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“When the sun got high enough that the city was out of the shade of the Dawn Wall,” she added, “it would go quick.”

“I know the tracks don’t melt on the brightside,” Wahram said. “Anything else?”

“The city infrastructure will be fine,” she conceded. “The shell. Some metals, ceramics, mixes of the two. Glassy metals. And then just ordinary tempered steel, stainless steel. Austenite steel. We’ll see. I suppose it will be interesting to see what it looks like when night falls on it again. Everything will have burned away except the frame, I guess. As soon as the sun hit, the plants would begin to die. They’ll be dead by now, all the plants and animals, even the bacteria and such. We’ll have to rebuild it.”

“Maybe,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, I think they’ll want to understand what happened to the tracks, and feel they are in a position to stop it happening again. Or else build to a different design. Free the city from its tracks, maybe, and roll over the landscape on wheels.”

“That would require some locomotion,” she pointed out. “As it is, the expansion of the tracks drives the city forward.”

“Well, it will be interesting to see what happens, then.” Wahram hesitated. “It would be pointless to rebuild and then have a recurrence.”

“If it was a low-likelihood accident, then a recurrence wouldn’t be likely.”

“I was under the impression that all such happenstances were already guarded against.”

“Me too. Are you suggesting that it was some kind of attack?”

“Yes, well, I’ve been thinking about that, anyway. I mean, consider what happened to us on Io.”

“But who would want to attack Terminator?” she demanded. “Attack it and yet miss it by a few kilometers, killing the town but leaving the people alive?”

“I don’t know,” Wahram said uneasily. “There’s been talk about the conflict between Earth and Mars, how it could even lead to war.”

“Yes,” she said, “but the talk always goes on to declare this impossible, because everyone is so vulnerable. Mutual assured destruction, as always.”

“I’ve always wondered about that,” Wahram admitted. “What if a first strike is made to look like an accident, and is so successful that no one knows who did it, and meanwhile the victim is mostly vaporized? A scenario like that might make one think there is not any certain mutually assured destruction.”

“Who would feel that way?” Swan asked.

“Almost any power on Earth could make the calculation. They’re safer than any of us. And Mars is notoriously self-absorbed, and also can’t be punctured with a single dart. No, I’m not convinced there can’t be a power out there that harbors a feeling of invulnerability. Or an anger so great they don’t care about consequences.”

“What could that be, though?” Swan said. “What causes that kind of anger?”

“I don’t know… say food, water, land… power… prestige… ideology… differential advantage. Madness. These are the usual motives, aren’t they?”

“I suppose!” She sounded horrified that he could make such a list, as if this were not part of Mercurial discourse, although really it was simply Machiavelli, or Aristotle. Pauline would know the list.

“Anyway,” he went on, “I’ll be very interested to find out what people are saying when we get out of here.”

“Only thirty days to go,” she said grimly.

“One step at a time,” he said gamely.

“Oh please! Take it like that and it’s eternity.”

“Not at all. But I will desist.”

After a while he said, “Interesting how a moment comes when you feel hungry. You didn’t before, and then you do.”

“That’s not interesting.”

“My feet are sore.”

“That’s not interesting either.”

“Each step is a little pain, or every other. Plantar fasciitis, I reckon.”

“Would you like to take a rest?”

“No. They’re only sore, not hurt. And they get warmed up. Then tired.”

“I hate this.”

“And yet here we are.”

The hour of walking passed. The rest period passed. The next hour passed. The rest following that passed. The tunnel stayed always the same. The stations every third night were almost the same, but not quite. They ransacked these places, looking for something different. Up at the top of the elevator shafts in each station lay the surface, exposed to the full Mercurial sun and approaching seven hundred K on surfaces struck by light; there being no air, there was no air temperature. At this point they were under Tolstoi Crater, more or less; Pauline was managing their navigation, such as it was, by a sort of dead reckoning; down here her little radio too was out of touch. The station phones never worked. Swan guessed they were elevator phones only-or else the whole system had broken in the impact, and because of the ongoing situation with Terminator’s population, and the fact that the crushed part of the tunnel was now out in the sun, no one was available to fix it.