Berling seemed pissed that this was being disputed. “I am, damn you.”
“I don’t know what that geeky kid—he was just eighteen or nineteen—grew up to look like, but you’re not him. You’re a damn transfer, a nothing.”
Berling’s tone was venomous. “I’m more of a man than you ever were. It was four days before I was able to get past that madman, get to your hibernation chamber, wake you up. And you didn’t do a thing to stop him.”
“There was nothing I could do,” said Van Dyke. “He had guns; I was unarmed.”
“You were the backup bowman,” snapped Berling. “You were the only other crew member. You should have stopped him.”
“I tried,” said Van Dyke. “That kid saw me try.”
“You had smuggled land mines aboard,” said Berling.
“The official report said it was Hogart Pierce, the primary bowman, who had done that.”
“Pierce was dead,” said Berling. He gestured behind himself. “They shot him as he came out that airlock here on Mars. When they found the land mines, they said he’d been smuggling them for some client here. But it wasn’t him; it was you.”
Van Dyke looked like he was going to utter a reflexive denial, so before he could, I asked Berling, “How’d you figure it out?”
“Like I said, money unlocks things. I started digging into this.” He pointed at the scrawny man, but looked at me. “Van Dyke had come to Mars once before that hellish journey, did you know that?”
“On Weingarten and O’Reilly’s second expedition,” I said.
Berling nodded. “And why didn’t he come back on the third?”
“He’d had a falling-out with Weingarten and O’Reilly,” I said, “over how to split profits, and—ah. As you greased enough palms to dig into Van Dyke’s past, you discovered—what? That he was a munitions expert? Former bomb-disposal guy?”
“Black-market arms dealer,” said Berling.
Van Dyke sneered, apparently offended by the term. “My expertise was in putting high-powered buyers in touch with those who had things of great value to sell. That’s why Simon and Denny brought me aboard . . . literally.”
“But then they double-crossed you,” I said. “Or you double-crossed them.”
Van Dyke said nothing.
“And, my God,” I said, taking a half step backward. “You—God, yes, of course! You sabotaged their ascent stage on the third expedition. You couldn’t have used the same model of land mine to do it—those were introduced after that ship left Earth. But an earlier model would have worked just as well—or some other explosive you had access to, as an arms dealer. You killed Simon Weingarten.”
“And Denny O’Reilly,” said Berling.
“No,” I said, “but only because Weingarten marooned O’Reilly here.” Berling looked surprised at this bit of news, but before he could speak, I went on. “So you’re a murderer,” I said to Van Dyke. “No wonder you’re in no hurry to meet your maker.”
“You could have halted the insanity,” Berling said, also to Van Dyke. Pickover, wisely, was staying out of all this.
“No, I couldn’t!” Van Dyke shouted at him. “The land mines were locked in a cargo hold; there was no way to get at them during the flight.”
“You could have detonated them by remote control,” said Berling.
“That would have blown up the ship!”
“It would have stopped him.”
“It would have killed us all.”
“It would have stopped him.” Berling was reaching his boiling point; he looked like he was going to explode.
“Stuart . . .” I said gently.
He wheeled on me. “That madman abused us. He tortured us. And Van Dyke could have stopped it. He could have stopped him. Instead it went on for another two months. Two months before we reached Mars, two months of horrific abuse.”
“I’m sorry,” Van Dyke said.
“Sorry!” shouted Berling. “That’s not enough. I can’t go home. I can’t go back to Earth. I’m rich now—but there’s nothing to spend it on here. I could never lock myself aboard another spaceship for months. And it’s your fault.” He didn’t take a deep breath; he couldn’t. But he did stop and look around—and then he shuddered. “Right over there—right down that hallway? See? That’s where he first . . . where he first . . .”
“Stuart,” I said again, as gently as I could. “It was thirty years ago.”
“It’s not thirty years for me! I relive it over and over again.”
“I am sorry,” Van Dyke said again. “There really was nothing I could do, and—”
Berling moved with a transfer’s speed, and with the same violent temper I’d experienced from him at Ye Olde Fossil Shoppe. He