“Are you religious now?”

“No.” He had tried, for the sake of the priest, Monica Chaum, as much as anybody else. But, unlike some who came back from space charged with religious zeal, Malenfant had lost it all when he made his first flight into orbit. Space was just too immense. Humans were like ants on a log, adrift in some vast river. How could any Earth-based ritual come close to the truth of the God who had made such a universe?

“So I gave up the chapel. It caused some problems with Emma’s family. But she supported me. She always did.”

“But now you have returned to the faith?”

“No. I do find the chapel kind of restful. But I get a lot more comfort from going out on a toot with Monica Chaum over at the Outpost. She has quite a capacity for a woman Catholic priest. I make no excuses; I’d been through a lot.” He eyed her. “As have you.”

“Yes.” Her face, never beautiful, was empty of expression. “As is well known.”

Nemoto had been aboard the International Space Station, in low Earth orbit, when the Red Moon had made its dramatic entrance. Nemoto had been forced to watch from orbit as the first great tides battered at Japan.

“I returned to Earth as soon as I could. I and my colleague used our Japanese Hope shuttle. You may know that our landing facility was at Karitimati Island in the South Pacific—”

“Where? Oh, yeah, Christmas Island.”

“There is little left of Karitimati. We were forced to come down here, at KSC.”

He said carefully, “Where was your home?”

“I have no home now,” was all she would reply.

He nodded. “Nor do I.” It was true. He had an empty house in Clear Lake, but the hell with that. His home was with Emma — wherever she was.

Nemoto paused and looked into the sky. Although the first liquid glimmer of sun was resting on the horizon, the Red Moon still shone bright in the sky. “If you have abandoned your attempts to acquire faith, you do not believe that God is responsible for that?”

He grinned, rubbing his hand over his bare scalp, feeling a rime of salt there. “Not God, no. But I think somebody is.”

“And you would like to find out who.”

“Wouldn’t you?”

“Do you believe that the bodies which fell through the African portal were human?”

He frowned, taken aback by the question. “Nobody can make much of the mashed-up remains that they scraped out of the savannah.”

“But they appear to be human, or a human variant. You saw them, Malenfant. I’ve read your testimony. They share our DNA — much of it, though the recovered sequences show a large diversity from our own genome. There is speculation that they are more like one of our ancestors, a primitive hominid species.”

“Yeah. So there are ape-men running all over our new Moon up there, right? I read the tabloids too.”

“Malenfant, what do you believe?”

He said fiercely, “I believe that the Wheel was some kind of portal. I believe it linked Earth to its new Moon. And I believe it transported those poor unevolved saps, here from there. What I don’t know is what the hell it all means.”

“And you believe your wife made the return journey. That she is still alive up there on the Red Moon, breathing its air, drinking its water, perhaps eating its vegetation.”

“Where else could she be?… I’m sorry. It’s what I want to believe, I guess. It’s what I have to believe.”

“Yes.” She smiled. “Everybody knows this, Malenfant. Your longing to reach her is tangible. I can see it, now, in your eyes, the set of your body.”

“You think I’m an asshole,” he said brutally. “You think I should let go.”

“No. I think you are fully human. This is to be admired.”

He felt awkward again. He’d only just met this girl, yet somehow she’d already seen him naked every which way a person could be naked.

They reached the Beachhouse. They sat on its porch, facing the ocean. Malenfant sipped water from a plastic bottle. “So how come you’ve been pursuing me around NASA? What do you want, Nemoto?”

“I believe we can help each other. You want to set up a mission to reach the Red Moon. So do I. I believe we should. I believe we must. I can get you there.”

Suddenly his heart was pumping. “How?”

Rapidly, with the aid of a pocket softscreen, she sketched out a cut-down mission profile, using a simplified version of Malenfant’s Shuttle-based Big Dumb Booster design, topped by a Space Station evacuation lander, adapted for the Moon’s conditions. “It will not be safe,” she said. “But it will work. And it could be done, we believe, in a couple of months, at a cost of a few billion dollars.”

It was fast and dirty, even by the standards of the proposals he had been touting himself. But it could work… “If we could get anybody to fund it.”

“There are many refugee Japanese who would support this,” Nemoto said gravely. “Of all the major nations it is perhaps the Japanese who have suffered most in this present disaster. Among the refugees, there is a strong desire at least to know, to understand what has caused the deaths of so many. Thus there are significant resources to call on. But we would need to work with NASA, who have the necessary facilities for ground support.”

“Which is where I come in.” He drank his water. “Nemoto, maybe you’re speaking to the wrong guy. I’ve already tried, remember. And I got nowhere. I come up against brick walls like Joe Bridges the whole time.”

“We must learn to work with Mr Bridges, not against him.”

“How?”

She touched his hand. Her skin was cold. He was shocked by the sudden, unexpected contact. “By telling the truth, Malenfant. You care nothing for geology or planetology or the mystery of the Red Moon, or even the Tide, do you? You want to find Emma.” She withdrew her hand. “It is a motive that will awaken people’s hearts.”

“Ah. I get it. You want me to be a fundraiser. To blub on live TV.”

“You will provide a focus for the project — a human reason to pursue it. At a time when the waters are lapping over the grain fields, nobody cares about science. But they always care about family. We need a story, Malenfant. A hero.”

“Even if that hero is a Quixote.”

She looked puzzled. “Quixote’s was a good story. And so will yours be.”

She didn’t seem in much doubt that he’d ultimately fall into line. And, looking into his heart, neither did he.

Irritated by her effortless command, he snapped, “So why are you so keen to go exploring the new Moon, Nemoto? Just to figure why Japan got trashed?… I’m sorry.”

She shrugged. “There is more. I have read of your speeches on the Fermi Paradox.”

“I wouldn’t call them speeches. Bullshit for goodwill tours…”

“As a child, your eyes were raised to the stars. You wondered who was looking back. You wondered why you couldn’t see them. Just as I did, half a world away.”

He gestured at the Moon. “Is that what you think this is? We were listening for a whisper of radio signals from the stars. You couldn’t get much less subtle a first contact than this.”

“I think this huge event is more than that — even more significant. Malenfant, people rained out of the sky. They may or may not belong to a species we recognize, but they were people. It is clear to me that the meaning of the Red Moon is intimately bound up with us: what it is to be human — and why we are alone in the cosmos.”

“Or were.”

“Yes,” she said. “And, consider this. This Red Moon simply appeared in our sky… It is not as if a fleet of huge starships towed it into position. We don’t know how it got there. And we don’t know how long it will stay, conveniently poised next to the Earth. The Wheel disappeared just hours after it arrived. If we don’t act now—”

“Yes, you’re right. We must act urgently.” The sun was a shimmering globe suspended on the edge of the ocean, and Malenfant began to feel its heat draw at the skin of his face. “We’ve a lot to talk about.”