out of that trial alive. I wanted you, Lara! I’ve always wanted you! But as long as Mance was around you wouldn’t even look at me!”
Lara said nothing. She didn’t know what she could say.
“I wanted Mance out of the way,” he admitted, his voice so low she could barely hear him. “I was so crazy in love with you. I still am.”
He burst into tears.
Lara got up from the desk chair and went to the bed. Cradling her husband’s head in her arms she crooned soothingly, “I understand, darling. I understand.”
“I shouldn’t have done it, I know,” Molina blubbered. “I ruined Mance’s life. But I did it for you. For you.”
Lara was quite dry-eyed. “What’s done is done,” she said. “Mance is dead now. We’ve got to live the rest of our lives.”
As she held him, Lara did not think of Mance Bracknell, nor of the strangely vicious man who called himself Dante Alexios. She did not think of Bishop Danvers or her husband, really, or even of herself. She thought of their son. Only Victor, Jr. He was the only one who mattered now.
SUNRISE
The rim of the slowly rising Sun was like molten lava pouring heat into the tractor’s little bubble of a cab. Yamagata saw that Alexios was steering directly toward the sunrise and the yawning rift.
“What are you doing?” he demanded.
Turning the lumbering vehicle just before it reached the edge of the fault line, Alexios leaned on the brakes. The tractor ground to a halt.
“We get off here,” he said.
“I thought—”
“Let’s stretch our legs a little,” said Alexios, popping the hatch on his side of the glassteel bubble.
Although he felt nothing inside his spacesuit, Yamagata realized that all the air in the cabin immediately rushed into the vacuum outside. Alexios turned back toward him and tapped the keypad on the wrist of his spacesuit. Yamagata heard the man’s voice in his helmet earphones, “We’ll have to use the suit radios to speak to one another now.”
“You intend to kill me, then?” Yamagata asked as he opened the hatch on his side.
“You murdered four million people,” Alexios said, his voice strangely soft, almost amused. “I think executing you is a simple act of justice.”
“I see.” Yamagata clambered slowly down from his seat to the hard, rock-strewn, airless ground. I’m in the hands of a madman, he thought.
“In case you’re wondering,” Alexios said as he walked around the tractor toward Yamagata, “your suit radio won’t reach the base. Not without the tractor’s relay, and I’ve disabled the tractor’s outgoing frequency.”
“I can’t call for help, then,” said Yamagata.
“Neither can I.” With that, Alexios touched a control stud on his suit and the tractor started up again, silently churning up puffs of dust from the ground, and started trundling away from them.
“You’re not going with it?” Yamagata asked, surprised.
“No, I’ll stay here with you. We’ll die together. Back at the base they’ll see the tractor’s beacon and think everything is normal. Until it’s too late.”
Yamagata almost laughed. “This is a simple act of justice?”
“Maybe not so simple, after all,” Alexios agreed. “I’ve been dispensing justice for several days, but I don’t quite seem to have the proper knack for it.”
Alexios stepped closer to him. Yamagata backed away a few steps, then realized the edge of the fault rift was close behind him.
“Dispensing justice?” he asked, stalling for time to think. “What do you mean?”
“Molina and Danvers,” Alexios answered easily. “I’m the one who brought those Martian rocks here. I led Molina to them and he took the bait like the fool that he is.”
“And Danvers?”
“I put the blame on him. Now they’re both heading back to Earth in disgrace.”
“You’ve deliberately ruined their careers.”
“They deserve it. They destroyed my life, the two of them. They took everything I had.”
He’s insane, Yamagata told himself. The tractor was dwindling slowly, lumbering off toward the disturbing close edge of the horizon.
“Message for Mr. Yamagata.” He heard the voice of the base controller in his helmet’s earphones. “From the captain of the freighter
Alexios spread his gloved hands. “We can’t reply to them.”
“Then what—”
The controller didn’t wait for an acknowledgement. “Here’s the incoming message, sir.”
Yamagata heard a soft click and then a different voice spoke. “Sir! I apologize for interrupting whatever you are doing, illustrious sir. The captain thought you would want to know that one of the passengers aboard ship has committed suicide. Bishop Danvers slit his throat in the lavatory of his cabin. The place is a bloody mess.”
Yamagata stared hard at Alexios, but only saw his own reflection in the heavily tinted visor of the spacesuit’s helmet.
“Thank you for the information,” he said, in a near whisper.
“They can’t hear you,” Alexios reminded him.
The base controller’s voice returned. “Is there any reply to the message, Mr. Yamagata? Sir? Can you hear me?”
Alexios walked to the rim of the rift. Damn! he said to himself. If they don’t hear anything back they’ll start worrying about us.
“Mr. Yamagata? Mr. Alexios? Reply, please.”
If they send out a rescue team they’ll go after the tractor, Alexios thought. It won’t be until they find that we’re not on it that they’ll start hunting for us.
He gripped the arm of Yamagata’s suit. “Come on, we’re going to take a little walk.”
Yamagata resisted. “Where do you want to take me?”
Pointing with his free hand, Alexios said, “Down there, to the bottom of the rift. With the Sun coming up you’ll be more comfortable sheltered from direct sunlight. It’ll be cooler down there, only a couple of hundred degrees Celsius in the shade.”
“You wish to prolong my execution?”
“I wish to prevent our being rescued,” Alexios replied.
Yamagata stepped to the edge of the rift. Inside the spacesuit it was difficult to see straight down, but the chasm’s slope didn’t seem terribly steep. Rugged, though, he saw. A slip of the foot could send me tumbling down to the bottom. If that didn’t rupture my suit and kill me quickly, it might damage my radiators and life support pack enough to let me boil in my own juices.
He looked back at Alexios, standing implacably next to him. “After you,” Alexios said, gesturing toward the edge of the rift.
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.
