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closer to the stone, looking for rough patches, bumps, anything that could provide purchase. He was grateful that the Sun was still low enough in the sky to throw long shadows; made it easier to see where he could plant his feet and get something to push against.
    Just as he reached one hand across the rim of the crater his foot slipped and he started to slide backward. He clung desperately to the slightly raised edge of the crater, grabbed with his other hand and hung on to keep himself from sliding all the way back to the bottom.
    For several moments he stayed there, strung out, gasping, while his booted feet searched for something to hold them. He gave it up and hauled himself upward, letting his legs go limp. He got his belly over the edge, trying not to think of what would happen if he tore the fabric of his suit. One leg over the rim. Then the other.
    At last he climbed to his feet. Wish I had a marker beacon, he thought. There ought to be a warning here.
    Okay, get moving. Enough time wasted.
    But which direction? He turned a full three hundred sixty degrees. Mare Nubium looked the same in all directions. Flat bare plain of dust-covered rock. The hump that marked the shelter he had fled was nowhere in sight now, but neither was the next shelter, nor the ringwall mountains of Alphonsus.
    “Talk about the middle of nowhere,” Paul said aloud.
    He checked the GPS receiver on his suit’s forearm. Nothing. The display was dark. No signal chirped in his earphones. Satellite’s too low for my suit antenna to pick up the signal.
    Paul stared out at the horizon. For the first time he felt truly afraid. He was alone and lost and miles from any possibility of help.

SAVANNAH
    “Murder?” Paul felt his insides go hollow.
    “That’s what Greg said,” Melissa Hart told him.
    It was Paul’s first day in his new office as CEO of Masterson Aerospace. He had been in the midst of setting up his personal mementos on his broad ebony desk: a fist-sized chunk of Moon rock; a solid mahogany model of a Clippership in the red, white and blue colors of American Airlines; a framed photograph of Joanna smiling at him from beneath a wide-brimmed straw hat.
    It had taken more than a week to get his new office suite squared away. Paul had wanted to stay at his old office, but it was in the manufacturing plant out where I-16 intersected with I-95. Corporate headquarters was in the old historic section of Savannah, down by the riverfront, where the docks and warehouses had been largely replaced by tourist hotels and upscale restaurants. At least he could walk to work, just a few blocks along Bryan Street.
    He had felt uneasy about taking over Gregory’s suite, but finally decided he shouldn’t let old guilts stand in the wayof doing his new job. So he had his secretary totally redecorate the office; a chore she delighted in, for six whirlwind days of painters and carpet installers and electricians and decorators.
    And now Melissa had walked unannounced into his office, so spanking new it smelled of paint and freshly sawn wood. She stood before his desk, arms clasped tightly across her chest, looking wired tight.
    Paul sank into his stylishly modern caramel leather swivel chair, staring open-mouthed at Melissa.
    “Murder?” he repeated.
    She pulled up the upholstered chair in front of his desk. “Greg’s got a videodisk that his father made just before he died. He says it proves Gregory didn’t commit suicide. He was murdered.”
    “Holy shit,” Paul groaned.
    Melissa said nothing.
    “Did you see this videodisk?”
    “Greg played it for me,” she said.
    “What’s on it?”
    “Gregory’s sitting at his desk. Right here in this office. It must’ve been late afternoon, right before he was killed.”
    He was supposed to have been at the executive committee meeting, Paul remembered. But Gregory had walked out on the rest of the committee halfway through the agenda and returned to his office. Nothing unusual in that; he had done it