Dark hesitated. He had found his intruder, perhaps a traveler who had run into engine trouble in the desert and had fortuitously been near enough to take shelter here while making repairs. But, again, there was no reason to antic.i.p.ate unfriendliness.
Carrying his marsuits, Dark walked up to the groundcar, overhearing a m.u.f.fled bit of profanity as he approached. The unfortunate mechanic evidently heard his footsteps, because he was greeted with:
"I wish to Phobos you"d stay down here and _try_ to help me, instead of spending all your time snooping around this deserted shack!"
The voice was m.u.f.fled, but it was definitely feminine and definitely irritated. Dark grinned and replied drolly:
"I"m sorry, but this is the first time you"ve asked me to help you."
With an audible gasp, the woman disentangled herself, in dangerous haste, from the groundcar engine and faced Dark.
They stared at each other, in mutual shocked recognition.
There was Dark Kensington, bearded, his arms full of marsuits, and there was Maya Cara Nome, sleeves rolled up, her lovely face streaked with grease.
Dark"s jaw dropped. Maya"s lips formed a round, astonished O.
Then, with a squeal, she hurled herself on him, throwing her arms around his neck. Dark staggered back, overwhelmed by marsuits, an abundance of wriggling femininity and a babble of happy and-completely unintelligible words gushed against his bearded cheek.
He managed to disentangle himself by the dual process of dropping the marsuits and holding Maya forcibly at arm"s length. She gazed up into his face, her own awed and radiant, and was able to reduce her own words to connected sentences.
"You"re not here," she said positively. "You can"t be here. You"re dead.
I saw you killed. You must be one of the ghosts of Ultra Vires."
She wriggled free and threw her arms around his neck again, announcing happily, "But you"re a solid, _comfortable_ ghost, and I love you!"
Again, Dark managed to get her at arm"s length and looked down seriously into her face.
"Did I hear you correctly?" he asked soberly. "Did you say you love me?"
"I did. And I mean it. Oh, Dark, how I mean it!"
He pulled her to him. He kissed her gravely. Then he held her close in his arms, while she rested her head contentedly against his shoulder.
"What," he asked at last, "are you doing here, tinkering with a groundcar?"
"Nuwell and I were on our way to Mars City by helicopter, when it failed and crashed," she explained. "This was the only place near enough for us to make it afoot, and the marsuit radios don"t have the range to call for help. We"ve been here more than two weeks now, trying to repair these groundcars."
She looked at the machine she had been working on and shook her head ruefully.
"I don"t think any of them can be fixed," she said. "Nuwell, it turns out, doesn"t know a d.a.m.n thing about machinery, but I was taught a good deal about mechanics when I was trained as a terrestrial agent. Even with three groundcars to supply parts, there are some things missing that I don"t think I can jury-rig subst.i.tutes for."
She turned back to Dark.
"But you"re dead!" she exclaimed. "I know you are, because we carried your body with us to the Canfell Hydroponic Farm. How in s.p.a.ce can you be here, alive and kissing, when you made such a beautiful corpse?"
Dark explained the circ.u.mstances to her; how he had awakened in the vat, how he had been able to breathe underwater, how the sight of Goat Hennessey had revived in him the memory of his ident.i.ty as Brute, how he had been able to walk across the desert without a marsuit.
"If you"re Brute Hennessey, I know why you aren"t dead," she said when he had finished. "We fell in with a party of Martians on our way here, and they told me about certain embryonic changes they made on you and Adam before Goat kidnapped your mothers and brought them to Ultra Vires.
Qril--he"s the Martian I talked to--said that these alterations not only permit you to live in a free Martian environment, but give you extraordinary regenerative powers."
"They must be extraordinary, if they permit me to come to life again after being stabbed in the heart and having my belly burned out with a heatgun," observed Dark.
"That"s because your tissues aren"t dependent on oxygen-carbon combustion," explained Maya. "According to Qril, when oxygen is no longer available to you, your cells utilize direct solar energy. That would prevent your tissues from dying while the damaged area of your body is under repair."
She looked at him in sudden awed realization.
"It would seem, darling, that you"re virtually indestructible!" she said.
Dark laughed.
"Perhaps so," he said. "But I don"t hanker to experiment along those lines any more than necessary. Dying is a very unpleasant experience, even if I do come to life again."
"Oh, Dark," said Maya, remembering. "I"d like for Qril to see you, and maybe he"ll give us some more information. They came back here three days ago and, for some reason, have just been hanging around outside, under the walls. Let me get on a marsuit, and I"ll take you to him."
"Here, put on one of these," suggested Dark, picking up the one he had selected for Old Beard.
Maya wriggled into it. The Martians, she said, were on the other side of Ultra Vires, so they left the motor pool and walked down one of the long corridors together, Maya clinging to Dark"s arm with one hand and carrying her marshelmet under her other arm.
They were halfway across the big building when Nuwell Eli appeared around a corner about thirty feet ahead of them. He stopped, staring, at the sight of Maya"s companion.
"Maya," he began, as they neared him. "Who ...?"
Then he recognized Dark.
With a terrified yelp, Nuwell turned and raced back down the side corridor at top speed. They heard the clack-clack of his heels on the stone floor, fading in the distance.
Dark and Maya stopped and looked at each other.
"It must have been quite a shock to him, too, to see you risen from the dead," she said. "I don"t believe he"s as happy to see you as I was, Dark."
"No, his joy seemed considerably mitigated," replied Dark gravely. "But, Maya, this raises a rather serious question which hadn"t occurred to me before, in the happiness of our reunion."
"What"s that, darling?"
"You"re a terrestrial agent and, as such, you put me under arrest. It"s true, you tried to free me later. But didn"t you tell me that night that you were engaged to marry this man, Nuwell Eli?"
"Yes," she admitted in a small voice. "But--"
"I haven"t had the pleasure of meeting the gentleman before," continued Dark, still in the same grave tone. "But you and he were going back to Mars City together, and, for some reason, it occurs to me that you and he planned to be married as soon as you could get there."
Maya was somewhat stunned at this evidence of mind reading.
"That"s true," she said in a very small voice.
"Now," said Dark, "you tell me that you love me. You must admit that the question raised by this is rather serious. Does this declaration of love--which, I a.s.sure you, is reciprocated completely--imply a radical change in your past course of action? Or, since you"re still a terrestrial agent, can I expect to be arrested again as a preliminary to your joining Mr. Eli in the holy state of matrimony?"
Maya looked up into his face, and burst out laughing.