Who relied on the Hulk to keep him safe.

That was necessary around the Scott household, because John Jeremy Scott was a blackout alcoholic—a fact Dale realized when he was eleven. Until that time, he had just thought J. J. Scott, a police officer in Anaheim, was tough because he had to be. He would yell and stomp around the house and break things—not always, not even very often, but enough—and, when Dale was younger, slap him when he got out of line.

From the time he got the Hulk, however, Dale never got slapped. Not once, up to the day his father finally moved out.

And Dale discovered that his Hulk was gone! Stolen from its place of honor on his shelf.

He didn’t have to wonder who (his father) or why (because J. J. Scott was always doing nasty things and once had teased Dale about spending his time watching the Hulk on TV).

But Dale had his revenge. After J.J. moved out and then moved in with some other woman, he settled in Fullerton, not far from Anaheim. He shared custody of Dale and Dale’s sister, Chelsea, though he wasn’t very rigorous about keeping to the schedule—a relief to both children.

The one time Dale found himself in J.J.’s apartment, he had sneaked into the master bedroom…and found the Hulk medallion sitting in the top drawer of a clothes chest.

Dale had pocketed the medallion and escaped clean with it, though he lived in trembling fear that J.J. would discover the theft—or, rather, the recovery—and turn on him in one of his terrible rages.

Dale feared that right up to the night, two years later, that J.J. Scott died in an off-duty auto accident…drunk.

He had had it put on a chain, so he wouldn’t lose it, and the Hulkster had accompanied him to Cal Poly Pomona, then to the Navy and flight training and grad school, to Iraq twice, and test pilot school and NASA, and even aboard the International Space Station.

And now here…wherever this was. Some godforsaken hollowed-out planetoid pushing itself out of the solar system back home. He wondered how far they’d traveled in these few days. Keanu would still be visible from Earth with the naked eye, even if its trajectory was due solar south. Someone in New Zealand or Chile, or Byrd Station, South Pole, would have a good view.

Keanu could probably keep accelerating for a long time—hell, centuries, maybe, meaning it could reach some fraction of the speed of light. But so far…hell, they weren’t even as far from Earth as the planet Mars!

Zack and Makali were in front, like lead mutts on a dog sled. Williams was in the rear, probably because of age and an inability to keep from stopping every few dozen steps just to take in the view. Well, what the hell; he had been imagining shit like this for fifty years. Dale guessed that it was okay for him to take it in.

Especially knowing that he wasn’t going to live any longer than Dale.

He looped close to Valya and asked her, in his below-average Russian, how she was doing. He had detected growing tension back at the Brahma site, along with real reluctance to press forward.

“How do you think?” she growled. Okay, obviously still some tension.

“I wish I could cheer you up,” he said.

“What would you do?” she said. “Sing me a song? Tell me a joke?”

“It worked before.”

“You had many charming techniques that worked before. We are in different circumstances.”

“Copy that.”

He let her mush on ahead of him and fell back with Williams. “Is it everything you dreamed it would be?” he asked.

“Less and more,” Williams said. “Even though I wrote it a few times, I surely never thought I’d be doing a traverse across an alien starship.”

“Funny how dreams come true.”

“Or nightmares.”

“That would be the ‘less’ business.”

“I keep telling myself that I also imagined and published miraculous escapes for my heroes. So if I have the true predictive vision…”

“Here’s hoping.”

Dale noticed that for all his bravado, Williams was actually limping a bit. Before he could ask, however, he heard a shout from Makali.

“Oh my God, look at that!”

Though still better than a NASA EVA garment, the skinsuit’s biggest drawback was limited field of view. The cowl-like hood was fairly rigid; in order to look up or sideways, you had to turn your body. You had almost no peripheral vision.

And the view forward wasn’t glasslike, either. You were looking through a filmy fabric about a centimeter in front of each eyeball.

Which was why Dale pressed forward, asking, “Can you see Mt. St. Helens already?” Zack had said “ten to fifteen kilometers,” which Dale took to mean “fifteen or more.” They could not have gone halfway yet.

“It’s not the vent,” Makali said, completely unnecessarily by that time, since Zack and Valya and Williams and Dale could all see what she’d found.

It appeared to be another spacecraft.

At least six stories tall—taller than Brahma before the accident—it was a rounded cylinder like a big fat bullet, or something out of an old Jules Verne novel. There were bumps and protruding blisters on the skin, which appeared to be metallic.

“Look at the pitting on this thing,” Zack said. “It must be really, really old.”

“How do you know it wasn’t designed that way?” Makali said. Of course, Dale thought, be argumentative.

“Just a hunch,” Zack said. “And no landing legs. And I believe it was designed that way.” The vehicle rested perfectly upright but lacked legs or any obvious landing aids. It rested on material that reminded Dale of a collapsed balloon.

“It must have crunched down on that skirt,” Makali said. She was close enough to toe the material, which was bleached an ugly white. “Hard.”

“Petrified,” Williams said. “More fuel for the argument that this is really, really old.”

“Whom did it belong to?” Valya asked. “Who landed it here?”

“Nobody from Earth,” Dale said. “And with that kind of landing, I get the impression this was a one-way trip.”

“Both Brahma and Venture had ascent motors inside them,” Makali said.

Dale couldn’t decide which annoyed him more, the fact that exospecialist Makali Pillay would presume to argue matters of spacecraft engineering with him, or just that she kept talking, period. “And both were modular,” he said, knowing he should not engage the woman. “With obvious separation lines. I’m looking at this baby, and it all seems to be one big piece.”

“—With an open hatch on this side,” Wade Williams said.

The hatch was a thick plug that opened downward rather than to the side, creating a platform for occupants going EVA.

And at least ten meters off the ground, preventing any of them from seeing inside the opening…or from reaching it.

“This gives me some idea of who it belongs to,” Zack said. “Look at the proportions of the Temple…the Architect was twice as tall as a human being.”

Dale could hear Wade Williams sputtering. “Surely the Architects are more advanced than this thing. They launched the vesicles, for God’s sake. This vehicle looks as though it could have been built by China, now!”

“Well,” Makali said, “whoever built it, a ladder would have been nice.”

“Shame on the Architects for not realizing you’d be coming along and wanting to go aboard,” Dale said. He had decided he might as well declare war on Pillay in the hopes of getting her to shut up. Otherwise he would be provoked to violence.

Zack ignored the exchange. “They probably had a rope ladder of some kind—”

“—A thousand years ago,” Williams finished. “Even something metal would have gone brittle in that time, baked and frozen a few million times. It must have eventually blown away like dust.”

“This is all quite fascinating, I’m sure,” Valya said. “But since we can’t go aboard, we should press on to this vent, since I believe it represents our only hope for survival. Or am I overstating matters?” For a non-native English speaker, Valya had perfect pitch when it came to sarcasm. Dale had always enjoyed it, at least on the few occasions when it was directed at someone other than him.