The sky was absolutely black, but only a few stars showed through the heavy tint of his helmet’s visor. They stared steadily down at Paul, unblinking, solemn as the eyes of God.

Turning slightly as he walked, Paul looked up to see a fat gibbous Earth, blue and gleaming white, hanging in the dark sky. So close. So far. Joanna was waiting for him there. Was Greg trying to kill her, too? The thought sent a fresh pang of fear and anger through him.

“Get your butt in gear,” he muttered to himself. He headed out across the empty plain, fleeing death one plodding step at a time. With all the self-control he still possessed he kept himself from running. You’ve got to cover twenty miles. Pace yourself for the long haul.

His surface suit held the sweaty smell of fear. He had seen two men die out here; it had been sheer luck that the berserk nanomachines hadn’t killed him, too. How do you know they haven’t infested the suit? he asked himself again. Grimly he answered, What difference does it make? If they have, you’re already dead.

But the suit seemed to be functioning okay. The real test would come when he stepped across the terminator, out of the night and into the blazing fury of daylight. Twenty miles in that heat, and if you stop you’re dead.

He had calculated it all out in his head as soon as he realized what had happened in the shelter. Twenty miles. The suit’s backpack tank held twelve hours of oxygen. No recycling. You’ve got to cover one and two-thirds miles per hour. Make it two miles an hour, give yourself a safety margin.

Two miles an hour. For ten hours. You can make that Sure you can.

But now as he trudged across the bleak wilderness of Mare Nubium, he began to wonder. You haven’t walked ten hours straight in… Christ, not since the first time you came up here to the Moon. That was twenty years ago, almost Twenty pissing years. You were a kid then.

Well, you’ll have to do it now. Or die. Then Greg wins. He’ll have murdered his way to the top.