Part 37 (1/2)

'Do we have time?'

'We have time.' He took the laser and attached it to a hook on one of the pulleys they had originally used to lower the boat. He hoisted the weapon upward. 'The laser will be there when you reach the cave, but not before. If she's near, and she smiles at you with her teeth, blow her head off.'

Lauren didn't argue with him. Gary swatted her lightly on the b.u.t.t and she began to climb.

Pain. All she knew was pain. Mars not only had vampires; it had devils with red-hot pitchforks. They poked her left side every time she raised an arm, either arm. She existed in a universe where death would have been a pleasure. She tried not to breathe. She tried to think of green trees, blue skies, and blue lakes. She mastered each rung individually, playing every mind game she knew to block out her body. Finally she pulled herself over the edge of the cliff and into the cave. There she lay panting on the ground, swallowing another mouthful of blood.

'No sweat,' she told Gary.

He started up the ladder. Lauren rolled over and unhooked the laser from the pulley. She slipped the strap over her head. Gary was a distant flickering white dot. 'No sign of Jessica,' she said in her radio. 'How much time to Armageddon?'

'Fifteen minutes, twenty seconds. All the time in the world.'

'You're sure?'

'Yeah. We've nothing to worry about. This b.a.s.t.a.r.d planet...'

Gary didn't finish. Perhaps Mars had finally taken offense to his repeated swearing. Perhaps it was all just rotten coincidence. Olympus Mons shook its fist again.

The quake threw Lauren against the wall. She heard a surprised cry in her helmet, and then a dangerous silence. She sat up quickly, even before the shaking stopped, and crept to the edge.

'Gary?' She couldn't see his helmet light. 'Gary?'

Nothing to worry about.

'Gary!'

She heard a faint moan.

'Are you there, Gary? Please answer me if you can.'

'Still making house calls, Doc?'

'Gary! Where are you? I can't see your light.'

'I'm lying flat on my back on the boat. I fell. Was there another quake?'

'Yes.'

'Oh, no,' he muttered.

Tidal wave!

She raised the reception on her vocals. There it was - the far-off roar of a mountain of water cras.h.i.+ng from the bowels of the world.

'You've got to get up!' she cried. 'A wave's coming. Get on the ladder.'

'My arm's broken. I think the bone's gone through the skin. I know what you mean about pain, Doc'

'I'll come down and get you. Hold on.'

'No! That would be foolish. s.h.i.+ne the searchlight on me. I'll find the ladder.'

Lauren caught him in the beam. He rolled from his back onto his belly and crawled like a horse with polio. The thunder of the tsunami grew. 'Do hurry,' she whispered.

As Gary straightened and took hold of the ladder, she saw the gross disfigurement of his left arm. Below the elbow, it twisted away from his body at a thirty-degree angle, and hung useless. Yet he begun to climb nevertheless, in the way a small bug tries to climb a tall wall moments after being wounded by an old shoe. His progress was miserably slow at best.

'Is there anything I can do?' she asked a minute later, when he stopped on a rung and showed no sign of going on. The fury of the tidal wave was almost on them.

'Tell me I'm the most handsome astronaut in the solar system.'

'There's none like you, on any of the planets,' she said.

'Tell me you would have married me if I'd had a steady job.'

'I would marry you. I love you. Please hurry, Gary!'

'Yeah, I'm climbing to the top, babe.' He coughed. 'To the top.'

He moved up another couple of rungs, but then was forced to rest again. The wave was too fast for a cripple. Lauren watched as the water began to recede up the ca.n.a.l. Foam swelled in the black chasm.

'It's coming!' she cried.

'I know,' Gary said in resignation. He stood unmoving on the ladder. 'Get away from the edge, Lori.'

'I'm not leaving you!'

'The water could reach as high as you. Please move back. Under my bed, in a blue binder, I have extensive notes on the Hawk's controls. Read them carefully. You're going home, Lori.'

Within the narrow area of visibility created by the searchlight anch.o.r.ed at the edge of the cliff, a white-maned monster swelled. The ground beneath Lauren's feet shook and instinctively she found herself turning and fleeing up the cave.

'Gary!' she screamed.

'I'm thinking of you, Lori,' he said.

Lauren was two dozen strides into the cave when a thick hand of compressed air slapped her on the back and knocked her to the floor. An invisible hurricane of noise and wind and rain swept around her.

Then there was a deadly hush. The wave had pa.s.sed.

'Gary?' she said. 'Gary?'

There was no answer. Of course there was no answer.

Lauren stumbled back toward the edge and began to weep, the tears draining the last few drops of moisture from her parched system, was.h.i.+ng over a hard lump inside that she knew would never dissolve, not even if she cried to the end of time. She reached the edge and found the searchlight shattered. All was dark. All was silent. She could see nothing. There was nothing. Gary was dead.

'The most handsome astronaut in the whole solar system,' she said, and sniffed. 'But I wish you had been a librarian.'