So forth. These days, spaceships stayed in space where they belonged, and everything they carried went up or came down on the ’rack elevators. Perfect quarantine, he’d heard some late-night talking head call it once, and extremely energy-efficient into the bargain. A spaceship coming down was the scenario from some cheap disaster flick or even cheaper paranoid alien-invasion experia show off the Jesusland channels. For it to happen for real could only mean that something, somewhere had gone superwrong.

Oh dude—this, I’ve got to fucking see…

He was still applying the biosealant gel to his face when the shuttle banked about and the tailgate cracked open. Cold Pacific air came flushing in with the scream of the turbines and the gray dawn light. He unbuckled and shuffled down the line to the cable hoist. His pulse knocked lightly in his temples. Something that was too much fun to be fear coursed in his blood. He wrapped the T-mask across his face, pulled the breathing filter down to his chin, pressed the edges of it all into the biosealant. The wind whipped in off the ocean outside, chilling the newly pasted skin of his cheeks where they were still exposed at either side of the mask. There was an illusory sense of safety behind the curve of impact-resistant one-way glass and its warm amber heads-up projected displays, as if his whole body were sitting back here instead of just bits of his face. They got warned about that shit all the time. Some crudely rendered virtual drill sergeant in the bargain-basement Texan software that was all Filigree Steel Security’s training budget ran to. Inexplicably, the badly lip-synched figure had a British accent. Whole-body awareness, you ’orrible li-uhl man, the construct was wont to bellow whenever he tripped one of the program’s stoppers. Are your legs on loan? Is your chest a temporary appendage? Whole-body awareness is the only fucking thing that will keep your whole body alive.

Yeah, yeah. Whatever.

He snapped the cable onto his vest, turned back to the belly of the shuttle and the observation camera fixed in the ceiling. He made the OK sign with finger and thumb. Coughed into the induction mike at his throat.

“Point, ready to deploy.”

I hear you, Point. On my mark. Three, two, one…drop.

The cable jolted into motion and he fumbled his XM to readiness in both hands, leaning out so he could peer down at what lay below. At first, it was just the endless roll and whitecap slap of the Pacific, outward in all directions. Then he got a fix on the ship. Not what he’d been expecting: it looked like a huge plastic packing case, awash in the water, barely floating. The hull was mostly a scorched black, but he could make out streaks of white with the remains of nano-etched lettering, some kind of corporate insignia that he supposed must have skinned off in the heat of reentry. He dropped closer, saw what looked like an open hatch set in a section that was still above water.

“Uh, Command. Are we sure this thing isn’t going to sink?”

Affirmative, Point. COLIN specs say she should stay afloat indefinitely.

“Just, I’ve got an open hatch here, and with this wind and the waves I figure she’s got to be shipping some water.”

Repeat, Point. Vessel should float indefinitely. Check the hatch.

His boots hit the hull with a solid clank about a dozen meters off from the hatch and a little downward. Ocean water swirled around his feet, ankle-deep, then sucked back. He sighed and unclipped from the cable.

“Understood, Command. Off descender.”

Will maintain.

He crouched a little and worked his way up the shallow slope toward the hatch, peered down into it. Water had sloshed into the opening; he could see it glistening wetly on the rungs of a ladder that led down to a second, inner hatch, which he assumed had to be the end of an air lock. As he watched, a fresh surge washed over the hatch coaming and rinsed down onto the ladder, dripping and splashing to the bottom of the lock. He peered a bit more, then shrugged and clambered down the ladder until he was hanging off the lower rungs just above the inner hatch. The water down there was about three fingers deep, slopping back and forth with the tilt of the vessel in the waves. Just below the surface, the moldings of the hatch looked unnaturally clean, like something seen at the bottom of a rock pool. There was a warning: caution: pressure must equalize before hatch will open.

Joe figured whatever pressure there was inside the hull must be pretty close to Earth standard then, because someone or something had already unsealed the inner hatch. It was hanging open just enough to let the water drain very slowly through the crack. He grunted.

Weren’t for that, fucking air lock’d be a quarter full already from the slop.

He tapped his mike.

“Command? I’ve got a cracked inner hatch here. Don’t know if that’s the systems or, uh, human agency.”

Noted. Proceed with caution.

He grimaced. He’d been hoping for a withdraw call.

Yeah, or failing that, some fucking backup, Command. This baby’s come from space, right, from Mars most likely. No fucking telling what kind of bugs might be loose in there. That’s what nanorack quarantine’s for, right?

For a moment, he thought about backing up anyway.

But—

You’re equipped, he could already hear the patient voice explaining to him. You’re masked and gelled against biothreat, which we don’t in any case anticipate. You have no valid reason to query your orders.

And Zdena’s voice: Why they pay us, cowboy.

And from the others, jeers.

He shook off a tiny shudder, moved down a couple of rungs, and put a boot through the water to press gingerly on the hatch. It gave, fractionally.

“Great.”

Point?

“Nothing,” he said sourly. “Just proceeding with extreme fucking caution.”

He braced one hand flat on the wall of the air lock, stamped harder on the hatch, impatient now and—

—it caved in under his foot.

Hinged heavily down to the side, dumping the water through into a darkened interior with a long, hollow splash. The sudden drop caught him unawares. He lost his grip on the rung above. Fell, grabbed clumsily with one flailing gloved hand, missed, and clouted the side of his head on the ladder as he tumbled. He went right through the opened inner hatch, had time for one garbled yell—

“Fuuuuuuahhhh—”

—and ended up in a heap on what must have been the sidewall of the corridor below.

Shock of impact, his teeth clipped the edge of his tongue. Sharp bang in his shoulder, gouge in the ribs where one end of the XM jabbed him on the way down. He hissed the pain out through gritted teeth.

For the rest, he seemed to have landed on something soft. He lay still for a moment, checking for damage reports from his tangled limbs.

Total-body awareness, right, Sarge.

He summoned a grin. Didn’t think he’d broken anything. Looking up, he figured it for not much more than a three-meter drop.

He blew a hard, chuckled breath of relief into the mask filter. Completed his expletive quietly.

“Fuck.”

Point? Command came through, yeah, finally fucking concerned now. Report your status. Are you injured?

“I’m fine.” He propped himself up on one arm, squinted around in the gloom and snapped on the helmet light. “Just took a digger. Nothing to—”

The edge of the beam clipped something that didn’t make any sense. His head jerked around, the beam hit full on what he’d seen—

“Ah, fuck man, you gotta be—”

And suddenly, with the flood of disbelieving comprehension, he gagged, vomit flooding up and into the mask, burning his nose and throat, as he saw for the first time exactly what the soft thing was that had broken his fall.