Which made her wonder just how durable this imposing-looking structure really was. How durable could it be? It had “grown up” in the past two days!

Then she felt something different . . . not a gentle wavelike motion that seemed to be caused by the storm outside. This was a deeper, more powerful vibration. A tremor.

It was coming closer, too. And more frequent.

One entire wall of the room slid open, revealing a dark chamber beyond. She heard more thumps, scrapes, and an awful chittering sound.

In spite of the darkness in the chamber, Megan could see the shadow of something huge and multi-armed.

Megan got to her feet. She knew there was no point in running—

—But she tried.

For Steverino. See attached, which turned everyone’s heads inside out. Where did you get such freaky freaks? Nathan says it has to be Keanu- originated, but he would. Where are you? Will we ever find out what you’re doing with this stuff?

E-MAIL FROM RESEARCHER [email protected] TO STEVEN MATULKA,

WITH EXTREMELY LARGE AUDIO FILE

Before Harley opened the door to the Home Team, he heard what sounded like Britain’s House of Commons in full roar. Then Blaine said, “We need you.”

The immediate image did nothing to cheer him; the tableau reminded Harley of a bar fight paused in midpunch. Wade Williams and his little friend Glenn Creel were, in fact, nose-to-nose with Lily Valdez and some other person Harley couldn’t place.

The heated argument Harley had heard through the door simply stopped. All parties looked at him like guilty schoolchildren when the teacher got back early. “Do you people realize we’re about to try the craziest maneuver in the history of spaceflight?” Harley said.

“We do,” Sasha Blaine said, indicating the big screen behind the potential pugilists. Destiny was now so close to Keanu that the NEO landscape filled the screen.

“Then please tell me what the hell is going on?”

Blaine smiled and blushed. “We think we’ve cracked the Architects’ code.”

“What do you mean?”

Wade Williams geared up for a sound bite. “It turns out those markers were transmitting and receiving information—”

“No, Wade, that’s imprecise,” Lily Valdez said. “We managed to isolate what we think are two reciprocal functions.”

Williams looked at Creel for his usual support. “Isn’t that what I just said?”

“Not quite,” Sasha Blaine said. She turned to Harley. “All we’ve done is isolate what appears to be packets of information flowing to and from the markers. The Bangalore team was able to record a burst of both when Zack and Taj made their first approach. Logic and precedent suggest that the message could contain warnings or instructions about entering the Keanu interior—”

“Probably asking us to remove shoes and headgear,” Creel said, largely for his own amusement.

“Truly, we know nothing!” Valdez was quite adamant.

“O ye of little imagination,” Williams said, unwilling to concede the point. “We recorded the burst, and can reproduce it. That, young lady, is communication. If we ran across a Martian who took one of our messages and fed it back, we’d think we were on to something.”

“We aren’t the Architects,” Harley snapped. “How the hell does this work?”

Blaine said, “It’s just a weird frequency—”

“—Not entirely unlike Brahma’s terahertz radio,” Williams said.

“Fine,” Harley said, growing exasperated. “You’re ready to simply feed their own signals back to them on command?”

Blaine polled the room visually. “Yes,” she said.

“Any other thoughts on what would happen? Ranging on a scale of one to ten, one being nothing and ten being Keanu blows up?”

Valdez answered quickly: “Two, some kind of response, likely automated. We have to operate on the assumption that the Architects are at least as advanced as we are, and to return to Wade’s Martian scenario, we would respond if our signal returned in a nonreflective manner.”

“Good,” Harley said, not knowing what value this would be. “If we decide to try it—”

“—Oh, you’ll be trying it,” Williams said.

But this time Harley wasn’t ready to yield the floor. “There’s a larger issue on the table.” He told them the center was being evacuated, that only a limited crew would remain in mission control. “As far as NASA is concerned, you are putting your lives in danger by staying. And you are, in fact, free to leave now.”

The Home Team room remained silent.

“What, and fight all that traffic?” Wade Williams had said. Several of the others laughed.

“Do you all feel this way?”

Lily Valdez said, “We may not play nicely all the time, Mr. Drake, but we’re bright enough to know the situation. We’re needed here.”

Harley could have kissed her. Clearly he was getting softhearted. Well, if he was softhearted enough to allow Rachel Stewart to ride out the upcoming impact with him, he was in no position to try to dissuade these people from remaining . . . especially not when he needed them. “Fine. In the time we have left, why don’t you tell me what those dang things are saying?”

He never learned. As he was turning to Sasha Blaine’s Slate, the speaker relaying real-time air-to-ground communications with the astronauts on Keanu went live.

Capcom Jasmine Trieu was talking to Zack Stewart.

No matter what you’ve heard . . . Z lives!

POSTER JSC GUY AT NEOMISSION.COM

“We’re only with you for a few minutes. Comm is through Destiny.”

Zack found he was blinking back tears. Steady, he ordered himself. Be strong. Look forward. Look at the task. Don’t think about where you are and what you’re losing. “What happened?”

Trieu gave him the short version, ending with news that Destiny had survived the blast, though Venture and Brahma had not. That Tea and the others were on the surface awaiting a long-shot rescue. (Trieu didn’t phrase it that way, but Zack made that determination.) “And what is your status?”

So he gave mission control his short version. “Bottom line, I’m stymied.”

“Wait one,” the capcom said. The persistent and by now infuriating lag made that statement unnecessary.

Then Harley Drake came on the line. “Yo, Zack . . . I’m patched in. Rachel is with me, by the way.”

“Say hello for me.”

“She’s listening. But since time is short, we want to get you this idea: Home Team thinks the markers are not only antennae of some sort, scooping up data . . . but might also serve as locks for the doors.”

“I kinda figured that out for myself. The locked part, anyway.”

More lag time. Zack realized he was hungry and out of breath. Neither one was a good sign.

“We’re going to feed you a signal that we want you to play into the nearest marker. Our hope is it will start the unlocking process.”

For the first time in days, Zack got furious. “When did we start making decisions based on hope?”

Now the lag stretched. Zack was immediately sorry—the whole mission plan had vanished soon after the landing on Keanu. He was in a bad way, risking his life on an alien environment . . . but at least he had the advantage of making his own decisions and living with the direct consequences.

The team in mission control felt just as responsible but operated in the dark. It was certain to drive them crazy. “Hey, guys, belay that last remark,” he said.

Naturally Harley talked over him. “—Ignoring that, because I know you’d want it that way. We all want the same thing, Zack, which, right now, is for you to get through that door. So stand by for this signal. We will play it, you will hear it just as you’re hearing my voice . . . ideally the marker will pick it up.”

“What does it say?” He owed himself that much information.