Heaven's Shadow Read online

  “EVA,” Chertok said. “She and Taj went into the vent with the others.”

  “And she let you babysit me?”

  “Both mission controls approved.” He inclined his head toward the communications panel at the front of the cabin. A computer screen was showing nothing but snow, though Yvonne could hear static and occasional voices on the comm. “Feel free to confirm.”

  “No, thanks.” She reached for a handle, trying to get herself out of the hammock.

  “Careful.”

  “A fall won’t actually hurt in this gravity.” Nevertheless, just raising her head made her feel queasy . . . and low gravity or not, her bandaged leg felt leaden. “What did you do to me?”

  “Set your broken tibia, removed vacuum-damaged tissue.”

  “Well, thank you. But I feel like shit.”

  “You are rather badly injured.” She barely knew Dennis Chertok, having shared a single training session with him years back. She knew his reputation, of course: he was the Tape Monkey, the Mr. Goodwrench, the Cosmonaut Handy Man, the five-time space veteran who could repair a malfunctioning toilet with a cardboard tube and a paper clip, or reprogram a computer with one typing hand tied behind him.

  All this, and a medical doctor, too. Through her fog, glancing down at her thickly bandaged leg, Yvonne wondered just what improvisations Dennis had developed to deal with her injuries. “I feel as though I should eat something.”

  Dennis gestured toward the cupboards he had just been warned off. “That’s what I was looking for. Food.”

  “Check the left side. My stuff is in the third row.”

  The cabinets contained not only food, but the medical kit, clothing, supplies, any gear not directly related to operational tasks like EVA.

  “First let me help you down—”

  “I’m fine!” That came out louder than she intended.

  Dennis simply turned away. That was one of the great things about Russians, Yvonne realized. They were happy to let you dig your own grave. Over his shoulder, he said, “What sounds tasty?”

  “A sandwich.” Astronauts chose their own meals and on her ISS tour, Yvonne had learned that her favorite was a ham and cheese sandwich smothered in mustard and pickle. Living in zero or near zero-g made you crave sharp flavors.

  As the cosmonaut rummaged in the juice boxes and shrink-wrapped trays, Yvonne continued her extraction, a process complicated by the bulky PPK case that shared the hammock.

  Eventually, with no obvious grace, she managed to get her legs headed out and down, leaving the PPK behind. The deck, which looked a long way down, proved to be a gentle half-step.

  “So, what’s the latest?”

  “There is bad news. Patrick Downey is dead.” Now Yvonne knew she was too drugged to function, because she somehow absorbed that shocking piece of information without question, or tears. She knew that spaceflight was incredibly dangerous. She had clear memories of the loss of Columbia and its crew when she was a freshman at Rice. Given where they were, what had already happened to her, somehow the news seemed inevitable. “Tell me how.”

  Dennis handed her a sandwich, then helped himself to an entire turkey dinner as he calmly told her a science fiction story . . . at least, that was the only way to take it. The bizarre environment inside Keanu, the changing structures, the glowworms, the atmosphere.

  And, of course, the growing things. “Wait a minute . . . Zack’s dead wife?”

  “So it would seem. Natalia’s dead coach. A dead child Lucas knew.”

  “What does it mean?”

  Dennis did not look up. Only now did Yvonne see how shaken he was. “This is . . . beyond my understanding. Alien spacecraft, yes. But to find these . . . back-from-the-dead people. It is disturbing.” He aimed a plastic fork toward the communications panel. “The lack of communication makes it much, much worse. My imagination . . .”

  He stood at that point, stepped to the forward bulkhead, and looked out the window.

  “You’re freaking me out, Dennis.”

  “Then I’ve succeeded.” He was looking at her now, and at the interior of the cabin. “It’s too bad you don’t carry any weapons.”

  “Maybe you should bring something over from Brahma.”

  He looked over his glasses. “Don’t tell me you believed that nonsense.”

  “Our two organizations haven’t exactly been getting along.”

  “Even during the cold war, when your country and mine had thousands of missiles pointed at each other, we still had agreements about keeping activities peaceful in space.”

  She chose not to argue. “When do we find out what’s going on? I can’t believe they’ve all been gone this long.” In Yvonne’s world, EVAs lasted eight hours, maybe a little more. Not twenty-plus.

  “I have no idea. We get bursts of contact through Brahma, but that’s all. Last message was two hours ago, from Taj. I know he’s alive, at least.” Dinner tray in hand, he suddenly seemed lost. “Where do you store—?”

  “Let me.” Reflexively returning to her familiar dutiful astronaut role—though never the dutiful daughter—Yvonne took the tray. Then she realized . . . it was from Pogo Downey’s locker.

  “Yvonne, is something wrong?”

  She couldn’t speak. She could only wave the empty tray.

  Dennis guessed her objection. “Yvonne, he is gone. He will never eat any of those meals. You might as well blame me for breathing his air.”

  “I know.” She knew, but that cold truth was still unbearable. Pogo was gone! The big, bluff, sometimes goofy pilot, the man she’d trained with for two years . . . she’d been to barbecues at his house, even Christmas with his family last year.

  Killed by some alien!

  Dennis left her alone in the forward cabin. By the time she had wiped her eyes and taken a deep breath, he had returned.

  “Now, what is this item?”

  He was holding the silver case of her PPK. Even though she knew he could not possibly harm it, much less set it off, she still hated seeing it in strange hands. “Personal gear,” she said, forcing a smile. “It’s where I keep my first day covers and vodka.” Russian cosmonauts were notorious for sneaking booze aboard space missions.

  Dennis smiled back, though Yvonne sensed that he was unconvinced. “We may have to break out the vodka, for medicinal purposes.”

  “Not just yet.” She took the case and wedged it into another cabinet. Then she looked at her watch. “How many hours left before we regain comm?”

  “Houston won’t be in touch for four hours yet.”

  “I should clean up.” She smiled, still feeling shaky and uncertain. “That leaves me three more hours.”

  “I know one thing we should do,” Dennis said. “Keep the doors locked.”

  What if it’s true? What if there’s ALIEN LIFE on Keanu? What are NASA and the Coalition going to do about those ships and people? THEY’RE INFECTED! THEY CAN’T COME HOME!

  POSTER AVRAM AT NEOMISSION.COM

  “She says she saw a man!”

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  Zack ended the TV link between Megan and Rachel because mother and daughter were both getting upset—Megan was sitting off to one side, face in her hands, Tea’s arm around her shoulders—and because Lucas had rushed up with Camilla in hand. The girl’s expression was one of giddy excitement, while Lucas was frantic. “Just that! She says there was a man beyond the rover a few minutes ago.”

  “Where? What was she doing?”

  “I let her go to the bathroom, all right?” Lucas added embarrassment to his confusion. “We were both maybe fifty meters that way.” He was pointing in the general direction of the Beehive, and the membrane beyond.

  “What exactly did she see?” Zack knelt in front of Camilla and assumed his best fatherly manner, willing a smile to his face. “Please ask her to tell me.”

  Lucas translated. “‘I saw a man with no clothes on.’”

  No clothes argued against this mystery “man” being c
osmonaut Chertok. “Anything else? Was he carrying anything?” He gestured with his hands.

  Camilla shook her head. Nothing. Now she was getting frightened by all the adult emotion. Zack gently patted her head and let her be.

  “Thoughts? Taj?”

  The Indian commander had been staring off into the forest, hoping to see what the girl had seen. “Well,” he said, “you three—Keanu brought back someone for each of you.” He pointed to Tea, then himself. “What about us?”

  “Maybe we aren’t worthy,” Tea said, joking.

  Zack said, “Well, maybe you are now.”

  “Oh, great; more hungry mouths to feed.”

  In Zack’s professional judgment, the situation was close to spinning out of control. Granted, he was completely exhausted—in that state it was easy to feel overwhelmed.

  But here he was . . . here they were . . . five space travelers and a pair of reborn humans, with limited food and resources . . . with limited communication . . . all this while trapped in an environment that changed according to rules they could not know, at the direction of entities known only as the Architects.

  Looking at it in summary, well, hell, he should have gone into a fetal crouch hours ago. “Natalia!” The Russian woman had been working on her space suit backpack, which lay half-opened. “Do you have any ideas?”

  “About what?”

  Zack barely suppressed a blistering reply. He had to remember that English was still Natalia’s second language. She would likely not know how infuriating her answer sounded. “About this new creature, or anything of interest. The Architects. The Temple.”

  Natalia only shrugged. She opened her mouth to speak, but said nothing, as if changing her mind in midthought. Given Zack’s suspicions about her actions regarding the Konstantin-thing, it wasn’t likely she would have much to say that was useful, anyway.

  Besides, Lucas was approaching, with further information from Camilla. “There’s one more thing: Camilla says the man had red hair.”

  “Oh, shit,” Tea said, making the same intuitive leap Zack made. “Pogo.”

  “Does that make sense?” Zack asked. “You’re suggesting that Pogo’s been revived.”

  “Zack, it makes as much sense as anything I’ve seen in the last six hours. Come on.”

  In my Father’s house there are many mansions. If not, I would have told you: because I go to prepare a place for you.

  JOHN 14:2

  It was a single word, even a sound, repeated several times in various forms, as if being tried out via air-to-ground radio.

  Pogo.

  Patrick Downey’s call sign had been hung on him during his first operational tour flying F-35s. During gunnery training at Nellis he had somehow managed to get ahead of one of his own missiles.

  Which then took him for a target. Fortunately, the missile was inert. By frantically deploying chaff and other countermeasures, Second Lieutenant Downey had been able to avoid being shot down by something he’d launched. He even earned praise from his instructor for “getting ahead of the syllabus,” which didn’t call for countermeasure instruction for another two weeks.

  That night in the O-Club, Shawn Beckman said to Patrick, in front of half a dozen other pilots, “Dude, you are your own worst enemy.”

  And Jeff Zajac, another pilot, just happened to say, “Yeah, like that old comic strip. ‘We have met the enemy, and he is us.’ What the hell was it called?”

  A third pilot, Rickie Bell, said “Pogo,” and a call sign was born.

  The rule with call signs was, if you don’t like what’s suggested, don’t worry; something worse will follow. Bell wound up hearing “Tinker” for his entire flying career. Beckman earned the relatively neutral “Beckerwood,” but Zajac, after an unfortunate shaving accident that left him with temporary damage to his face, was henceforth saddled with “Scabber.”

  In Pogo’s mind, it served him right.

  But why was he thinking about that? Nellis training was almost twenty years ago.

  He’d been dreaming. No more.

  Suddenly he had questions. Where? What? How?

  He couldn’t breathe! Something covered his face! He clawed at it, found that yes, he could see . . . he could suck air into his lungs. God.

  But he was in a coffin! Wait, there was light. As he began to thrash, the walls gave. They were like thick plastic.

  Then he remembered the Sentry. The big sweep . . . the sickening horror of knowing he had been cut, sliced, vision going red, feeling himself literally fall to pieces: dead.

  But no more.

  He slid out of the cell.

  For the first time in his life—lives—he screamed. It was both terror and joy and there was no chance he could stop it. It was as if his body had to announce itself, or calibrate itself.

  He was naked where he wasn’t covered in second skin. Yes, he was obviously in Keanu. . . .

  But he was alive!

  And, from the looks of things . . . the lifeless cells around him, the quiet gray “sky,” the lack of wind and sound . . . apparently alone.

  Thinking, thinking. Zack and the others . . . were they nearby? God, maybe they’d left. Maybe he’d been “dead” for a long time. Weeks. Months. Centuries.

  He stood up, stretching. It felt as though he’d been immobile for a while. But, then, he was in a new body. He twisted, touched his toes, flexed. Aside from a growing hunger, and a nagging headache, he felt right.

  He looked at his surroundings, from the wall of cells to the surface of the ground, now mossy as opposed to icy rock, to the oddly shaped trees that effectively blocked his view toward Keanu’s interior.

  As he took tentative steps, he was grateful for the moss . . . it felt soothing on his bare feet, which turned out to be as tender and callus-free as a baby’s—or an astronaut’s after a six-month stay in space.

  He looked back at the cells . . . the three he had seen with Zack, Natalia, and Lucas lay open, dried out, dark. As if the stone had been rolled away from the tomb, to put it in biblical terms. Not that he was making any blasphemous comparisons; his resurrection was not that Resurrection, though, given the events of the past day, he was feeling more secure in his belief in the latter.

  His cell was still oozing, pieces of its walls and sheaths of second skin hanging off it. Afterbirth was the word that came to mind. Well, technically, afterdeath.

  Only now did he notice that there were at least two other open cells, too . . . not as weepy and moist as his own.

  At least two someone elses had been reborn.

  Pogo wondered where they had gone, and when. And who they were?

  But he was racked with questions . . . no doubt contributing to the throbbing in his temples. For example, if he returned to the site of his “death,” what would he find? His torn body? The remains of his EVA suit?

  Why did he care? Because he felt the clear urge to have that suit and the helmet. He needed them—

  Don’t panic, Pogo.

  He was an operational sort, trained to look at the mission, then take the necessary steps. Given the goal of returning to Venture, then the first step would be . . . search for his suit.

  If he found other revived beings, he would deal with them. If, miraculously, Zack and the other astronauts remained here, so much the better. He had a message to share, with them, with the people of Earth.

  Time to move. To find something to eat.

  And for his head to stop hurting.

  Pogo Downey headed into the woods.

  It is very appropriate to infer that the Veda was given to the world only by persons endowed with all powers.

  SRI SATHYA SAI BABA

  Within five minutes, they had reached the place where Tea and Taj had left Pogo’s remains. Zack was, momentarily, struck again by how little of Keanu he had seen. It was likely less than a couple of square kilometers . . . while the chamber proper was at least fifty times larger.

  And this chamber was only a fraction of Keanu’s interior volume. Was
the rest of the NEO solid, or were there other similar chambers, each with its own glowworms, its own environment? With other Temples and Sentries?

  “Over here!” Tea had run ahead of him. She and Taj had come with Zack, to act as guides.

  “You didn’t bury him.”

  “With what?” Taj said, over her shoulder. “The closest thing we have to a shovel is a space pen.”

  She stopped suddenly. Zack joined her, kneeling at the spot, gently lifting giant leaves and uncovering the rendered remains of the late Pogo Downey, essentially three big pieces of former human somewhat wrapped in blood-soaked shreds of an EVA undergarment. “Is this the way you left it?”

  “No! He was still . . . in the suit!” Tea said. Then, “And I left his helmet right there, too. It was the grave marker—”

  “Was this stain here?” Zack pointed to a discoloration that surrounded the body . . . it was dark, not exactly the color of blood, though it was difficult to tell in this light.

  “No,” Tea said. “It was all dirt before. What do you think it means?”

  “No idea.” He saw something else, too—the foliage had been disturbed. “I think there’s also a trail here,” he said. Rising, he followed it deeper into the brush.

  He didn’t have to go far, maybe twenty meters. “Found it!”

  Tea and Taj were only a few steps behind. They stopped when they saw what lay at Zack’s feet. “Oh, there it is.”

  The white EVA suit and its bulky backpack lay in a clearing like a fallen soldier. It bore the clear signs of severe damage: three huge gashes across its front, one of them so deep it effectively tore the garment in half.

  Zack touched the jagged tears, the multilayered fabric thick in his fingers. It took a lot of strength to just slice through a suit like this.

  “This,” Tea said. “is extremely fucking bizarre.”

  “Okay,” Zack said, “if Pogo’s body is still here . . . who’s that red-haired naked guy?”

  “Is it possible that what Camilla saw was an entirely different revived being?” Taj said.