And while she no doubt meant it to be an aside—this chamber had amazing acoustics—Gabriel heard what Sasha said to Rachel next: “Why does he think we aren’t coming back? Does he know where we’re going?”

Harley couldn’t let that pass. Nor could he let them continue complaining, believing that they couldn’t be heard.

“Ladies,” he said over his shoulder, “right now we are forced to look good rather than be good.”

Gabriel knew that was how many NASA people—and some outside the agency—would describe his entire career. He’s slick and superficial, no substance. He’s affirmative action all the way.

While acknowledging that he had, indeed, benefited from affirmative action—hell, if it worked for Obama’s career, it could work for his—he also knew what he knew. He’d literally done his homework since junior high in Baltimore. He’d managed to balance a promising baseball career with solid academics, enough to get him noticed by scouts for the Ivies, who wouldn’t offer money, but rather a hell of a lot of prestige and connections.

But a lucky visit to Rice University had given him his first exposure to Houston and the great state of Texas, neither of which were high on his go-see list. And the aero engineering team he’d met there seemed far more experienced and practical than their equivalents at Princeton and Dartmouth.

Then there was the weather. Houston wasn’t anyone’s garden spot, but at least it didn’t have snow on the ground for several months of the year.

So he’d graduated from Rice, then gone to MIT for grad school. A taste of the commercial space world with Lockheed had convinced him he was not cut out for that type of pressure, even with the potential rewards. (Besides, in technical circles, it was still just a bit tougher for an African American to rise than, say, for an Asian. That was another thing the folks who snickered “affirmative action” tended to forget.)

He had joined NASA Goddard outside Washington. Working on NASA’s uncrewed programs was not the road to space program glory—until Gabriel found that he was being repeatedly asked to be Morris the Explainer when TV programs deigned to cover Mars landers or Mercury orbiters or asteroid encounters.

He’d wound up at headquarters, and when NASA turned its attention beyond Earth orbit, why, who better to lead the agency’s premier operations hub, the Johnson Space Center?

If pressed, Gabriel would admit that his tenure at JSC had been troubled. He had not been eager to spend the hours required to immerse himself in JSC’s unique culture, which looked like the rest of NASA, but was to, say, Goddard what the culture of suburban Maryland was to, say, Saudi Arabia.

He had made mistakes. Hell, maybe he had been lazy, too used to the magic created by his own words and personality.

And his daughter, Yvonne—one of two astronauts killed on the Destiny-7 mission—had paid the price. Gabriel had had ample hours to consider the reckless decisions that led to her death, the way he had been swayed by “national security” concerns to allow Yvonne to carry a nuclear weapon aboard a “peaceful” mission.

Sure, no one in Houston or Washington had known what the crew and controllers would face on Keanu, but Gabriel had found it too easy to listen to the consensus, to be America- or Earth-first.

There was another issue, too. Thirteen days before the Destiny-7 launch—a date that, to his amazement, was still less than a month in the past—Gabriel Jones had been given news that forced him to change the way he thought about the future. His original path was to use the JSC directorship as a stepping-stone to deputy administrator, or even the top agency job…and then to…the Senate, perhaps? Or president of a university. That was now Future I.

The news put him on a radically different track, Future II: manage his health.

Now, even more strangely, he was facing Future III. He had been dumped into an environment a hundred times stranger than JSC had been to him, and considerably more dangerous than even Future II.

To ensure his future survival, he had days—not weeks, days—to:

One: get off Keanu and back to Earth, or—

Two: find twenty-first-century medical technology on Keanu.

He did not want to calculate the odds that he would be successful at either.

As they headed toward an opening up ahead, Gabriel slowed down so that Harley Drake and his new friend, Sasha, and Zack Stewart’s daughter, Rachel, could keep pace with him.

Gabriel noted that Sasha kept reaching out to brush the tunnel wall with her fingers. “Tell me why you’re doing that. Are you a geologist?”

“I’m trying to keep reminding myself that I’m no longer on Earth,” she said.

Gabriel laughed, then turned to Harley Drake. He knew the crippled former astronaut more by reputation than contact. He admired the way that, following the accident in Florida, Harley had chosen not to crawl into a hole, instead reinventing himself as a planetary scientist…while remaining a bit of a trash-talking horndog. Given his own news, Gabriel hoped he possessed similar force of character. “You, too, Harls?”

“Hell, no! I keep hoping this is just the nightmare of all time and that any moment I’m going to wake up.”

“Oh, come on,” Gabriel said, making sure to smile at Rachel Stewart. Keep her included. “Aren’t you just a little bit…fascinated? I mean, I keep wanting to see one of those Markers the crews found.”

“I keep wanting to see a whole set of Venture landers waiting to take us home.”

“Harley, for an astronaut, you really don’t have much pioneer spirit.”

Gabriel realized that the exodus was losing steam as it neared the opening. Those in front of them were bunching up, shoving and beginning to make noise.

Brent Bynum sprinted past them, shouting, “Hurry it up, everyone!”

Gabriel looked at Harley and Weldon. “Who woke up and made him cheerleader?”

“Brent?” Weldon said. “He’s been acting weird since we got scooped.”

“Before that,” Harley said.

Harley grinned. “Maybe he thinks that running around flapping his arms will restore his authority.”

“What authority?” Gabriel said.

“Exactly.”

As they reached the cluster, they saw the cause of the problem.

It was a human female, likely Indian, perhaps thirty years old, wearing khakis and a faded sky-blue shirt. Her long hair was sun-streaked, and she wore an expression of puzzled annoyance, as if she had been interrupted at some important work. In fact, she was engaged in what appeared to be an argument with Bynum, and with another of the Houston group, a sleepy-eyed young African American Gabriel Jones recognized from the trip. He had been one of the few who kept poking his nose—and entire body—into the RV.

“She says we can’t go past her!” the young man said. Xavier was his name; Gabriel was good with names, eventually.

“I said no such thing!” the woman said, as the crowd pressed around her. “I only said you should be careful, that there are a lot of other people right outside—”

Gabriel realized that he ought to take the lead. Before Bynum could open his mouth, he said, “Excuse me, I’m Gabriel Jones of the NASA Johnson Space Center.”

“I’m Makali Pillay. Welcome to Keanu.” More startling than her surfer girl manner…Pillay had an Aussie accent.

Everyone soon saw what the problem was: Just beyond the opening was another opening, off to the right, and out of it an even larger group of humans had emerged…and this group had not dispersed. They were collapsed in a collective heap, sick, frightened, paralyzed.

“Who are these people?” Rachel said.

“Folks from Bangalore, I’m guessing,” Harley said. He turned to Sasha. “Your other Object.”

In this half-lit space, crowded with unwashed, uncounted bodies, it was impossible for Gabriel to see beyond the few people in front of him. He had to concentrate on Miss Pillay. “Are you in charge? Is there someone I can talk to?”