“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 protected at all costs. Even at the cost of my own life. My son has done a great wrong, but killing him will not make things right.
On they walked. With each step it seemed to grow hotter. Down at the bottom of the fault rift they were in shadow, yet the Sun’s glaring brilliance crept inexorably down the chasm’s wall, as slow and inescapable as fate. They could see the glaring line of sunlit rock inching down toward them; it made the rock face look almost molten hot. The heat increased steadily, boiling the juices out of them. Alexios heard his suit fans notch up to a higher pitch, and then a few minutes later go still higher. Even so he was drenched with perspiration, blinking constantly to keep the stinging sweat out of his eyes. He licked his lips and tasted salt. Wish I had a margarita, he thought. Then he realized how foolish that was. Maybe I’m getting delirious.
Yamagata kept moving doggedly along.
“Let’s rest a couple of minutes,” Alexios said to him.
“You rest, if you wish. I’m not tired.”
Not tired? Alexios thought that Yamagata was simply being macho, unwilling or perhaps unable to show weakness to a man he took to be an inferior. He’s older than I am, Alexios told himself. A lot older. Of course, he must have had all sorts of rejuve therapies. Or maybe he’s just too damned stubborn to admit he’s tired, too.
The heat was getting bad. Despite the suit’s insulation and internal air conditioning, Alexios was sloshing. His legs felt shaky, his vision blurred from the damned sweat. He could feel the Sun’s heat pressing him down, like the breath of a blast furnace, like a torrent of molten steel pouring over him. Still Yamagata plowed ahead steadily, as if nothing at all was bothering him. Blast it all, Alexios thought. If he can do it, so can I. And he trudged along behind the older man.
Until, hours later, the harsh unfiltered rays of the Sun reached the fins of his suit’s radiator.
DEATH WISHES
Yamagata stumbled, up ahead of him. Alexios reached for the spacesuited figure but he was too slow. Yamagata pitched forward and, in the dreamlike slow-motion of Mercury’s low gravity, hit the ground: knees first, then his outstretched hands, finally his body and helmeted head.
Alexios heard him grunt as if he’d been hit by a body blow. The rift was narrow here; there was barely room for him to step beside the fallen man without scraping his radiator fins on the steep rocky wall of the chasm.
“Are you all right?”
“If I were all right I’d be on my feet,” Yamagata retorted, “instead of lying here on my belly.”
The bottom of the rift was half in sunlight now, the huge rim of the Sun peering down at them now like a giant unblinking eye, like the mouth of a red-hot oven. Alexios was so hot inside his suit that he felt giddy, weak. Blinking away sweat, he peered at Yamagata’s backpack. It looked okay. Radiator fins undamaged. No loose hoses.
“I can’t seem to move my legs,” Yamagata said.
“I’ll help you up.”
It was difficult to bend in the hard-shell suit. Alexios tried to reach down and grasp Yamagata by the arm.
“Put your hands beneath you and push up,” he said. “I’ll help.”
They both tried, grunting, moaning with strain. After several minutes Yamagata was still on his belly and Alexios sank down to a sitting position beside him, exhausted, totally drained.
“It’s… not going to … work,” he panted.
Yamagata said. “My nose is bleeding. I must have bumped it on the visor when I fell.”
“Let’s rest a few minutes, then try again.”
“I have no strength left.”
Alexios turned his head slightly and sucked on the water nipple inside his helmet. Nothing. Either it was blocked or he’d drunk the last of his suit’s water supply. It’s all coming out as sweat, he said to himself.
“There ought to be some way to recondense our sweat and recycle it back into drinkable water,” he mused.
“An engineer’s mind never stops working,” said Yamagata.
“Fat lot of good it does us.”
“You should record the idea, however,” said Yamagata, “so that whoever finds us will be able to act on it.”
“A tycoon’s mind never stops working,” Alexios muttered.
“This tycoon’s mind will stop soon enough.”
Alexios was too hot and tired to argue the point. We’re being baked alive, he thought. The suits’ life support systems are running down.
“What do you think will kill us,” Yamagata asked, “dehydration or suffocation, when our air runs out?”
Squeezing his eyes shut to block out the stinging sweat, Alexios replied, “I think we’ll be parboiled by this blasted heat.”
Yamagata was silent for a few moments. Then, “Do you think the base has sent out a search team?”
“Probably, by now. They’ll follow the tractor’s beacon, though.”
“But when they find the tractor is empty…?”
Alexios desperately wanted to lean back against the rock wall, but was afraid it would damage his radiators. “Then they’ll start looking for us. They’ll have to do that on foot, or in tractors. We’ll be dead by the time they find us.”
“Hmm,” Yamagata murmured. “Don’t you think they could hear our suit radios?”
“Down in this rift? Not likely.”
“Then we will die here.”
“That’s about the size of it.”
After several silent minutes Yamagata asked, “Is your sense of justice satisfied?”
Alexios thought it over briefly. “All I really feel right now is hot. And tired. Bone tired. Tired of everything, tired of it all.”
“I too.”
“Vengeance isn’t much consolation for a man,” Alexios admitted.
“Better to have built the starship.”
“Better to have built the skytower.”
“Yes,” said Yamagata. “It is better to create than destroy.”
“I’ll drink to that.”
Yamagata chuckled weakly. “A bottle of good champagne would be very fine right now.”
“Well chilled.”
“Yes, ice cold and sparkling with bubbles.”
“That’s not going to happen.”
“No, I fear not.”
“Maybe we should just open the suits and get it over with. I’m broiling in here.”
Yamagata said, “First I want to record my last will and testament, but I can’t reach the keypad on my wrist. Can you assist me?”
Alexios let out a weary breath, then slowly rolled over onto all fours and crawled over the gritty ground to Yamagata’s extended left hand. It took all his strength to move less than two meters. At last he reached his outstretched arm and pressed the record tab on the wrist keypad. In his earphones he heard a faint click and then a deadness as Yamagata’s suit-to-suit frequency shut off.
Lying there on his own belly now, head to helmeted head with Yamagata, Alexios thought, Last will and testament. Not a bad idea. With his last iota of strength, he turned his own suit radio to the recording frequency and began speaking, slowly, his throat dry, his voice rasping, offering his final words to the woman he had loved.