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As they started ru

Dawn kept coming, as always.

Now this was an interesting matter: could he modulate his fear, rein it in and use it to impel him at the optimum pace for the quickest arrival at the platform out there to the east, in the raw light of daybreak? And did that pace match the pace that was going to be set for him by the person he was following? For Swan was moaning still, crying and cursing, keening in a rhythm that was keyed to her ru

The land dipped and rose here in such a way that he could see many kilometers to the north, and the highlands in that direction were now all ablaze with sunlight. That lit part of the landscape threw light over the shadowed terrain they ran in, and Wahram saw the rumples in the land, and the rubble on it, better than he had ever seen anything before, not just on Mercury but anywhere. Everything looked coated by a layer of friable powder, no doubt the result of the daily bake and freeze.

The light from the north grew so bright he had to look away to preserve his vision for the dark places underfoot and before him. Ahead the moaning silhouette bounded against the stars. He forced his breath into a rhythm with his feet, watched the ground he was ru

He ran on. Normally the distance involved would be for him a matter of about forty-five minutes of ru

On the other hand, she was not getting farther ahead. And he was now in a pace he thought he could sustain. It was neither fast nor slow. He huffed and puffed, watched the ground carefully. Quick glances showed Swan always well short of the horizon. It was all going to work out—then he stumbled and had to catch himself up by way of some desperate windmilling of the arms, after which he kept his head down and focused on the ground more than ever.

It was one of those moments when the shock of the unexpected throws one into a different space. He could see Swan’s boot prints superimposed on the palimpsest of earlier prints. Her stride was shorter than his. He flew over her steps, even though he was losing ground on her. The sunwalkers were halfway over the horizon. Swan’s moaning still filled his ears, but he refused to let himself turn down the volume or turn it off.

Then the sun blinked over the horizon, and again he felt his heart pounding. At first, licks of orange fire popped over the horizon and disappeared. The corona was hotter than the actual surface of the sun by a great deal, as he recalled. Magnetic surges, bowing up in characteristic loops of fire, rising majestically over the horizon and hanging there before blasting off to one side or the other. The sun’s flames, in effect, flying up in stupendous explosions guided by the magnetic fields that roiled in the burn. He ran on looking down at the ground, but the next time he glanced up most of the horizon ahead of him was orange—the sun itself, its orangeness stuffed and writhing with bubbles and ba

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.