“They need medical attention—”

“They’re dead, Dr. McCallum. All of them.” Jack froze. Slowly he raised his head and met the man’s gaze through the clear face shield. He could read no expression there, could see nothing that reflected the tragedy of four lost lives.

“I’m sorry about your astronauts,” the man said, and turned to walk away.

Jack struggled to stand up. Though swaying and dizzy, he managed to stay on his feet. “And who the fuck are you?” he demanded.

The man paused and turned back. “I’m Dr. Isaac Roman, USAMRIID,” he said. “That orbiter is now a hot zone. The Army is assuming control.”

USAMRIID. Dr. Roman had pronounced it as one word, but Jack knew what the letters stood for. The U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases. Why was the Army here? Since when had this turned into a military operation?

Jack squinted in the flying dust, his skull still ringing from the blow, and struggled to absorb this bewildering information. An eternity seemed to pass, a surreal progression of images in slow motion. Men in Racal suits striding toward the orbiter. The staring at him with expressionless eyes. The isolation tent in the wind like a living, breathing organism. He looked at the of soldiers, still holding the ground crew at bay. He looked at orbiter and saw the men in space suits carry the first stretcher of the tent. The body was sealed in a bag. The plastic had been stamped repeatedly with the bright red biohazard symbol, like blossoms strewn across a corpse.

The sight of that stretcher made Jack’s mind snap back into focus. He said, “Where are you taking the bodies?” Dr. Roman did not even turn to look at him, but directed the stretcher to a waiting chopper. Jack started to walk toward the orbiter, and once again found a soldier standing in front of him, rifle butt raised to deliver another blow.

“Hey!” came a shout from the ground crew. “You dare to hit him again and we’ve got thirty witnesses!” The soldier turned and stared at the angry NASA and United Space Alliance employees, who were now surging forward, voices raised in outrage.

“You think this is Nazi Germany?”

“—think you can beat up civilians now?”

“Who the hell are you guys?” The nervous soldiers tightened ranks as the ground crew continued to push forward, shouting, feet churning up dust.

A rifle shot exploded into the air. The crowd went dead still.

There is something terribly wrong here, thought Jack. Something we don’t understand. These soldiers were fully prepared to shoot. To kill.

The convoy leader understood this as well, because he blurted out in panic, “I’m in comm link with Houston! At this moment, a hundred men and women in Mission Control are listening!” Slowly the soldiers lowered their rifles and glanced toward their officer. A long silence passed, broken only by the wind and the scatter shot of sand pinging the choppers.

Dr. Roman appeared at Jack’s side. “You people don’t understand the situation,” he said.

“Explain it to us.”

“We are dealing with a serious biohazard. The White House Security Council has activated the Army’s Biological Rapid Response Team—a team created by an act of Congress, Dr. McCallum. We’re here on orders from the White House.”

“What biohazard?” Roman hesitated. He glanced toward the NASA ground crew, who stood in a tense huddle beyond the line of soldiers.

“What is the organism?” Jack said.

At last Roman met his gaze through the plastic face shield.

“That information is classified.”

“We’re the medical team, charged with the health of that flight crew. Why weren’t we told about this?”

“NASA doesn’t realize what it’s dealing with.”

“And how is it that you do?” The question, heavy with significance, went unanswered.

Another stretcher emerged from the tent. And whose body was that? Jack wondered. The faces of the four crew members flashed through his mind.

All dead now. He could not grasp that fact. He could not imagine those vibrant, healthy people reduced to shattered bones and ruptured organs.

“Where are you taking the bodies?” he asked.

“A Level Four facility for autopsy.”

“Who’s doing the autopsy?”

“I am.”

“As the crew’s flight surgeon, I should be present.”

“Why? Are you a pathologist?”

“No.”

“Then I don’t see how you could contribute anything useful.”

“How many dead pilots have you examined?” Jack shot back. “How many aircraft accidents have you investigated? Aerospace trauma is my training. My field of expertise. You might need me.”

“I don’t think so,” said Roman. And he walked away.

Stiff with rage, Jack crossed back to the NASA ground crew and said to Bloomfeld, “The Army’s in control of this site. They’re taking the bodies.”

“By what authority?”

“He says it comes straight from the White House. They’ve activated something called a Biological Rapid Response Team.”

“That’s an antiterrorist team,” said Bloomfeld. “I’ve heard about them.

They were created to deal with bioterrorism.” They watched a chopper lift off, carrying two of the bodies.

What the hell is really going on? Jack wondered. What are they hiding from us?

He turned to the convoy leader. “Can you patch me through to JSC?”

“Any one in particular?” Jack thought of whom he could trust, and who was high enough in the NASA bureaucracy to carry the battle to the very top.

“Get me Gordon Obie,” he said. “Flight Crew Operations.”

The Autopsy

Gordon Obie walked into the video conference room prepared for bloody battle, but none of the officials sitting around the table suspected the depth of his rage. And no wonder, Obie was wearing usual poker face, and he didn’t say a word as he took his place at the table, next to a tearful and puffy-eyed Public Affairs Officer Gretchen Liu. Every one looked shell-shocked. They didn’t even notice Gordon’s entrance.

Also at the table was NASA administrator Leroy Cornell, JSC director Ken Blankenship, and a half dozen senior NASA officials, all of them grimly staring at the two video display screens. On the first screen was a Colonel Lawrence Harrison from USAMRIID, speaking from the Army base in Fort Detrick, Maryland. On the second monitor was a solemn, dark-haired man in civilian clothes, identified as

“Jared Profitt, White Security Council.” He did not look like a bureaucrat. With his mournful eyes and his gaunt, almost ascetic features, he looked like a medieval monk, unwillingly transported into a modern age of suits and ties.

Blankenship was talking, his comments directed at Colonel Harrison. “Not only did your soldiers prevent my people from doing their jobs, they threatened them at gunpoint. One of our flight surgeons was assaulted—knocked to the ground with a rifle butt. We have three dozen witnesses—”

“Dr. McCallum broke through our security cordon. He refused to halt as ordered,” Colonel Harrison responded. “We had a hot zone to protect.”

“So now the U.S. Army is prepared to attack, even shoot, civilians?”

“Ken, let’s try to look at it from USAMRIID’s point of view,” said Cornell, placing a calming hand on Blankenship’s arm. The diplomat’s touch, thought Gordon with distaste. Cornell might be NASA’s spokesman at the White House and their best asset when it came to cajoling Congress for money, but many at NASA had never really trusted him.

They could never trust any man who thought more like a politician than an engineer. “Protecting a hot zone is valid reason to apply force,” said Cornell. “Dr. McCallum did breach the security line.”

“And the results could have been disastrous,” said Harrison over the audio feed. “Our intelligence reports that Marburg virus may have been purposefully introduced to the space station. Marburg is a cousin of Ebola virus.”