She nodded. “I suppose it influenced me, made me come on the mission in the first place. I wasn’t going to have a conventional life, no matter how I played it.”

“You could’ve adopted.”

“You know the odds against a Percell getting children to bring up. Even in Hawaii.”

He said savagely, “Yeah, they sealed off everything from us, didn’t they?” The memory could still draw bitterness.

“I could’ve stayed…fought with the others…”

“You saw what happened.”

She nodded, sniffing, surprised at her own emotion. If I stay here I’ll cry. “We…really made the right choice, didn’t we? Coming?”

His voice was leaden, his face a mask. “I… I don’t know.”

She was shocked. Have I taken away his last fantasy? And with it gone, the tide of despair rushes in?

“Carl, you can’t think that. We’ve survived, we’ve managed to—”

“Look, I’d… I’d rather not talk right now. Okay? Just… want to be alone.” He visibly pulled himself together, struggled to regain some of the confident manner of leadership that had become like a second skin to him… however easily it had peeled away, just now. “I appreciate your telling me. I can understand you better now, and at least that’s something.”

“Carl, I.”

“I’ve got plenty more to do here,” he said bluntly. “Maybe later.”

Speechless, Virginia held out her hands, then let them drift to her sides. “All… all right.”

She left quickly, her mind aswirl with conflicting emotions. Somehow she had had to tell him, and yet if it stripped away too much, damaged him…

She had been fooled by his public face of assurance and control. Beneath that, Carl had really changed very little. He had grown as the situation demanded, but not the inner Carl. That Carl had nursed a fantasy, and now she had toppled it.

She loped across the ice, putting her confusion into exercise, a coasting mote moving across a plain the color of a blank television screen.

—Virginia, —JonVon’s well-modulated voice came when she was halfway to the lock. —There are coded transmissions from near your present location.—

“Coded?” She stopped and looked around. Nobody in sight, except a few hydro workers trudging off after their shift. On the horizon one of Jim Vidor’s faery towers spiked at the stars. Farther away a launcher thrummed, driving them gradually, imperceptibly, toward the encounter with Mars. “What do you mean?”

—I broke the code, a juvenile little algorithm. The messages are quite excited and not altogether intelligible. They mention your name and Carl Osborn s.—

“Look, monitor it and try to track the source. I’ve got other things on my mind right now”

She glanced back at the dome and saw through its smudged translucence two figures confronting each other under the brilliant lights.

Carl, suited and gesturing. The second, in a simple robe…she was sure it was Saul.

With Carl in such a state… I wish I could warn Saul. This is definitely not the time to bother Carl with some detail.

Something was wrong. Saul waved his hands, then lurched to the side, as if to leave.

Virginia frowned. Saul looked sick… and something was odd about the way he moved.

Carl took a step forward and Saul pushed him away. Virginia wished she were back in her lab, could tap immediately into one of the worker robos inside the dome, listen in.

The men were shouting at each other, Saul gesturing wildly, pushing. He collided with the towering glass wall.

The dome split! At that moment a blue flash cut down it, ripping the pressure sheet, showering livid yellow sparks. Air gushed out soundlessly, a pearly fog exploding into a ball that rose and grew and shredded. Howcould a man shatter… Thenshe realized.

Laser.

“Saul! Run to the airlock!” But he couldn’t hear her, of course. Saul wasn’t wearing a suit.

Carl sprinted toward the lock, where the helmets were stored.

Saul stumbled, confused, and fell into a mass of vegetation. He got back to his feet among the boiling tangle of plants, but did not seem to know what to do, where he could find pressure again. The lock was only a hundred meters away, but in the disorientating plunge to vacuum the brain gave conflicting signals.

Virginia was running, shouting, without taking her eyes off Saul. His robe flapped above bone-white flanks, he lurched awkwardly—away from the lock, toward the split in the dome. He was mindlessly following the gale that swept past him, sending his brown hair streaming before his eyes, tossing the plants in a whipping gale.

Carl had reached the lock. He ducked inside, slammed the hatch. It would take him at least a minute to find a helmet, get some air into his lungs …

Virginia ran furiously, slipping maddeningly off the ice.

“Saul—no! Saul—”

She knew the effects of vacuum and cold, rupturing the blood vessels in the lungs, freezing the body’s cells, bursting the delicate membranes in eyes and ears, wreaking bloody havoc throughout the body…

He stumbled toward the shattered lip of the dome, drawn by the sucking storm. She was still running when he fell among the upright shards.

Carl rushed past her. But when they reached the crumpled figure, stiffly contorted in a position of tortured agony, they could see sharp, glassy daggers protruding from his back. The deep cuts no longer even spurted scarlet. Purpling bruises, glassy complexion. Blank, open eyes.

The dome crew came running from the far lock, bringing first-aid equipment. Too late.

How strange he looks, Virginia thought. He had always seemed craggy, time-worn but triumphant. Now he seemed unblemished, young, his face smooth, as if years had been erased by the soothing hand of Death.

He had always been a problem-solver, a man who reflexively reacted to the unknown by breaking it into understandable pieces. Then Carl would carefully solve each small puzzle, confident that the sum of such microproblems would finally resolve the larger confusions. What’d they call it at Caltech? A “linear superposition, with separable variables”? Yeah, that’s my kind of stuff. Ol’ can-do Carl.

He slammed his fist into the foamweb wall of Dome 3. But I can’t fix the past. I can’t bring Saul back. I can’t even comfort Virginia.

She sat among some wilted stems of just-harvested rhubarb, staring into space. Her red-rimmed eyes had lone since cleared of tears and now she was drawn, exhausted, numb. The dome crew had taken Saul’s body way, and in the confusion Virginia had dropped into silence, ashen and listless. Lani Nguyen sat with her, murmuring softly, an arm around Virginia’s shoulders.

Lain and Jeffers had arrived only moments after Saul’s death, responding to Carl’s Mayday call. There was no sign of whoever had fired the laser that punctured the dome. Lani and Jeffers had met no opposition as they sprinted from the nearest shaft. The comm radio carried no news. The dome crew, well seasoned by meteorite punctures, had replaced the shattered wall and resealed the dome quickly. Atmosphere was building to nearly normal.

Jeffers said sourly, “I still can’t figure it.”

Carl blinked, self-absorbed. “What?”

“Why Saul didn’t react when the dome popped. He’s older, sure, but we’ve had plenty trainin’ with leaks in the shafts. How come Saul didn’t follow you?”

“He was disoriented even before that. He came up through the waste hatch over there, mumbling.”

“That’s crazy.” Jeffers shook his head. “The waste hatch?”

“He must’ve taken it as some sort of shortcut. Maybe he knew Virginia was talking to me and—” Carl stopped. He didn’t want to reveal what Virginia had said, or pursue the thought that Saul was trying to stop her. It’s all so damned jumbled up! Why should Saul care about Virginia’s telling me? Or was Saul’s arrival—too late—an accident?