She was also wrong. She and Pav closed the door around eleven P.M. local time—as good as any, given their “space lag,” as Xavier called it. Rachel snuggled against Pav, who went to sleep as fast as a human being could.

While Rachel lay there for a good long time

She carried no watch—none of the HBs did—but there was a clock on the nightstand, and it said 1:27. She had not slept at all so far, and it didn’t appear that she would.

It was frustrating. Having Edgar Chang on board meant that her team had taken its first public step toward accomplishing its mission . . . and having Xavier returning from Adventure with an armful of equipment, and a knowing smirk, meant that the less-public plan was now in motion, too.

All they truly needed was for Sanjay to get well. Or to recover enough to be movable. Having seen him, however, she had to be realistic: He wasn’t going anywhere soon.

The brief contacts with Harley Drake and Keanu had been sort of reassuring—Rachel hadn’t realized how truly disconnected she had been feeling.

So why the restlessness? And how the hell did Pav manage to lie there snoozing like an exhausted infant? Like Yahvi as a baby—

Yahvi, of course, was another contributor to Rachel’s lack of sleep, with her chorus of sneezes, sniffles, and moans heard from the next room. Taj had seen the afternoon signs of an oncoming cold and prescribed spicy food, but Yahvi had rejected it—not that Rachel blamed her. (The Keanu diet was bland by any standards, especially the Houston side of it. Yahvi was just as likely to eat a bowl of live insects as a dish of hot curry.)

Yahvi seemed to be quiet now, thank goodness. Rachel had never been a victim of insomnia—she had even been able to fall asleep easily on the hard-packed nanodirt of the Keanu habitat during her first months, before the Bangalore teams “created” hammocks and actual mattresses.

Of course, she had been fourteen then . . . and was thirty-four now.

Exhale. Close eyes. Empty the mind . . . these were all meditation exercises Pav and others had taught her, and they had proved useful, for meditation. As for sleep, she would see—

Then she heard—and felt—a whump!

It was significant enough that it forced her to open her eyes, and wait. What could it be? It reminded her of her childhood in Houston, a Dumpster being emptied early on trash day—

If so, that would be the end of it.

Then she heard a second whump, and a third, and a series of fast rattling vibrations.

Pav sat up. “Hear that?”

“Yes,” she said. “I’m surprised you did.”

“You know me—” He went to the door and paused before opening it, listening for activity in the hallway.

“I want to check on Yahvi,” Rachel said.

Pav opened the door and their daughter was there, red-eyed and miserable looking. “Mommy,” she said.

As Pav slipped past, Rachel drew Yahvi into the room and sat her on the bed. “How are you feeling?”

“Look at me!”

Rachel had to stifle a smile and a laugh. She felt like a terrible mother, but Yahvi’s countenance was comical—red runny nose, her normally pretty blue eyes all bloodshot, her hair a tangled mess. She looked like a cartoon version of herself. “You’ve looked better,” she said, “but it’s just a cold.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means you stay warm, drink fluids, rest for three days, and it will be gone.”

“For you, maybe. What if I don’t have immunity? What if this makes me really sick?”

That troublesome thought had been simmering in Rachel’s mind, likely another cause of her sleeplessness. She placed the back of her hand on Yahvi’s forehead, the way her mother had when she was a child. “You don’t have a fever.”

“Like that’s really scientific. God.”

“We’ll have one of the Indian doctors check you in the morning.”

“That fills me with confidence.”

Rachel had to work to keep from laughing again. It was so . . . typical of Yahvi, or any girl her age—indeed, of Rachel herself at that age—to inflate every minor discomfort into a case of the plague. Obviously the girl was ill, and, never having experienced anything like a common terrestrial cold, clearly struggling with it. But she was strong, healthy, and likely to be over it in forty-eight hours or less.

Falling into wise mother mode, as Pav called it, also had the benefit of distracting Rachel from her own situation . . . the lack of sleep, the uncertainty about their next step, and what the hell were those sounds that reminded her of explosions and machine guns?

She had just tucked Yahvi back into her bed when Pav returned, meeting her in the empty hallway. “It’s over, whatever it was. The guards seemed relaxed.”

“Pav, you know what it sounded like.”

“Completely. It sounded like three grenades or mortars, followed by machine-gun fire.”

“So—”

“Hey, friends, what’s up?” Xavier poked his head out of his room, blinking sleepily. He was wearing nothing but baggy shorts, allowing his notable belly to precede him wherever he turned.

“Investigating a disturbance,” Pav said.

“A what?”

Pav looked at Rachel. “What sounded like explosions. Apparently they were not.”

Xavier shrugged and scratched his hind parts—never, to Rachel’s eyes, an attractive gesture. “I didn’t hear anything. You guys woke me up.”

“Well, then,” Rachel said, “go back to sleep.”

“As I said,” Pav told him. “It’s probably nothing.”

Okay, late update:

We have an opening, a good chance.

Can’t tell you more. But watch this space—

Until it goes dark. That will be a sign.

COLIN EDGELY TO THE KETTERING GROUP,

APRIL 14, 2040

ZEDS

But it was something.

Zeds had been told—repeatedly, by Rachel and Pav and Taj, and at least two other Indian officials—that he was not a prisoner, that the chamber was closed for his protection . . . but not locked.

Nevertheless, the first time he was left alone in the chamber, he had tried the latch . . . and found it locked. He had not attempted to force it that first night, preferring to rest and gather strength, and to more closely observe the workings of the mechanism when he was released the next day, and locked up again that evening.

Zeds wasn’t convinced that he could be locked into the chamber; he possessed sheer muscular strength far beyond that of any human. His extra arms provided additional leverage, another force multiplier. He could probably have torn the metal and glass door off its hinges.

But Zeds also possessed a weapon common to Sentries—a tool vest, as Zachary Stewart had named it twenty years past. It was more than that, of course . . . it was a garment that Sentries generally wore when anticipating lengthy excursions outside the sea (which was what they called any aquatic environment larger than a human bathtub). Most of the “pockets” held gas and chemicals that, when combined, created a liquid that could be breathed by a Sentry who would otherwise collapse.

(Harley Drake said it reminded him of the spare oxygen tanks firefighters carried, an image it took Zeds months to understand: What were these “fires” and how where they “fought”?)

The vest also contained any number of helpful items, such as several translating devices, weapons, and tools.

It bulked up under the overall environment suit Zeds was wearing for landing and other excursions and was actually rather uncomfortable. But he had agreed to that because he and Rachel anticipated situations where he might be out of the sea for ten hours or more, far beyond the support limits of a vest.

So, on night two, feeling constrained and also a bit annoyed that he had been eliminated from Rachel’s press conference—she and Pav had told him repeatedly that humans might react badly to his presence, and that they would have to be cautious—