“What do you mean?” Catherine pulled her knees to her chest.
“You’re carrying an antibody that has never been seen on Earth before. It means you were exposed to something during the mission—bacteria, a virus, a fungus—something that got into your body and caused a reaction in your immune system. And only one other human on record has ever had that particular antigen,” Cal said. “Iris Addy. The one other person who’s experienced similar memory loss and violent impulses after going through the wormhole.”
“You’re saying we all were exposed to something out there?” A nightmare scenario grew in Catherine’s mind, all six of them falling into those fits. Oh God, had they all destroyed one another? Was that what happened?
“It’s possible. I don’t know.” Cal watched her carefully as if he saw the tension spike in her. “Cath, don’t start jumping to conclusions. Stick to what we know. You and Commander Addy. That’s all we know.”
Catherine took a deep breath to steady herself, then let it out. “Okay. Say you’re right. How could an infection make us do things and not remember them? How could it… control us?”
“Have you ever heard of zombie ants? In Brazil?”
“Zombie ants…” As bad as things were, that was just ridiculous enough to make her smile. “No. Please tell me you aren’t saying I’m a zombie.”
“No! No, not at all. Okay. So there’s a fungus called Ophiocordyceps unilateralis. It infects certain species of ants and takes control of their bodies. It’s not sentient; it just makes the ants go to a specific place that’s most favorable for the fungus to spread.”
“Something tells me that doesn’t end well for the ants.”
“Well, no; they die and sprout fungi,” Cal said quickly, “but that’s not what I’m thinking about here. What if the original antigen represents some sort of similar method of control?”
“But…” Catherine paused.
“There’s no sign that it’s fatal,” Cal reassured her. “Iris Addy has been living with it for years.”
“You said the fungus isn’t sentient,” Catherine said. She could remember the distinct feeling of another entity, an intelligent mind, directing her movements. “But there was a… a personality there. A mind.”
“Yeah, it’s not a direct parallel. I’m just saying I think the antibodies are related—” Cal stopped. “Catherine. Do you realize what this means? An alien life-form made contact with you out there.”
“Don’t jump to conclusions—”
“It’s a small jump—a hop. First contact. Catherine, that’s huge.”
“We could have it all wrong.” Catherine wanted to backpedal. He believed her almost too completely. She hadn’t counted on that. “What if I’m just crazy?”
“I don’t think you’re crazy—at least, not delusional.” Cal got up to get their coffee, black for both of them. He brought it back to the living room and Catherine wrapped her hands around the mug, hunched over it.
“Even if I’m not, and I have met aliens—or they’ve communicated with me somehow—they’re not exactly saying ‘we come in peace,’ Cal. They may have already had a hand in killing some of us, and… and if…” She couldn’t make herself say it.
Cal leaned forward and touched her hand carefully, and she didn’t pull away. “Come on. Spit it out.”
“If they see us the way that I saw people…” Catherine shivered. “They want us dead. All of us.” A worse thought occurred. “What if they made me kill them all? My crew? If we were all infected, what if we killed one another?”
“Let’s verify that they exist first, before we start worrying about that.” Cal squeezed her hand and let it go. The warmth lingered on Catherine’s skin, more soothing than she wanted to admit.
“ ‘We,’ ” Catherine said suddenly.
“Huh?”
“You keep saying ‘we.’ ‘Before we start worrying.’ ”
“Well… yeah.” Cal gave her a puzzled look. If he tilted his head, he’d look like a baffled golden retriever, and Catherine had to fight a smile. “We’re the only ones who know about this. The first thing we need is more information,” Cal said.
“Where do we start?”
Cal rubbed his eyes before answering. “Some of it might come from you, if you start remembering things. There might be some reports hidden away that describe anomalies from your mission, or Iris Addy’s. I haven’t seen them, but I can look.”
“They didn’t tell me about any, if there are.”
“Yeah… that doesn’t mean much. Something like that would be classified ‘need to know’ immediately. And of course,” he added, “mere astronauts don’t need to know that.”
“You know people would say we’re both crazy.”
“Feh,” he said cheerfully. “Wouldn’t be the first time someone’s said that to me. Besides, they told Galileo he was crazy, right? And probably Einstein. Sometimes you gotta be crazy to make any progress.”
“NASA doesn’t like crazy these days.” Catherine felt a wry smile tugging at her mouth. “Crazy isn’t politically expedient.”
“Again, I say feh.” He really was on her side. He’d been against her only when he thought she was trying to hide the truth. Which… she supposed, she had been. She’d been afraid of the truth. She still was, but now she wasn’t afraid alone. And that made more of a difference than she could have imagined.
“The way I see it—God, that’s awful,” he said, grimacing after taking a sip of coffee, “once we have proof of their existence, the two biggest questions we have to answer are how and why. How are they controlling you? And why do they want to destroy Sagittarius II?”
“I don’t know.” She shrugged. “I’ve felt—I’m not sure how to describe it. When I’ve had those violent, repulsive thoughts, it’s like I got pushed out of the driver’s seat. And… last night, when we were fighting, I pushed my way back.”
“Lucky for me,” he said.
“I’m so sorry.”
“Not another word. You didn’t do it.” Cal leaned back, thinking.
“I don’t understand,” Catherine said. “We sent probes to TRAPPIST years before Sagittarius I. And you saw the data we managed to send back. Nothing showed any signs of intelligent life.”
Cal lowered his mug. “ ’What if this species, whatever it is, has evolved into a form that we can’t track or recognize?”
“Like what?”
“Any number of things,” Cal said. He looked for all the world like a graduate student having a theoretical discussion with some classmates. “They might be microscopic. Hell, they might not be made up of anything we recognize as living, organic material.”
“How the hell do we find something like that?”
Cal grinned. “I have no idea. But we’ll figure it out with some more data.”
“Oh God,” Catherine said suddenly. “We’ve got to let the crew know what they’re heading into.”
“I have a better idea,” Cal said, his expression turning more thoughtful. “How about we bring them back?”
“How are we going to do that? If no one wants to know the truth because of bad publicity, they’re sure not going to let us do that.”
“I don’t know yet.” Cal leaned back into her sofa. “We’ve got just over three weeks to find evidence that letting Sagittarius II land on TRAPPIST-1f would be worse optics than calling them back and scrapping the mission.” He glanced over. “You up for the challenge?”
“I am if you are.”