“It’s true, isn’t it?” Douglas said to his wife.

Lisa lay in their bed, a black robe pulled around her. To Douglas she looked more beautiful than ever, glowing from within. Her belly was just slightly rounded.

She said nothing, merely watched him with her dark enchantress’s eyes.

“I checked with Catherine. She didn’t want to admit it, but she finally did. Four abortions in the past five years. Four sons or daughters we could have had. Why? Why did you kill them?”

“I didn’t want them,” she said, her voice as flat and controlled as if she were reading off a list of numbers. “Other things were more important.”

“And for five years I worried that the radiation you’d been exposed to in the flare... Jesus Christ, Lisa, why didn’t you at least ask me?”

“It was none of your business. It was my decision to make.”

He sank onto the end of the bed, head bowed, tears of frustration welling up in him. “Four children,” he muttered. “Four children of mine... and you never even said a word to me about it.”

“We had more important things to do than to argue about having babies,” Lisa said.

He looked up at her. She was perfectly calm, totally in control of herself.

“They were mine, weren’t they?” he heard himself snarl at her. “Not Demain’s or Blair’s or Marty’s. Or maybe some of the miners? Do you know who the fathers were?”

Even that failed to crack her facade. “They were yours, Douglas. Only yours. But the decision to keep them or not was mine.”

Nodding bitterly, he hauled himself to his feet. He swayed there at the end of the bed for a moment, as if drunk.

“Okay,” he said. “You made your decisions. Now I’m making mine. I’m taking an expedition Earthside as soon as we can get it ready. You can lie there and swell up and burst, for all I care. I don’t believe it’s my kid. I’ll never believe a word you say to me, never again!”

He stamped out of the bedroom. Lisa lay unmoving, listening to him rummaging around the other rooms for a few moments. Then she heard the corridor door slide open and slam shut.

He’ll be back, she thought. He’s angry now, but he’ll cool down. He’ll come back, feeling sheepish. And I’ll ask him to forgive me. He will, and then I’ll forgive him. We’re having a son. I’ll tell him that all the tests indicate that. He’ll stay to see his son born. He’ll be back. Soon. He won’t stay away long.

But he never returned to her.

It took three months to organize the Earthside expedition to Douglas’ satisfaction: three months of frantic preparation, of meticulous detail work, of unceasing training for the men he hand-picked to go with him, of driving, flogging everyone—himself most of all.

Lisa watched the takeoff of his spidery transfer craft on the video screen in her bedroom. Every ship in the settlement was needed to lift the expedition members toward the Earth-orbiting space station. Douglas, she knew, was in the very last spacecraft. When its rocket engines ignited and it leaped off the Moon’s dusty surface and out of view, she felt a sudden, searing pain in her abdomen.

Her son was about to be born, five weeks prematurely.

BOOK TWO

Chapter 8

Alec stood at the observation dome’s main window and gazed across the tumbled, broken wingwall floor to the bleak horizon.

Hanging above the weary, slumped mountains of Alphonsus, floating softly in the blackness, shone the blue, beckoning crescent of Earth. It glowed, catching the light of the now-quiet Sun on bands of glistening white, casting vivid shadows across the pitted gray lunar floor.

From slightly behind him he heard a soft voice:

“All of beauty’s there,

And all of truth.

Let me leave this land of mirthless men

And return to the home of my youth.”

Turning, Alec saw Dr. Lord, the astronomer. The old man was smiling faintly; the Earthlight coming through the window caught the wispy remains of his dead-white hair and produced a halo for him against the darkness of the room’s dim interior lighting.

“I didn’t realize you were a poet,” Alec said.

Dr. Lord’s voice was the whisper of a dying man. “Oh, yes. Back before the sky burned, when there were still girls for me to impress, I spent hours memorizing poetry. Between the poetry and the observation work, I made out rather well. You know, working all night at the observatory... you asked a girl to keep you company.” He chuckled faintly at his memories.

“Has the Council meeting started?” Alec asked.

“Yes, about ten minutes ago. Your mother said the vote won’t come until after considerable debate, and it would be impolite for you to be present while they’re trying to decide.”

Alec nodded. “I wouldn’t want to offend any of the Council members.”

“No, that wouldn’t do,” Dr. Lord agreed.

Turning back to the window, Alec thought, All of beauty’s there, and all of truth... and much, much more.

Dr. Lord moved up to stand beside him at the window, and Alec could see their faint reflections despite the deliberately low lighting of the observation dome. Lord was ancient, frail, his chalky skin stretched over the bones of his face like crumbling antique parchment. He breathed through his mouth, so that his lips were drawn back to reveal big, rodent-like teeth, surprisingly strong and healthy in his deathlike face.

Alec studied his own face and wondered what it would be like if he ever reached Dr. Lord’s age. He was taller than the old man, but not by much. Not as big as his father or most of the men he knew. His features were too delicate, almost feminine, and his hair curled in golden ringlets no matter how short he cropped it. But he had his mother’s dark, smoldering eyes. And he saw that there were tight, angry lines around his mouth. Tension lines. Hate lines.

“I was there when it happened,” Dr. Lord muttered, more to himself than to Alec.

Alec said nothing and hoped that the old man wouldn’t go through his entire litany. For a few moments the only sound in the dome was the faint electrical hum of the air fans.

“We had no idea...” Dr. Lord looked as if he was still dazed by it, even now, more than twenty-five years later. “Oh, I had proposed that perhaps the Sun emits a truly large flare every ten millennia or so... Tommy Gold had suggested it earlier, of course, and I was following his lead.”

He paused, and Alec tensed himself to beg the old man’s permission to leave. But, “When it happened, I was at the observatory in Maine... it was summer, but the nights were cool up on the mountaintop.”

Alec had missed his chance, he knew, and he could not risk being called impolite. So while the old astronomer rambled away, Alec stared out at the luminous crescent of Earth, narrowing his thoughts to the debate going on in the Council. He knew that the choice was between Kobol and himself. Kobol had the advantages of age, experience, and no personal involvement. As a Council member, he was physically present at the debate. No risk of impoliteness for him. Alec’s only advantages were his mother, and the urgings that burned inside his guts.

“...the sky just lit up. For a moment we thought it was dawn, but it was too early. And too bright. The sky burned. It got so bright you couldn’t look at it. The air became too hot to breathe. We ran down to the film vault, down in the basement, behind the safety doors where the airconditioning was always on. But they all died. Peterson, Harding, Sternbach... that lovely Robertson girl. They all died. All of them...”

Alec put a hand on the old man’s frail, bony shoulder. “It’s all right... you made it. You survived.”