He gazed at me with that irresistible grin, and I felt my heart break.
“It’s time,” I said, watching the darkness growing in his eyes.
The glass touchscreen felt like ice on my fingertips as I set the machine in motion, burning with cold fire. The pod jerked as the clamp loosened, and a moment of fear passed over the prisoner’s countenance. We could not hear each other, but he placed his hand against the little peephole. It seemed too clean, to pale, for the sanguine deeds it had done.
The sun was below us, now, and the hatchway burst opened. He was gone. Sucked out into the vacuum of space, sent careening toward a light that would allow him no shadow of rest, I rechecked the figures. Yes, the display showed, and it would show to anyone who checked, his intercept course with the waiting star. I had programed it to do so. No one coming after me would find that perfect moment, the balance of gravity called an orbit.
It was a lonely star. No planets ran round its years. So, why not give it this charge; make it the warden of a life sentence instead of an executioner? It seemed a shame to destroy something so beautiful, so unique. And who knows. I might, in time to come, have need again of that irresistible grin.
Tale Told 