“Tea . . . who knows her better than the boyfriend? She’d be a great commander, for a lunar mission. You know and I know how programmed she gets: As commander of a Keanu mission—again, on the shortest notice possible—she is going to drive the training teams batshit with questions and more questions and you don’t have time for that. She’s on the team, but not as commander.

“I’m the guy. I know both spacecraft well enough to be backup to Tea for Destiny and Pogo for Venture. I’ve got as much EVA time as Yvonne. And there is no one at the center, much less the office, who is more familiar with Keanu than me.

“Your predecessor and the ninth floor and HQ thought I was capable enough to be trusted with the first lunar landing of the twenty-first century. Are you going to sit here and tell me I can’t handle this?”

“There’s still a looming question,” Weldon said, apparently agreeing with Zack’s impassioned points. “Your family situation. What will Rachel think?”

Since his conversation with Harley, Zack had not devoted much thought to Rachel . . . he needed no special insight to predict what she would think, and say. “She’ll like the idea for a week, then she’ll hate it. How will that be different from any other astronaut family? She’ll deal. It’s my decision. My goal. My mission.”

Weldon stared for five seconds. Then he offered his hand. “Congratulations, Commander Stewart. Destiny-7 is yours.”

Zack could only nod. He had had magical moments in his life— telling Megan that he was in love with her, not knowing whether she felt the same . . . the birth of Rachel . . . the call from NASA asking him if he was still interested in becoming an astronaut—

“Know what your real challenge is going to be?”

Zack could think of many sudden, terrifying challenges. The training. Rachel. “What?”

“Telling your girlfriend that you snaked her command.”

Go Destiny-7 ! Go USA!!!!

TYPICAL POST IN THE CHEERLEADING THREAD AT NEOMISSION.COM

Grow up. You wouldn’t be there without the Coalition.

POSTER BRAHMA FAN, SAME THREAD

KEANU STAY

“Thank God we’ve got the airlock,” Pogo said, his face red from the torturous business of getting Zack’s and Yvonne’s suits ready for the EVA, a job that involved swapping out the torsos, gloves, and boots. The only surprise in the comment was that it came from Col. Patrick Downey, USAF, normally a hairshirt stoic on matters of space and livability. Zack, Yvonne, and Tea had spent two hours grunting and cursing as they executed the maneuvers necessary to eat, clean up, use the toilet, and get Zack and Yvonne suited for the first steps onto Keanu’s surface. Items had to be removed from lockers, used, then replaced—or the debris stashed in a different locker. “This is like a clown car,” Pogo snapped, clearly at his limit. “And what the fuck is this? Yvonne?”

He had a silvery box in his hand labeled HALL PPK, Personal Preference Kit, the collection of college banners, family photos, commemorative stamps, and other memorabilia astronauts were allowed to carry on flights—as long as they didn’t exceed a kilogram or two of mass.

“I hope that isn’t filled with good-luck coins or doodads,” Tea said, teasing. Early astronauts had gotten into trouble for sneaking memorabilia aboard their vehicles.

“It’s all within limits,” Yvonne replied, clearly stung.

“What it is, is in the wrong locker,” Zack said, taking it from Patrick and handing it to Yvonne. “20-B is where the PPKs go.”

He slid between Patrick and Yvonne and entered the airlock. The chamber was almost as big as the cabin itself. On the day—hopefully a week from now—when Zack and his crew climbed into Venture to launch off Keanu’s surface, it would be left behind, along with the rest of the descent stage of the vehicle. But right now it was serving as a dressing room, where Tea waited, holding Zack’s helmet for the final stage of his suiting. “Oooo, Commander Stewart,” she purred in a fairly good imitation of some movie sex kitten, “I’d much rather be undressing you . . .”

“We’ve still got time to add ‘first boff on Keanu’ to the resume.”

“Optimist,” Tea said, resuming her normal voice, “but thanks for asking.” She was about to lower the helmet past his ears when she hesitated.

“What is it?” Zack was normally not a nitpicker or worrier, but this was not a normal situation.

She leaned forward and kissed him gently. “For luck.” Then the helmet descended, dampening the humming rattle of Venture’s ambient noise. Tea clicked the base of the helmet into the neck ring, and Zack was now suited up, breathing from its tanks.

In his headset, he heard Pogo say, “Zack, check this out!”

“What is it?”

“Brahma’s coming in.”

Without being told, Tea disconnected Zack’s helmet and helped him remove it. “Remind me—”

“—That you’ve already used a few minutes of air, yeah, yeah.”

At the command console, Pogo had turned one of the exterior cameras north and zoomed out.

The image showed black sky over the fuzzy white edge of Vesuvius Vent . . . and a bright star. “Looks like an airliner on approach,” the pilot said.

“They’re feeding it live,” Tea said, calling up the worldwide broadcast from the flight deck of the Coalition craft . . . it showed the snowy surface as seen from an altitude of fifteen hundred meters, according to the updating figures.

“Should we be at general quarters or something?” Pogo said. He had not forgotten the missile launcher.

“Yeah, stand by to repel boarders.” Zack was confident there would be no “action”; even if there was, he didn’t have a lot of options for counterattack. “Houston, we’re holding on EVA prep until Brahma is safely down.”

Five seconds later, Houston acknowledged. “We copy, Venture. Wait until the debris settles.”

The bright star resolved into what looked like a beer can with legs, with a fin on one side. Brahma was actually stopped in midair, hovering.

“Taj is taking his time,” Tea said, paying attention to the commentary on Coalition TV.

“He’s not flying it, is he?” Pogo said.

“Don’t worry, Colonel—people will still remember you did it first,” Yvonne said. Pogo shot her a look that could have burned holes in her forehead.

“Coming down—!” Tea reported.

Like the Venture lander, Brahma’s engines burned clear; there was no plume of flame, just a brightness at the base of the vehicle and wisps of vapor being blown off the snowy surface. “It looks like 2001,” Yvonne said.

“Like what?” Patrick said, almost snarling.

“The movie,” Tea said. Zack could see the point . . . there was indeed a resemblance to the big round commercial Moon shuttle touching down at Clavius Base in the Kubrick-Clarke film.

“Fifty meters now, I think,” Pogo said.

Then Brahma disappeared in a cloud of white.

“What the hell was that?” Yvonne said.

Zack slapped her on the forearm of her suit. “Shut up and watch!”

Through the mist—like the lifting fog on a coastal morning—Zack could see Brahma bouncing just as he imagined Venture had . . . but only a few meters.

The damn spacecraft actually rotated, allowing the Destiny astronauts to see a line reaching from the missile tube on Brahma’s side into the ground. The giant six-story vehicle shuddered like a breaching whale . . . then gently settled.

Zack laughed out loud. “I don’t believe it! They harpooned it!” Seeing that none of his crew understood, he said, “They fired an anchor from that tube. It wasn’t a missile launcher, it was a tool to keep them from bouncing the way we did.”

“You mean, they winched themselves in?” Tea said, clearly stunned. Of the four of them, she was the only one with sailing experience.