Part 42 (1/2)

'Friend,' she interrupted. 'What's my name?'

[Lauren.]

'Have you ever called me Lori before?'

[Yes, Lauren. Minutes ago, when you were resting in your hibernaculum, I called you Lori.]

'Why?'

[Because my basic programming had been overridden by a transposition of alien concepts...]

'Stop. I believe you. Is Gary still asleep?'

[Yes, Lauren.]

'Could you kill him for me using his hibernaculum?' she asked.

[No, Lauren. My basic programs forbid such an action.]

'What if I tell you Gary is trying to kill me?'

[You may tell me that.]

'Gary is trying to kill me. Now can you kill him for me?'

[My basic programs forbid such an action.]

'But don't you have to protect me?'

[Yes, Lauren. It is one of my prime functions. It is also one of my prime functions to protect Gary.]

'Who's more important?' she asked, not really expecting an answer.

[Gary is more important as far as the mission is concerned.]

'What if I told you Gary is a Martian?'

[You may tell me that.]

'Gary is a Martian. He's no longer Gary. He just looks like Gary. He's dangerous. Manipulate the flow of blood through his hibernaculum in such a way that it kills him. That is a direct order, Friend. Do it now.'

[I cannot, Lauren.]

'Why not?'

[Your remarks are not logical. You have not given me reason enough to override my basic programs.} 'I told you, Gary is not Gary. He's a f.u.c.king Martian!'

[There are no f.u.c.king Martians, Lauren.]

It was useless arguing with a machine, even when he was on your side. She considered having Friend rouse Mark, but that would take hours, and Mark would be the last one in the solar system capable of killing Gary.

'Friend, do you still have control of the Hawk's systems?'

[No, Lauren.]

She had foreseen the possibility before she had set off the dynamite. It meant she was locked out of the Nova. She would have to crawl out the hole into s.p.a.ce and make her way to the Nova's exterior airlock. She ordered Friend to prepare for her unorthodox entry and undid her seat belts.

The rip created by the blast was wide and Lauren had no trouble making her way into the starry night. Immediately she began to drift, though, and had to grab for her very life. A false step now and she would join the family of asteroids. In the dark she searched for handles, but in designing the Hawk's nose, the engineers had been concerned with other qualities besides EVA anchors. However, as she rounded the s.h.i.+p's top point, raw sunlight burst before her over the hull and she was able to find protrusions to grab hold of. She turned her back on the harsh light and pulled herself toward the Nova. Mars shone to her port side, approximately four times as large as the Moon as seen from Earth, and a hundred times more visible than she would have preferred. For a moment Lauren suffered from the illusion that they were actually returning to the red planet, and not racing away from it at thousands of miles an hour. It was not a pleasant illusion.

Approaching the Nova, Lauren noted where the antenna dish had been sheared off. What a fool she had been to think the pinpoint collision was an accident! Torn metal drifted near where the antenna had attached, standing at odd angles in the windless cosmos, casting hard shadows on the s.h.i.+p's silver hull. Repair was out of the question, but she was one fool that was learning fast.

When Lauren reached the Nova's airlock her fatigue caused by the growing strength of the Antabolene in her bloodstream came within an inch of overwhelming her. It was all she could do to drag herself inside the airlock and hit the right b.u.t.ton. But as the atmosphere tore against her pressure, she did doze, even though she knew it could be her death to do so. But perhaps it was that fear that brought the dream, for it was hideous. The cosmonaut's gouged eyes floated in a sea of red lava, searching for her on a molten sh.o.r.e. Only now they were beautiful blue eyes, like Jennifer's. They were searching for her to show her what was left of her sister's body. Ashes, Lori, burnt ashes. And it's your fault.

Lauren awoke with a scream in her throat.

She ordered Friend to open the airlock door, and drifted into the axis of the Nova. She floated weightless at the center of the s.h.i.+p, yet weightlessness didn't keep her from shaking. When she came to the ladder that led to the rim, where the hibernaculums were, she told herself that Gary was already dead, that he had been murdered on the frozen Martian plateau. Very good, my love. Drink all you want. There's lots. She began to weep, contemplating what was to come.

'Is he still asleep, Friend?' she asked.

[Yes, Lauren.]

Lauren climbed toward the hub. The invisible threads of gravity returned along with the weight of the final confrontation. Time pa.s.sed slowly, yet all too soon she stood next to his body. It was only a body, she told herself, a helpless vehicle possessed by a hateful spirit of ancient origin. Yet she did not believe it. He was still Gary to her: the boyish face that would never grow up; the curly dark hair she always wanted to run her fingers through; the strong muscles that were always ready to wrestle with her. He appeared so frail to her right then, fast asleep with half of his left arm missing. Gary had made no cowardly decision to live forever. He had trusted in her wisdom. Maybe she was wrong, after all. She had been wrong so many times already. Maybe he wasn't a Martian ...

No!

She couldn't listen to the arguments, especially her own. If she had not argued with Jim in the first place, there might have been a few more of them returning home. Gary was dead. She was only giving sustenance to a mirage to think otherwise. But now there was a gruesome decision to be made. How was she supposed to do it? She was no Van Helsing and she had nothing to make into a wooden stake. Yet did the exorcism need to be so messy? When the flesh was destroyed, surely the possession vanished. Legends-they were only stories. Plus she'd never read a vampire story that praised a laser bolt above a wooden stake, yet Ivan and Jessica could have testified to the advantages of high-tech hardware.

Lauren's fatigue made it difficult to think clearly. But the limits of the flesh, she kept saying to herself. The limits of the flesh. The physical laws of the universe didn't have to all be tossed out just because there were vampires running around on the fourth planet. If she killed him, she killed him. He would be dead, totally dead. It didn't matter how she did it. There was no way she was sticking something sharp through his chest. The government would lock her in a tiny room for the rest of her life if they saw that she had desecrated Gary's body.

Finally convinced she knew what she was doing, Lauren crossed to her medical cabinet. There she climbed out of her pressure suit and stood scantily clad before the rows of drugs. There were so many ways to kill a man She needed something simple, something she might be able to explain away as a hibernaculum failure. She picked up a bottle of pota.s.sium. A high dose of pota.s.sium would overload the heart by backing up the kidneys and toxifying the blood. Simple. Neat. Perfect.

Lauren reached for a syringe and stabbed the needle through the cork at the top of the bottle. She drew off ten cc's, two hundred milli-equivalents, enough to kill a dozen men. She would tell NASA it had been a very nasty hibernaculum failure. She also grabbed a scalpel and put it in her pocket. If Gary tried to get up, she would slit his throat wide open and to h.e.l.l with what NASA thought.

Lauren crossed back to Gary's hibernaculum. There she leaned over the clear lid and deactivated the artificial kidney mechanism. She couldn't have the pota.s.sium filtered out of his system as quickly as she put it in.

She was having a hard time. Her hands trembled. Her vision blurred. She took hold of the tubes that circulated his blood. She stared at his blood. It looked so red, so human. She took her syringe and thrust the needle into the tube leading into his vein and began to pump the pota.s.sium into his system: one cc, two cc's, three cc's.

[Lauren, are you awake?]

T know, Friend,' she said.

[Lauren, Gary's heart is under...]

'I know,' she repeated, hysteria entering her voice.

Eight cc's. Nine cc's. Ten cc's.