2312

He began to sweat. Probably this was just fear, and the sudden helpless acceleration in his pace. His suit began to hum audibly in its effort to cool him, a slight but terrible sound. His sweat would slide down his flanks and legs and collect at a seal above the boots. He didn’t think enough could collect to drown him, but he wasn’t sure. The black flicker of Swan in the sun had become a sort of spectre of the Brocken, exploding in and out of existence in vibrant pulses. He thought he saw her look over her shoulder at him, but he did not dare wave to her lest he lose his balance and fall. She seemed short, and suddenly he saw she was visible now only from the knees up. The horizon was about as far away as it would be on Titan. That meant he was probably only five or ten minutes behind her.

Then the platform top appeared over the horizon just to her left, next to the southernmost track, and he quickened his pace yet again. In any physical endeavor a little kick at the end could usually be found.

This time, however, it seemed he was truly stretched to his maximum. Indeed it very quickly turned into something more like a desperate attempt to hold what speed he had. He was gasping, and had to force himself to a breath pattern in a rhythm coordinated with his pounding heavy legs, one gasp for two strikes. It was very frightening to look up and see almost the whole visible stretch of the eastern horizon topped by the corona; the slight curve of it seemed to suggest it would eventually fill most of the sky, as if what was rising before them was some kind of universal sun. Mercury looked like a bowling ball rolling into that light.

His sweat now filled his suit to his thighs, and he wondered again if he could drown in it. But then again, he could drink it and save himself. Happily his air supply was still cool in his face.

His faceplate polarization shifted, and the texture of the sun through the black glass of his faceplate articulated into thousands of tongues of flame. Big fields of tendrils moved in concert, whole regions swirling like cats’ paws on water. It looked like a living being, a creature made of fire.

The platform was a block of black in the black, Swan a black movement beside it. He reached her, stopped, gasped for a while with his hands on his knees, his back to the sun. Her keening had stopped, although from time to time she still moaned. The sunwalkers apparently had already taken the elevator down; she was waiting for it to come back up.

“I’m sorry,” he said when he could speak. “Sorry I’m late.”

She was looking at the sun, now four fingers high over the jagged black horizon. “Oh my God, look at it,” she said. “Just look at it.”

Wahram tried, but it was too bright, too big.

Then a loop of the corona flew hugely higher than any they had yet seen, as if the sun were trying to reach out and burn them with a touch. “Oh no!” Swan cried out, and pulled Wahram over to her and against the door, moving to his sun side and pulling him down to shield him with herself, punching elevator buttons over his shoulder and cursing.

“Come on hurry!” she yelled. “Oh that’s a big flare, that’s bad. By the time you see one of those it’s already zapped you.”

Finally the elevator doors slid open and the two of them rushed in. The doors closed. They felt the elevator car drop.

When Wahram’s faceplate and eyes had adjusted to the ordinary light, he saw that Swan’s face under her faceplate was wet with tears and snot.

She sniffed hard. “Damn that was a big flare,” she said, wiping her face. When the elevator stopped and they got out, she said to the sunwalkers, “Any of you have a dosimeter on you?”

One of them replied as if quoting: “If you want to know, you don’t want to know.”

She looked at Wahram, her expression grim in a way he had never seen. “Pauline?” she said. “Find the dosimeter in this suit.” She listened for a while, then clutched her chest, staggered down to one knee. “Oh shit,” she said faintly. “I’m killed.”

“How much did you get?” Wahram exclaimed, alarmed. He checked his wristpad; it showed a radiation spike of 3.762 sieverts, and he hissed. They would be needing a lot of DNA repair the next time they got their treatments-if they could make it. He repeated his question: “How much did you get?”

She stood up and would not look at him. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“That was quite a slice of the sun,” he said.

“It’s not that,” she said. “It was that flare. Bad luck.”

The sunwalkers nodded at this, and Wahram felt a little queasy jolt slither down his spine.

They were in a lock. The elevator doors closed behind them, the door on the other side of the lock slid open, followed by a little whoosh of air. They went into a low room of some considerable size, with several doors and passageways leading out of it.

“Is this a refuge?” Wahram asked. “Do we have to stay here through the brightside crossing? Can we?”