Like dogs after a bath, the Sentry pair shivered and shed the enveloping goo, splashing it on the five humans. Zack was horrified, both by the potential contamination and by the taste, which reminded him of polluted seawater.

Now he had to act. “Everybody back!”

He took Megan by the arm. To his surprise, she fought him! Camilla did the same with Lucas.

Zack started to say, “Let’s get out of here—” But before he could finish the order, the nearest Sentry snapped out a limb and reached directly for Megan. Zack feared that, like Pogo, she would be sliced up.

But the Sentry pulled her close, then rolled into a giant three-meter-tall ball, enveloping her.

The other Sentry did the same with Camilla. Natalia and Lucas were unable to react any more effectively than Zack.

The Sentries then rolled off, deeper into Keanu.

Zack stared after them, stunned to immobility, hearing Lucas say, “I think they’re headed for the Temple.”

Approximately twenty-eight hours after landing on Keanu, one hundred twenty hours after launch from Kourou, Bangalore Space Centre lost contact with spacecraft Brahma . The cause of the problem is not known at present. Further information will be made available in due course.

ISRO PRESS RELEASE, 23 AUGUST 2019

“Tell me you didn’t put a nuke on this mission.”

Harley Drake rolled up to Brent Bynum. The White House representative was standing behind Shane Weldon and Josh Kennedy, who were asking every member of the flight control team, one by one, what data they had last recorded prior to loss of contact—and what, if anything, they were seeing now.

“This isn’t the place to discuss those issues,” Bynum said. “We need to go to the Vault.” He picked up his Slate—which had been vibrating nonstop ever since the most recent “event” on Keanu—and headed for the door.

“Fuck the Vault,” Harley said. “I’ve made my last visit to that place.”

Weldon pushed back his chair. “So, Harley, is that the status report from Home Team?”

“No. But I can probably give you a tentative report, along the lines of ‘We got nothing.’”

“What makes you think there was a nuke on board?”

“I know you guys. A couple of hours ago you were telling me to class the ‘entities’ as ‘hostile.’ Then you start talking about some ‘Item.’” Harley jerked a thumb toward the screen, which was still showing a ground-based telescopic view of Keanu and a scattering debris cloud. “Then there’s that.”

Bynum looked beaten down. “I still don’t think we should talk here.”

“Every person in this room has a need to know,” Harley said. “If you can’t trust them . . . well,” he said, shaking his head, “you really can’t be more fucked than you are now, can you?”

Before Bynum could answer, Weldon stood up. “Harley is correct. NASA, the White House, the Department of Defense, and Homeland Security authorized the placement of a small nuclear device aboard Venture . Although no orders were given for its use, it is likely that it was detonated and caused the loss of the vehicle.”

“And Brahma,” said capcom Travis Buell. “The guys in Bangalore don’t know what hit them.”

“I wonder what’s on the news,” Jasmine Trieu said. Red-eyed, she was sitting next to Buell, having finally been ordered to stop calling for Venture to answer.

Bynum held up his Slate. “It’s every bit as bad as you could imagine. . . .”

“They’re reporting loss of both vehicles?” Harley said. Bynum nodded. “What do they give as a cause?”

“So far, unexplained venting. Natural causes.”

“Well, they’re going to figure it out soon enough.”

Bynum opened his hands. “Sure. But they’re not going to learn it from me.”

“Brent,” Harley said, “we aren’t learning much from you and we’re all here together.”

Weldon stood. “There isn’t much point to assigning blame. The Item was triggered—why, by whom, we don’t know, though Yvonne Hall was the one with the codes.”

“And a crazed Revenant banging on her door.” That comment came from Jasmine Trieu.

“We still have two crew members unaccounted for,” Weldon said.

“Two plus three from Brahma, plus the Revenants,” Harley said. “Or is there something else you guys are keeping from me?”

“No,” Bynum said. “That number is correct.”

“Then we’ve got to keep trying to raise them,” Harley said. He rolled toward Buell. “Brahma had that relay sat. Is it still alive?”

Before Buell could respond—and his posture told Harley the answer was likely negative—one of the other controllers in the front row suddenly shot to his feet.

“I got something!” he said. He was a young man of Indian ancestry, but Texan in voice. “I’ve got Destiny.”

“How the hell did it survive?” Buell asked.

“It was on the other side of Keanu when the bomb went off,” Trieu said. “And, am I right? Shock waves don’t propagate in vacuum?”

“It was several hundred kilometers away,” Weldon said. “Even on Earth, it wouldn’t have sustained much actual damage. I was worried about its electronics, though. Keanu must have shielded it. . . .”

With that news, the group—Bynum included—reacted like hangover victims given a dose of vitamin E.

“Okay, everyone,” Weldon said. “Let’s see what kind of shape our bird is in. At least we’ve still got something out there we can use.”

He turned to Harley, who was already in motion. “I’ll see what the great minds can do with this.”

Harley knew that his Home Team was getting the feed from mission control. They knew what he knew. There was no reason for him to trundle right in there.

Or so he told himself. He really needed a moment to think. He wanted to strangle Brent Bynum—not in a personal sense, since the man was clearly just a messenger—but just to strike a blow against what his father would have called “institutional fuckheadedness,” the kind of arrogant blindness that believed you could put a nuke on a risky mission, then be surprised when it went off.

It was dawn in Houston, the air already thick, the buzzing and flapping of bugs and birds already audible, the sky to the east thick with rosy clouds. Red sky at morning, sailor take warning.

Harley flinched. Wade Williams was lurking in the shadows, sitting on a concrete bench, a bottle in his hand. “I’m afraid I don’t have any orange juice, but . . .” He had a six-pack at his feet and offered a bottle to Harley.

Who took it. What the hell, he thought, twisting off the top. “How’d you manage to get this in here?”

“I may be a pompous ass—don’t argue with me—”

“Oh, I wasn’t.” But he smiled to take the edge off the remark.

“I know what I am and how I come across. All I can say is, I come from a long line of pompous asses. It’s what happens when you’re smarter than most people you meet, and louder, and unable to keep from making that clear.” He smiled and took a sip. “Anyway, I have a few fans squirreled away at JSC.”

“Cheers to your fans,” Harley said, taking a drink, and only then looking at the bottle: near beer. “O’Doul’s? Damn, Wade, I thought we were going to commemorate the serious shit we were in by getting loaded!”

“Not since 2012 for me, unfortunately.” He got a faraway look in his eye. “Still, just holding the bottle—the weight of it—helps me think.”

“And what are you thinking? I presume you and the team heard—”

“—All of it, the whole sorry mess.” The old man rubbed a hand across the stubble on his face. “I’ll say this for you, Drake. You and NASA sure know how to pack a thousand years of thrills into a few days.”

“It’s all kind of hard to believe, isn’t it? Last week we were thinking we were just damn lucky to have a chance to do a NEO landing without sending a crew on a nine-month mission, and now . . .”