At first, realizing he was alive again, he had wanted to get back in touch with Zack and the others. But three events had convinced him that was a bad idea: The first was finding the body of another Revenant, a sign that Pogo’s former colleagues were prepared to be violent.
Second was the sight of Zack and the other crew members in complete disarray, suits discarded, in the company of other humans, among them two members of the untrustworthy Coalition crew.
Third was finding his own body . . . seeing his own bloodied face frozen in final agony—
He needed an advantage. High ground. Leverage.
He was also determined to contact Linda and the kids.
Surely they had been told of the earlier accident—strange to think of the words, his earlier death. The thought of their pain and uncertainty triggered blinding tears.
All he wanted in life was to be able to take that away, to make it better, to hold them again. No, it was all a mistake. I’m alive!
He could reach his family—and gain needed leverage—only by going outside the chamber and back to Venture.
So he had stolen a suit and helmet.
All during this time he had been bombarded with strange pseudo-memories. Images of structures and landscapes somewhere deeper inside Keanu. One was dark, glowing, burned. Another was filled with greenish fog and strange floating shapes. There was a recurring image of a large, multilimbed creature dressed in garments that were a kind of shiny armor.
He knew their names. Garudas Scaptors. Architects. The fact that there were several factions of Architects, each with its own agenda.
And the stupid Sentry, which wasn’t a Sentry at all, but simply another life-form. If it had a more accurate name, it would be candidate. For what, Pogo didn’t know.
There was so much more . . . concepts that lurked at the borders of memory, like lessons in computer science studied twenty years back: the idea that entities, organic or not, had a greater footprint in the universe than suggested by visual borders or physical limits, that they left quantum “wakes” or “clouds” that could be detected—and manipulated—years after death or destruction.
The dizzying confusion of it, the lack of words to fit concepts, his frustration with his own inability to understand how, why—it made him physically ill. Yet as he reached the rim of Vesuvius—spotting Dennis, who had switched on his helmet lights—he suddenly knew what his mission was.
Not just to go home, to return to Linda and Daniel and Kerry.
To punish the Architects for their cruel and ill-planned contact with the human race.
Then go home.
As he passed through the Beehive, he had flung rocks at as many cells as he could. The destruction was minimal, but likely significant.
“Where’s the ramp from your twenty?” he radioed to Dennis. As he waited, he looked at the rocks and ice around him. His hands felt empty. What he needed was a stick, something to steady himself. Deep in the shadows, under a cleft, were several items that, in a terrestrial cave, would have been called stalactites.
Pogo wondered briefly if it was possible for a human to break ice that had been hardened for ten thousand years. The answer was yes—
“To my left, your right . . . two hundred meters.”
Downey was in motion before Dennis finished telling him, slipping and sliding, bracing against the vent wall with one free hand, the other using the ice shard as a cane.
He felt faint—probably stressing the suit’s oxygen flow, which was not designed for cross-country hikes—and the momentary lightness reminded him all too much of the circumstances of his own death. Just how had that happened? Clearly Lucas had spooked the Sentry, but what kind of creature responded to a simple flash of light with a killing blow?
Unless that creature was so strong and fast that it was merely intending to grab and hold him—
There was the ramp, its terminus littered with small rocks mixed with snow. Clearly no one had tried to use it in centuries or longer.
But he could pick his way across the rubble, using his “cane.” And once he got past the debris at the base, the ramp proved to be relatively clean, though strangely broad. You could have driven two rovers up this thing, side by side.
A good thing, too. The low gravity meant little traction. Every other step resulted in a skid . . . and though he knew, intellectually, that he could survive a fall, he had no wish to return to the vent floor and start the climb again.
He was running out of time.
A bobbing light played across the irregular vent walls. Dennis making rendezvous. “I see you.”
“Copy that.”
Downey reached the rim before Dennis arrived. He stopped, catching his breath, wheezing a bit. He could see Brahma off to his right, a six-story silver skyscraper that seemed ridiculously close . . . and Venture beyond, squat, lit like a Halloween pumpkin.
“Downey.” Dennis stopped several meters away. “Welcome back.”
The lag was driving Pogo crazy—even though the EVA suits effectively masked physical gestures that accompanied speech, it was annoying to see the Russian raise his hand in greeting . . . and have the words trail by seconds.
Maybe that explained what happened next. In silence, the cosmonaut reached out to him with his right hand . . . but there was something in his left! And Dennis was raising that hand—
Downey blocked it with his cane. The movement was exaggerated by low gravity—Chertok spun.
And the icy tip pierced Chertok’s suit.
The Russian stared at the gash in the thick blue fabric and a quick spew of bloody droplets that quickly froze, becoming red sleet.
Only then did Downey hear the man say, “Take my hand.”
So it hadn’t been a mistake! Dennis Chertok was drawing him close to hit him, likely to smash his helmet.
Now it was Dennis Chertok whose air and life were hissing out of a hole in his suit. He dropped the tool and frantically reached for his chest—obviously he couldn’t see exactly where he’d been cut.
Did he have a patch? One hand pawed at a pocket on the left leg of the suit.
His faceplate fogged over, then frosted. Words in Russian. Downey heard what he knew to be a curse, followed by a single word: Spaseniye. Help.
Then a strangled hiss. Chertok fell over, face down in the snow of Keanu. No movement. He was dead.
Pogo dropped his ice spear and picked up the tool. Better.
Pogo had no memory of the next few minutes. It was as if he had tele-ported, à la Star Trek, from the rim of the crater to a place midway between the two vehicles, approaching Venture from its back side.
He hadn’t meant to hurt Dennis Chertok. Well, maybe he had wanted to punish him for meeting him with a weapon. Surely the Russian must have known what would happen. Did the man have no understanding of what Downey had endured?
But dead? No. Of all people, Downey knew what that felt like. The sudden, permanent, inescapable disconnect. Of course, whereas Downey had been dismembered, literally seeing if not really feeling his body being torn apart, Chertok had frozen and suffocated . . . it must have been like drowning.
Downey had always heard that drowners felt peace at the end. He rather hoped the same was true for cosmonauts exposed to vacuum. . . .
Still, it shouldn’t have happened. He was too quick to react, too uncontrolled.
But it was done. “Yvonne, Pogo. I’ve got a problem.”
At least the lag was gone—Downey could communicate directly with Venture through line of sight. “No shit, you stupid bastard. I saw what you did.”
“Then you know it was an accident.” As he talked, Downey realized he couldn’t just stand on the surface of Keanu debating Yvonne Hall. He continued to approach the lander.
“What do you want?”
“What the hell do you think? I want to come aboard! I can’t stay out here.”
Another half dozen steps closer. “Where are Zack and Tea?”
“No idea. Still in Keanu.”
“How do I know you didn’t hurt them?”