It was a foolish mistake to put on the nanosuit without putting the vial of pills into one of the suit’s capacious thigh pouches, he realized. Now the pills rested in the hip pocket of his coveralls, mere centimeters from his grasp, but he could not reach them. Not without opening the suit, which was impossible out here in the open.
Excitement about the crater had smothered his usual good sense. Like a schoolboy, he admonished himself. You rushed out here to see the crater without thinking, without planning ahead. You allowed your enthusiasm to overpower your intelligence. A mistake. A serious mistake. The crater isn’t going to disappear! You should have been more careful, more thoughtful, before pulling on the nanosuit and rushing out to see it.
He had volunteered to be the donkey, carrying instrument poles and sample cases from the camper to the crater’s rim. Easy work, he thought. Waterman and Hasdrubal gave him the easiest task. I can recite the rosary as I walk back and forth. I can keep my loads light and walk slowly, deliberately, across the sands of Mars.
Still, his pulse thudded in his ears. He blinked beads of perspiration from his eyes, felt sweat trickling down his ribs. Yet he felt cold, clammy and cold.
The rosary, he told himself as he pulled another armload of sensor rods from the camper’s exterior cargo bay. Do it in Latin. Pater noster…
I could go back inside the camper, take off the suit, and get to the pills. I don’t really need them, I’m fine at the moment. But it would be a relief to have them within my grasp.
And then what? he asked himself. Once you come outside again, how can you swallow a pill with this ridiculous plastic bubble over your head? Open it for a second and you’ll die of decompression.
He lay the sensor poles on the ground at the crater’s rim. It had stopped smoking, he saw. Peering down into the pit he saw Waterman and Hasdrubal laboring to set a network of sensor rods in the churned-up ground. A half-dozen insulated specimen cases lay off to one side.
“Father DiNardo?” The woman’s voice in his earphone startled him.
“I am here,” he replied, looking up into the cloudless butterscotch sky. Not entirely cloudless, he realized. Three little wisps floated high, high above. Like the Holy Trinity watching over him.
“Your readouts show a good deal of exertion.” It was Mrs. Waterman’s voice, he recognized. Of course. She is a physician. “Perhaps you should stop what you’re doing and take a brief rest.”
“Yes,” he said gratefully. “Thank you.”
I’ll go back inside the camper and take a pill, DiNardo told himself. Then I’ll be fine.
But halfway back to the camper he felt a sudden white-hot stab of pain at the base of his skull. He tried to call out, to scream, but his voice froze in his throat. I can’t move! He willed his booted feet to take him to the camper but instead his knees buckled and he sank to the ground. The pain overwhelmed him.
He lay on the red sand on one side, his backpack preventing him from rolling onto his back. He couldn’t move. His arms, his hands, paralyzed. He tried to wiggle his toes inside the boots. Nothing. He lay there and stared at the distant horizon, reddish bare hills and endless barren wasteland.
Mother of God, he thought, I’m going to die on Mars.
Jamie scrambled up the slope of the crater, knocking over a couple of sensor poles as loose stones rolled under his boots.
“Father DiNardo!” he shouted. “Fulvio! Are you all right?”
No response.
He reached the lip of the crater and saw the priest’s body crumpled on the ground, halfway to the camper.
“He’s collapsed!” Jamie called to Hasdrubal.
Vijay’s voice came through his earphone, taut but calm. “It might be a stroke. Get him into the camper right away.”
Jamie ran to the priest, Hasdrubal a few steps behind him. In the slanting light of the setting sun he peered at DiNardo’s face. It looked ashen, sweaty.
He scooped up the body in his arms and trotted toward the camper.
“Lemme take his legs,” Hasdrubal said, coming up beside him.
“It’s okay. I’ve got him. Get the hatch open.”
Hasdrubal sprinted to the camper, long legs covering the ground in loping strides as Jamie carried DiNardo’s inert body. In the easy gravity of Mars the priest weighed only about thirty kilos. He pushed the body into the open airlock, then clambered up the little ladder and squeezed into the chamber with him.
Hasdrubal eyed him as Jamie slammed the control panel. It seemed to take hours for the hatch to close, the airlock to cycle, and the inner hatch finally to pop open.
“We’re in the camper,” he called to Vijay. “What should I do?”
She didn’t answer.
As he opened DiNardo’s helmet and unsealed the front of his nanosuit Jamie asked again. “Vijay! What should I do?”
“There’s nothing you can do, Jamie,” her voice replied. “According to these readouts, he’s dead.”
A part of Fulvio DiNardo’s mind was angered at the silliness of it. I can see, I can hear, but I can’t move, can’t speak, can’t even blink my eyes. This would be terrifying if it weren’t so stupid.
He realized that he was about to die. The specialist he had seen privately in Rome had warned him more than a year ago that he was at risk for a cerebral hemorrhage. That’s what the pills were for, weren’t they?
But to die on Mars. What a cosmic irony. You spend half your life working to reach this place and you have a fatal stroke within a week of your arrival. What a test of faith this is!
Waterman is shouting at me. I can’t make out the words. He’s speaking in English, of course, but his voice seems slurred, distorted.
And I’ll die without ever finding out why God wiped out the Martians. I’ll have to ask Him personally. Assuming that I get to heaven. Of course I will. But that’s the sin of presumption, isn’t it. What did that American humorist say: It’s not over until it’s over. The devil waits, always. Satan bides his time and seizes the opportunity to drag souls down to damnation.
He had the feeling that they were carrying him, laying him down on one of the cots, straightening his legs and arranging his arms across his chest. I’m not dead, he tried to tell them. Not yet.
But they could not hear him.
Why did you kill them, Lord? They were intelligent. They must have worshipped You in some form or other. Why kill them? How could You—
And then DiNardo understood. Like a calming wave of love and peace, comprehension flowed through his soul at last. As Waterman and Hasdrubal fussed about him DiNardo finally understood what had happened on Mars and why. God had taken the Martians to Him! Of course. It was so simple, so pure. I should have seen it earlier. I should have known. My faith should have revealed the truth to me.
The good Lord took the Martians to Him. He ended their trial of tears in this world and brought them to eternal paradise. They must have fulfilled their mission. They must have shown their Creator the love and faith that He demands from us all. So He gave them their eternal reward.
DiNardo tried to blink his eyes. The light was getting so bright it was difficult to see Waterman and the other one. Glaring. Brilliant. I thought it would all go dim at the end, the priest thought, but it’s getting brighter and brighter. Dazzling. Brilliant. Like staring into the sun. Like looking upon the face of…
Jamie straightened up, his arms and back aching after trying to pound DiNardo’s heart back to life.