So, mentally, he had treated it like a landing, the kind of maneuver he had once hoped he would perform on the surface of the Moon.
And, sure enough, during what a Venture lander crew would have called the terminal phase, as the half-moon of Keanu became the single biggest thing in Harley’s universe, something inside the Object had gone online, some kind of deceleration engine.
Everyone had begun to feel it, too, as they started to slide toward the bottom of the spherical object. The terminal phase had dragged on, in Harley’s semiprofessional judgment. Of course, if you had unlimited propellant or a magic engine, you would go slow. Harley had flown a shuttle docking at the International Space Station, and the final closing rate was usually a meter per second. At that velocity, a bump wasn’t going to do too much damage.
Which seemed to be the idea behind the object’s touchdown on Keanu.
Or, to be precise, touchdown inside Keanu. During the last fifteen minutes of the descent, Harley had spotted a crater growing prominent through the cloudy surface of the object. No matter what maneuvers the blob made—and it was making occasional adjustments, each of which caused Harley’s stomach to turn over—the crater stayed square in the center of the field of view.
And kept growing until it was a target so obvious, no one could mistake it.
All Harley knew was that this wasn’t Vesuvius Vent, the large crater that had served as the landing site for both Zack Stewart’s crew and the Brahma team.
Trying to think ahead, Harley latched on to his wheelchair. (The only truly nice thing about the trip inside the object had been the lack of gravity…Harley had been able to float just like everyone else.) He wanted support if gravity built up, as he expected it to.
With Sasha’s help, he got positioned in the chair. “First time I’ve felt like I needed to be strapped down,” he said.
Harley had begun hearing a few “Oh my Gods” and other alarmed whimpers. Before he could say anything, however, Gabriel Jones had spoken up. “People, please! Remember what I said about the voyage itself! Somebody wants us on Keanu! They’ll land us safely!”
Harley hoped that Jones was right, and not just enthusiastic. He had lost perspective, lost any thoughts of the second object; the only thing he could do was watch the crater grow until it literally filled the field of view.
Whoosh!
The dark walls of the crater enclosed them with very little clearance, for a moment shaking Harley’s confidence that this would all end with a soft landing.
Then, with no more g-forces than you’d experience in the ground-floor stoppage of an elevator, they were down…somewhere inside Keanu, all seventy-nine of them. Since they were now subject to gravity, they slid toward the lower fifth of the object, collecting around the bent RV.
“Now what do we do?” Bynum said. The man from the White House staff—the most unlikely refugee in the whole unlikely group—looked more alive than at any time in the past two days.
“Look for the door marked EXIT,” Sasha said.
“How do we know we can go outside?” someone asked. That was another one of Harley’s associates, Wade Williams, the famous—though not as famous as he thought—sci-fi writer. For all his farseeing intellect, Williams was a cranky, half-deaf geezer wearing an Astros cap he had managed to find somewhere in the cloud of flotsam.
“For the same reason we knew we would live through this,” Jones shouted. “Because someone wants us here!”
Still nothing happened for at least a minute, maybe two.
Then the entire object rotated and turned slightly. It was just enough to unsettle everyone and nearly throw Harley from his chair.
Something wasn’t right. “Sasha,” he said, “do you feel anything really unusual?”
She started to say no, but stopped in midsyllable. “Shit, what’s happening?”
The curved surface of the object was beginning to soften. It retained its by-now-familiar milky translucency…but it also appeared to be melting. Harley sensed the wheels of his chair sinking in. The sensation was not pleasant.
“It’s getting gooey,” Sasha said.
The voices of those sharing the space with them began to rise, too. There were a couple of moans; someone started weeping.
“Look at the life support gear!” Weldon said.
At their backs, at the very base of the object, the machines that had provided air, water, and food as well as cleanup service were beginning to melt, too. Harley could smell a nasty odor, like burning plastic. “I hope that’s not toxic.”
The process seemed to accelerate…the machines were now just puddles of goo and the surface of the bubble actually writhed and wrinkled, as if losing tensile strength.
“Oh my God, Harley—” Sasha was literally sunk to her knees. She reached for Harley’s chair, but it, too, was sinking…
At that moment the bubblelike skin of the object simply collapsed, covering them all in a substance that felt like fabric, but also like liquid.
Which dissolved, leaving only a thin film of powder that quickly, gently wafted away, like ashes from an old campfire.
The entire group, along with every piece of equipment including the RV (lying on its side), was sitting on the floor of a chamber at least five or six stories tall, and substantially wider.
“My ears popped,” Sasha said.
Harley’s had, too. “I hope that’s increasing pressure, not decreasing.” He took a deep breath…the air actually smelled and tasted fresh, like a spring morning. Of course, any air would be an improvement over the fetid stew he and the others had lived in for the past two days.
“Friends,” Gabriel Jones announced, “I think we have arrived.”
“In what?” Weldon asked. It seemed to Harley as though the former flight director and chief astronaut got angry every time Jones opened his mouth. He realized he would have to watch Weldon; he wasn’t handling the situation very well.
“In a docking bay?” Bynum said. “Isn’t that what you NASA people would call it?”
“It’s as good a name as any,” Harley said. He turned to Sasha, who was staring up, openmouthed. “What?”
“Just…looking,” she said.
On the “ceiling” Harley saw what appeared to be squiggly luminous tubes growing brighter.
“I think there’s a door,” Bynum said. He was pointing behind them to a glowing rectangular opening.
“I, for one, am heartily sick of waiting,” Harley said. He turned to Sasha. “Could I trouble you for a little help? I want to be first, as in, ‘one small roll for Harley Drake, one giant push for Sasha Blaine.’”
She smiled, took a moment to run her fingers through her hair, then settled her hands on the handles.
They were joined by the others now, all crowding behind them as they moved en masse toward the “door.”
ARRIVAL DAY: GABRIEL
Their arms filled with whatever they could carry, the Houston group had trudged several hundred meters down a broad, rock-lined tunnel. “Better bring everything,” Jones had said. “We may not be coming back this way!”
And while she no doubt meant it to be an aside—this chamber had amazing acoustics—Gabriel heard what Sasha said to Rachel next: “Why does he think we aren’t coming back? Does he know where we’re going?”
Harley couldn’t let that pass. Nor could he let them continue complaining, believing that they couldn’t be heard.
“Ladies,” he said over his shoulder, “right now we are forced to look good rather than be good.”
Gabriel knew that was how many NASA people—and some outside the agency—would describe his entire career. He’s slick and superficial, no substance. He’s affirmative action all the way.