braking thrusters fired and Kinsman felt a firm but gentle hand push him down in the foam cushion seat. There was no noise from the retrorockets, only a faint shudder of vibration.
Over the intercom, the pilot sang out, "Last stop: the free and independent nation of Selene. Population, one thousand and umpty-two. Everybody off the bus!"
Kinsman grinned. Home sweet home. He realized that he was indeed home. Diane was here, and Harriman and Frank Colt and all the other people and things that made this corner of the universe his home.
He had been sitting up at the front end of the passenger compartment. Most of the other men and women aboard were between him and the egress hatch, but they stepped aside wordlessly, automatically opening the aisle for him to go to the hatch first.
