“Maybe you should bring something over from Brahma.”

He looked over his glasses. “Don’t tell me you believed that nonsense.”

“Our two organizations haven’t exactly been getting along.”

“Even during the cold war, when your country and mine had thousands of missiles pointed at each other, we still had agreements about keeping activities peaceful in space.”

She chose not to argue. “When do we find out what’s going on? I can’t believe they’ve all been gone this long.” In Yvonne’s world, EVAs lasted eight hours, maybe a little more. Not twenty-plus.

“I have no idea. We get bursts of contact through Brahma, but that’s all. Last message was two hours ago, from Taj. I know he’s alive, at least.” Dinner tray in hand, he suddenly seemed lost. “Where do you store—?”

“Let me.” Reflexively returning to her familiar dutiful astronaut role—though never the dutiful daughter—Yvonne took the tray. Then she realized . . . it was from Pogo Downey’s locker.

“Yvonne, is something wrong?”

She couldn’t speak. She could only wave the empty tray.

Dennis guessed her objection. “Yvonne, he is gone. He will never eat any of those meals. You might as well blame me for breathing his air.”

“I know.” She knew, but that cold truth was still unbearable. Pogo was gone! The big, bluff, sometimes goofy pilot, the man she’d trained with for two years . . . she’d been to barbecues at his house, even Christmas with his family last year.

Killed by some alien!

Dennis left her alone in the forward cabin. By the time she had wiped her eyes and taken a deep breath, he had returned.

“Now, what is this item?”

He was holding the silver case of her PPK. Even though she knew he could not possibly harm it, much less set it off, she still hated seeing it in strange hands. “Personal gear,” she said, forcing a smile. “It’s where I keep my first day covers and vodka.” Russian cosmonauts were notorious for sneaking booze aboard space missions.

Dennis smiled back, though Yvonne sensed that he was unconvinced. “We may have to break out the vodka, for medicinal purposes.”

“Not just yet.” She took the case and wedged it into another cabinet. Then she looked at her watch. “How many hours left before we regain comm?”

“Houston won’t be in touch for four hours yet.”

“I should clean up.” She smiled, still feeling shaky and uncertain. “That leaves me three more hours.”

“I know one thing we should do,” Dennis said. “Keep the doors locked.”

What if it’s true? What if there’s ALIEN LIFE on Keanu? What are NASA and the Coalition going to do about those ships and people? THEY’RE INFECTED! THEY CAN’T COME HOME!

POSTER AVRAM AT NEOMISSION.COM

“She says she saw a man!”

“What the hell does that mean?”

Zack ended the TV link between Megan and Rachel because mother and daughter were both getting upset—Megan was sitting off to one side, face in her hands, Tea’s arm around her shoulders—and because Lucas had rushed up with Camilla in hand. The girl’s expression was one of giddy excitement, while Lucas was frantic. “Just that! She says there was a man beyond the rover a few minutes ago.”

“Where? What was she doing?”

“I let her go to the bathroom, all right?” Lucas added embarrassment to his confusion. “We were both maybe fifty meters that way.” He was pointing in the general direction of the Beehive, and the membrane beyond.

“What exactly did she see?” Zack knelt in front of Camilla and assumed his best fatherly manner, willing a smile to his face. “Please ask her to tell me.”

Lucas translated. “‘I saw a man with no clothes on.’”

No clothes argued against this mystery “man” being cosmonaut Chertok. “Anything else? Was he carrying anything?” He gestured with his hands.

Camilla shook her head. Nothing. Now she was getting frightened by all the adult emotion. Zack gently patted her head and let her be.

“Thoughts? Taj?”

The Indian commander had been staring off into the forest, hoping to see what the girl had seen. “Well,” he said, “you three—Keanu brought back someone for each of you.” He pointed to Tea, then himself. “What about us?”

“Maybe we aren’t worthy,” Tea said, joking.

Zack said, “Well, maybe you are now.”

“Oh, great; more hungry mouths to feed.”

In Zack’s professional judgment, the situation was close to spinning out of control. Granted, he was completely exhausted—in that state it was easy to feel overwhelmed.

But here he was . . . here they were . . . five space travelers and a pair of reborn humans, with limited food and resources . . . with limited communication . . . all this while trapped in an environment that changed according to rules they could not know, at the direction of entities known only as the Architects.

Looking at it in summary, well, hell, he should have gone into a fetal crouch hours ago. “Natalia!” The Russian woman had been working on her space suit backpack, which lay half-opened. “Do you have any ideas?”

“About what?”

Zack barely suppressed a blistering reply. He had to remember that English was still Natalia’s second language. She would likely not know how infuriating her answer sounded. “About this new creature, or anything of interest. The Architects. The Temple.”

Natalia only shrugged. She opened her mouth to speak, but said nothing, as if changing her mind in midthought. Given Zack’s suspicions about her actions regarding the Konstantin-thing, it wasn’t likely she would have much to say that was useful, anyway.

Besides, Lucas was approaching, with further information from Camilla. “There’s one more thing: Camilla says the man had red hair.”

“Oh, shit,” Tea said, making the same intuitive leap Zack made. “Pogo.”

“Does that make sense?” Zack asked. “You’re suggesting that Pogo’s been revived.”

“Zack, it makes as much sense as anything I’ve seen in the last six hours. Come on.”

In my Father’s house there are many mansions. If not, I would have told you: because I go to prepare a place for you.

JOHN 14:2

It was a single word, even a sound, repeated several times in various forms, as if being tried out via air-to-ground radio.

Pogo.

Patrick Downey’s call sign had been hung on him during his first operational tour flying F-35s. During gunnery training at Nellis he had somehow managed to get ahead of one of his own missiles.

Which then took him for a target. Fortunately, the missile was inert. By frantically deploying chaff and other countermeasures, Second Lieutenant Downey had been able to avoid being shot down by something he’d launched. He even earned praise from his instructor for “getting ahead of the syllabus,” which didn’t call for countermeasure instruction for another two weeks.

That night in the O-Club, Shawn Beckman said to Patrick, in front of half a dozen other pilots, “Dude, you are your own worst enemy.”

And Jeff Zajac, another pilot, just happened to say, “Yeah, like that old comic strip. ‘We have met the enemy, and he is us.’ What the hell was it called?”

A third pilot, Rickie Bell, said “Pogo,” and a call sign was born.

The rule with call signs was, if you don’t like what’s suggested, don’t worry; something worse will follow. Bell wound up hearing “Tinker” for his entire flying career. Beckman earned the relatively neutral “Beckerwood,” but Zajac, after an unfortunate shaving accident that left him with temporary damage to his face, was henceforth saddled with “Scabber.”

In Pogo’s mind, it served him right.