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  Within seconds, Harley and the others were horrified to hear a very shaky, obviously rattled Yvonne Hall. “Houston, Venture, we’ve got a serious problem.”

  The next ten minutes were completely panicked, though an outside observer would never have known. The default setting in mission control was cool, calm, collected. Smart decisions required smooth hands and lowered voices. But from experience, Harley saw the signs of confusion . . . the furtive glances between Kennedy, Weldon, and Trieu. And then between Weldon and Jones and Bynum, who had just arrived.

  The tension was also evident in the way several controllers in the back row pushed their chairs together and conferred quietly.

  Eventually they all got the update: Yvonne was out of her mind with fear, trapped in Venture, and Patrick Downey was trying to get inside.

  Dennis Chertok was dead, apparently killed by Downey. (That explained why Trieu’s fellow capcom, Travis Buell, was so busy. He was talking to Bangalore.)

  And there was no immediate word from the five explorers inside Keanu—or information about the three Revenants.

  Four Revenants, if one included Pogo Downey. For a moment, Harley was genuinely glad that he was not responsible for unfucking this clusterfuck, to quote one of his early flight instructors. Yet . . . he wasn’t sure he trusted Jones and Bynum to find the best solution.

  “What do I do?” Yvonne had gone to the encrypted channel and was talking to Jasmine Trieu—another woman’s voice, which Harley hoped Yvonne would find soothing.

  Meanwhile, Buell was apparently talking to Pogo Downey. Harley rolled toward the capcom console . . . more out of morbid curiosity than any operational need—the same reason he had left the Home Team and come to mission control at this particular moment.

  But after a cursory confirmation, Buell was not saying anything to Downey. And it didn’t appear that Downey was being verbal.

  He was active, however. Yvonne had turned on both of Venture’s exterior cameras. The forward view showed nothing, but the anterior had Downey coming up the ladder, a horror-movie version of Armstrong’s first steps on the Moon . . . in reverse.

  There was an in-cabin view, too, locked off and aimed at the forward console. As Harley and the entire team watched, Yvonne Hall briefly appeared, hopping on one foot and trying to steady herself. In Keanu gravity, that meant keeping herself from bouncing toward the ceiling.

  “What is she doing?” Harley said.

  Buell had been watching more carefully, it seemed. “Trying to find something to jam the hatch.”

  “Doesn’t it lock?”

  “Not by design.” And why should spacecraft hatches lock? The most likely result would be an EVA crew member trapped outside thanks to a loose washer in an otherwise “foolproof ” system. True, there had been locks for the main hatch of the early space shuttle, back when NASA had been forced to fly several commercial or foreign “astronauts” who had not been thoroughly vetted concerning their mental stability under duress.

  Jasmine Trieu was handling this matter, however. “Okay, Yvonne, keep this in mind: As long as the inner hatch isn’t sealed, the outer hatch can’t be opened.”

  Harley realized he should have thought of that. It was better than a padlock.

  “Copy that,” Yvonne responded. “But that leaves me at risk if he pokes a hole in the chamber!”

  Trieu conferred with Josh Kennedy. “Can you put on your suit?”

  Harley knew what that answer would be: No, it was torn. Sure enough, the only thing Jasmine Trieu could tell Yvonne now was, “Stand by.”

  Meanwhile, Harley became aware that Bynum, Jones, and Shane Weldon were having what passed for a violent argument—at least, what passed for one in the reading room–like silence of mission control. Harley couldn’t wheel himself closer without announcing that he was eavesdropping, but by turning his head, he could hear Bynum’s mention of “dire circumstances in a worst-case scenario” should the “Item be enabled,” followed by Weldon’s calmer “don’t think we’re there yet.”

  Gabriel Jones reacted strangely, jabbing a finger in Bynum’s chest and saying, “You are way ahead of yourself!” Then he walked out of mission control.

  After a moment, Bynum and Weldon hurried after him, leaving Harley and anyone who witnessed the outburst baffled. Granted, the situation on Keanu—unusual by definition—was unprecedented and unpredictable. There were no back pages in a flight data file dealing with “crazed astronaut tries to break into lander.”

  But to leave in the middle? What the hell was wrong with Gabriel Jones?

  And what the hell was this “Item”?

  This is Destiny mission control. Keanu’s rotation now allows direct line-of-contact communication between Houston and the Venture vehicle on the surface. Telemetry is being received here; astronaut Yvonne Hall is in a rest period. We expect to regain contact with the EVA team momentarily, at which point live transmissions will be resumed.

  NASA PUBLIC AFFAIRS COMMENTATOR SCOTT SHAWLER, AUGUST 23, 2019

  At the first blow, the entire cabin rang like a church bell. “Stop that!” Yvonne said, feeling in equal parts frightened, ill, and, especially, foolish, since no one, least of all Downey, could hear her.

  She had done as Trieu instructed, leaving the hatch between the Venture main cabin and its airlock open, essentially locking the outer hatch. (An interlock inside the hatch froze the outer latch mechanism unless the inner one was closed.)

  But Downey had climbed the ladder and, after a fruitless session of tugging on the door, had actually struck it with something hard.

  She finally got on the radio again. “That won’t work.”

  “What choice do I have?” he said, after a lag. “I can’t stay out here.”

  “Let’s talk, Pogo. Talk to mission control, too.” She had been able to see him through the hatch port, but now light streamed through. Where had he gone?

  “Sorry, I don’t have time for that.”

  “What do you want?”

  “I just want to go home.”

  “You and me both!” Yvonne said. Then the other channel lit up. “Yvonne, Houston. The director is online.”

  Her father? “Copy that.” What else was she supposed to do? Coo, Oooh, Daddy?

  “First, I just want you to know we’re doing everything we can here.”

  She wanted to scream. That wasn’t a father talking, that was a man with his head up his butt—wondering what the rest of the world would say. “Too bad the decisions have to be made up here, by me.”

  “We’re confident—” he said, then paused and started over: “I’m confident in you.”

  To do what? Figure out how to stop Downey, or blow myself up? “Thanks for that,” she said, knowing the sarcasm would likely not be noticed through the radio connection.

  “How are you feeling? How is the leg?”

  Oh, yeah, her leg: the one she would almost certainly lose if she managed to survive this. “Leg is stable,” she said.

  As she talked and waited for a response from her father, she hopped from window to screen to window, searching for Downey. Still nothing. “The situation is . . . critical, Yvonne.”

  Fuck him. “Just what exactly are you trying to tell me, Daddy? Why can’t I just let Downey in . . . maybe I can talk sense to him.”

  Was that him? A shadow around to the left—

  “Negative, Yvonne. All our data shows that astronaut Patrick Downey died six hours ago. The person you see cannot be given access to Venture.”

  True, the person running around out there sounded like Pogo Downey, but he was wearing Zack Stewart’s suit.

  “Which is where this all started,” she said. “I can hold him off, maybe until his air runs out, but it would really be helpful if you guys could do something from there.” Was there some kind of remote-control switch the EVA support guys had, something that would disable an astronaut’s backpack? Until a few hours ago, Yvonne would have been horrified at the thought of it . . . now it didn’t seem so undes
irable.

  “You are the best option,” her father finally said.

  “So we’re back where we started.” She had lost the shadow . . . damn, she hated this.

  “Not quite. Every minute he remains outside he’s one minute closer to his redline.”

  “That’s all you’ve got to say to me?” She wasn’t sure what she wanted. . . . An apology for twenty-odd years of neglect? An even better apology for putting her in this horrific situation?

  “We—” he said, then had to correct himself again. “I am proud of you.”

  Which only convinced her. Things would have to be a lot worse, as in bugfuck crazy Pogo Downey about to stab her, before she would blow up the Item.

  Before she would make her father’s life any easier.

  Then she saw Downey again, back on the surface at the rear of the lander, heading for the front. He had something in his hand . . . the same weapon she had told Dennis to take.

  “I want to come inside. You have something I need.”

  “You ain’t coming in here.” There he was . . . right outside the forward windows, looking up at her.

  She knew she sounded more confident than she felt—thank you, NASA, for sending me on speaking tours—but it was all surface. She realized this situation was much, much worse than being flung across the surface of Keanu.

  Five meters lower, eight meters away, Downey looked up at her. For a moment their eyes met through the multiple layers of glass.

  Houston had heard some or all of this. Now Jasmine Trieu was saying, “Tell him to wait until Zack gets back.”

  Which she did.

  Downey was already in motion. “Zack won’t be here for hours. That’s assuming he ever gets here. No, it’s you and me.”

  What was he doing? Picking up a rock?

  “Last chance.”

  “Pogo, come on, be real.”

  “Are you going to open the hatch?”

  “I can’t.” There it was.

  As she watched, the space-suited figure clumsily hurled a rock the size of a bowling ball directly at the forward windows.

  Downey’s aim was terrible, but Venture was a big target. The rock hit with a shuddering thud and bounced off.

  “Stop that!”

  “I’ve got lots of rocks, Yvonne.” And he bent to pick up another one.

  Shit, shit, shit. “Houston, what the fuck do I do now? He’s throwing rocks at me!”

  “Venture, Houston, ah, we don’t think he can really damage the vehicle... .”

  A second thud, this one almost a direct hit on one of the windows.

  Yvonne knew spacecraft and structures. She knew that, yes, a vehicle like Venture was actually a thin aluminum shell that could be punctured with a screwdriver. But when pressurized to ten pounds a square inch, it was harder than any rock Downey could throw at it.

  Still, that second shot had come close to a window . . . and Yvonne could see a ghostly crack.

  The multipaned windows were vulnerable. The same air pressure that bolstered the thin metal skin would cause a seriously cracked window to blow out.

  She grabbed the metal case and opened it. “Okay, Downey, you want to play rough. I’m arming the Item, you dumb bastard.”

  Three seconds later, her answer was another thump from another rock, followed by Jasmine Trieu’s frantic, “Negative, Venture! You are not authorized for that step!”

  But she was already deeply into the process. She had opened the case, removed the false front, and entered the first set of codes. She felt stupid, slow, and numb . . . the drugs doing their work.

  She was not planning to die. This was just a contingency move, to allow Houston to come up with an answer.

  The countdown started from ten minutes. Be cool, she told herself. You can stop it at any time.

  She picked up the Item and stepped toward the front windows. “Can you see this? It’s a bomb, and it’s armed!” There was no sign of Downey, no word on the radio.

  Then Yvonne heard a different sound, not the thump of rock against the rugged cabin wall, or the more frightening crack of impact on the window. This was a more distant clang.

  An alarm sounded on the control panel, two indicators suddenly red.

  Fuel tanks! Downey had managed to poke a hole in one of them, and it was big enough to create a cloud of freezing vapor: Yvonne could see it from the left front window.

  “Pogo,” she radioed, knowing she sounded tired and pathetic. “What the hell are you doing? This fucks all of us. . . .”

  Houston was on the line, Jasmine Trieu sounding strained. “Venture, we show a drop in hydrogen tank two—”

  “I know,” Yvonne snapped. “Pogo!” she shouted.

  It took almost ten seconds. “I’m at the hatch,” he said. “Put your stupid bomb in the lock, button yourself up, and open the outer door. And I’m counting, too. Up to ten, when I put a hole in another tank. One, two . . .”

  She considered her options. “Houston, can you hear this?” Goddamn time lag. The clock on the Item showed 6:30 and counting. “What do I do?”

  Gabriel Jones was back on the link. “Yvonne, it’s your father again . . . we are talking to Downey. He’s not responding. But I want to say again, don’t do anything—”

  Then the whole damn lander shook. Pogo must have really blown that second tank.

  The entire left side of the console, all the systems related to ascent engine and propellants, was red red red. There was not going to be a liftoff, no rendezvous with Destiny, no return to Earth. Pogo had fucked her completely. Zack, Tea, all of them were going to die here.

  Slumped against the bulkhead, she reached into her suit and grabbed the key on her neck chain. Three minutes, now less. She could shut it down....

  “Yvonne, talk to me—”

  Another clang. Downey was determined to wreck Venture! Maybe if she tried a different approach . . . She got to her feet and stepped to the window. “Pogo, let’s talk this over. I’ll . . . I’ll shut off the timer.”

  There he was, out front, arm raised. He launched what looked like a snowball right at the window.

  Direct hit.

  The last thing Yvonne Hall saw was the crack in the outer pane suddenly mirrored by a deeper one in the inner pane. Part of the window blew out, beginning the swift, permanent, fatal venting of Venture’s atmosphere—

  Two meters behind her, the timer on the Item reached zero.

  Oh, shit.

  MOST FREQUENT LAST WORDS OF PILOTS IN CRASHES

  In pain, exhausted, infuriated, Pogo Downey saw the puff of air and the spewing of Plexiglas fragments. This was the coup de grâce—already hobbled by two plumes from punctured tanks, the Venture was like a wounded bull in the arena.

  Yvonne would not survive this. But the vacuum inside the Venture would allow the outer hatch to unseal, allowing Downey access to the Item, giving him a weapon.

  No. Between one step and the next, Downey saw the entire lander expand and fragment.

  As brains, bone, blood, and whatever it was the Architects had used to rebuild him vaporized, he had a fraction of a second to realize he was dying for the second time.

  You’re surprised that they’re lying to us? NASA stands for “Never A Straight Answer!”

  POSTER ALMAZ AT NEOMISSION.COM

  On the screen in mission control, Harley saw Yvonne at the forward station. He was not wearing a headset, so he could not hear the exchanges, which were clearly fraught: Prime capcom Jasmine Trieu had tears in her eyes while the secondary communicator, Travis Buell, was throwing his hands in the air.

  And Gabriel Jones, in headset, was seated between them, pounding on the desktop.

  Harley had seen the intense knot of controllers around the lander consoles, specifically the propellant team, and knew there was some kind of problem.

  As if they needed more problems. Where were Zack and Tea? Communications were reestablished, but no one seemed to be calling them.

  Then the screen went to snow.


  And all the Venture consoles went white, as the constant flow of temperatures, pressures, and other indicators ceased to make sense, or just ceased all together.

  “Venture, Houston,” Jasmine Trieu was saying. She repeated it.

  Gabriel Jones slumped. Shane Weldon put his arm around him and said, “Get Bangalore on the line.” Then he shouted, to no one in particular, “Do we have a telescopic view?”

  It only took a few seconds, but some clever operator in a back room called up a long-range view of Keanu from some Earth-based telescope.

  The screen now showed a silvery crescent . . . and an expanding cloud in the upper portion, roughly the area where Venture and Brahma had landed.

  “I take it that’s not another eruption,” Brent Bynum said.

  Harley Drake realized that they had lost Venture, and with it any chance of bringing his friend Zack Stewart and his crew—Revenants or not—home again.

  Part Four

  “IN THE WIDE STARLIGHT”

  Any idea what caused that flash on Keanu surface? We saw it in Australia.

  POSTER JERMAINE AT NEOMISSION.COM

  “Did you feel that?”

  Tea and Taj had reached the membrane and were about to drive through when something strange happened. “I saw it,” Taj said. “The inner surface of the membrane—”

  “Yeah, it fluttered,” Tea said. “But I felt some kind of ripple or vibration. Not a quake, I don’t think.”

  “It’s hard to tell from here.”

  “Then we get out.”

  Normally the procedures to egress from rover Buzz would have taken fifteen minutes, most of them to allow pressure to drop so the hatch could be opened. But Tea and Taj had simply not bothered to close the hatch. Indeed, they had driven from the campsite to the membrane without donning their suits.

  “Do you smell something funny?” Taj asked.

  “No,” she said. “But I’m surprised my senses are working at all.” This wasn’t quite the truth; her eyes had definitely noted the rippling of the membrane. And even swathed in the increasingly dirty, sweaty EVA undergarment, she had definitely felt a tingling akin to the forerunner of a thunderstorm on a midwestern summer day.