She so swears, avers and affirms.

Three hundred days later she is marooned on the green shores of the second planet with only the Devil in the form of Professor Cummings for company. The island they share is lush and beautiful, but empty of everything but vegetative or insect life. The Devil mostly spends his time pulling the legs off flies and ripping up patches up grass.

“Why do you do that?” she asks at one point.

Cummings grins at her with his shark’s mouth, shark’s eyes. His straw beard is dapper. “Because I can,” he says. “Because it’s there.”

In the night she kills him, stabs him through the chest with a sharp piece of flint. He screams for hours, a sick, bubbling sound. Thousands of legless flies buzz down and settle on his eyes and tongue, choke his throat and nostrils with their outrage. She hides her face and weeps into her hair.

In the distance the singing of the rising sun and waves breaking gently on the shore. Evil has come and gone, and the green planet spins on.