A white blob appeared on a black background.
“This is Keanu, our newest Near-Earth Object,” Zack said. “If you look at the site, you’ll see that Keanu is almost a billion and a half kilometers out from the Sun, and heading in fast. Earth will be in its sights twenty-seven months from now.
“Our best calculations show that Keanu will not hit Earth, which is good, because it’s around a hundred kilometers in diameter and the devastation its impact would cause would kill everything larger than a bacterium.”
He turned to Jones, who was, as expected, blinking back tears of wonder at the thought of such horror and tragedy. “We’re going to dodge the Keanu bullet, but one of these days we will spot an object we can’t dodge. And when that happens, we need to be prepared two ways:
“First, we need to know how to operate around and on NEOs, in case we can do something to change their trajectory. Second, and slightly more important, the human race needs to have a permanent presence on another world, a pocket of humanity that can go on. If a NEO like Keanu hits Earth someday, seven-point-something billion people are gone! Wouldn’t we be happier knowing that the human race won’t vanish from the universe like the dinosaurs?”
The press conference had settled into the expected questions about Venture’s pressurized rover and the likelihood of discovering ice at Shackleton Crater when an Indian man of about forty stood up and asked, “What do you say to your Indian and Russian friends who fear a possible American claim to Shackleton as the first step toward interplanetary manifest destiny?”
It was Taj! Taj Radhakrishnan, an Indian “vyomanaut” (the Indian space program insisted on its indigenous terminology) who had been part of Zack’s space station team. Zack had sent pro forma invites to all three of the internationals, but given the rising tensions between the United States and the new coalition of Russia and India, he hadn’t expected any to actually show up, least of all Taj.
And now here he was—with his fourteen-year-old son, Pav, sitting next to him, obviously unhappy—asking the question half the world wanted asked. Zack’s answer: “The plaque on Venture says, ‘We come in peace for all mankind.’”
“So it does. But what happens when our Brahma lands at Shackleton?”
“If we happen to be home, we’ll bring over a cup of sugar.”
Taj smiled and made a perfect bow. “As long as you don’t make us pass through an immigration check. I just had the experience at Orlando. It was humiliating in the extreme.”
There were scattered boos from the press and onlookers—those who didn’t recognize Taj. Shawler stepped forward. “If that concludes the, uh, questions, I want to have a few words from Gabriel Jones—”
The JSC chief started into one of his standard sound bites as a member of the KSC security team vaulted onto the stage and began talking to Scott Shawler.
“What now?” Tea asked, close to whispering.
Zack saw the look on Scott Shawler’s face as the security guard delivered a message. So did Mark Koskinen. “Somebody’s getting bad news.”
Then Zack saw Shawler looking directly at him.
My father is landing on a godforsaken planetoidal thing. I’m stuck in mission control. BORED!
RACHEL STEWART ON HER SLATE
KEANU APPROACH: TERMINAL PHASE
“Houston, we’re at fifteen thousand . . . coming up on powered-descent initiation in five.”
Zack waited for Shane Weldon’s reply as he stood—tethered, since Venture was still in microgravity—at the forward control panel next to Pogo. He was still in his helmet, wearing gloves, feeling like a child bundled up for a day in deep snow.
Houston and Weldon seemed more remote than ever, their signal hissing and breaking up. “Copy that, Venture . . . still go for . . . descent at 78:15:13 MET.” Mission elapsed time . . . had it really been seventy-eight hours since the Saturn VII lit up, rattling Zack and his crew into Earth orbit?
Tea and Yvonne were strapped in directly behind, but effectively invisible and, for the moment, silent.
The last word from mission control on that subject had been, “We’ve got the Home Team on it,” the Home Team being a panel of Keanu specialists led by Harley Drake, who was no doubt phoning and e-mailing all over the world, contacting a broad spectrum of experts on NEOs and venting.
And what was Rachel thinking? What had she heard? Zack had not spoken to his daughter since launch. They had exchanged text messages—her preferred means of communication—during the first sixty hours. Nothing since then. She had sent them; he could see a queue in his personal message file. But he had had no time to compose even a two-word reply.
Well, he would send her the first message from the surface of Keanu.
Which was now closer than ever. They were under fifteen thousand meters altitude, roughly the same as an airliner crossing the United States. Three minutes until the twin RL-10 engines on Venture lit up, slowing the vehicle enough to drop out of orbit and head for touchdown—
“Houston, from Venture. Any word on our Coalition neighbors?”
“Venture”, Weldon said, after more than the usual lag, “Brahma is in a lower, more circular orbit . . . plane diverges from yours . . . twenty degrees. Data coming to you.”
The gravity gauge burn had put the combined Destiny- Venture vehicle in a wide, looping orbit around the NEO. Within twenty minutes, on Houston’s orders (encouraged no doubt by Tea’s report), Zack was injected with a sedative, zipped into a sleeping bag, and stashed in the Venture airlock. While he dozed, Patrick, Yvonne, and Tea completed the tedious work of configuring Destiny for a week—or a month—of uncrewed autonomous flight while transferring gear, food, water, and other supplies into the lander.
Zack had been awakened for the separation maneuver, which Tea and Yvonne handled, half an hour ahead of the terminal burn. Destiny had been left behind, and now the four-legged collection of tanks that was Venture flew on its own.
Meanwhile, the crew of Brahma completed its burn, winding up in a relatively circular orbit that had the advantage of allowing them more frequent landing opportunities. Destiny’s crew, in going for broke with the gravity gauge and jumping to a far more eccentric orbit, would have the first chance to touch down . . . but if unable to start descent this goaround, would have to wait another day.
While Brahma would swoop in ahead of them. And it would be Zack’s old space station comrade, the excitable-yet-capable Taj, who would take the first steps on Keanu.
“Three minutes,” Zack said. “Kids, you okay in the backseat?”
“Yes.” “Fine.” Both voices were so clipped and tense that Zack could not tell them apart.
“Okay, there’s the Brahma data,” Pogo said, pointing a thick gloved finger at the display. It showed an image of the big ball that was Keanu and two rotating planes representing the orbits of the two spacecraft, along with columns of constantly changing figures.
“Houston on Channel B,” Zack said, clicking to the encrypted link. “Did you or the Home Team happen to note one of those venting episodes when Brahma did its burn?”
“Now there’s a good question,” Pogo said.
The lag stretched beyond the normal six seconds. Finally a new voice came on the line. “Zack, Harley. The answer is no . . . and yes—”
“Fucking A!” Yvonne blurted, clearly annoyed. Zack wanted to smile. Pogo Downey had the classic military mind—get ’er done, give me an answer. Yvonne, an engineer by training, had even less appetite for nuance.
But even Tea Nowinski, usually the mediator, the finder of middle ground in any group, joined the chorus. “What’s that supposed to mean?”