Mercury

department of a major university?”

“Why is the sky blue?” Molina snapped. “How the hell should I know?”

“We know why the sky is blue,” McFergusen murmured, a slight smile on his bearded face.

“Rayleigh scattering,” said the young woman on the other side of the table.

“The question remains,” McFergusen said, in a voice loud enough to silence the others, “that you received an anonymous message that led you directly to the specimens you discovered, and no one else has been able to find anything similar.”

“And no one else has tested your specimens,” said the woman on Molina’s left.

Seething, Molina hissed, “Are you suggesting that I faked my findings?”

“I am suggesting,” she said, unfazed by his red-faced anger, “that you allow us to independently test your specimens.”

“It’s possible to make an honest mistake,” Bishop Danvers said softly, laying a placating hand on Molina’s arm.

“Look at Percival Lowell, spending his life seeing canals on Mars that didn’t exist.”

“Or the first announcement of pulsar planets.”

McFergusen said gently, “No one is impugning your honesty, Dr. Molina. But we can’t be certain of your results until they are checked by a third party. Surely you understand that.”

Reluctantly, Molina nodded. “Yes. Of course. I’m sorry I got so excited.”

Everyone around the table seemed to relax, ease back in their chairs.

“But,” Molina added, pointing straight at McFergusen, “I want to be present when the tests are made.”

“Certainly,” McFergusen agreed. “I see no problem with that. Do any of you?”

No one objected.

“Very well, then. We can test the rocks tomorrow. Dr. Baines, here, is the best man for the job, don’t you agree?”

Molina nodded.

“I will attend the procedure myself,” McFergusen said, almost jovially. “With you, Dr. Molina.”

Molina nodded again and muttered, “Thank you,” through gritted teeth.

GOETHE BASE

“You’ve got to help me,” Victor Molina said, his voice trembling slightly. “You’ve got to!”

Dante Alexios sat stiffly in his straight-backed chair and struggled to keep any emotion from showing on his face. “I have to help you?”

“None of the others will. You’re the only one who can.”

The two men were in Alexios’s bare little office. Molina was on his feet, pacing like a caged animal back and forth. Alexios sat unmoving, except for his eyes, which tracked Molina’s movements like a predator sizing up its intended victim.

Molina paced to the wall, turned around, strode back to the opposite wall, turned again.

“I’ve got to find more samples!” he blurted. “They won’t believe me if I don’t. I’ve got to go out on the surface and find more rocks that contain biomarkers.”

As evenly as he could manage, Alexios said, “But the IAA team is looking for samples all over the planet, aren’t they? They’ve stopped us from doing any further activities—”

“The IAA team! McFergusen and his academics! A bunch of incompetent fools! They sit up there safe and comfortable in their ship and send teleoperated rovers to snoop around the surface for them.”

“Virtual reality is a powerful tool,” Alexios goaded. Standing in front of him, bending over so that their noses nearly touched, Molina cried, “They won’t allow me to use their VR system! I let them examine my rocks but they won’t let me touch their equipment! It’s not fair!”

Alexios slowly rose to his feet, forcing Molina to back off a few steps. “And that’s why you’ve come to me.”

“You have tractors sitting here at the base doing nothing. Let me borrow one. I’ve got to get out there and find more specimens.”

Alexios’s oddly irregular face slowly curled into a lopsided smile. “It’s against safety regulations for anyone to go out on a tractor alone.”

Molina’s already-flushed face turned darker. Before he could say anything, though, Alexios added, “So I’ll go out with you.”

“You will?” Molina seemed about to jump for joy.

With a self-deprecating little shrug, Alexios said, “I have little else to do, thanks to the IAA.”

He could have said, Thanks to you, but Molina never thought of that possibility.

Instead he asked, “When? How soon?”

“As soon as you’re ready.”

“I’m ready now!”

In truth, it took more than a day for Molina to be ready. He shuttled back up to Himawari to gather the equipment he wanted, and by then it was time for dinner. So he spent the night aboard Yamagata’s torch ship with his wife. Alexios slept in his quarters alone, trying not to think of Molina in bed with Lara. He slept very little, and when he did his dreams were monstrous.

Molina arrived at the base early the next morning, with four crates of equipment. Alexios hid his amusement and walked him to the garage where the base’s tractors were housed. A baggage cart trundled behind them on spongy little wheels, faithfully following the miniature beacon Alexios had clipped to his belt.

The garage was empty and quiet. “Mr. Yamagata came in here just once since the IAA embargoed us,” Alexios said, his voice echoing off the steel ribs of the curving walls. “He wasn’t happy to see all this equipment sitting idle.”

Molina said nothing. The tractors were simple and rugged, with springy-looking oversized metal wheels and a glassteel bubble up front where the driver and passengers sat. The two men loaded Molina’s equipment into the cargo deck in back, then closed the heavy cermet hatch.

“I’ll get into my suit now,” said Molina.

Alexios could see dark stains of perspiration on his coveralls. It couldn’t be from the exertion of lifting those crates in this light gravity, he thought. Victor must be nervous. Or maybe he’s afraid of going outside again.

He went with Molina and suited up also.

“But you won’t have to leave the tractor,” Molina objected as a team of technicians began to help them into the bulky suits.

“Unless you get into trouble,” said Alexios.

“Oh.”

“You wouldn’t want to wait a half hour or more while I wiggled myself into this outfit.”

“No, I imagine not.”

At last they were both ready, the cumbersome, heavily insulated suits fully sealed and checked out by the technicians.

Alexios called base control with his suit radio. “Dr. Molina and I are going out on tractor number four. We will go beyond your camera range.”

The controller’s voice sounded bored. “Copy you’ll go over the horizon. Sunup in one hour, seventeen minutes.”

A flotilla of miniature surveillance satellites hugged the planet in low orbits, so every square meter of Mercury’s surface was constantly covered by at least two of the minisats. They provided continuous communications links and precise location data.

“Sun in one seventeen,” Alexios acknowledged.

“You are clear for excursion,” said the controller.