Ben Bova - Mercury

by Mercury(lit)

  Yamagata hesitated. Even with only the slimmest arc of the Sun's huge disk above the nearby horizon a flood of heat was sweeping across the barren ground. Dust motes sparkled and jumped like fireflies, suddenly electrified by the Sun's powerful ionizing radiance. Both men stared at the barren dusty ground suddenly turned manic as the particles danced and jittered in the newly risen Sun. Slowly they fell to the ground again, as if exhausted, their electrical charges neutralized at last.

  They looked out to the horizon and gazed briefly at the blazing edge of the Sun; even through the deeply tinted visors of their helmets its overpowering brilliance made their eyes water. The Sun's rim was dancing with flaming prominences that writhed like tortured spirits in hell.

  Yamagata heard his spacesuit groan and ping in the surging, all-encompassing heat. He looked down into the chasm again, and the after-image of the Sun burned in his vision. Turning around slowly in the cumbersome suit, he started down the pebbly, cracked slope backwards. Alexios followed him. It was hard, exhausting work. Yamagata's booted foot slipped on a loose stone and he went skittering down the pebbly slope several meters before grinding to a stop. Alexios came skidding down beside him.

  "Are you all right?"

  It took Yamagata several panting breaths before he could reply, "What difference does it make?"

  Alexios grunted. "You're all right, then."

  Yamagata nodded inside his helmet. The suit seemed intact; its life support equipment still functioned.

  Both men were soaked with perspiration by the time they reached the bottom of the rift. Yamagata looked up and saw that the edge of the chasm was ablaze with harsh light.

  "Sunrise," said Alexios. "You come from the land of the rising sun, don't you?"

  Yamagata decided he wouldn't dignify that snide remark with a reply. Instead he said, "The message for me was that Bishop Danvers has committed suicide."

  Silence for several heartbeats. Then Alexios said, "I didn't expect that."

  "He slit his throat. Very bloody, from the description."

  "I imagine it would be."

  "You are responsible for his death."

  Again a long wait before Alexios replied, "I suppose I am, in a way."

  "In a way?" Yamagata jeered. "You planted false evidence and accused him falsely. As a result he killed himself. Murder, it seems to me. Or was that an execution, too?"

  "He was a weak man," Alexios said. His voice sounded tight, brittle, in Yamagata's earphones.

  "Weak or strong, he is dead because of you."

  No reply.

  Yamagata decided to twist the knife. "I am not a Christian, of course, but isn't it true that in your religion killing one man is just as hideous a sin as killing millions?"

  Alexios immediately snapped, "I'm not a Christian, either."

  "Ah, no? But do you feel any guilt for the death of Bishop Danvers?"

  "He destroyed my life! Him and Molina. He got what he deserved."

  Yamagata nodded inside his helmet. "You feel the guilt, don't you?"

  "No," Alexios snapped. Then he raised his hand and pointed to the steep wall of the chasm. Yamagata saw that the slim line of glaring sunlight made the rift's edge look molten, so brilliant that it hurt his eyes to look up there.

  "In five or six hours we'll be in the direct sun. A few hours after that our life support systems will run out of air. Then all the guilts, all the debts, they'll be paid. For both of us."

  VALLEY OF DEATH

  Alexios could not see Yamagata's face as they stood together in the bottom of the fault rift. I might as well be looking at a statue, he thought. A faceless, silent statue.

  But then Yamagata stirred, came to life. He began walking down the rough uneven floor of the chasm, heading in the direction opposite to the path of the unoccupied tractor. Alexios realized he was heading back toward the base.

  "You'll never make it," he said. "The base is more than thirty klicks from here. You'll run out of air long before then."

  "Perhaps so," Yamagata replied, sounding almost cheerful in Alexios's helmet earphones. "However, I find it easier on my nerves to be active, rather than standing by passively waiting to die."

  Despite himself, Alexios started after him. "You don't expect to be rescued, I hope."

  "When I was in Chota Lamasery the lamas tried to teach me to accept my fate. I was a great disappointment to them."

  "I imagine you were."

  They walked along the broken, stony ground for several minutes. The walls of the rift rose steeply on both sides higher than their heads, higher even than the fins of the radiators that projected from their life support packs. The ground was hard, cracked here and there. Pebbles and larger rocks were strewn along the bottom, although not as plentifully as they were up on the surface. The planetologists would have a field day here, Alexios thought. Then he grinned at his inadvertent pun.

  Yamagata stumbled up ahead of him and Alexios automatically grabbed him in both gloved hands, steadying him.

  "Thank you," said Yamagata.

  Alexios muttered, "De nada." Sweat dripped into his eyes, stinging. He felt perspiration dripping along his ribs. "I forgot to put on a sweatband," he said, wishing he could rub his eyes, mop his brow.

  Yamagata made no reply, but Alexios could hear the man's steady breathing through the suit radio.

  "I think the lamas made some impression on you," Alexios said, after almost half an hour of silent, steady, sweaty walking.

  "Ah so?"

  "You're taking this all very stoically."

  "Not at all," Yamagata replied. "I am walking toward the base. I am doing what I can to get myself rescued. I have no intention of dying without a struggle."

  "It won't do you any good."

  "Perhaps not. But still, one must try. You didn't accept your fate when you were exiled, did you?"

  That brought a flash of anger back from Alexios's memory. "No, I guess I didn't."

  "Yet now you are committing suicide," Yamagata said. "You could have thrown me out of the tractor and returned to the base alone. Why give up your own life?"

  "I have nothing left to live for."

  "Nonsense! You are still a young man. You have many productive years ahead of you."

  Thinking of Lara, of the skytower, of Danvers lying slumped in a ship's lavatory splattered with his own blood, Alexios repeated, "I have nothing left to live for."

  "Not even the stars?" Yamagata asked.

  "What's that supposed to mean?"

  "The reason I came to Mercury, the real purpose behind building these power satellites, is to use them to propel a starship. Perhaps many starships."

  Without a heartbeat's pause Alexios countered, "The reason I lived, the real purpose behind my life, was to build a tower that gave the human race cheap and easy access to space. You destroyed that. Finished it forever. They'll never build another skytower. They're too frightened of what happened to the first one."

  "And for this you would deny the stars to humankind?"

  "I'm not interested in humankind anymore. The stars will still be there a hundred years from now. A thousand."

  "But we could do it now!" Yamagata insisted. "In a few years!"

  "We could have been riding the skytower to orbit for pennies per pound by now."

  Yamagata grunted. "I believe you have a saying about two wrongs?"

  "You're a murderer."

  "So are you."

  "No, I'm an executioner," Alexios insisted.

  "A convenient excuse." Yamagata wondered what Alexios would say if he revealed that Nobuhiko had destroyed the skytower. He shook his head inside the bubble helmet. Never, he told himself. Nobu must be protected at all costs. Even at the cost of my own life. My son has done a great wrong, but killing him will not make things right.

  On they walked. With each step it seemed to grow hotter. Down at the bottom of the fault rift they were in shadow, yet the Sun's glaring brilliance crept inexorably down the chasm's wall, as slow and inescapable as
fate. They could see the glaring line of sunlit rock inching down toward them; it made the rock face look almost molten hot. The heat increased steadily, boiling the juices out of them. Alexios heard his suit fans notch up to a higher pitch, and then a few minutes later go still higher. Even so he was drenched with perspiration, blinking constantly to keep the stinging sweat out of his eyes. He licked his lips and tasted salt. Wish I had a margarita, he thought. Then he realized how foolish that was. Maybe I'm getting delirious.

  Yamagata kept moving doggedly along.

  "Let's rest a couple of minutes," Alexios said to him.

  "You rest, if you wish. I'm not tired."

  Not tired? Alexios thought that Yamagata was simply being macho, unwilling or perhaps unable to show weakness to a man he took to be an inferior. He's older than I am, Alexios told himself. A lot older. Of course, he must have had all sorts of rejuve therapies. Or maybe he's just too damned stubborn to admit he's tired, too.

  The heat was getting bad. Despite the suit's insulation and internal air conditioning, Alexios was sloshing. His legs felt shaky, his vision blurred from the damned sweat. He could feel the Sun's heat pressing him down, like the breath of a blast furnace, like a torrent of molten steel pouring over him. Still Yamagata plowed ahead steadily, as if nothing at all was bothering him. Blast it all, Alexios thought. If he can do it, so can I. And he trudged along behind the older man.

  Until, hours later, the harsh unfiltered rays of the Sun reached the fins of his suit's radiator.

  DEATH WISHES

  Yamagata stumbled, up ahead of him. Alexios reached for the spacesuited figure but he was too slow. Yamagata pitched forward and, in the dreamlike slow-motion of Mercury's low gravity, hit the ground: knees first, then his outstretched hands, finally his body and helmeted head.

  Alexios heard him grunt as if he'd been hit by a body blow. The rift was narrow here; there was barely room for him to step beside the fallen man without scraping his radiator fins on the steep rocky wall of the chasm.

  "Are you all right?"

  "If I were all right I'd be on my feet," Yamagata retorted, "instead of lying here on my belly."

  The bottom of the rift was half in sunlight now, the huge rim of the Sun peering down at them now like a giant unblinking eye, like the mouth of a red-hot oven. Alexios was so hot inside his suit that he felt giddy, weak. Blinking away sweat, he peered at Yamagata's backpack. It looked okay. Radiator fins undamaged. No loose hoses.

  "I can't seem to move my legs," Yamagata said.

  "I'll help you up."

  It was difficult to bend in the hard-shell suit. Alexios tried to reach down and grasp Yamagata by the arm.

  "Put your hands beneath you and push up," he said. "I'll help."

  They both tried, grunting, moaning with strain. After several minutes Yamagata was still on his belly and Alexios sank down to a sitting position beside him, exhausted, totally drained.

  "It's... not going to... work," he panted.

  Yamagata said. "My nose is bleeding. I must have bumped it on the visor when I fell."

  "Let's rest a few minutes, then try again."

  "I have no strength left."

  Alexios turned his head slightly and sucked on the water nipple inside his helmet. Nothing. Either it was blocked or he'd drunk the last of his suit's water supply. It's all coming out as sweat, he said to himself.

  "There ought to be some way to recondense our sweat and recycle it back into drinkable water," he mused.

  "An engineer's mind never stops working," said Yamagata.

  "Fat lot of good it does us."

  "You should record the idea, however," said Yamagata, "so that whoever finds us will be able to act on it."

  "A tycoon's mind never stops working," Alexios muttered.

  "This tycoon's mind will stop soon enough."

  Alexios was too hot and tired to argue the point. We're being baked alive, he thought. The suits' life support systems are running down.

  "What do you think will kill us," Yamagata asked, "dehydration or suffocation, when our air runs out?"

  Squeezing his eyes shut to block out the stinging sweat, Alexios replied, "I think we'll be parboiled by this blasted heat."

  Yamagata was silent for a few moments. Then, "Do you think the base has sent out a search team?"

  "Probably, by now. They'll follow the tractor's beacon, though."

  "But when they find the tractor is empty...?"

  Alexios desperately wanted to lean back against the rock wall, but was afraid it would damage his radiators. "Then they'll start looking for us. They'll have to do that on foot, or in tractors. We'll be dead by the time they find us."

  "Hmm," Yamagata murmured. "Don't you think they could hear our suit radios?"

  "Down in this rift? Not likely."

  "Then we will die here."

  "That's about the size of it."

  After several silent minutes Yamagata asked, "Is your sense of justice satisfied?"

  Alexios thought it over briefly. "All I really feel right now is hot. And tired. Bone tired. Tired of everything, tired of it all."

  "I too."

  "Vengeance isn't much consolation for a man," Alexios admitted.

  "Better to have built the starship."

  "Better to have built the skytower."

  "Yes," said Yamagata. "It is better to create than destroy."

  "I'll drink to that."

  Yamagata chuckled weakly. "A bottle of good champagne would be very fine right now."

  "Well chilled."

  "Yes, ice cold and sparkling with bubbles."

  "That's not going to happen."

  "No, I fear not."

  "Maybe we should just open the suits and get it over with. I'm broiling in here."

  Yamagata said, "First I want to record my last will and testament, but I can't reach the keypad on my wrist. Can you assist me?"

  Alexios let out a weary breath, then slowly rolled over onto all fours and crawled over the gritty ground to Yamagata's extended left hand. It took all his strength to move less than two meters. At last he reached his outstretched arm and pressed the record tab on the wrist keypad. In his earphones he heard a faint click and then a deadness as Yamagata's suit-to-suit frequency shut off.

  Lying there on his own belly now, head to helmeted head with Yamagata, Alexios thought, Last will and testament. Not a bad idea. With his last iota of strength, he turned his own suit radio to the recording frequency and began speaking, slowly, his throat dry, his voice rasping, offering his final words to the woman he had loved.

  When the rescue team finally found them, some twelve hours later, Alexios and Yamagata were still lying head to head. Their gloved hands were clasped, Alexios's right with Yamagata's left. It was impossible to tell if their hands were locked in a final grasp of friendship or a last, desperate grip of struggle. Some of the rescuers thought the former, some the latter.

  The team argued about it as they tenderly carried their space-suited bodies back to Goethe base. From there they were flown up to Himawari, still in orbit around Mercury. The medical team there determined that both men had died of dehydration. They were only five kilometers from Goethe base when they died.

  The recording found on Yamagata's suit radio was sent to his son, Nobuhiko, in New Kyoto. Alexios's recording was sent to Lara Tierney Molina, in her family's home in Colorado.

  EPILOGUE:

  LAST WILLS

  Lara sat alone in her old bedroom in her family's house in Colorado, listening to Mance's grating, bone-dry voice forcing out the words that would clear her husband. He confessed to everything: to assuming the identity of Dante Alexios, to spiriting the rocks from Mars and planting them on Mercury, to luring Victor to Mercury and making him the victim of the hoax.

  Victor can clear his name with this, she thought. He'll never outlive the stigma entirely, but at least he can show that he was deliberately duped, that he's not a cheat. He can rebuild his career.

  She looked out the
bedroom window and saw that evening shadows were draping the distant mountains in shades of purple. Victor would be coming home soon, she knew. She briefly wondered why she felt no joy, not even a sense of relief that Victor's ordeal was at last finished. But she knew why: Mance. Mance is dead. That's finished, too.

  Tears misted her eyes as she thought of all the things that might have been. But a chill ran through her. Victor was willing to send Mance to hell because he loved me and wanted me. And Mance fought his way out of exile and died on Mercury because he loved me. He gave up his revenge on Victor, he even gave up his life, because he loved me.