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  “I’d be glad to consult from here, but I’m not the right person for that job. I can give you a few referrals of people who would be better suited.”

  That wasn’t the reaction he expected. “You’re wrong. I had a chance to look over the other files. You’re the only person for this job. You’re the only one with the kind of stamina, talent, and sheer guts it will take to do this.”

  Her expression was skeptical. “I’m sure it looks like that on paper—”

  He let his frustration bleed through. “Look, they’ve spent months looking at linguists—we’ve been working with plenty of linguists already, on another, similar project—and none of them can match your level of natural ability and experience. Come on! You’re a goddamn living legend in your field—and you’re what? Thirty-five? Do you know what we’ve been calling you at NASA? We call you Indiana Jane.”

  The smile snuck back, just for a second.

  “Well, okay—I call you that—but it’s fucking true!”

  She snorted softly and looked away.

  He rolled his eyes. They’d warned him not to curse. “Sorry. You were right when you guessed I don’t spend much time around women.” He eyed her, and dropped the exasperation. But he couldn’t stop sounding perplexed. “I don’t understand—why wouldn’t you want to do this? You’ve already seen most of this planet, why not go see part of the solar system and an alien space ship, too? I mean, I’d expect you to be salivating to get into that rocket!”

  “You are.” It was a flat statement, an observation.

  “Yes!”

  “Are you going?”

  He rubbed the back of his neck thoughtfully. “That depends.”

  She shot him a shrewd, evaluating look. “On what?”

  “There are five slots plus a linguist. They’ve got us narrowed down to twelve. That’s out of an original 108 possible astronauts. They’re still testing us, quizzing us, deciding. It’s down to the psychs now. The final decision will be soon. Then the training starts. We have a little over a year to get ready.”

  He watched while a variety of expressions flickered over her momentarily unguarded features. Some he couldn’t name. Some he recognized. Indecision, for one. Longing, for another. She hid it quickly, but he’d seen it. She wanted it. She wanted to go.

  He smiled at her, a slow, rakish smile, in recognition of a kindred spirit.

  Her face went blank and she pushed by him. “I’m sorry you came all this way, Dr. Bergen. I won’t waste any more of your time. I’ll drive you back to your car and let you get back to your work. It sounds important.”

  “What?” Damn it—he was chasing after her again and totally clueless about what was going on.

  She didn’t reply. She was marching, fast, back toward the parking lot.

  “Wait a minute!”

  Heels and that skinny skirt weren’t made for the kind of flight she was trying to take on the gravelly path. She stumbled a bit and he caught her arm. She pulled herself upright and wouldn’t meet his gaze.

  “What’s holding you back? You were born for this mission.”

  She laughed without humor. Her golden-blonde hair was starting to unravel from its tidy arrangement.

  He still had a hold on her arm. He squeezed it. “That little trip you took to South America took balls.”

  She cocked an eyebrow at him.

  He shrugged helplessly.

  She shook her head and more hair came loose. “That wasn’t supposed to be me.”

  She seemed steady now, so he dropped his hand away. “What? Your file doesn’t say anything about that.”

  “I study endangered languages, yes, but mostly among the remnants of the native tribes of Canada. I wasn’t the one slated to go to Brazil three years ago. It was one of my students. She was the perfect candidate—excellent language skills, fearless, always ready for a challenge. But she turned up pregnant two weeks before she was due to leave. The project was funded. It was important work. It is so rare to find a tribe so untouched by the modern world. We knew that the things that could be learned there could potentially rock the foundations of what we thought we knew about how language forms in the human brain. We hoped it would—and it did—overturn entrenched ideas about recursion…” She stopped herself, probably realizing he didn’t have a clue what she was talking about.

  Her lips were tight as she spoke, “She wanted to go anyway. She wanted to… I couldn’t let her! The only way to keep her here, to keep her safe, was to go myself. That’s why I went. My hand was forced. So, I went. I—”

  “You proved what you set out to prove.”

  She shuddered. “Yes, but at what cost? Was it worth the lives that were lost to prove some ancient, pedantic academic wrong?”

  “That was a bad break.”

  Her expression was bleak, full of anguish. “A bad break? People died. They left families behind—people who needed them, relied on them. I couldn’t prevent it. I couldn’t protect them. I couldn’t save them.”

  He frowned. “They were adults. They knew the risks when they signed up—just like you did.”

  She shook her head slowly, her lips pursed together in a thin, white line. “Look, I’m not some wild adventurer. I’m not who you think I am.”

  “Your childhood would suggest otherwise,” he said sardonically.

  “That was my parents. That wasn’t me.” She resumed a crisp stride back to her car.

  He trailed behind her, bewildered. He was going to catch hell when he got back. They were going to assume he’d made some kind of off-color remark that put her off. They were going to think he’d fucked up a sure thing. He’d failed their test.

  When he came out of the park, she was in the car and the motor was running. He got in and she took off, her driving no longer measured and controlled. She was going a little faster, taking a few more risks.

  “Is it fear?” he asked quietly. “Because we all… I mean, it’s normal.”

  “No.”

  It was a forceful answer. She didn’t say anything more. He had to take that at face value. She parked on campus and sat there, staring straight ahead.

  “They’re going to ask me why. What should I tell them?”

  “When people take risks, they do it for selfish reasons, for their own personal indulgence. They don’t consider how their actions will affect others.”

  “Who will you affect, Doc? We’ve done our research. There isn’t a thing about you we haven’t considered. You tick off every box. You’re divorced, have no children. Your one surviving parent appears to be off the grid and the grandparents you spent your teens with are both deceased.”

  She looked down at her lap.

  He fished in his wallet for a business card. She took it silently and he got out. The car was already getting hot in the sun and he didn’t know what else to say to her. He was just about to slam the door when he thought of one last thing. “Are you going to be like this girl, this student of yours, with regrets? Or are you going to fulfill your potential and do something absolutely amazing that will benefit the human race?”

  She didn’t reply, only closed her eyes.

  He retrieved his ID card from inside the building and remembered he needed her to sign the confidentiality agreement. As he headed for his own car, he noted that hers was gone. So, he’d screwed that up, too, dammit.

  Partway back to Pasadena, his cell rang. It was Holloway.

  Her voice sounded cold, formal, rehearsed. “Dr. Bergen? This is Dr. Holloway.”

  He checked his mirrors and decided not to change lanes just yet. “Yeah, this is Berg.”

  She cleared her throat. “Have your people contact me about the arrangements.”

  He sat up in his seat a little straighter. “Oh, you changed your mind?”

  “I’ll go to Houston. That’s all I’ll agree to, for now. And that’s just to satisfy my curiosity.”

  3

  Bergen cursed.

  “Sorry, Doctor Holloway—but it looks like you’re o
ut of a job,” Walsh said flatly.

  Jane let out the breath she’d been holding. She told herself she should be relieved. “Don’t be too quick to make assumptions,” she found herself musing aloud. “This could be a social custom that we don’t understand. Visitors may be expected to follow the lights to a designated location. It could be a welcoming gesture.”

  “Like walking the red carpet, or something,” Gibbs suggested.

  “Think there’s any paparazzi?” Bergen said.

  Walsh shook his head. “The docking lights, the aperture opening, the interior lights—are probably automated, triggered by proximity and the act of docking. I think we’re looking at the ‘vacant’ scenario here.”

  A gut feeling insisted he was wrong. There was someone in there. Jane eased forward, reaching to pull herself through the opening.

  Bergen was grimacing. “So, where does that put us on the flow chart of doom?”

  Walsh grabbed Jane from behind before she could go further. “Wait. Compton—getting any response to the radio transmission?”

  “Negative, Commander. No joy,” Compton said evenly from the cockpit.

  Jane spoke up. “They’ve welcomed us. They know we’re here. I think, maybe, they expect us to—”

  “Run like rats through a maze?” Bergen put in with an arched brow.

  Jane swiveled to face him, scowling. “Don’t judge them, Dr. Bergen. We don’t know anything about them. You jeopardize the mission with comments like that. They could be monitoring us, even now.”

  “You think they speak English, Doc?” Bergen said dryly.

  Had they forgotten all the training? Jane put some snap in her voice. “We’ve been through this. It’s a mistake to assume anything. We have to remember their culture is completely foreign. They don’t think like we do. Perhaps they fear their appearance will frighten us. They may be shy—eager to observe our behavior before they show themselves. There could be hundreds of reasons that I’m not equipped to imagine.”

  Walsh turned toward the base of the capsule. “I don’t think there’s any ‘they’ to be worried about, Holloway. It’ll be our job to figure out why that is.”

  Jane gritted her teeth.

  Walsh pushed off for the cockpit. “We’ll give this some time.”

  Bergen fiddled with an instrument, completely absorbed in whatever the display showed. His eyebrows shot up. “It’s fully pressurized. There’s a good seal between the ships. We’re at about 12 psi now. I should go in there and take some air samples.”

  Walsh said, “No. Stay put for now.”

  “But—” Jane started to argue, though she knew she was pushing it.

  Walsh turned, an eloquent pirouette. “Under the protocol of this scenario, you’re working for me, Dr. Holloway. We’ll do this my way.” He clambered into the cockpit to send another transmission to Houston, detailing what had occurred so far.

  An elaborate “if this, then that” chart had been hammered out in Houston. Depending upon the circumstances they found at the Target, either she or Walsh were in command at any given time. Walsh wasn’t going to hand over the baton without proof that there was someone in there, which was fine. Jane had never wanted the command, but she did care about getting this right. First contact was a delicate thing, even back home, among humans. And this was far more precarious.

  Walsh was following the protocols they’d hammered out in Houston. At some point, though, she’d developed doubts that human logic would mean anything out here.

  Jane lingered with Bergen at the capsule’s hatch. Bergen was peering into the ship, getting as close as he dared without incurring Walsh’s irritation. He was twitchy, checking his instruments and reorienting them on his suit. Through her helmet, she could hear the muffled scritch of the velcro peeling apart repeatedly.

  “Which way is up?” she asked Bergen.

  He thwacked her helmet with his gloved knuckles. “Turn on your comm, Doc.”

  Damn. She’d hoped he could hear her speaking quietly. Must every word, every movement, be public? At least her thoughts were still her own. She turned the comm back on. “Which way is up?”

  “Hm.” He gazed at her thoughtfully. “I was just wondering the same thing. In microgravity, it doesn’t matter. Yet, we still like to think of an up and a down orientation. They may as well.”

  She nodded, as much as the stiff suit would allow. “Well, you’re the engineer. What do you think? Did they put the lights in the floor or the ceiling? There aren’t any other cues, are there?”

  “Hard to say, since the lights are flush with the surface. It could really go either way.”

  “Gibbs’s comment about the red carpet, though—and the way they turned on—made me think floor. You?”

  “Mm. I’d like to get in there and take some measurements, but…” He glanced back toward Walsh with frustration.

  Walsh studiously ignored their conversation.

  “Does it resemble the craft at Area 51 in any way?”

  “That’s minuscule by comparison. So far I don’t have any real details to compare.”

  Jane inspected the smooth material that lined the alien craft. It was a gloomy color, not quite beige, not quite green, and darker than she would expect for a vessel in deep space from a purely psychological point of view—it didn’t reflect light. But the passageway itself was spacious.

  “It seems to be roughly human in dimension, doesn’t it? If we were to construct a vessel of this size, wouldn’t our hallways resemble this in size and shape?”

  Bergen’s eyebrows shot up as he considered. “Not really. You’re comparing it to structures on Earth with gravity—where people are standing upright. I’d expect something a bit smaller for us, to conserve space and air. That looks to be about two and a half to three meters from floor to ceiling. I’d design something closer to two, or even less for a hallway.”

  Jane stayed alert, hoping someone might still come forward. If the vessel were manned by a skeleton crew and the controls to open the hatch were far away, they could arrive any minute.

  The bizarre sensation she’d felt before hadn’t lingered. What had that been? Some physical manifestation of fear? She considered that until she looked up and saw that Bergen was studying her intently.

  “What are you thinking about, Doc?” he asked softly.

  “I… Well, I was thinking about when we opened the hatch. I—I felt so strange there for a few minutes. Did you—”

  A hiss of static came over the comm and they turned toward the others. It was a broadcast from Houston, the voice of the NASA Administrator, Gordon Bonham. “Providence. Houston. Acknowledged. Received audio transmission. Awaiting video transmission at this time. Our recommendation: proceed with caution. Operation: Delta Tango Uniform. Houston out.”

  Jane shook her head. The message was in code, telling them to explore the ship with weapons drawn—expecting hostiles. Walsh would follow this order to the letter, she was sure.

  Jane and Bergen eyed each other, both openly skeptical, as they lined up. They all would go in except for Compton, who would stay behind to guard Providence.

  Walsh made a show of handing Jane a military-issue Beretta M9. She refused it, as he had known she would. She had always objected to any contingency that called for weapons use.

  Jane blinked hard. The buzzing had returned, though it was softer this time—a little easier to ignore. Something about it niggled at her. She’d never felt anything like it before. Not when she‘d been struggling to drag her colleagues to safety by canoe, deep in the Amazon River basin, flushed with fever and starving, forced to push on despite the death of their guide. Not when she’d encountered giant snakes or carnivorous insects that swarmed over a person’s body while they slept, nor when she’d stumbled upon hostile tribesmen who would just as soon deliver a poison dart as a greeting. Even in those horrifying, desperate, exhausted moments she’d never felt a fear like this, that tapped into her ability to reason.

  Walsh and Gibbs were poised
at the meter-wide portal.

  “What color would you call that, Jane? Split pea? Bilge green? Puce? Ugly as hell?” Gibbs commented with a wink, gesturing toward the Target.

  Jane nodded distractedly. She couldn’t answer Gibbs’s call for levity. He was too excited to look disappointed.

  Walsh pushed off and half a second later, Gibbs did as well. She pulled herself closer.

  A strangled cry and a yelp resounded in her ears as Walsh and Gibbs crashed into a heap on the surface that housed the greenish lights.

  The floor, evidently.

  “Whoa,” Bergen muttered, his blue eyes lighting up. “Artificial gravity. Wasn’t expecting that.”

  “Really?” Jane asked. “I was, sort of—”

  Compton shoved his way in, pulling Varma to the opening as he repeated, “Walsh, Gibbs—report.”

  Varma’s fine features were pressed into a mask of worry. “They’ve passed out. Clearly. They shouldn’t be out long. I dearly hope they haven’t broken bones.”

  Bergen huffed through tight lips. “We have no idea how many Gs that is. Even if it’s only one G—they’re wearing 230-pound suits. They’re going to have a hell of a time getting up. If that’s more than one-G, this could be a serious problem. We still don’t know if that’s breathable air in there.”

  They peered into the Target, helmets gently tapping.

  “They’re so close. Shouldn’t we try to pull them out?” Jane asked the others.

  Varma frowned. “We could try—but I suspect we would pass out before we could get a hold on them. Let’s give it another moment.”

  Walsh moved his arm.

  “Walsh, report,” Compton barked.

  “Ffffthff,” was all Walsh could manage. Then he groaned, “Dammit, Gibbs, get off me.”

  Gibbs didn’t respond.

  Varma leaned in. “Commander, are you hurt?”

  “Just my pride. Bergen, were you keeping this as your special little secret for me, or what?” Walsh wheezed.