He had only to glance at her. He saw the same terror that he was feeling enter her eyes, then saw it firmly suppressed.

They stepped to the edge of the opening.

“How deep is it?”

“It was deep when I was young. It’s deeper now.”

“But what’s down there?”

“The lair.”

“And it was there when you were a boy? Why didn’t they destroy it then?”

“You’d have to ask Dr. Turner. He let the gen threes dig it. He thought they were controllable. He thought they were loyal.”

She looked into the darkness. “He did not understand generation three. I don’t think he understood any of us. Our god had no idea what he had created.”

“He might not be the only god with that problem.”

Again, their eyes met. This time, though, Mark had a new feeling. Always, he had been willing to die to complete a mission. But now he wanted to live, and even more, he wanted the person before him, his Gina, to live and thrive.

In his eyes, he felt a tingling sensation. But what was it? Something caused by radiation, perhaps? Certainly these cores were full of it. But then it began to affect his cheeks, a slow tickling, and he realized what this was. He was crying. Deep inside himself, to make certain that he kept going, he forced himself to enclose his heart in the ice-cold demands of the mission. Firmly he closed his tear ducts.

He said, “Let’s go,” and began shoving his bomb toward the opening.

She came beside him.

They arrived at the edge.

“We’re married,” she said.

“Married, yes.”

They went over.

The wind was louder and stronger than he had imagined, and holding on to his bomb was hard, but he kept it steady and kept it positioned correctly. He could not see her beside him, but he could sense her and he imagined her and closed his eyes and found in his mind a perfect image of her as she had appeared the first moment he had seen her face so long ago, in the rapture of its innocence.

As far as he was concerned, this was the end of the program. He fixed the image of her face in his mind.

They fell and the wind rushed. Waiting for impact is as terrible an experience as can be, and when they just kept falling and falling, Gina cried out. Mark heard only snatches of her despair as it was ripped away in the rushing wind.

Ordinarily, he did not feel much pain but now the heat hurt. Then there was light. In it, he saw Gina beside him, her eyes wide, looking down. The light was powder-bright, its glare cruel.

He followed her eyes and saw what had transfixed her: a great, complicated shape was rushing upward, coming straight at them.

It was another drone, and there was no way around it.

“Stop! Stop! Stop!”