The traverse through the membrane should have been the fulfillment of a lifelong dream for Tea. The goal of every female astronaut, every one of them a Star Trek fan, was “to boldly go where no man has gone before . . .”
Here she was, and she could already hear her father saying, “How’s that working for you?”
Not so well, Dad.
How could it work as exploration? Pogo was dead. Zack was overdue. Nothing she knew about Keanu twenty-four hours ago seemed to fit anymore.
There was awe and mystery—did that phrase come from another sci-fi television show?—in the Beehive and the bizarre environment. But there was also the risk of swift death—
Lucas suddenly peeled away from them. “Lucas, dammit,” Taj said. “Get back here!”
“I see . . .” It was all the Brazilian astronaut said, possibly all the English he had at the moment.
As Tea, Taj, and Natalia watched, Lucas ran up to the trio.
“Oh God,” Natalia said.
And he knelt to the smaller one. The little creature clapped its hands together and launched itself at Lucas. Tea started to move toward them, but now Taj stopped her. “I think he knows that one.”
Sure enough, Lucas and the tiny being were hugging, a ludicrous sight. “Lucas,” Taj said, sounding like a flight controller worried about a missing aircraft.
“Camilla!” Lucas shouted into their headphones. “My niece! Is my niece!”
He was carrying a creature toward them that looked to Tea like a little girl.
A little human girl.
And she spoke, chirping away in a language that could have been Spanish or Portuguese. “Anyone know what she’s saying?” Taj asked.
Lucas stood the girl on the ground. “She says I am the world’s greatest uncle!”
So now their party numbered five as they crossed the last hundred meters to Zack and his companion. “Camilla” and Lucas chattered away, with Lucas trying to keep Taj and Tea involved. Apparently Camilla had been diagnosed with leukemia at a young age, and had died eighteen months ago while Lucas was off training in Bangalore.
Tea tried to understand why there were creatures inside Keanu that not only were humanoid, but seemed to be copies or reconstructions of people who had been part of their lives on Earth . . .
Tea did not have a religion. Her father had been as open an atheist as common sense would allow, and Tea had generally felt the same. But for the first time in her life, she felt she might have missed something.
Answers to the larger questions of life and death would be most welcome now as they emerged from the Beehive.
And there was Zack Stewart—standing around without his helmet, like an astronaut relaxing after an EVA training session.
As they closed the last fifty meters, trying not to be distracted by the panorama beyond, Tea saw him pick up his Snoopy cap and give an awkward wave. “Here we are!”
We?
Tea’s relief at seeing and hearing Zack immediately gave way to near-panic . . . someone who looked a lot like a dirty, nearly naked Megan Stewart was standing with him.
“Hey, Tea!”
In her life, Tea had fantasized about meeting an alien, but never ever had she expected the E.T. to recognize her and say her name!
The reunion was noisy, chaotic, and brief. “No, I’ve been breathing Keanu’s air for almost two hours now,” Zack said, as Taj kept insisting that he get back into his suit again.
He did allow Tea to recharge his backpack from hers, giving him two hours of consumables for the trip back through the membrane. “Thank you,” he said, finally looking into her eyes—granted, through her faceplate.
Tea wanted to say, How come you’re not screaming? How can you stand this? But in the circumstances, the best she could offer was, “What can I do?”
“You wouldn’t happen to have a very large extra spacecraft in your pocket, would you?” Zack shook his head. “We need the rover.”
“Copy that, but . . .” Tea looked at the relatively benign terrain, then back up the slope toward the Beehive and the passage beyond.
Zack was doing the same thing. “It should fit.”
“Speaking of fits, isn’t that what Houston’s going to throw if we drive the rover in here?”
“No doubt, but I have to tell you . . . the one thing I’m really enjoying about this mission is that we don’t have mission control hounding us every minute.”
This was the Zack Stewart she had grown to admire, and love: smart, confident, direct.
“I’ll take Taj and we’ll go get Buzz.”
All through this, Megan Stewart stood with arms crossed. Tea wasn’t convinced it was Megan Stewart, but if so, what the hell was going through her mind?
I don’t know which is worse, Houston or Bangalore. It’s like a giant cone of silence has descended on both centers. Something is majorly wrong with the Keanu missions and NO ONE IS TALKING.
POSTER JERMAINE AT KEANU.COM
The Johnson Space Center cafeteria had been hard-hit by the extra-large mission control staff and the press contingent. Soups and sandwiches were gone; entire display cases, normally filled with pie and cake, were empty. Nevertheless, Rachel and Amy were able to grab several snack bars, bags of M&M’s, and sodas. “God, they only have Cheetos,” Amy said. “I want SunChips.”
“You’ll take Cheetos and like them, young lady,” Rachel said. Both started giggling, then suppressed it as the Latina cashier shot them a glance.
“God, be careful!” Amy said.
“They know me,” Rachel said, with more hope than certainty. “They just don’t get many fabulous girls here.”
That started them giggling again, until Amy’s phone sang to her. She grabbed it as Rachel led her to a table as far from the cashier as possible.
As they sat, Rachel said, “I thought you had it off.”
“Just turned it on a minute ago.” Amy had already fallen into that dead-eyed zone of the distracted. Knowing there would be no significant conversation for the next several minutes, Rachel turned her Slate back on.
She had never seen its screen so full. Her personal inbox was jammed, her Facebook was overloaded, and her newsfeed updated every couple of seconds.
And every news story was about Keanu, Destiny, the accident involving astronaut Yvonne Hall, and the NASA cover-ups of everything! “God, everything on my screen is blinking.”
“Mine, too,” Amy said.
Rachel turned to her personal messages. She felt the need to connect with her friends about more important things than this stupid mission her father was on.
“Luvng your escape!” one friend wrote.
“420@JSC! Wicked!” said another.
Rachel turned to Amy. “I thought you said you had it off until a minute ago.”
“Okay, I had it on silent.”
“Amy!” Rachel grabbed her friend’s phone. Not only was it transmitting their words, the camera was on, too. “You had it on the whole time!” She clicked it off.
“Look, it’s nothing. You remember Tracy wanted to come. I just let her listen!”
“She did more than listen. I think she put us on the Web!”
“So what? Half the planet is on the Web. It doesn’t mean anything.”
“Amy, God . . .” Rachel struggled for words. Sometimes Amy could be so shallow. “People are searching for JSC and Keanu and probably my name, too. So a lot of people know exactly what we’ve been doing and saying.” She got a sick feeling. “I think some of these headlines came from your phone.” She held her phone and its news feed up to Amy’s face.
“They shouldn’t be covering stuff up.”
“Yeah, fine. But, you know, what’s also bad is that everyone knows we were blazing!”
“Rachel, with all the crazy shit that’s going on here, I still don’t think anyone cares!”