'He kissed me. He said I was his bride. He kissed me till I was bleeding and I liked it. I loved it, Lauren. I loved him sucking on me. I loved it dripping down my neck and over my...'

'Shut up!' Lauren cried.

Jessica fell silent, and went rigid again, except for her face, where there now crawled a spirit of pure loathing. Her lips pulled back over her teeth and stayed there as if they were pinned with needles.

Lauren sobbed. 'Oh, G.o.d, he drank your blood. s.h.i.t. s.h.i.t!'

'He never hurt me!' Jessica shrieked. 'He never hurt n.o.body! You think he killed Jim, but that's a lie! A devil's lie! Of course he came and sucked me. I'm his woman!'

Lauren roused herself and her weapon. Jessica was moving closer again. Ten feet. Eight feet. 'Stop,' Lauren snapped.

'You are a b.i.t.c.h! I saw you sleeping with Gary. I heard you plotting to kill my man.'

'One more step and I'll shoot,' Lauren said. 'I swear it.'

Jessica reached out her arms, reaching for her. 'Where's Bill?'

Lauren breathed. 'No closer, Jessie.'

'Where is he, Lauren?' Five feet.

Lauren shook her head. 'No.'

'Where is he, b.i.t.c.h?' Four feet.

'I don't know!'

Jessica was about to touch the tip of the laser. 'You murdered him!'

'Don't make me,' Lauren pleaded, pressing her back against the damp wall.

'Murdering harlot!'

'No, Jessie!'

Jessica lunged. Lauren pulled the trigger. The fire came, a cracking bolt of red thunder. It went through Jessica's body like a knife going through soft b.u.t.ter. Jessica was instantly sliced in two. Lumps of steaming flesh splattered the walls of the cave. Jessica's two main sections teetered at the edge of the cliff for a moment, as if held together by invisible threads, or a will that refused to die. Then the pieces toppled and were gone. Far away there came two distinct splashes. Lauren briefly glanced at the cindered intestines that lay scattered at her feet. She also noticed, without much interest, that the laser had torn away a chunk of the wall. Splintered fragments of stone mixed in with the gore, smoking faintly. Still, Lauren felt no relief. She didn't even feel sick anymore. She just felt cold and empty.

Jessie. My friend Jessie.

Four minutes to detonation.

Lauren fell to her knees and began to pray.

'I love you, Jenny. I'm sorry I won't be coming home. I'm sorry I won't be there to watch you grow up. Things just didn't work out for me this time. Things just went bad, real bad. I should never have left you. Jenny, promise me that you will never forget...'

Lauren sprang to her feet.

Quickly she backed away from the edge.

A gloved hand had suddenly appeared at the top of the rope ladder.

The dead seemed so alive.

Her terror was complete. It led beyond reason, into the easy to find but difficult to leave sanctuary called madness. She watched without the strength or the will to use the laser's last charge as a second gloved hand appeared.

This one was covered with blood.

THIRTY.

There should have been nothing to comprehend. The thing that was emerging was coming out of a place where neither the living or the dead could exist. The hands were followed by a helmeted head. Lauren did not move. A torso came next, followed by legs and feet. The thing stood in the dark, a black creature devoid of characteristics. It was Ivan. No, it was Bill. Jessica. It was all of them. They were all one, and it didn't matter that the books had different names for them. Ghouls and succubi and werewolves - they were always hungry and thirsty.

Lauren finally broke from her paralysis and dropped to one knee, steadying the laser on the middle of her thigh. She aimed for the heart and pulled the trigger.

Nothing happened. She tried again. Nothing. Then she realized: she was holding the same laser she had used on Ivan. The president had said there were only three shots to a clip. They had never recharged the gun, and by chance, Jim had chosen this particular laser to be their ace in the hole. What a f.u.c.kup.

Lauren turned and ran, or at least she tried to run. The floor was wet and slippery, and her knee was shot. She slipped and fell. The thing behind her took a step toward her. It was the oldest of all nightmares - the monster at her back and she the victim unable to run away. Cringing into a shivering ball, finally giving up, she knew that if she pinched herself she wouldn't wake up on Earth. The creature took another step toward her.

It didn't attack her, however, and it made Lauren wonder. She raised her head and glanced over her shoulder. Still the dripping figure made no hostile move. It was injured. Its left arm was horribly twisted.

'Gary?' Lauren whispered.

He groaned, then fell to the floor.

'Gary!' she cried.

She jumped up and knelt to cradle his head in her arms. He grimaced as he tried to smile, but he had not lost his sense of humor. 'Surf's up, Doc,' he mumbled.

'Gary, you're supposed to be dead. But you're alive!'

'If only I'd had my board.'

In the light of her helmet, she could see that his thermal underwear beneath his pressure suit was soaked red. 'Your poor arm - I've got to stop the bleeding.'

'No,' he said weakly. He tried to rise. 'The time?'

She had forgotten about the bomb. 'We have three minutes. Can you travel?'

He nodded. 'We've got to get around the bend in the cave.'

Leaning on each other for support, they limped away from the edge of the cliff. They had gone less than two hundred yards when they discovered Hummingbird, parked with its nose pointed toward the ca.n.a.l. Moaning in pain, Gary fell in the pa.s.senger's seat. Lauren jumped behind the controls.

Two minutes to detonation.

In order to turn Hummingbird around, she realized, they had to fly back out over the ca.n.a.l. Calling upon her hours of training in an abandoned parking lot outside of Houston, Lauren activated the jets beneath the hovercraft and gripped the steering control that stuck like an oversized manual stickshift directly in front of her. The power to the jets was regulated by an ordinary foot pedal. Hummingbird bobbed off the ground and floated forward. Gary mumbled something that she didn't make out. Perhaps it had been a warning, for as soon as they floated past the edge of the cliff, Hummingbird began to sink, slowly at first, and then like a rock.

Lauren realized in an instant what had happened. Once they had left the ground behind, they had lost the added buoyancy of their trapped air cushion. As the black water rushed to meet them, she floored the foot pedal. It was well she did. For several seconds a powerful spray shot out all around them. Then they began to rocket toward the ceiling. Lauren quickly took her foot off the pedal and turned the craft around before they could begin to fall again. She applied medium power to the jets, and let Hummingbird settle in midair just beyond the end of the cave.

She checked their time.

Thirty seconds.

Yet their calculations were wrong. Even as she studied her watch, the bomb exploded. Searing light flashed from the direction of the cavern, so bright that it obliterated everything else. Lauren floored the pedal and Hummingbird leaped forward at high speed. One second into the tunnel, the shock wave hit, an almighty fist of blasted air. The tunnel shook violently. It was next to impossible to steer. Behind them a new wave rushed up the ca.n.a.l, a wave of fire, turning the black waters to shining steam. The steam shot around them on all sides, instantly raising the internal temperature of their pressure suits to that of an oven. But Lauren had gone through too much to let Hummingbird smash into the walls. She rode the wave of fire, and they survived.

In the bas.e.m.e.nt of the Hawk, on the same table where Lauren had cut out James Ranoth's heart, Gary Wheeler lay on his back. The bones of his fractured left arm protruded through his skin four inches above the back of the wrist. He was unconscious. Using a scalpel and a scissors, Lauren cut off the arm of his pressure suit and then his undershirt. A quick examination showed he had torn tendons and a severed median nerve. He needed surgery, she knew, a blood transfusion, and water. She could already see that his hand and arm would never be the same.

Lauren crossed to the part of her medical cabinet that had survived the rough landing. She selected hypodermics, narcotics, st.i.tches, and a small bottle of glucose solution. She had only one of the latter, and she knew she would need ten of them to rehydrate him fully. She started an IV, and gave him a light anesthesia. She doubted he would wake during the operation; he was out cold. It was a miracle he was even alive, she thought. During their flight from the ca.n.a.l, while he phased in and out of consciousness, he had explained how he had tied himself to the rope ladder, and thus survived the tsunami. He also mentioned how a soft spongy sack hit him after the wave had pa.s.sed. She hadn't told him it had been a piece of Jessica.

At present it was dark outside. The wind howled, blasting the exterior hull with snow. For an almost airless planet, Mars was sure delivering plenty of environmental abuse. Lauren sat on a stool beside the table, too weak to stand, and began to cut through Gary's arm with her scalpel. She prayed that he didn't die on the table.

Lauren awoke on the couch in the living area to moans of pain. She checked the clock. Four hours had pa.s.sed since she had put in Gary's last st.i.tches. She tried to sit up but immediately doubled over in pain. She had forgotten her broken ribs. A pity they had not forgotten her. The dry heaves that followed did not help matters. She staggered down the ladder to the bas.e.m.e.nt.

Gary rocked on the table in a nightmare. He had yanked out the IV attached to the now empty glucose bottle. His left arm was bandaged, locked in a brace. She touched his forehead. It was hot.

'Gary,' she said. 'Wake up. Can you hear me?'

His thrashing subsided. He opened his glazed eyes. 'I'm cold, Lori,' he whispered. 'My hand is so cold. I'm thirsty. Ahh!'

An intense spasm of pain gripped him. Lauren was at a loss. She had hoped he would awaken strong enough to pilot the Hawk into orbit. Apparently the loss of blood and the dehydration had weakened his system more than she had antic.i.p.ated. Lauren took hold of his shoulders.

'Listen to me,' she said. 'You've got to get up. We've got to get back to the Nova. I can't help you here.'

The spasm continued. Veins bulged at his neck. It was as if his body was in one ma.s.sive cramp. 'No!' he cried. 'The cold. Make it stop, Lori. Help me!'

She could not bear to see him suffering so. She prepared a shot of morphine and injected him in the vein on his right arm. Within a couple of minutes he began to relax, and soon he was asleep. Lauren removed his bandages and studied his injury. Her puzzlement deepened. The broken skin surrounding his incision was a dark green, almost black. He had a serious infection, yet he had shown not a trace of one a few hours ago. What germ could have multiplied so swiftly? She sniffed. His arm smelled as if it was rotting.

Lauren reinserted his IV and changed his type antibiotics. She doubled the dosage. Then she took a knife and made a slit in the skin at the site of the infection, allowing the pus that dribbled out to collect on a slide. She studied the sample under a microscope, but didn't recognize the cells. One thing she did recognize, however. The cells appeared dead, yet they were multiplying.

Lauren took a blood sample from Gary. Here she found no sign of the cells, even though she subjected the blood to a number of tests. She was somewhat rea.s.sured. The infection was spreading, it was true, but it was still contained.

Lauren took the pus and prepared a culture. She wouldn't have been surprised if Ivan's face had started to grow in the center of it. Then she lay down on the floor beside Gary. She would awaken when he did.

She heard cries in the dark, and she was standing and holding his hand before she knew she was awake. Gary writhed like a frothing animal with rabies.

'It's Lauren,' she said, squeezing his uninjured hand. 'Can you hear me?' She turned on the light.

He awoke, shivering, fear in his eyes. 'I'm freezing. I'm cold-like them.'

Lauren examined his left arm. The infection had moved into his hand; it was also creeping toward his elbow. The odor was worse. Indeed, he was beginning to smell like the pit where Bill had met his end.

'What are you feeling?' she asked. 'Tell me.'

He closed his eyes, struggling, apparently fighting an internal resistance. 'I feel cold and thirsty. I can't breathe. But I feel that if I drink ... if I drink.' He shook violently, his eyes popping open. 'No! I won't! Stop them, Lori! Stop them!'

Lauren grabbed him, struggling to keep him on the table. She glanced over at the arm of his pressure suit that she had cut away. It was then she noticed the small torn flap at the elbow. The damage had probably occurred when he fell off the ladder during the quake, before the tidal wave hit. When the wave rolled over him, though, the pressure must have been immense. Lauren wondered if perhaps a drop or two of the ca.n.a.l water had penetrated his suit at that moment and mixed with his blood. The idea was not totally farfetched. There were three layers to the suit. The outer layer was made of a hard - although flexible - plastic. It was that layer that had been breached. The middle layer was a tight weave of synthetic thread. It was possible the pressure had been able to force a tiny portion of water inside to the third layer - which was basically a flannel coat - even though the suit remained sufficiently intact to keep the air from escaping.

There seemed no other way to explain his bizarre infection. His symptoms were totally alien. The fingers of his left hand had begun to swell, the flesh turning the same dark green as her incision. Bill and Ivan had not displayed such signs, of course, but no medical text she knew of outlined all the phases human physiology went through before it metamorphosed into a walking corpse. For all she knew, both Bill and Ivan had turned a dozen weird colors. Gary continued to shake in her hands like a man possessed. Lauren put her head to his ear and spoke gently.

'Gary,' she said. 'Tell me, what's going through your head? I have to know before I can give you another shot.'

'I'm cold. I'm suffocating. Thirst.'

'What are you thirsty for?' she asked.

A sudden wild gleam entered his eyes. Lauren took an instinctive step backwards.

You know, Lori.

But the gleam vanished, and Gary rolled onto his side and began to mumble nonsense. Then another spasm of pain came and he screamed and screamed and wouldn't stop. Lauren gave him .another shot of morphine. This time he took a long time to settle down. Finally, though, he relaxed, and began to doze.

Lauren checked on the culture and found a stinking dish of green fungus-like growth. She studied the sample under an electron microscope and a section of college biology came back to her. The cell structure of the infection was not totally foreign, after all. She'd seen it before, in school when they'd studied reptiles.

Reptiles?

Martians.

Lauren hurried back to Gary. The antibiotics were doing no good. The infection appeared to spread even as she watched. He had only one chance. She shook him awake.

'Gary! Wake up! I have to tell you something.'

He stirred uneasily in a dream-like daze. 'Decision. Live forever. Forever.' he began to weep miserably. 'No blood. Too much blood. Immortal children.'

Lauren shook him again. 'Gary!'

'My guardian can't save me.'

'You have to wake up!'

'Chan...' he whispered.

Then he was asleep. It was her decision to make alone. Another look at his arm and she made it quickly. She prepared another injection, and took up her scalpel and a small electric saw. She had no choice. She had to amputate his arm at the elbow.

Lauren sat by a porthole in the control room with a blanket wrapped around her shoulders. It was night. She couldn't sleep. Somehow she had lost the day. At least the blizzard had abated. Still, outside was a happening place. Gary's casual remark about the warhead acting as a fuse was proving correct. The summit of Olympus Mons glowed a dangerous red; a Martian candle lit in mourning for the loss of the black altar. But this was no candle to be easily blown out. It dripped hot wax in their direction, hot lava that was going to reach the Hawk soon. She watched as the fine fiery lines crept down from the caldera and asked herself what else could possibly go wrong.

She had studied the notebooks under Gary's bed. She would have to study them for a couple of years before she would know how to get the Hawk in the air.

'Friend,' she said. 'What are the odds that we'll get home?'

Of course, the computer was ho longer on speaking terms with her. Yet it must have been listening. Across the control room, on a square blue screen, large red-lettered words suddenly formed.

[One hundred percent, Lori.]

Gary called her name. Lauren pulled her numb face off the cold window, blinking in the morning light. She'd fallen asleep watching the volcano. It was day. The plateau was full of steam. The approaching lava was vaporizing the snow. She hurried to Gary's side.