Heaven's Shadow Read online

“Tea’s out because she’s involved with Stewart. Her judgment will be colored by that.”

  “I guess that’s why Zack doesn’t have the package, either.”

  Here her father looked uncomfortable. “Stewart is brilliant and flexible, all the things we want in a mission commander. But, as you said, he’s involved with one of his crew.

  “He’s also too convinced of his own intelligence. No matter what scenario we could come up with, all of our war-gaming showed that Zack would keep trying to the bitter end and beyond! He would be too slow to realize—”

  “—That the patient was terminal?”

  Gabriel Jones smiled tightly. “Exactly.” Then he said the worst thing anyone had ever said to Yvonne: “You’re your father’s daughter.”

  She had walked away at that point.

  But she had allowed the device to be stowed in her PPK.

  And now, her leg shattered, her career destroyed, with very little knowledge of what was happening to Zack and Pogo and the others inside Keanu . . . Yvonne Hall swung in a hammock, cradling it.

  Praying she would not have to use it.

  Remember these from Hynek and others?

  Close Encounter of the First Kind—sighting of an alien vehicle.

  Close Encounter of the Second Kind—physical evidence of an alien vehicle.

  Close Encounter of the Third Kind—contact with alien beings.

  Close Encounter of the Fourth Kind—abduction of human by alien beings.

  Close Encounter of the Fifth Kind—two-way contact between humans and alien beings.

  Close Encounter of the Sixth Kind—death of humans caused by alien beings.

  So where are we now? Close Encounter 5.5?

  POSTER ALMAZ AT KEANU.COM, AUGUST 22, 2019

  “What do you think? Are they some kind of plasma? Or just the thirtieth-century alien equivalent of neon lightbulbs?” Zack was looking up at the ceiling, at the items he could not help calling glowworms.

  “Got to be plasma,” Pogo said.

  The last twenty minutes had stretched and twisted to the point where time had no meaning. The strange glowworms had crawled into what seemed to be semipermanent positions on the ceiling, several hundred meters over what appeared to be the chamber “floor.”

  As they moved, the environment continued to change radically. The light brightened, giving Zack and his team a better view of their surroundings: the walls of the Beehive, the forest of corals, and the vast distance across. In fact, the other side of the chamber could not be seen.

  It started to rain, too. Not a gentle, midwestern summer sprinkle, like those Zack knew from childhood . . . this was windblown and gusting, like a tropical storm.

  Like the rain that fell during Megan’s funeral. The four of them could only stand there, sprays of water spattering their suits and helmets. “At least now the outside of my helmet looks like the inside,” Natalia said.

  There was no immediate danger; astronauts trained for EVAs wearing these same suits in huge water tanks. The danger would come when they took these suits into the frigid, two-hundred-degrees-below-zero environment beyond the membrane.

  Worry about that later. Meanwhile, the experience of hearing rain rattling on the helmet—well, Zack would have found that unnerving.

  Except that by now everything was unnerving. The very ground began to rattle and shake. The coral structures began to crumble. “Is like earthquake,” Natalia said.

  “It’s more like being on a ship at sea,” Zack said. He’d experienced both: Earthquakes were sharp jolts that struck without warning, but swells at sea built . . . you could actually feel them approaching.

  And these Keanu waves endured for a minute or more. “I feel heavier,” Lucas announced.

  “Me, too,” Pogo said.

  “Well, we’re getting a sort of sunrise,” Zack said. “Maybe the artificial gravity machine is coming online, too.”

  “I hope the standard setting isn’t equivalent to Jupiter,” Natalia said. Zack had been kidding, as usual, but Natalia’s statement was sobering; the size of the passageways already suggested that the Keanu-standard life-forms were larger than humans, which suggested more massive creatures suited to . . . well, 2.5 times Earth gravity, for example.

  He surely didn’t want to walk in three or four times Earth gravity.

  Now that he thought of it, he doubted they could get far, even if Keanu developed gravity equal to Earth’s surface, where each suit weighed more than the astronaut.

  And how the hell would they get out of Vesuvius? Those ramps would need to reach pretty close to the top. . . .

  But he was feeling heavier. He took a few tentative steps. Goddamn it, this was the end. “Everybody, grab your stuff. We’re pulling out.”

  “No!” That was Lucas, but Natalia and even Pogo uttered similar protests at the same instant.

  “We’re in uncharted territory, people! Our mission is to get back alive. I’m worried about—”

  He stopped, no longer sure of what he was saying. His eye was drawn to the strange landscape of Keanu’s interior. It was a giant cave, of course, but lit by squiggly yellow shapes that hovered over a green, purple, and pink countryside, if one stretched the definition of countryside to include “vegetation” that looked more like structures found on a coral reef. And you accepted a sky that was reminiscent of a giant sports arena. (The chamber’s upper reaches—its ceiling—were lost in mist and shadow.)

  And windblown rain. There was a strong breeze blowing from Zack’s left, the direction of the membrane. If it had been the other way around, he’d have been worried about a leak.

  Wait . . . Something was moving out there. “Uh, does anyone—?”

  “We see it, too!” said Lucas.

  What looked like a scaled-up version of the bubble bearings in the membrane—only three meters wide and high—was rolling across the ground toward them, changing directions to avoid the corals, sloshing and spilling fluid, leaving a trail of moisture that was visible even on the moist soil.

  “Any thoughts?” Zack said. “Is this the Keanu version of a tumbleweed? No means of locomotion.” The rolling bubble seemed to be blowing in the wind.

  “What if it’s alive?” Pogo said.

  “Then get ready for First Contact,” Lucas said.

  “We are not prepared for anything like that!” Natalia said. She was on the verge of panic.

  “Everybody hold position. Act like professionals.”

  The rolling bubble turned toward them. Now Zack could see that it was opaque with dark shapes, like curdled milk. Pogo backed away, out of Zack’s limited peripheral vision, saying, “It’s fighting the wind, Zack!”

  “So it is.” All he could think to do was raise the camera. Running wasn’t an option.

  Another astronaut rule was, when in doubt, do nothing. You’ll only make it worse.

  Closer and closer . . . “It is coming right at us,” Lucas said.

  “Give it room! Everybody back away!” Zack said. Commanders got the goodies on missions—the first steps. They should also get first shot at the bad stuff. “Let me be the target.”

  Natalia and Lucas scuttled off to the right, putting a crumbling coral tower between them and the rolling bubble.

  Which was now less than fifty meters away.

  “I sure hope this thing is friendly,” Pogo said.

  “Let’s make the assumption for now. . . .”

  The argument ceased, because the bubble sloshed to a halt . . . ejected an object almost the same size. The bubble then dissolved into a whitish puddle on the ground.

  The ejected item looked like a sow bug, but only for a moment, as it came to a stop, then unfolded itself.

  And stood up. Zack tried to remain calm and scientific. Bilateral symmetry, check. It had two legs and two arms as well as two sets of different types of appendages around its middle. It looked heavier and thicker where the middle pairs attached.

  A head of sorts, check. But nothing resembling a face or a n
ose or eyes . . . just various openings, one of them ringed with cilia that seemed to flex rhythmically . . . breathing?

  But was it animal or machine? At this distance, in this light, it was difficult to tell . . . the creature’s skin was shiny, but was it wet metal, or slime? It appeared to be a harness of some kind, dripping with fluid the same color as the dissolved bubble.

  “Looks like it’s standing guard,” Natalia said. Which was true: As soon as it unfolded to full height—half again as tall as any human—the creature seemed to freeze in position.

  “Maybe it’s a sentry,” Zack said. He hated having to anthropomorphize his Keanu experience, but it was the only way to make sense of things. Besides, the builders, owners, or inhabitants might have stationed someone to check passports here at the entry to the NEO’s interior.

  For a moment Zack was face-to-face with the creature. Twenty-five meters of distance, and at least one of height separated them, not to mention however many eons of evolution. But it seemed to Zack that the Sentry was taking his measure—

  “Rain seems to be stopping,” Lucas said. Zack had been concentrating so totally on the Sentry that he’d stopped paying attention. But yes, the windblown gusts had stopped . . . the entire chamber glowed with a sheen of moisture that reflected the golden light from the glowworms.

  Then the Sentry moved.

  Its major left-side appendages rose suddenly to its head. Zack had begun to form an image of the Sentry as the Tin Man from Oz . . . stolid, rusted to immobility . . . now trying to salute.

  Look at what’s here, not what you remember!

  Then the creature took a step . . . and staggered.

  “It looks like it’s hurt!” Natalia said.

  “Everybody stay back!” Zack said. The Sentry began to flail, like a man in extreme pain.

  He could see its chest heave. Okay, it’s organic, not a machine.

  Then the Sentry abruptly turned toward Pogo Downey, who, inexplicably, was walking forward.

  The being snapped out a hand, as if trying to reach Pogo—

  Swaddled in his suit, Zack could not feel what happened next, but he saw a flash. Lucas had taken an image with that damned Zeiss unit! And in the low light, the autoflash had triggered!

  With frightening speed, the Sentry turned toward Pogo, and swung one of its middle arms out and across, like a samurai swordsman.

  Pogo’s helmet detached, and with it Pogo’s head, blood spurting from the neck ring of the EVA suit. With three swift moves, the Sentry clove the torso from top to bottom, separating one arm and leg, then the other, finishing its disassembly of Col. Patrick “Pogo” Downey, USAF, with a reverse horizontal slash.

  Natalia screamed. Lucas shouted.

  Zack was frozen, confused, horrified. All he saw was Pogo’s body, a quartered bloody mess on the ground.

  Then he breathed again. He grabbed Lucas and Natalia and herded them back toward the membrane. “Go, go, go!” He wanted as much space between them and the Sentry as he could get, as quickly as it could be gotten.

  But Natalia’s visor fogged over, obscuring her view forward. She fell twice in her first ten steps, with Zack and Lucas frantically trying to right her again.

  The falls allowed Zack a glance back at the Sentry, who was in pursuit, but more deliberately. “It looks stunned,” he said.

  It seemed to Zack that the giant being was losing mobility . . . its arms and hands were roaming over its torso, as if suffering from either heat or pain.

  The third time she fell, Natalia was the one who looked back. “I think it’s dying. . . .”

  The impulse to flight was momentarily suspended. Zack and Lucas turned. The three watched as the Sentry began to jerk and heave, as if racked by seizures. Vapor rose from its body, as if the creature were burning up from within.

  Then, abruptly, the Sentry collapsed . . . and within seconds ceased to spasm.

  “What the hell?” Lucas said, clumsily crossing himself.

  “I saw an animal being gassed in Leningrad once,” Natalia said. “That’s what it looked like.”

  A thought occurred to Zack: “Do you suppose the environment killed it?”

  “Wasn’t it designed for this environment?” Lucas said, sounding almost offended at the idea. “Didn’t it live here?”

  “We don’t know anything,” Natalia said. She was collapsed, almost immobile. Zack wondered what it was like inside her suit.

  He barely had time to curse Lucas—and mourn Pogo.

  It was clear that Natalia would not be able to move with any speed. Zack realized he would have to help her with every step . . . and every moment they remained in the Beehive they were vulnerable.

  “Lucas, get to the rover. Tell Houston and Bangalore what’s happened. Recharge your suit, get food and water, then come back. We’ll be following!”

  He wished he could have given the Brazilian astronaut better orders, but he had nothing left, just a firm idea that information on today’s events needed to get out—someone needed to survive.

  If he and Natalia managed to survive as well, there might be time then to think about Pogo . . . recovering his remains.

  Lucas didn’t argue, which meant that the seriousness of the situation was apparent even to him. Zack watched him go back up the slope, into the heart of the Beehive.

  “Come on, we’ve got to move, too,” he told Natalia.

  Gamely, she got to her feet. “I’m stable,” she said.

  “Fine,” he said, “but take my arm, too.” And so they set off, like lovers strolling through a park . . . and about as fast.

  And not very far. Within a few meters, Natalia essentially sat down. “I can’t.”

  “No problem,” Zack told her, lying only slightly. “We’ll just wait until Lucas returns.” He checked his own consumables: still two hours, plenty of time to observe, if not act.

  The environment in the chamber continued to change. The “weather” had grown calmer; the rain had stopped, even though a gentle wind continued to blow now . . . detectable in the cloud of particles that wafted past Zack’s faceplate.

  The corals had completely collapsed everywhere. If Zack’s eyes could be trusted—and what could be trusted at a time like this?—they were being transformed somehow. Zack focused on one area where an older pile of pinkish debris was being replaced by greenish shapes that expanded and stretched.

  That grew. That was the word. The corals were growing into vegetation of some kind.

  Or possibly quasi machines like the Sentry.

  Zack wanted to put more distance between himself and whatever was happening in this chamber. In fact, he would have been completely satisfied to be watching these events through a TV camera while safe aboard Venture.

  Or better yet, back in Houston. He had been frightened before; now he was terrified. It wasn’t just the shocks and the violence . . . it was knowing he was out of his depth, so far beyond a comfort zone that he could no longer remember what it was like to operate normally.

  He turned back to the Beehive, hoping for a last glimpse of Lucas, but the World’s Greatest Astronaut had likely let fear fuel his retreat, because he was long gone.

  Zack had nothing else to do but look at the Beehive. Now he could see that some of the cells here had changed, too. Formerly open, smaller ones and at least two jumbo units were now sealed, covered with some kind of translucent film that swelled.

  That almost breathed—

  “This is stupid,” Natalia announced, hauling herself to her feet.

  She was already up, if unsteady, and heading back into the chamber before Zack could reach her. “Movement adds heat, kiddo. Don’t run off,” he told her. He peered into her helmet . . . it was so fogged over he could barely make out a face. “How is it in there?”

  “Hot and wet. Feel like I’m drowning.” That sounded terrifying. Learning to live and work in suits, under pressure, without succumbing to claustrophobia was one of an astronaut’s biggest challenges. And that was when the suit was
operating properly.

  If Natalia felt as though she were drowning, she probably was. And Zack could do nothing to help—

  “I’m going to try something,” Natalia said. She raised her arms, hands touching the sides of the neck ring where her helmet was attached, and unlocked it.

  “Hey, Natalia, that’s not a good idea—!”

  Too late. The cosmonaut raised the bulky helmet off her head, revealing a wet face and the reddest complexion Zack had ever seen on a human being.

  How long would it take for her to die? Would she turn blue from lack of oxygen? Or would she freeze . . . or begin twitching and shuddering like the Sentry?

  None of those things happened. She opened her eyes then, looked directly at Zack, smiled, and inhaled.

  She was racked with a coughing spasm. “You tried it. Now put the helmet back on,” Zack said. She’d lost precious minutes of oxygen, but she hadn’t killed herself.

  But the coughing stopped. And Natalia said, “I’m okay.”

  Zack was surprised that he could hear her words, slightly muffled by his own helmet. And surprised that she was still alive, in no more distress than when sealed up in the suit.

  “It’s oxygen,” she said. “I saw it on my spectrometer. Ratio is high, maybe thirty percent . . . but pressure is still low here.” She took a deep breath again. “Feels like being on a mountain top. Dry. Lots of smells I can’t identify.”

  “Don’t get too comfortable,” he said. He was happy to know that Keanu’s environment was less immediately hostile than open space—at least if you steered clear of things like the Sentry. “Think alien organisms.”

  “This place was a hundred degrees below zero a few hours back. There shouldn’t be anything alive.”

  “And look at it now.” She was edging back into the chamber, toward the dead Sentry, and Pogo.

  “Where are you going?” Because Zack was still using radio inside his helmet, and she was not, she barely understood him. He repeated himself, shouting.

  Then she nodded, understanding him. And said, “I always wanted to do an alien autopsy.”

  Zack did not follow. He considered his own consumables, the likelihood that Lucas would take longer than expected to return . . . and the fact that Natalia seemed just fine.