QUESTION: You’re not answering.

TOUTANT: You pick up on things.

INTERVIEW AT YELAHANKA,

APRIL 14, 2040

DALE

Dale Scott had spent years flying Air Force jets on combat missions and routine patrols.

Then, during his decade at NASA, he had access to the sleek T-38 jets, which gave him even more hours of high-performance exhilaration.

He had been also launched into orbit aboard a Russian Soyuz rocket.

None of those experiences approached the thrill and satisfaction he felt in “flying” Keanu, even though his active role lasted less than fifteen minutes.

He had made his way back to the Factory in less than an hour—there was nothing like compulsion, anger, and good directions to shorten a trip.

The control center that Keanu guided him to was a structure he had passed dozens of times over the years. He recalled making plans to check out the place, but that applied to fifty other buildings as well.

When he arrived, he realized that he had stuck his head inside at least once in a dozen years . . . finding nothing but inert, incomprehensible machines and displays.

Today, however, these items were alive and working, as if waiting for him.

By now the messages inside his head had resolved with impressive clarity; he knew exactly what screens to touch, in what order, with what timing.

He executed the intricate series of commands, feeling a glow of satisfaction each time he was successful.

With the final touch, he believed that he felt a shudder in his feet . . . Keanu’s propulsion system coming alive.

On one central screen, entire rows and cells of figures began to change.

“Houston, we have ignition,” Dale said.

Another screen lit up with the most detailed Keanu schematic he had ever seen—not for the first time in his exile, he wished for an iPhone so he could capture that image. Jaidev Mahabala, Sasha Blaine, and Harley Drake—indeed, any one of the HBs—would have introduced money to the human habitat just to be able to buy the thing.

It showed the spheroid of the NEO, of course; that wasn’t surprising. Also visible: a number of habitats that Dale recognized, including the Factory. What fascinated him was seeing at least twice as many habitats as he expected, along with a network of tunnels and passages far more extensive than his explorations had revealed.

There was the core, too, a central cylinder running roughly south to north and containing Keanu’s primary power source, the fusion generator Zack Stewart had died restarting.

Near both poles of Keanu were a dozen tubes that were different from the internal tramway or Substance K piping . . . these had a slight conical shape, like trumpets, with their mouths appearing to reach Keanu’s surface.

Of course, Dale realized: These were scoops for sucking up interstellar gas and other materials to fuel the power core. (The schematic showed that there were other methods of gathering fuel or energy, including a network of grids on the NEO’s surface.)

Spaced equidistantly around Keanu’s equator and poles were smaller tubes that Dale recognized as propulsion jets.

And, finally, three other passages . . . vesicle-launching tubes.

Ultimately the schematic was a hodgepodge of different systems added over time. What else would one expect from a ten-thousand-year-old starship? It was likely that none of the equipment was original . . . that it had all been redesigned, upgraded, remade over the millennia.

And, given the variety of habitats, by different races, each with its own technology, and its own relationship to the now-absent or extinct Architects.

Humans were latecomers, Dale realized. And in twenty years had done nothing! We don’t even know what we’re living in, he thought.

But for the moment, one human had been empowered. Dale Scott had activated Keanu’s propulsion system for the second time in human history. The first activation, twenty years ago, had stopped Keanu’s flight out of the solar system and put the NEO on a long, slow trajectory back toward Earth.

That event had been controlled from the Temple, but only the way that a human space mission could be “controlled” from a backup center . . . basic commands could be given, but little else. The real calculations and decisions took place in the primary centers.

Here in the Factory node, Dale had finer, more precise control than the Temple.

He needed it, because he was not only blasting Keanu out of its circular orbit four hundred thousand kilometers from Earth.

He was sending it on a collision course toward Earth.

He wondered whether Jaidev and the others knew that. In the past month, Keanu had made a burn of its system to slow down enough to be captured by Earth’s gravity, so, Dale knew, the backup node in the Temple was still active. But would anybody be watching? Would its rudimentary displays suddenly flash red or sound some kind of alarm?

He would have loved to see the look on Harley Drake’s face when he realized that someone else had taken the stick and was flying his NEO.

There was still work to be done, of course. An object the size of Keanu—over one hundred kilometers across—and flying at a velocity that was steadily increasing to ten or twenty thousand kilometers an hour needed to be able to tweak its trajectory.

Because the idea was not to hit Earth. The idea was to fly close, within a thousand kilometers, possibly even lower, on a certain path over a certain spot at a certain time.

Dale hoped that someone on Earth would be aiming a camera at Keanu as it approached—and then he realized that every human on the fucking planet would be watching the sky! Having a bright white NEO the size of a major asteroid growing bigger and bigger would send people running for hills and shelters . . . at least, those too stupid to realize that the impact of an object the size of Keanu would be a civilization-ending event.

(The rock that had killed the dinosaurs was a third the diameter of Keanu.)

The smarter ones would hold each other’s hands, say their prayers, confront their fate, watching in horrified wonder as the shiny thing grew monstrous in the sky.

What a show that would be!

In spite of his years of solitude and systematic exploration of the Factory and environs, patience had never been prominent in Dale Scott’s makeup.

After several hours with no further update of the images and sounds in his head, he began to wonder:

Was Keanu finished with him?

He shouldn’t have been surprised. His communion with Keanu had never been consistent; indeed, at times the images and sounds had been absent for days or even months.

But he needed them now.

He returned to the control node and saw that the status screen continued to change. He also found a new panel that showed both “target” Earth, still small and largely in shadow, just a bluish crescent, and the Moon, far closer, half-shadowed, viewed from a completely different perspective; Dale realized he was looking toward its south pole . . . he could make out Shackleton Crater, the landing site for Destiny-5 more than twenty years ago, a mission he might have commanded instead of Tea Nowinski . . . if not for Zack Stewart.

No, don’t look back. Go forward.

But . . . how? Since he had commanded Keanu out of orbit, the NEO had crossed thousands of kilometers. Its speed had increased dramatically.

It was diving toward Earth! Surely Keanu needed his help with that incredibly dangerous operation—