Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright Page

Dedication

Part One - “TO FIND THE SEA”

KEANU APPROACH

TWO YEARS AGO

KEANU APPROACH: TERMINAL PHASE

Part Two - “LONG, GENTLE THUNDER”

TWO YEARS AGO

KEANU STAY

SEVENTY-THREE DAYS EARLIER

KEANU STAY

Part Three - “SOME FRAGRANT NIGHT”

Part Four - “IN THE WIDE STARLIGHT”

Part Five - “FOR THE DEAD ARE FREE”

Acknowledgements

HEAVEN’S WAR

THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

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This is an original publication of The Berkley Publishing Group.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the authors’ imaginations or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

Copyright © 2011 by Phantom Four Films and St. Croix Productions, Inc.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Goyer, David S.

Heaven’s shadow / David S. Goyer & Michael Cassutt. p. cm.

ISBN : 978-1-101-51654-6

1. Human-alien encounters—Fiction. 2. Space flight—Fiction. I. Cassutt, Michael. II. Title.

PS3607.O925H43 2011

813’.6—dc22

2010054263

http://us.penguingroup.com

To Michael Engelberg

Dramatis Personae

ZACK STEWART, astronomer and astronaut, commander of Destiny-7

MEGAN DOYLE STEWART, journalist

RACHEL STEWART, their daughter

AMY MEYER, Rachel’s friend

SCOTT SHAWLER, NASA public affairs officer, the “voice” of the Destiny missions

TEA NOWINSKI, Destiny-7 astronaut

PATRICK “POGO” DOWNEY, Destiny-7 astronaut

YVONNE HALL, Destiny-7 astronaut

TAJ RADHAKRISHNAN, vyomanaut, commander of Brahma

NATALIA YORKINA, exobiologist and Brahma cosmonaut

LUCAS MUNARETTO, engineer and Brahma cosmonaut

DENNIS CHERTOK, aerospace physician and Brahma cosmonaut

HARLEY DRAKE, former astronaut, head of the Home Team

GABRIEL JONES, director of the NASA Johnson Space Center

SHANE WELDON, former chief astronaut, now Destiny-7 mission director

BRENT BYNUM, deputy national security adviser, White House staff

JOSH KENNEDY, Destiny-7 flight director

LINDA DOWNEY, Patrick Downey’s wife

JILLIANNE DWIGHT, crew secretary, Johnson Space Center

KONSTANTIN ALEXANDROVICH FEDOSEYEV, Russian, now a Revenant

CAMILLA, a Brazilian child, now a Revenant

VIKRAM NAYAR, lead flight director at Bangalore

THE HOME TEAM

SASHA BLAINE, Yale astronomer

WADE WILLIAMS, popular science and sci-fi author

GLENN CREEL, creator of Cartoon Network’s Escape Velocity

LILY VALDEZ, professor at University of California, Irvine

STEVEN MATULKA, president of the Planetary Society

JASMINE TRIEU, astronaut, capcom

TRAVIS BUELL, astronaut, Destiny-5 commander, capcom

JAMES and DIANE DOYLE, Megan Doyle Stewart’s parents

TOBY BURNETT, Wackenhut security officer at JSC

LEE SHIMORA, Destiny-7 Stay-3 flight director

Part One

“TO FIND THE SEA”

Near-Earth Objects are comets or asteroids that have been nudged by the gravitational attraction of nearby planets into orbits that allow them to enter the Earth’s neighborhood.

NASA JET PROPULSION LAB, NEAR-EARTH OBJECT PROGRAM FAQ

What if it comes from farther away?

POSTER ALMAZ, JULY 7, 2016

KEANU APPROACH

Blue planet Earth and its seven billion human beings lay 440,000 kilometers below—or, given the arbitrary terminology of orientation in space, off to one side. If the sheer magnitude of the distance failed to provide a mind-boggling thrill, Zack Stewart could, by looking out the window, cover his home planet with his thumb.

That small gesture got the point across: He and his three fellow astronauts were farther away from Earth than any human beings in history.