“Maybe it needs to be that large to survive a ten-thousand-year trip.”

“Or maybe it isn’t a space probe, and those Objects aren’t sample-returners.”

Sasha Blaine gave up the argument.

Just after crossing the bayou, as the traffic dwindled to nothing, Harley made a sharp right onto Red Bluff, and soon after, another right into Taylor Lake Village, a crumbling development from the 1960s.

“You do know where you’re going,” Rachel said.

“Used to have a girlfriend who lived here. She was married. Had to perform a few emergency evasive escapes.”

Rachel had endured twenty minutes of being slammed around the backseat. Never a happy passenger, she was getting sick to her stomach. And impatient. “God, will you hurry?”

“What’s the rush, Rach?” Harley said. “I don’t think the Object is going anywhere.”

“I just want to see it!”

Sasha Blaine turned around from the front seat. “You’ve had to listen to the two of us nattering. What do you think it is?”

It wasn’t a question of trying to keep her feelings secret . . . it was more that Rachel didn’t understand her own compulsion until Sasha asked her. “I don’t know what it is,” she said. “All I know is that my mother told me not to be scared.”

You guys are awesome. No one in the world could have pulled this off in such a short time . . . no one in the world would have even tried it.

SHANE WELDON STATEMENT TO DESTINY FLIGHT CONTROL TEAM

Hey, guess what? Weldon gave everyone a “well-done!”

POSTER JSC GUY AT NEOMISSION.COM

The Destiny had come to rest safely—“No apparent leaks or holes, Houston”—but with one immediate problem. “The fucking hatch is underneath.” Always a bit of a potty mouth, the tomboy’s legacy, Tea Nowinski had developed strict air-to-ground discipline in her previous flights.

But the sight of Destiny, relatively unscathed except for the loss of one of its solar panels, with one edge of the hatch visible about three feet off the ground, overwhelmed her already-challenged verbal governor. “Any ideas?”

The lag seemed to stretch on, but Taj was ready to fill it. “Remember where we are, Tea.”

He slipped past her, hopping close to the Destiny, which even on its side was twice his height. Tea found Taj’s tone infuriatingly cheerful “I haven’t forgotten,” she said, about to add, you fucking idiot, when she realized what the vyomanaut meant. “Oh. Right.”

Destiny had only a fraction of its ten-ton weight here. “Tea, Houston. We see your situation with, ah, hatch access. And we are recommending—”

“—That we simply roll it, copy, Houston.” Tea, you are the fucking idiot. “Stand by for magic.”

“Before you do,” Houston said, “give us five. We want to vent atmosphere.”

Of course: for uncrewed orbit operations, Destiny was pressurized to ten pounds per square inch, slightly less than it would be with a crew aboard. With all that pressure on one side, a hatch would literally blow open, possibly damaging its hinges.

Tea and Taj retreated fifty meters, to where Natalia and Lucas waited. “Thar she blows,” Tea said, as a sudden gout of vapor erupted from Destiny’s base. Within a few minutes, it was gone. Destiny’s interior pressure was now almost a vacuum.

It took the four of them, two positioned on the side of the gumdrop-shaped Destiny, two on the canlike service module. The challenge wasn’t moving the mass—which rocked slightly to the touch—it was traction. “We’ve got to dig in,” Taj said.

“I wish I had my football cleats,” Lucas said. Tea was happy to hear the World’s Greatest Astronaut speak; he had fallen completely silent over the past hour, a sure sign of exhaustion and depression.

Natalia, who had also been sullen and silent, hopped to work, digging footholds for all. (She had been clever enough to bring tools from rover Buzz.)

“Uno, dos, tres,” Lucas said . . . and the giant, bus-sized vehicle rolled twenty degrees, just enough to uncover the hatch.

“Goddamn, it worked!” she said. “Great idea, Taj!”

“Thank Zack,” Taj said.

Tea dropped to her knees, looking for the handle as she tried to orient herself. When Destiny was upright, its main hatch opened to the left . . . with the spacecraft on its side, the hatch would open toward her, like a ramp. Which would be good.

Entry was simply a matter of finding the access handle—which was on the top of the hatch, from her perspective, and almost out of reach. “Houston, Tea, I’m ready to open ’er up.”

She waited. Then Jasmine Trieu said, “Pressure is effectively zero. You’re go for open.”

The rectangular hatch, wide enough that Tea could not touch the ends if she stretched out her arms, opened easily. Tea climbed up on it, then stepped into the interior.

And almost fainted.

God, had it only been forty hours since separation? It felt as though she were visiting for the first time! There was the confusing inversion of local vertical and local horizontal—she entered the spacecraft along one of its sloping walls. The main control panel, and two unstowed couches, were directly over her head. She should have been used to that, of course; her last look at the interior had been as she dove headfirst through the hatch in its pointy nose.

Right now she was standing on a cabinet door that had not been designed—as parts of Destiny’s “floor” were—for stepping. Fortunately, with Keanu’s gravity, Tea’s fears were less about breaking or stepping through the cabinet than tracking alien ice and mud into the “house.”

Taking slow breaths, she focused on the cabin lights and on key features: the stowed couches, the personal gear held in place by webbing along another part of the wall.

Better. She turned back to the hatch, where Taj waited. Natalia and Lucas were right behind him.

“All right, everybody. Last chance. Hot food, showers, massage. Well, none of that, exactly. But I’ll think you’ll enjoy the accommodations.”

“Destiny, Houston for Tea. We need you to take a look at Panel Delta.”

Tea reacted without thinking, closing up the flight data file and dropping it in the next seat. Panel Delta was where data on Destiny’s environmental systems was displayed.

It was only an hour after she and her colleagues—survivors of the human race’s less-than-nominal First Contact mission—had sealed themselves inside Destiny. Taj and Natalia were now awkwardly camped out on the sloping “floor” next to four rigid and empty pressure suits; Lucas was wedged atop the two stowed couches.

And Tea was in T-shirt and shorts, perched above them at the command operator’s position.

The moment she had been able to close the door and restore pressure, Tea had not only removed her worn-out EVA suit, but had also stripped off her fantastically nasty undergarment. She then cleaned herself with a wad of wet wipes and shrugged into a flight suit, telling the others, “Be my guest.”

Taj had objected. “What if there’s a loss of pressure?”

“Then I’ll die comfortable,” she said. “Besides . . . your suits have different hose fittings. You can’t recharge from these tanks. You might as well clean up and change clothes, too.”

To spare the others the awkwardness of donning coveralls last worn by dead comrades, Tea had opened a cabinet and pulled out spare garments intended to be worn the last day of the mission. She hoped this was the last day of the mission.

Pogo’s size XL hung loosely on Lucas, and Tea’s spare didn’t fit tiny Natalia much better. Zack’s fit Taj as though tailored . . . which caused Tea to think about her absent friend and commander. As the others laid waste to the stored food and water, Tea radioed a quiet query to Houston about word from Zack and was only told, “Last contact was two hours ago. Nothing since then. Nothing expected.”