Then it was into a newish forest, short green bushes and trees.

The only sound she heard was her own breathing…and then, far off, barking.

That stupid dog again. All during her “bath,” Cowboy had insisted on splashing into the lake and either sniffing her or the nearest woman. A couple of the bathers, especially those from Houston, seemed okay with the idea, but Rachel had been furious.

Eventually someone had lured the animal away. But now he was on the prowl again….

As Rachel emerged from the new forest, she felt her side beginning to ache. So she stopped. The far wall, the one that was opposite the Temple, still lay at least a kilometer or more away. Between the new forest and the wall was a series of gentle hills made of rounded rocks.

Rachel plopped down behind the nearest one and opened Pav’s Slate.

For a moment, she felt bad about that. Not for the invasion of privacy—anyone near Rachel’s age assumed that every computer or Tik-Talk or Slate was hackable, that any images, music, or data stored there was certain to be seen by someone else, eventually.

What bothered her was wasting energy. She promised to only peek for a minute…and started clicking on the desktop.

Which was an immediate disappointment. She realized it was all schoolwork or music—an amazing amount of music, and many of the names unknown to Rachel—and, yes, the predictable private folder under a stupid cover name. “‘Physics stuff,’ Pav? Really?”

“Actually, my porn is in the file labeled ‘Porn,’” Pav said.

It was her turn to be startled. “How long have you been there?”

“Five seconds.” He was still panting, in fact. “See anything you like?”

“Well, no, not in your ‘Hot Euro Bodies.’ None of them are real, by the way.”

“Okay, but not relevant.”

The dog barked again. “Is he coming after us?” Pav asked.

“He’s a Lab or a retriever,” Rachel said. She recognized only half a dozen dog breeds, but Labs and retrievers were among them. “They’re herders. Maybe he thinks we’re cows.”

Pav sat down next to her. “Let me,” he said. Rachel allowed him to take the Slate back. “Were you there for the launch?”

“What launch? Oh, my dad’s. Yeah.” Two years ago, the last time Rachel had gone to Florida and the Cape for Zack Stewart’s first attempt at a Destiny mission, her mother had been killed. This time, Zack had encouraged her, and had arranged for Amy Meyer and her family to go along. So, dutifully, she had stood at the press dome three miles from Pad 39A as Zack’s Saturn had lifted off. The launch excitement lasted ten minutes; the rest of the day had meant driving, parking, walking, unparking, and driving back to the motel in horrible heat and humidity. None of this had done anything to improve Rachel’s attitude toward Florida and rocket launches.

“I couldn’t go to my dad’s.”

“Why not?”

“It was in French Guiana. The European Space Agency owns it and they really aren’t set up for many visitors. And the Coalition was worried that if something went wrong, they’d have to deal with a few thousand witnesses.”

“Well, nothing went wrong—”

“Then, you mean.”

“Yeah.” Pav showed her the Brahma launch…the massive Ariane 6 rocket rising on a fountain of steam, then arcing over the Atlantic.

“Wait!” Rachel said. “What was that?”

“What?”

She took the Slate and clicked on the pad, freezing the footage and opening another window, where Pav had called up another view of the Brahma event from MSNBC. She froze that image…which showed her mother Megan’s publicity portrait.

“Oh,” Pav said, seeing the same image. “I guess they were doing some kind of recap….”

Rachel resized the image so it filled the screen. There was Megan Doyle Stewart, probably from four years ago, when she finally broke down and got new images made. Brunette, brown-eyed, unable to appear serious even when it would be a good idea—

It was the same woman she had seen most recently on images downlinked to Houston from Keanu. The same woman whose horribly mutilated body she had just helped bury.

She couldn’t see it. Her eyes were filled with tears.

“Hey,” Pav said, “let’s just…save on the batteries.” He gently took the Slate back and closed the windows—

—just as Cowboy trotted past.

The dog veered away from his path, which seemed to be taking him toward the near wall, just long enough to pant and sniff them. Then he continued on his canine journey.

“Where do you suppose he’s going?” Pav said.

“We should probably get him…”

“Are we responsible now?”

“I think we’re responsible for everyone and everything now.” She got up. “Besides, if we don’t chase the dog, we’ll have to go back to the Temple, and they’ll put us to work at something crappy.”

“You make an excellent point.”

Cowboy was easy to follow…his tracks were visible on the smooth dirt surface. And whenever they lost sight of him in the rocks, they would hear him yap. “Do you suppose he’s chasing something?” Pav said.

“I hope not,” Rachel said.

Pav laughed. “Another excellent point.”

“Eventually he’s going to run out of room, though.” They were close to the wall now. It rose above her, like one of those giant office towers in downtown Houston, only rocky and sandy rather than shiny glass. Stopping, she let her head tilt back and saw that the wall began curving toward the ceiling, which made her feel light and dizzy—

Not far away, Cowboy started barking furiously.

Pav slipped one of his tattooed forearms around her. To her surprise, she rather liked it.

“It’s creepy to know that we’re living in a giant tube.”

“Hey, if you think about it, we were living on the surface of a big ball of rock. How was that better? Come on.”

Cowboy’s barking had grown irregular but was enough to let them know where he was…to their left, down-habitat, and right against the wall.

Here stood a collection of rocks and weirdly shaped structures that reminded Rachel of cave stalagmites. Their surface was studded with tiny crystals of some kind, like mica or fool’s gold. And they all seemed fresh, somehow. Moist.

The dog had gone silent.

“Where did he go?” Rachel said. Then she called, “Cowboy!”

“Who knows? He came out of nowhere, right? Maybe he went back.”

“No, he was chasing something. And if he went back, we would have seen him.”

Pav was in the lead, and suddenly he stopped. “What’s the matter now?” Rachel said.

“What if he’s found something we don’t want to find?”

“Like what? An alien?”

“High on my list.”

“I hope so. I have a lot of questions for the first alien I meet.” And she slipped past him.

Around the last cluster of rocks, almost hidden in shadows, they found Cowboy on his hind legs, pawing at the wall.

And the wall was pulsing and flowing.

“Holy shit.”

There was a slit of some kind, as if the wall were either creating an opening or closing one. Cowboy kept leaping into the slit. With every movement, the pulsing stopped for a few seconds. “Whatever’s going on,” Rachel said, “it looks as though he’s interrupting it.”

She stepped forward, but slowly and carefully. As she got closer to the dog, she began to smell something—an odor that blended swamp with diesel exhaust. It wasn’t unpleasant, but she wouldn’t want a bottle of it, either.

“Here, Cowboy…come here…”

The dog stopped moving long enough to glance back at Rachel and Pav. Then he turned away and dove right through the opening.

“Well, shit,” Rachel said.

“What do we do now?”

Rachel wasn’t sure. “Look,” she said, “my father is all freaked out because there doesn’t seem to be a way out of the habitat….” She was already edging toward the opening.

“Are you out of your mind?”

“Probably, but…it’s solidified.” The opening had developed edges that gave off wisps of steam, like a lava flow that hits cold seawater.