“Jack,” she said softly. “I think I’ve just bought myself some time.”

“What’ve you got?”

“HCG. Diana was growing the crystals. I’d have to do an IVA to get to it. They’re in the ESA module, and that’s at vacuum. If I start depress now, I could get to those crystals in four or five hours.”

“How much HCG is on board?”

“I’m checking.” She opened the experiment file and quickly scanned the mass measurement data.

“Emma?”

“Hold on, hold on! I’ve got the most recent mass here. I’m looking up normal HCG levels in pregnancy.”

“I can get those for you.”

“No, I’ve found it. Okay. Okay, if I dilute this crystal mass in normal saline … plug in my body weight as forty-five kilograms…” She typed in the numbers. She was making wild assumptions here. She didn’t know how quickly HCG was metabolized, or what its half-life would be.

The answer at last onscreen.

“How many doses?” said Jack.

She closed her eyes. It’s not going to last long enough. It’s not going to save me.

“Emma?” She released a deep breath. It came out as a sob. “Three days.”

It was 1:45 A.M. and Jack’s vision was blurred from fatigue, words on the computer screen fading in and out of focus.

“There must be more,” he said. “Keep searching.”

Gretchen Liu, seated at the keyboard, glanced up at Jack and Gordon in frustration. She had been sound asleep when they called her to come in, and she’d arrived without her usual camera-ready makeup and contact lenses. They had never seen their normally elegant public affairs officer looking so unglamorous. Or wearing glasses, for that matter—thick horn-rim glasses that magnified pinched eyes. “I’m telling you guys, this is all I can find on Lexisnexis search. Almost nothing on Helen Koenig. On SeaScience, there’s only the usual corporate news releases. And as for the Palmer Gabriel, well, you can see for yourself he doesn’t court publicity. In the last five years, the only place his name turns up in media is on the financial pages of The Wall Street Journal articles about SeaScience and its products. There’s no data. There’s not even a photo of the man.”

Jack slumped back in his chair and rubbed his eyes. The three of them had spent the last two hours in the Public Affairs Office, combing every article about Helen Koenig and SeaScience they could find on Lexis-Nexis. They had turned up numerous hits for SeaScience, dozens of articles in which its products had been mentioned, from shampoos to pharmaceuticals to fertilizers. But almost nothing had turned up on Koenig or Gabriel.

“Try the name Koenig again,” said Jack.

“We’ve done every possible spelling variation on her name,” said Gretchen. “There’s nothing.”

“Then type in the word Archaeons.” Sighing, Gretchen typed in Archaeons and clicked on “Search.” A numbingly long string of article citations filled the screen.

“Alien Earth Creatures. Scientists Hail Discovery of New Branch of Life.” (Washington Post)

“Archaeons to Be Subject of International Conference.” (Miami Herald)

“Deep Sea Organisms Offer Clues to Life’s Origins.” (Philadelphia Inquirer)

“Guys, this is hopeless,” said Gretchen. “It’ll take us all night to read every article on this list. Why don’t we just call it a night get some sleep?”

“Wait!” Gordon said. “Scroll down to this one.” He pointed to a citation at the bottom of the screen,” Scientist Dies in Galapagos Diving Accident (New York Times).”

“The Galapagos,” said Jack. “That’s where Dr. Koenig discovered the Archaeon strain. In the Galapagos Rift.” Gretchen clicked on the article and the text appeared. The story was two years old.

COPYRIGHT, The New York Times.

SECTION, International News.

HEADLINE, “Scientist Dies in Deep Sea Diving Accident.”

BYLINE, Julio Perez, NYT Correspondent.

BODY, An American scientist studying Archaeon marine organisms was killed yesterday when his one-man submersible became wedged in an undersea canyon of the Galapagos Rift. The body of Dr. Stephen D. Ahearn was not recovered until this morning, when cables from the research vessel Gabriella were able to haul the minisub to the surface.

“We knew he was still alive down there, but there was nothing we could do,” said a fellow scientist aboard Gabriella. “He was trapped at nineteen thousand feet. It took us hours to free his submersible and haul it back to the surface.” Dr. Ahearn was a professor of geology at the University of California, San Diego. He resided in La Jolla, California.

Jack said, “The ship’s name was Gabriella.” He and Gordon looked at each other, both of them struck by the same startling thought, Gabriella.

Palmer Gabriel.

“I’ll bet you this was a SeaScience vessel,” said Jack, “and Helen Koenig was aboard.” Gordon’s gaze shifted back to the screen. “Now this is interesting. What do you make of the fact Ahearn was a geologist?

“So what?” said Gretchen, yawning.

“What was a geologist doing aboard a marine research vessel?”

“Checking out the rocks on the sea floor?”

“Let’s do a search on his name.”

Gretchen sighed. “You guys owe me a night’s worth of beauty sleep.” She typed in the name Stephen D. Ahearn and clicked on “Search.” A list appeared, seven articles in all. Six of them were about undersea death in the Galapagos.

One article was from the year prior to his death, “UCSD Professor to Present Latest Findings on Tektite Research. Will Be Keynote Speaker at International Geological Conference in Madrid.” (San Diego Union)

Both men stared at the screen, too stunned for a moment to utter a word.

Then Gordon said softly, “This is it, Jack. This is what they’ve been trying to hide from us.” Jack’s hands had gone numb, his throat dry. He focused on a single word, the word that told them everything.

Tektite.

JSC director Ken Blankenship’s house was one of the anonymous tract homes in the suburb of Clear Lake, where so many JSC officials lived. It was a large house for a bachelor, and Jack saw that the front yard was immaculately groomed, every hedge clipped into submission. That yard, so well lit at three A.M. , was exactly what one would expect of Blankenship, who was notorious for his perfectionism as well as his almost paranoid obsession with security. There’s probably a surveillance camera trained on us right this moment, thought Jack as he and Obie waited for Blankenship to answer the front door. It took several rings of the doorbell before they saw lights come on inside.

Then Blankenship appeared, a squat little Napoleon dressed in a bathrobe.

“It’s three in the morning,” said Blankenship. “What are you guys doing here?”

“We need to talk,” said Gordon.

“Is there something wrong with my phone? You couldn’t have called first?”

“We can’t use the phone. Not about this.” They all stepped into the house. Only after the front door swung shut did Jack say, “We know what the White House is trying to hide. We know where Chimera comes from.” Blankenship stared at him, his irritation over a disturbed night’s sleep instantly forgotten. Then he looked at Gordon, seeking confirmation of Jack’s statement.

“It explains everything,” said Gordon. “USAMRIID’s secrecy. The White House’s paranoia. And the fact that this organism behaves unlike anything our doctors have ever encountered.”

“What did you find out?” Jack answered the question. “We know Chimera has human, mouse, and amphibian DNA. But USAMRIID won’t tell us what other DNA is on the genome. They won’t tell us what Chimera really is, or where it comes from.”

“You told me last night the bug was sent up in a SeaScience payload. A culture of Archaeons.”

“That’s what we thought. But Archaeons are not dangerous organisms. They’re incapable of causing disease in humans—that’s why the experiment was accepted by NASA. Something about this particular Archaeon is different. Something SeaScience didn’t tell us.”