“I know what’s happening to me!” she said. “This body wasn’t meant to last! It was only temporary, to give you someone to . . . talk to.” She was already mourning for her own lost life, for the experiences she would never have, for the faces she would no longer see, voices she would no longer hear, touches she would never feel.

For no more Zack. For Rachel never again.

Now she knew loss.

And the part of her that was linked to the Architect could only scream, Why? Why now?

But there was no answer.

Moments later, they emerged from the tunnel into a chamber that dwarfed the previous one. . . . But whereas the human-friendly environment looked, at its most stable, like a terrestrial jungle, this looked like a circuit board . . . or an urban cityscape, all silvery towers and boxes mixed with coils, vents, bridges. There were broad passages between some of the structures. Others were packed as tightly as Manhattan brownstones.

And much of it was still taking shape, being assembled before their eyes.

“What is this place?”

“The Factory,” Megan said, barely able to speak.

“What does it build?”

“Environments. Life-forms. Supplies. Everything.”

“Well,” Zack said, “at least it will be easier to walk.” He indicated the ground, which had now formed itself into flat, bricklike shapes much like those in the tunnel between Vesuvius Vent and the membrane.

“And the environment is still human-friendly.” Zack had half-expected to start gasping the moment he and Megan cleared the tunnel. “What about those people the Architects need?”

Megan swayed. Zack caught her. “I’m sorry, all I’m doing is asking questions that can wait. You need food. We need shelter . . .” He trailed off. “Did you hear something?”

Megan stood up, alert. “Yes.”

It was a human voice screaming in terror . . . the voice of a child! “That was Camilla!” Zack said.

The Architect was due south of them—if north could be defined as the tunnel mouth—and busy with his own tasks. The sound came from their right. “Stay here,” he told Megan, and began edging along the rocky wall.

“No, thank you,” Megan said. “I’m coming, too.”

Approaching Object w Weldon others—big but so far benign. Sending imgs.

DEPUTY NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER BRENT BYNUM’S LAST TEXT MESSAGE

“No signs of radiation, at least.” Shane Weldon looked up from the Geiger counter. “But I wish we had some other ways of looking at this thing.”

“Do we even know what we’re looking at?” Harley said.

By the time they had crossed Lake Pasadena, Harley, Rachel, Sasha, and the mission control group had been joined by dozens of other people, all approaching the big bright dome of the Object from different directions . . . including one trio in a rowboat.

Harley said, “I just wish I knew where all these folks were coming from.”

“I think they were the same ones outside the center,” Rachel said. “The ones in the RVs.”

“I think you’ve just got a lot of the JSC community here,” Weldon said. “People who live along the lake.”

“I didn’t realize so many of them were nuts.”

“Only in a good way,” Weldon said. “There are lots of places in the U.S. where you’ll find people who are fascinated with spaceflight . . . but right here you’ve got a group that is not only curious, but involved. Naturally they’d be compelled to see something like this.”

What they were seeing now was a whitish sphere perhaps fifty meters in diameter, embedded in the ground and slowly rotating . . . dirt, debris, and even water seemed to be bubbling up around it. Visibility was still limited; the only light at the site came from the Object itself, and from the flashing red lights of emergency vehicles a hundred meters away.

“Well,” Harley said. “Look away. I am not going any closer.”

Not that that was an immediate option. The Object had impacted north and west of the NASA Parkway bridge over Lake Pasadena. JSC’s antenna farm had indeed been obliterated, but the damage was far less than Harley expected. “We should be seeing a crater here, don’t you think?” He addressed the question to Sasha Blaine.

“Yes. It’s almost as if it landed.”

“That’s exactly what it did!” a familiar voice proclaimed. Emerging from their left, having apparently walked from JSC, came another group led by Wade Williams. “What the hell . . . it came from a spacecraft. Logic says it’s another vehicle of some kind.”

Williams was clearly winded by the walk. He leaned on a tree as others from the Home Team caught up. “Gee, Harley,” Shane Weldon said. “If I’d known your whole crew was coming, I would’ve chartered a bus.”

“They’re free agents, Shane. They can go wherever they want.”

Williams heard the exchange and stepped in front of Weldon. “You asked us to give you advice on alien activities and objects. Isn’t this where we’re supposed to be?”

Weldon never passed up a challenge to his authority. “It’s where one of you might be useful. Suppose this thing blows up? Then where are we?”

“I don’t know about you, Mr. Weldon, but I suspect I’ll be dead.” That drew laughs from the Home Team group, even those who weren’t members of Williams’s claque. “And I suspect I could turn this argument back on you: You’re the mission manager. You’ve got a whole bunch of very important mission control types here. If this thing goes tits up, the program will suffer, will it not?”

“Hey, everybody,” Harley said, annoyed that, once again, his job was to be referee. “Why don’t we see whatever we can see . . . then go back where it’s safe?” There was no sign that his suggestion was acceptable, but there were no further exchanges, either.

Helped by Creed and Matulka, Williams began to make his way down the slope toward the Object.

Weldon turned back to his team. Brent Bynum was busy with his BlackBerry, of course. Harley wondered what the White House thought about the Object. Or what they were telling everyone. It wasn’t likely to be the truth.

“This is real-time, folks. Do we follow them? What’s our plan? Deferral is not an option.”

“If the Object were a weapon, we’d be dead by now,” Sasha said.

“Likely,” Weldon said. “But if not a weapon, then what?”

“Uncrewed space probe,” Harley said. “Or crewed.”

That caused Weldon to react. “What do you mean?”

“Maybe one of them is aboard,” Harley said. “Or more than one of them.” He hadn’t really considered the possibility until this moment . . . but suddenly it seemed logical. The Object was far larger than any reasonable space probe. So maybe it was a lander . . . an “Earth Excursion Module” for Keanu’s inhabitants.

“Maybe this is the message my mother told me about,” Rachel said.

“I think Rachel’s right,” Sasha said, taking the girl’s hand.

Harley looked at the two women, one thirty-two, one fourteen, and wondered how they had come to be friends in such a short time. He could never manage that. He had had a lot of girlfriends, but no real female friends.

No matter; however this situation played out, it was clear he was going to have to learn the art of friendship—with Sasha Blaine, maybe—and parenting, with Rachel. The only thing he knew about kids was that he had once been one.

He wondered, briefly, what it might be like to be married to Sasha . . . but why was he thinking about personal stuff when he was two hundred meters from an alien spacecraft?

He was tired. He was overstimulated. And he was stuck in this fucking chair.

“Hey, Shane, hold on a moment.” It was Brent Bynum, looking more harried than Harley had ever seen him, emerging from the shadows with his Slate.

Weldon turned away from his colleagues, glancing directly at Harley, as if to say, Now what?