They had joined and mixed up with the larger group from Bangalore. This uber-group had immediately splintered into (A) those who knew each other, (B) those who immediately got busy working on such matters as shelter and sustenance (with a good deal of overlap between groups A and B), (C) a larger group that had a litany of complaints requiring Immediate Action from Somebody, (D) an even larger group that moved in stunned silence, like the victims of a natural disaster, and (E) a small but disturbing group that seemed too paralyzed by shock to move at all.
In group E was a young woman who had lapsed into catatonia. Which was bad enough, but what was worse was that she seemed to be the mother of an infant—said child had ceased wailing in justifiable complaint and probably hunger through exhaustion. (Harley sympathized; with a bit more provocation, he was prepared to engage in a screaming duel with the kid.)
They had met Zack Stewart in the company of a nine-year-old Brazilian girl. Strange, certainly, but hardly a blip on Harley’s recent scale of strange experiences.
Now all of them were gathered, more or less, around the Temple, listening to Zack, former NASA astronaut, former commander of Destiny-7, former astronomer, former inhabitant of Earth, answering questions. What is this place? Who built it? How did they get us here? Can we go home?
Or, rather, trying to answer. It was obvious to Harley that his friend Zack was getting into deep water with the larger questions. Harley offered a change of subject: “Hey, Zack…any thoughts on food and water?”
“Oh, right,” Zack said. “Water—there are at least two springs within walking distance. We have food, too. So far I’ve found fruits and vegetables. No meat, though.”
“That is no problem for most of us,” a tall, middle-aged Indian man said, to at least some laughter. He was Vikram Nayar, the lead Indian flight director for the Brahma mission. Harley suspected that most of those transported humans were either space professionals or people working at one of the two control centers.
Hardly a cross section of humanity. But then, what sort of talent pool was required? Were they going to be stuck here for days, weeks, years? In that case, Harley would prefer a dozen Boy Scouts, or farmers.
Or were they going to find a way to go home? In that case, the space geeks were what you wanted.
Responding to another question, Zack turned, allowing Harley to see his face, and it wasn’t pretty. The man was exhausted, filthy, and on the verge of collapse. That much was obvious to Harley, who had known Zack for fifteen years, and to Shane Weldon.
It was even troubling to Rachel, Zack’s daughter. “God, Harley, can’t we get someone else to do this?” she said.
“Who else knows anything?” Sasha said.
Harley turned to Weldon. “What happened to your inventory?” That had been one small task he and Weldon had worked on during the trip, if for no other reason than to keep them from going batshit crazy.
Weldon waved a piece of paper, the backside of a wrinkled printout salvaged from someone’s backpack. “Right here. I still don’t think we’ve got everything out of the RV.”
Among the seventy-eight humans with whatever they wore and carried, the Houston Object had sucked up half of a recreational vehicle as well as a small boat, complete with two life jackets and oars; several coolers and lawn chairs; dozens of personal data devices (phones, laptops, BlackBerrys); various medications; several six-packs of beer; and even a couple of bottles of spirits.
Just glancing at the items carried by the Bangalore crowd, Harley could add a food vendor’s cart—“Now there’s a useful item”—several bicycles, and a dozen colorful umbrellas. Actually, these were more flimsy: call them parasols.
If Harley ever returned to Earth again, he would never make assumptions about what his fellow man or woman might be carrying on, say, the Day of Rapture.
If nothing else, they’d be armed, too. “What about the weapons?” he asked Weldon.
Weldon showed him the list of six handguns and a shotgun. When Harley made a groaning sound, Zack said, “Come on, Harls, what do you expect? It’s Texas, and it looked as though we were being invaded!”
Harley Drake had made some strange trips in his life. But emerging from a tunnel on an alien planet into a regular damned Garden of Eden…with his old buddy Zack Stewart waiting to greet him?
Then there was the image of half the RV floating around inside the Object. That had struck Harley as simply terrifying; any space traveler knew that just because a module didn’t have weight didn’t mean it didn’t have mass. A couple of people had slammed into the vehicle, and while the injuries turned out to be bumps and bruises, it could have been much worse, had the thing not eventually slithered to the bottom of the Object and stayed there.
Coming in at third place: becoming foxhole buddies with Gabriel Jones.
For years Harley had dismissed the Johnson Space Center director—an African American astronomer—as an affirmative-action hire, a pleasant face and voice not backed up with leadership skills.
He had been happy to be proven wrong, as very soon after the “scoop,” Jones had rallied the troops, taking roll, conducting, in essence, a town meeting.
Not that there’d been much leading he could do. As the Earth receded from view and Keanu grew larger, it became clear that the Houston group—seventy-nine of them; Jones had confirmed the number through several head counts—was on a voyage likely to last two days. (Calculations courtesy of one of the retired JSC engineers swept up by the object.)
Two days of confusion, hunger, thirst, deteriorating hygiene, and general panic that eventually died out from lack of energy.
But Jones had proven himself to be as capable as anyone could be, given the strangeness factor, offering reassurance where needed, a bit of cheerleading at other times, and even a sharp correction when warranted.
It was quite remarkable, considering that Jones’s daughter, Yvonne Hall, had been one of the astronauts killed on Zack Stewart’s snakebit Destiny-7 mission.
Then there was what Harley later called the “Close Encounter.”
It happened midway through their second day. Harley had been half-dozing when Sasha nudged him.
“Did you see that?” Sasha said. The large, flamboyant redheaded woman had become Harley’s closest friend throughout this mad adventure. With her highly irregular human interactions, she seemed highly suited to this new environment.
“Don’t tell me you saw something weird.” He couldn’t keep the sarcasm out of his voice.
She slapped him on the shoulder. “Out that side…I thought I saw another blob.” The Houston Object—or, as most of them referred to it, “the blob”—was essentially a giant stiff-sided balloon…its skin was white and it was possible to see through it…though, given that the only visible features were the Earth, the Sun, and the Moon, Harley saw little point in doing any observations.
“‘Plotting an intercept course, Mr. Data?’” That earned him another slap.
“Actually, flying in formation,” she said. Harley and Sasha had begun to act like a bickering couple from a bad romantic comedy. It seemed inevitable that they would wind up together, if they could just overcome the immediate obstacles.
In their case, of course, the obstacles were possible death by impact on a strange planetoid, or suffocation or any of the dozen ways one could die in spaceflight.
One of the other passengers, a short African American kid named Xavier, agreed with Sasha that “something” was out there. But when Harley had dutifully looked where Sasha had indicated, he had seen nothing.
Which didn’t mean there was nothing to see. He knew, of course, that Bangalore had been struck by an Object before Houston had. Maybe that had turned into a scoop, too.
Finally, there was the landing itself. Fascinating was the best word Harley could come up with. He had already made the assumption, and confirmed it with Jones and Brent Bynum, the disturbed White House guy, and Weldon and even Rachel Stewart—everyone else he knew who had been scooped up—that the Keanu people weren’t going to send an Object to bring them across space only to smash them on the surface.