The old man wasn't holding up so well. Landing on the Old Rock, the huge Planet, God, had placed them in a gravity field stronger than anything they had felt in months. Yes, they had occasionally engaged the ship's gravity, but there wasn't enough power available to do so for long. The larger mining ships spun to effect gravity, and Orefall was the only place where the generators could sustain a field.
For Choron, the effect was bad enough: disorientation, difficulty breathing, bruises, and maybe worse. Miro, however, was in agony. Choron looked at him under the weight of God's invisible hand, saw how frail he was: stringy muscles strained to move his thin limbs. He tried to ignore the bloody froth on Miro's lips.
“Dammit, kid! Give me some painkillers.”
Choron remained pressed into his seat, staring at the nearly imperceptible horizon, a gray line between a starry sky and a black world. “Miro, for the last time, if your system slows down any more, you'll die.”
“I don't care! I'm never leaving the Old Rock, anyway. I knew it as soon as I felt His fingers on my bones.”
Miro was right, of course. Lifting off from the Rock would certainly kill him. Choron thought for a moment about which path the prospector should take. “Give me a minute, master. I'm not yet ready to stand.”
“Be quick about it,” Miro said through clenched teeth, his hands curled tightly into fists.
Choron breathed deeply. He closed his eyes, preparing for the pain of standing up. The first aid kit was just out of reach above his head, but it would be best if he stood so he could better tend to his master. For a moment, the only sounds were those of Miro's stifled groans.
Then, Choron grabbed the seat's arm-rests and pushed as hard as he could with all four limbs, standing partially out of his seat. An explosion of painful colors clouded his vision, removed him from the world for a moment, isolating him behind a curtain of visual noise. Choron thought he saw a form amid the mixture of colors swirling behind his eyes, but if anything was there, it disappeared quickly. He held himself up, arms shaking, until the pain faded, and then stood completely uprught. Miro smiled at his apprentice. “Now you know a little of what I feel.”
The kit came loose very easily. With trembling hands, he fumbled through bandages until he found an injector labeled Pain Killer. About one year earlier, he had needed to inject himself with an antitoxin after having come into contact with a mercury pool that had coated his environment suit from head to toe. Removing the suit had exposed him to the toxic mercury vapor; a timely injection had saved him from a horrible death. This injector would be equally easy to use, but it would instead help Miro die.
“Stop thinking and do it!” came Miro's hoarse command.
Choron nodded and walked carefully to the pilot's seat two steps away. He pressed the injector to his master's neck and watched the old man's muscles relax as the chemical circulated through his body. He held the prospector's hand while Miros's eyes surveyed the ship. Then the prospector looked to the thin horizon outside and smiled. His groans became whimpers, then murmurs, then nothing, and his hand loosened its grip.
Even though his master was dead, Choron did not feel alone on the sacred Planet. Maybe Miro had been right, and the ghosts of generations past walked outside. Either way, God's presence was strong there, His gravity a constant reminder of that fact.
Choron slumped back into his seat and tried to think of what to do. Launch wouldn't be pleasant and might end up killing him, if he wasn't careful. He could hardly bear the burden of gravity already; launching would place him under even stronger force. He decided to wait for an hour or two in the hope that his body would adapt to its situation in that time.
Turning off the ship's lights, he activated the console's radio. He heard faint, multi-layered prayers coming from Orefall. His mind endured for hours while he tried to distinguish just one voice from hundreds of others; it was what he had always done instead of contributing his own prayers to the throng.
Miro was dead. How had he overlooked the dangers of landing so suddenly? He had been too good a prospector for that. Perhaps he had died deliberately, tempted, drawn in by the Great Rock. Something about the old man had been too calm and focused; his landing had been executed so well that it implied nothing but a knowing death. Yet, Miro had never before expressed a wish to die.
Everything about the circumstances made Choron shiver.
With his time on the face of God, Choron thought back on the sermons he had heard and the texts he had read. There were certain passages that lingered in vague connection with Miro's death; the only one Choron remembered well came from the Book of the Planet: “He who dies at the hands of God has earned a place on His world.” His early years of ecclesiastical studies had taught him that men could twist a phrase into something it was never meant to be. Although he had been only eleven years old then, Choron had known how the Church often cited passages to meet its own needs. His father's rhetoric had already driven him from any interest in the family's business, and the sudden realization of a similar fate with the Church, begun when he had met Nara, had made him approach Miro.
It had been one of a hundred trips to the miners' bar known as the Steel Comet. At the request of the bar's owner, the Church sent groups of boys to speak to patrons—the best way to keep order there, thought the owner, was to remind the miners of God's presence. Choron had spoken to Miro many times before and had been impressed by the man's simple conviction. No tricks of words or logic raced through Miro's mind. Having decided to leave the Church, Choron had worn his plain clothes under his robes. Miro had looked up from his drink, grinned at the young cleric before him, and prepared for another shaky benediction under Choron's hands.
“I'm quitting the Church,” Choron had said. “Will you take me as your apprentice?”
Miro had not missed a beat. “Only if you bless me before you quit.”
And that had been that.
Choron smiled, opened his mouth to speak, and turned to Miro. He forgot what he was going to say when he saw once again that the old prospector was dead. He decided to say something anyway: “Miro, I never did understand you.” It seemed a fitting eulogy.
Looking back to the horizon outside the ship, he thought of what Miro had said before beginning his final descent: We're just gonna leave a little offering. Choron wanted to leave without setting foot on the Great Rock, but they had landed for a reason: to put the radio on the Planet so God could hear their prayers. And to leave an offering. Choron didn't know what he could leave; everything on the ship was essential. Those things he could afford to leave were all silly: food packets, asteroid core samples. Nothing God wanted.
With a jolt, Choron turned to Miro. He who dies at the hands of God... Miro had meant himself to be the offering. He wanted to be sure that his ghost would stay on the Planet. Choron suddenly became uncomfortable in the small command cabin of the Plenty. Taking his dead master back home for burial was one thing; leaving him right there to soak into the skin of God was quite another. There would be questions if Choron made it back home; maybe even accusations of murder. But it was his master's wish, not to mention that the Book of the Planet clearly stated what Choron had to do.
Shaking his head, he stood slowly, glad that his body had grown more accustomed to the Planet's gravity. “I guess my apprenticeship is over,” he said.
The locker that contained their environment suits was only a stride aft, and it was easy enough to free the suits from their hooks. On the other hand, getting Miro into his suit proved to be incredibly challenging. By the time Choron finished this task, he was dripping with sweat; his muscles screamed against the effort required under gravity. After a few minutes' rest, Choron donned his own suit, running through the usual tests to make sure it was airtight, and saw to the dirty, caulk-covered suit of his master. When everything was ready, Choron placed the radio in Miro's limp hands, then tugged him toward the airlock.
The suit was slick enough that dragging Miro's body on the metal deck was relatively easy. It took longer for Choron to get himself and Miro through the airlock, but within a few minutes, Choron stood next to his dead master on the soil of the Great Rock. The little meters in Choron's helmet reported a residual atmosphere very close to the ground, mostly comprised of poisionous gasses. He wouldn't have wanted to expose himself, anyway: the temperature there would have frozen his flesh immediately. It was a harsh grave, but still better than the deep regions of space that had swallowed many dead miners.
The emptiness of the enormous planet made Choron nervous. Orefall was far smaller than the Great Rock, but it felt inhabited, even outside the colonized zones. The body of God stretched in blackness to that long, thin line that marked the horizon, where the shadows suddenly were studded with stars. The ground under his feet felt grainy—looking down, he saw dirt under his headlamp; he had never seen natural dirt before in his life. Unlike Orefall, the Great Rock was no rock at all, but a full world. This alone stunned him.
He remained motionless, like the rest of the Planet, for a long time. The longer he stayed there, the more he felt he belonged. Something finally made sense, although he couldn't say what it was. This feeling, was it a proud and sinful one? No man was supposed to be so close to God as long as he lived—but Choron, he asked himself, why does it feel like the place where He has always wanted us to be?
Taken aback by the startling question, Choron made himself shift his thoughts to the old man. A full burial would take too long, and Choron was already exhausted; he needed to save his remaining strength for the launch. Instead of digging into the skin of the Planet, he pulled Miro away from the ship, looking at the tracks left by the action. Deep down, Choron was pleased that he had left a small mark there with his actions. His religious training faintly admonished him for such a feeling, but the feeling stayed nonetheless.
Miro lay with his arms crossed over the radio, his feet toward the ship. Choron took a final long look at him, turned away, and walked back to the ship's outer hatch. While the airlock dusted him off and filled the sealed chamber with air, he thought back to the strange ideas that had flitted through his mind during his contact with the Planet.
Inside the ship, he cautiously removed his suit, noticing a fringe of dirt on the soles of his boots. With utmost reverence, he placed them into the locker on a sheet of thin plastic; he wanted to save as much of the sacred soil as possible. Once the rest of the suit was in its place, he walked back to his chair, and just before he sat down, he realized that his new place was at the pilot's station. Shaking his head, he went to Miro's old, battered seat and eased into its unfamiliar contours.
For an hour, he stared at the controls, his consciousness empty.
At last, Choron regained some semblance of purpose. With an unsteady hand, he prepared the Plenty for lift-off: warm up the engines, boot the navigational computer, run all systems through a quick diagnostic. He glanced through the lines of text and graphics that told him the ship was ready to go. The computer had sounded the dark depths of the Planet and a map of still valleys, mountains, and plains rotated on the console's main screen. God was beautiful.
Choron paused for a moment, closing his eyes, muttering a quick prayer asking the Planet to send him home safely. Although he was tired, his muscles were loose and ready. There was no better time to launch.
He plotted a course into the computer so that he would be safe in the event of a blackout; even if he died, his ship would make it into orbit, and it might be found some time later. When everything had been prepared, Choron eased the engines' throttle up and gave the computer the signal to begin the launch.
The first minute of the flight was uncomfortable, but not painful; the Plenty slowly rose from its resting place, pressing Choron into the seat. What came after, however, was an intense pain that he had not expected.
When the ship increased its vertical acceleration, the force pulling on him grew. The edges of his vision were lined with black; his heart was having trouble getting blood to his brain. Everything hurt. He had known it would be that way. It was just like a routine liftoff from Orefall, except he hadn't had days to prepare himself. It may have been that difference, but he suspected it wasn't, that caused him to see the Spot as he fought to remain conscious.
There were spots in his vision, but the Spot was unlike the others; it stayed in front of him when he looked from side to side—it seemed real, was no ghost image formed by imperfections and compressed fluids in his eyeballs. This tiny fleck contained what he had first thought to be white light, but it grew larger and he saw that it was the same mixture of painful color that he remembered from when he had first stood to help Miro. The rest of the cockpit began to seethe while the spot spread; if it had been only red, the surfaces in front of him would have appeared to bleed. When the spot's colors had seeped into everything, it invaded his sight: it actually lunged forward, entering the shrinking black tunnel he saw through his tear-soaked eyes.
His cry drowned the roar of the Plenty's engine; its frequency and texture phased into a pressure wriggling against both sides of his eardrums. It was deafness to everything but the sound of those colors. The rest of his senses followed: as his vision only saw what had once been the Spot, and his hearing could perceive no other sound, his nostrils, tongue, and skin flooded with the torturous sensations stemming from those terrible colors.
At that moment, he would have given anything to feel someone chop his arm off.
And once again, he saw a form skimming through the chaos. It had edges, and that was all; the shape was as indistinct as everything else his mind received from its nerves.
Suddenly, it stopped. Everything stopped. The cockpit did not return to him; instead, he was on the Planet. He tried to draw a breath, but nothing filled his lungs. All warmth fled from his body. He was dying on the airless skin of God, unprotected from the harshness of His surface. Just before Choron felt his body fail, a structure blossomed above him. It looked like the Main Dome on Orefall, only far bigger. As he fell to the floor that had appeared under his feet, his diaphragm contracted once more, allowing his lungs to take in oxygen with a sickening gasp.
He felt his surroundings shifting, and when he had recovered from his exposure to the surface, he looked about: buildings rose beneath the dome like monster-growth flowers. One emerged under his feet, breaking the floor with a sharp crack, and nearly reached the transparent lid holding atmosphere in. From his vantage point, Choron saw the surface of the Great Rock growing veins of light, of heat, veins that crossed each other until the soil outside crawled with them. Orefall sped toward the Planet, the two bodies ready to collide. The far smaller planet struck God with such force that it shattered. The glowing blood-magma that dwelled beneath its thin crust splattered onto the squirming face of the Great Rock.
Miro's bony fingers dug into his right shoulder from behind and spun him around. The dead eyes stared at him, attached to nothing, and the rest of Miro's body trickled into place from somewhere unknown. The land under the dome started pulsing with a deep bass, a pumping sound, and the ground began to shift like the skin sheathing enormous muscles. With his other hand, Miro, whose feet seemed fixed to the roof of that skyscraper, drew Choron closer, preventing him from falling.
Miro's mouth opened. Words, millions of words, spilled forth, like the mingled prayers coming from a thousand mouths on Orefall. They lapsed into and out of nonsense; sounds occasionally synchronized into something meaningful:
Make God your home. Live on Him. Take from Him. He is alone and wants to rejoice in His creation. In Him you will find a new destiny. The Planet is yours.
Miro knew that Choron had understood, for he closed his mouth and smiled. Then his feet lost their supernatural purchase on the rooftop. The two men hurtled to the heaving ground far below. Miro hit first, and Choron, still watching the old man's face, saw the colors erupt from him. They steeped Choron in the familiar agony and then retreated; Choron blacked out just as the cockpit of his ship came back into view.