Mercury

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.

She began sobbing softly, wondering what she should do now, what she could do. She felt surrounded by death.

Then she heard footsteps pounding up the stairs and before she could dab at her eyes with a tissue the bedroom door flung open and Victor, Jr., burst in.

“Daddy’s home!” the eight-year-old announced, as if it was the most glorious event in history. “He’s parking his car in the driveway.”

Lara got to her feet and smiled for her son. Life goes on, she told herself. Life goes on.

Sitting alone in the dim shadows of the small, teak-paneled office of his privacy suite, where not even the oldest family retainer dared to interrupt him, Nobuhiko Yamagata listened in stony silence to his father’s gasping, grating final words.

He knows that I caused the skytower to fall, Nobuhiko said to himself. He blames himself for teaching me to be ruthless. How like my father: credit or blame, he takes it all for himself.

“…four million deaths,” the elder Yamagata’s voice was rasping. “That is a heavy burden to bear, my son.”

Nobu nodded. Unbidden, a childhood memory rushed upon him. He was six years old, and he had run down one of the house’s cats with his electric go-cart. His father loomed before him, his face stern. Young Nobu admitted he’d killed the cat, and even confessed that it was no accident; he’d deliberately tried to hit the animal.

“I thought it would get out of my way,” he said. “It was too fat and lazy to save itself.”

Father’s face showed surprise for an instant, then he regained his self-control. “That creature’s life was in your hands,” he said. “It was your responsibility to protect it, not to kill it. The world is filled with fat and lazy creatures. You have no right to kill them simply because they get in your way.” And he walked away from his son. No punishment, although Nobu drove his go-cart with greater care afterward. For a while.

“Four million deaths,” his father’s voice rasped from the audio speaker. “And mine, too. I’m dying because of the skytower.”

Nobu’s eyes widened. Father! I’ve murdered you!

Aloud, he cried, “What have I done? What have I done?”

As if he could hear his son’s sudden anguish, Saito Yamagata gasped, “If you have any… feelings for me … come to Mercury. Finish … my work. Please, Nobu. Give us… the stars.”

His father’s voice went silent. Nobuhiko sank back against his desk chair. The intimate office was lit only by the lamp on his desk, a single pool of light against the shadows.

Nobu fingered the controls in his chair’s armrest that turned the office ceiling transparent. Leaning his head back, he saw the stars glittering in the dark night sky.

Father went to Mercury to atone for his sins, Nobuhiko thought. Now he expects me to do the same to atone for my own.

His lips curled into an ironic smile. Leave everything and traipse off to Mercury to build power satellites that will propel a starship. How like Father. Always trying to make me live up to my responsibilities.

Nobu got to his feet. I suppose I could direct the star project from here, he thought. I can visit Mercury but I don’t have to remain there permanently.

He knew he was fooling himself. As he left his office and rejoined his family, he wondered how long it would take to travel to Alpha Centauri.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

My thanks once again to Jeff Mitchell, who really is a rocket scientist from MIT; to Steven Howe, as bright and innovative a physicist as I ever met; and to David Gerrold, whose description of a “beanstalk” in his novel Jumping Off the Planet is the best I have seen—true friends in need, each one of them.

The epigraphs heading the prologue and main sections of this novel are from William Shakespeare, Sonnets 29 and 123; Edgar Allan Poe, “The Conqueror Worm”; John Dryden, “Absalom and Achitophel”; and Shakespeare again, Titus Andronicus, Act II, Scene 3.