slice through skin and subcutaneous fat.
Mercer hadn't complained of a headache, as Jill had, but he'd had a fever and had coughed up a little blood.
Would his lungs show the effects of Marburg virus?
Again, Roman's diagonal cuts met below the xiphoid, and he sliced a shallow line down the abdomen to the pubis. Again he cut through the ribs, freeing up the triangular shield that covered the heart. He lifted the sternum.
Gasping, he stumbled backward, dropping his scalpel. It clanged onto the table. His assistants stood frozen in disbelief.
In Mercer's chest cavity was a cluster of blue-green cysts, identical to the cyst in Jill Hewitt's brain. They were massed around the heart, like tiny translucent eggs.
Roman stood paralyzed, his gaze fixed on the gaping torso.
Then his gaze shifted to the glistening peritoneal membrane. It distended, full of blood and bulging out through the abdominal incision.
Roman stepped toward the body, staring at the outpouching of the peritoneal membrane. When he'd made his incision through the abdominal wall, his scalpel had nicked the surface of that membrane. A trickle of blood- tinged fluid leaked out. At first it was barely a few drops. Then, even as they watched, it began to trickle into a stream. The slit suddenly burst open into a gaping rent as blood gushed out, carrying with it a slippery flood of blue-green cysts.
Roman gave a cry of horror as the cysts plopped onto the floor in splatters of blood and mucus.
One of them skittered across the concrete and bumped against Jack's rubber boot. He bent down, to touch it with his gloved hand.
Abruptly he was yanked backward as Roman's associates pulled him away from the table.
'Get him out of here!' Roman ordered. 'Get him out of the room!' The two men pushed Jack toward the door. He resisted, shoving away the gloved hand now grasping his shoulder. The man stumbled backward, tipped over a tray of surgical instruments, sprawled to the floor, slippery with cysts and blood.
The second man wrenched Jack's air hose from its connection and held up the kinked end. 'I advise you to walk out with us, Dr. McCallum,' he said. 'While you've still got breathable air.'
'My suit! Jesus, I've got a breach!' It was the man who'd stumbled into the instrument tray. He was now staring in horror at a two-inch-long tear in his space suit sleeve -- a sleeve that was coated with Mercer's body fluids.
'It's wet. I can feel it. My inner sleeve is wet -- '
'Go!' barked Roman. 'Decon now!' The man unplugged his suit and went running in panic out of the room. Jack followed him to the air lock door, and they both stepped through, into the decon shower. Water shot out of the overhead jets, pounding down like hard rain on their shoulders.
Then the shower of disinfectant began, a torrent of green liquid that splattered noisily against their plastic helmets.
When it finally stopped, they stepped through the next door and pulled off their suits. The man immediately peeled off his already wet scrub suit and thrust his arm under a faucet of running water, to rinse away any body fluids that had leaked through the sleeve.
'You have any breaks in your skin?' asked Jack. 'Cuts, hangnails?'
'My daughter's cat scratched me last night.'
Jack looked down at the man's arm and saw the claw marks, three scabbed lines raking up the inner arm. The same arm as the torn space suit. He looked at the man's eyes and saw fear.
'What happens now?' said Jack.
'Quarantine. I go to lockup. Shit ... '
'I already know it's not Marburg,' said Jack.
The man released a deep breath. 'No. It's not.'
'Then what is it? Tell me what we're dealing with,' said Jack.
The man clutched the sink with both hands and stared down at the water gurgling into the drain. He said softly, 'We don't know.'
Sullivan Obie was riding his Harley on Mars.
At midnight, with the full moon shining down and the pockmarked desert stretched out before him, he could imagine it was the Martian wind whipping his hair and red Martian dust churning beneath his tires. This was an old fantasy from boyhood, from the days when those precocious Obie brothers shot off homemade rockets and built cardboard moon landers and donned space suits of crinkled foil. The days when he and Gordie knew, just knew, their futures lay in the heavens.
And this is where those big dreams end up, he thought. Drunk on tequila, popping wheelies in the desert. No way was he ever getting to Mars, or to the moon either. Chances were he wouldn't get off the goddamn launchpad, but would be instantly atomized.
A quick, spectacular death. What the hell, it beat dying at seventy-five with cancer.
He skidded to a stop, his bike spitting up dirt, and stared the moonlit ripples of sand at Apogee II, gleaming like a streak silver, her nose cone pointed at the stars. They had moved her to the launchpad yesterday. It was a slow and celebratory procession, the dozen Apogee employees honking horns and beating on their car roofs as they followed the flatbed truck across the desert. she had finally been hoisted into position and everyone squinted up against the blazing sun to look at her, they had suddenly fallen silent.
They all knew this was the last roll of the dice. In weeks, when Apogee II lifted off, she would be carrying all their hopes and dreams.
And my sorry carcass as well, thought Sullivan.
A chill shot through him as he realized he might be staring at his own coffin.
He goosed the Harley and roared back toward the road, bouncing across dunes, leaping over dips. He rode with abandon, his recklessness fueled by tequila and by the sudden and unshakable certainty that he was already a dead man. That in three weeks he would be riding that rocket to oblivion. Until then, nothing touch him, nothing could hurt him.
The promise of death had made him invincible.
He accelerated, flying across the bleak moonscape of his boyhood fantasies. And here I am in the lunar rover, speeding across the Sea of Tranquility. Roaring up a lunar hill. Launching off to soft landing ... He felt the ground drop away. Felt himself soaring through the night, the Harley growling between his knees, the moon shining in his eyes. Still soaring. How far? How high?
The ground hit with such force he lost control and tumbled sideways, the Harley falling on top of him. For a moment he lay stunned, pinned between his bike and a flat rock. Well, this is fucking stupid position to be in, he thought.
Then the pain hit him. Deep and grinding, as though his hips were crushed to splinters.
He gave a cry and fell back, his face turned to the sky. The moon shone down, mocking him.
'His pelvis is fractured in three places,' said Bridget. 'The pinned it last night. They tell me he's gonna be confined to bed at least six weeks.' Casper Mulholland could almost hear the sound of his dreams popping, like the loud burst of a balloon. 'Six ... weeks?
'And then he'll be in rehab for another three or four months.'
'Four months?'
'For God's sake, Casper. Say something original.'
'We're screwed.' He slapped his palm against his forehead, as though to punish himself for daring to dream they could ever succeed. It was that old Apogee curse again, cutting them off at ankles just as they reached the finish line. Blowing up their rockets.
Burning down their first office. And now, taking their only pilot of commission. He paced the waiting room, thinking, Nothing has ever gone right for us. They'd invested all their combined savings, their reputations, and the last thirteen years of their lives.
God's way of telling them to give up. To cut their losses before something really bad happened.
