Rachel suddenly saw a person who might care. “Quiet,” she told Amy, and nodded toward the main entrance, where Jillianne Dwight had just entered with a uniformed member of the JSC security team. “Leave your stuff.”
“But I’m still hungry—”
Rachel yanked Amy to her feet and practically dragged her toward the side exit. There were still dozens of people in the cafeteria. Maybe they wouldn’t be spotted—
They emerged into the muggy JSC night on the wrong side of the building. Darkness was good, however. And not a single person was visible. “Where are we?” Amy said.
“If we keep going, we’ll be in the astronaut building. My dad used to have an office on the fourth floor.”
“Could we?”
“No, it’s locked.” Rachel walked as fast as she could without breaking into a sprint. Her plan was to go all the way around the astronaut building, then back to mission control. Fortunately, the grounds at JSC were easy to navigate . . . nothing but concrete walkways and a few flower beds. Her father had told her it was designed like a college campus because if NASA ever got closed down, that was what the center would become.
Whatever. She only wanted to be sure she and Amy didn’t get caught. “Do you still have the pot?”
“Yes, of course! Oh, shit—”
Rachel looked for a place to throw it. “Around this corner—”
They made the turn and ran straight into three men, two JSC cops and a blond man in a short-sleeved white shirt. Rachel tightened her grip on Amy’s upper arm, as if to say, Ignore them and keep going.
“Rachel Stewart!” It was the blond man.
“What?” Rachel remembered him. Bynum, the guy from Washington.
“We’ve been looking for you.”
“Okay,” she said. “You found us.”
He turned to the guards. “Take their phones.”
For the next several hours—possibly as many as ten—the Venture crew will be in a communications blackout created by the new rotation of Near-Earth Object Keanu. The same orbital mechanics affect the crew of Brahma . Mission control continues to be in contact with the Destiny spacecraft, however, and it is possible that at certain times telemetry and voice may be relayed. We will, of course, continue to post whatever data we receive as we receive it.
NASA PUBLIC AFFAIRS, AUGUST 23, 2019
Tea and Taj had been gone only half an hour when Zack noticed that his charges were beginning to yawn. “Oh my God,” Megan said.
She was so immediately unsteady that Zack got worried. “Are you feeling faint?”
“No, just . . . tired.” She sank to the ground where she was. The girl slid close to Megan. In moments, both were, to Zack’s eyes, sound asleep. “That was very strange,” Natalia said.
“Have you ever seen a baby fall asleep?” Zack said gently, afraid he might wake them, and just as afraid he might provoke Natalia. “They go and go and go for hours, then they’re like little machines when you switch them off.” Just saying it reminded him again of Rachel. What was he going to tell her? How was he going to explain this?
“Well,” Lucas said, “they are only a day old.”
“I think we need a fire.” Without further discussion, Zack left Lucas to keep watch, then began to forage in the immediate vicinity. Natalia joined him—more, it seemed to Zack, to avoid being anywhere near the revived pair than because she wanted to help. “Why do you need a fire, anyway?” Natalia said. “It’s warm enough in here.”
“At the moment,” Zack said. “But we don’t know what it’s going to be like when the glowworms go dark—”
“—Assuming they do go dark.”
“Whether they do or not, fire gives light, it helps with cooking, and it provides protection.”
“You think a flaming torch is going to help you fight off that thing that killed Pogo?”
“No. But it might be a hell of a distraction. And there’s a scientific question to be explored, Dr. Yorkina.”
“The ability of the human mind to focus on the irrelevant during times of stress?”
Zack laughed. “Okay, a second scientific question, which is, can we actually build a fire inside Keanu? We’ve got oxygen, but do we have tinder?”
He stopped and waved at the new growth: spindly, leafy structures that resembled trees. At the moment they reminded him of the pathetic potted sticks that dotted the raw real estate development he had lived in at age seven.
Natalia forgot her own miseries and fears long enough to play along. “Well, even if these are wood, or something resembling cellulose, it will all be green. I can’t imagine it will burn easily.”
“There’s another reason I need a quest for fire,” he told her. “Frankly, it gives me something to do while they sleep and the rover gets here.” He stripped some of the leafy material off one of the new growths. It felt dry, but not flimsy. It also had substance.
Within minutes he had an armful. “So,” he said, as casually as he could, “what happened between you and Konstantin? Was he—?”
“It was not he, it was it. And I killed it.” She admitted her action as casually as if saying she had crossed the street.
“Mind telling me why? Did it attack you?”
“I was afraid it would.”
Zack could only nod. What were his options? Arrest her? She wasn’t even a member of his crew. “And then you ran.”
“I was in a panic.” Only now did she look at him. “I still am.”
“I guess we all are,” he said. “What about Megan and Camilla. Are they its?”
“Yes.”
“But you’re not afraid of them.”
“I will be cautious around them, but no . . . not like Konstantin.”
“Why not?”
“Because the human Konstantin was a brute! Any replica of him was certain to be just as dangerous. Were you afraid of your wife when she was alive? Should we be in fear of that little girl? I don’t think so.” She stood, arms filled with vegetation. “We should get back now.”
Zack had no better alternative.
“I gave them water and food,” Lucas said, as soon as Zack and Natalia returned.
“Good thinking,” Zack said, kneeling to arrange his collection of Keanu kindling in the classic Boy Scout fire stack.
At any other time, Lucas would have smiled. Now he just looked embarrassed. “Even if that stuff will burn, how are you going to ignite it?”
“Well, we know there’s oxygen here, or none of us would be breathing.”
“Are you sure about them?” Natalia said, nodding at the sleeping undead. “That they’re breathing like us?”
Zack chose to ignore the comment, shredding the leafy stalks as best he could, creating a pile of lighter material that would, he hoped, be more receptive to flame. Then he stood up. “Now, all we need is a spark.”
“Don’t Young Pioneers rub two sticks together?” Natalia said.
Lucas chose to be supportive. “We could try to get sparks off a couple of rocks, maybe. . . .” He presented Zack with a pair of likely candidates.
Zack thanked him and took one of the rocks. “First, though—” He pulled his backpack over to the protofire and opened a valve. “A little extra O2 flow . . .”
Then he pulled the geological hammer from the bag on his suit. With the hammer in one hand and the rock in the other, he knelt and held them just over the kindling, in the stream of fresh oxygen flowing from his backpack.
Once, twice. “I’m not seeing a spark,” Natalia said.
“Your observation is noted,” Zack said, really wishing she would go away. The two hits had been unsatisfactory. For the first time since conceiving this procedure forty minutes ago, he began to doubt it would work.