Mercury

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