Lisa’s exquisitely sensitive face was pale and drawn. With her eyes closed she seemed almost a mask of death. But if death is so beautiful, Douglas thought, no man should fear it. Her dark, short-cropped hair framed her delicate face and looked more lustrous for the contrast against the white pillowcase and sheets of the hospital bed.

Douglas looked down and saw that his left hand, pressing against the bed’s surface, rested next to Lisa’s hand. The contrast between the two fascinated him. Her hand was so tiny, delicate, almost fragile beside his heavy, thick-fingered paw. Her hand was made for a ballerina, a painter, a musician. His was built to carve rock from lunar caves, to punch equations into a computer, to point and command men. But he knew the strength that her china-boned hands were capable of; he had felt those fingers clawing at him even through the thickness of a pressure suit.

With a reluctant sigh he pushed himself up from the bed and, standing, stretched his tensed back muscles. Tendons popped as his fingers scraped the ceiling.

Lisa’s eyes opened. She was looking straight at him. Her dark smoldering eyes betrayed the delicacy of her features. She was strong. Despite the seeming fragility of her body, she was as strong as a thin blade of steel.

“You’re awake,” Douglas said, instantly feeling inane.

“You’re leaving,” she countered.

“Yes.” He glanced at his digital wristwatch. “The ship leaves in two hours. I’ve got to get my gear ready and...”

“Why you?”

He blinked at the question. It had never occurred to him that he would not lead the mission.

“Why take on this expedition at all?” Lisa went on. “It’s all nonsense. None of you will get back alive.”

“I don’t think that’s true,” he said.

Lisa’s eyes roamed around the bleak little chamber, the rock walls that had been laser-fused into smoothness and then painted pastel green, the five empty beds sitting stiffly starched and white around them. Finally she looked back at her husband.

“It’s foolishness,” she said. “Male foolishness. You’re just trying to prove that you’re brave.”

He almost smiled. The terrible events of the past few days had not destroyed Lisa’s spirit.

Sitting on the edge of her bed again, he answered carefully, “We are a community of five hundred and seventy-three men and women. Most of us are mining engineers and technicians. We have three physicians, five psychologists...”

“Four physicians,” Lisa corrected.

“Three. Haley OD’d last night.”

She took the news with no discernable reaction.

Douglas resumed, “As things stand now, we can’t survive on our own. And there’ll be no further help from Earth—unless we go Earthside and take what we need.”

“If you go to Earth you will be killed.”

“Maybe,” he conceded, shrugging. “Maybe you’re right and we’re all subconsciously trying to kill ourselves in one grand final gesture, instead of waiting around up here in this underground tomb.”

Lisa sighed, a mixture of weariness and impatience. “You’re always so logical. The Earth has been destroyed, billions of people have died, and you’re as cool and logical as one of your computers.”

“We’re not dead. Not yet, anyway.” His voice was tight, grim. “And I want to live. I want you to live, Lisa. That’s why I have to lead this mission Earthside. We’ll only go as far as the space station, for sure. We won’t go down to the surface unless...”

“I don’t want you to kill yourself,” Lisa said. Her voice was flat, devoid of emotion.

“Why not?”

“Because we need you here. I need you here. You’re a natural leader. I need you here to hold this community together.”

He thought for a few moments before replying softly, “What you mean is, you want me here so that you can run the community through me.”

Her gaze never wavered from him, but she did not answer. The silence between them stretched achingly.

Finally Douglas said, “I don’t mind, Lisa. You want the power. I don’t.”

“You’re a fool,” she said, unsmiling.

“Yeah. I know.” He got up slowly to his feet. Looking down at her, “The baby... it was Fred’s, not mine, wasn’t it?”

The barest flicker of surprise crossed her face. Then she said, “What difference does it make now? Fred’s dead and I’ve lost the baby.”

“It makes an enormous difference to me.”

She turned away from him.

Suddenly his hand flashed out, grasped her slim jaw and wrenched her head around to face him.

“Why?” he demanded. “Why did you do it? I love you.”

She stared at him, eyes blazing, until he released his grip on her. Then she said, “Go to Earth and kill yourself. Just as you killed him. Just as you killed my baby. You deserve to die.”

Chapter 2

“We can make it,” Martin Kobol said, his long face somber. “We can survive—I think.”

Six of them had crowded into the tiny bedroom. Like the rest of the underground settlement, it had been carved out of the lunar rock, designed originally as a standard dormitory room for a mining technician or a scientist. Its furniture consisted of a single bed, a wall unit that combined closet, desk, bureau drawers and bookshelf, and the same type of shower stall and toilet system that had been developed for the space station.

William Demain shared the room with his wife, Catherine. Now it was being used as a meeting place for the Demains, Kobol, and three other men. The Demains and one of the men sat on the narrow bed. Kobol had the room’s only chair. The other two men had hunkered down on the thinly-carpeted floor.

“Each of us is in charge of a key section of the settlement,” Kobol said, pointing to each individual in turn. “Hydroponics, communications, life support, medicine, mining.” He jabbed a thumb at his own narrow chest and added, “Electrical power.”

“You forgot administration.”

They turned, startled, to the accordian-fold door to the corridor outside. Lisa stood there, gripping the door jamb as if she would collapse if she didn’t have something to hold onto. Her face was white. She wore a jet black jumpsuit, so that it was difficult to see how frail she had become.

“You shouldn’t be out of the hospital!” Kobol was at her side in a single bound. Catherine Demain pulled herself up from the bed and also went to Lisa. Together, they moved her to the chair.

“I’m all right,” Lisa protested. “Just a little weak from being in bed so long.”

“You walked here from the hospital?” Catherine Demain asked. At Lisa’s nod she said, “That’s enough exercise for one day. You still have a lot of recuperating to do.”

Kobol glanced at her with a curious grin. “How did you know we were meeting here? I mean, we didn’t broadcast...”