“How are you feeling?”
“Impatient.”
Xavier loved the way Zeds always said exactly what he felt. He had none of the social governors that even the least-inhibited human beings possessed.
“What were Chang and Pav talking about?”
“The aircraft is one they hoped to see.”
Now, that was interesting—and welcome news. But from where? And more importantly, to where?
Xavier returned to the truck, where Edgar Chang and Chief Warrant Officer Singh were both pacing, phones to their ears. To Xavier’s alarm, he noted that as Singh talked, his other hand was removing a revolver from a holster in the small of his back . . . as if checking on its presence and heft.
Meanwhile, Rachel Stewart-Radhakrishnan seemed to be having an argument with her husband as their daughter and Tea looked on, distressed.
“You’ve never hidden things from me before—at least I don’t think you have—”
“I have not,” Pav said.
“So why are you starting now?”
“Because I don’t know what happened for certain!”
Now Tea spoke: “What about Taj?”
“No word.”
Xavier glanced at Yahvi; her eyes and nose were red from her cold, but now it looked as though she’d been crying, too. “Can we catch a brother up?” he said. “And maybe Zeds would like to know.” The Sentry had followed him to the gathering.
Rachel gestured for Pav to speak. “The other convoy,” he said, clearly struggling for the words. He sighed. “There was an incident.”
“Oh, for God’s sake, Pav!” Rachel said, as snappish as Xavier had ever heard her. “They’re dead, isn’t that what you and Chang said? All killed on the road to the other airport?”
Xavier felt sick, though not, when he thought about it a second time, terribly surprised. He waited for Pav to add detail. “The report—Chang got it, and so did your driver—is that a highway bridge failed. Both limos went into the road below and turned over. One of the trucks was damaged, too. No word on the ambulance. The entire party is reported to be dead.” Pav quickly pivoted to face Tea. “And so far we don’t have definitive information on who was in the convoy at the time. I know my father said he was going along—”
“To help with the ruse, yes,” Tea said bitterly.
“Taj is not among the dead,” Chang said. He had just gotten off the phone. “There are four fatalities, including Warrant Officer Pandya—” Here Chang nodded toward Warrant Officer Singh. Xavier was surprised at how that news struck him; he’d assumed Pandya was the spy, not a supportive member of the team.
Not someone who would risk his life for them—and lose it.
“Two others were injured and evacuated. Taj is not among them, that’s confirmed.”
“Do we know where he is?” Pav said.
Chang shook his phone. “Still working on that.”
“We should never have left Sanjay,” Rachel said. “He’s unprotected at Yelahanka.”
“I believe the reason Taj stayed behind was to find a moment to remove Sanjay,” Chang said. “That was the plan.”
“Which one?” Yahvi spoke for the first time. “I can’t keep these plans straight.”
“Plan 3C,” Xavier said. “Not that I want to forget about Sanjay, but here’s a stumper: What about us? We got in the truck this morning with this as our destination. Well, folks, here we are . . . standing in a cold empty hangar in the rain.
“Are we flying to China? Are we catching a boat to Japan? What’s the deal?”
“Just wait,” Pav said.
Out on the runway, a small jet broke through the low clouds, swiftly touching down and rolling out. Xavier would not have been able to identify aircraft types in 2019 beyond big and not-so-big, so he was useless with this one.
But it was not big . . . a corporate or executive jet.
“Is this our ride?” Yahvi said.
Pav put his arm around her. Xavier noticed that he exchanged a look with Chang before answering: “Yes.”
“Who are they?” Rachel said.
“Friends,” Edgar Chang said.
“I asked my husband,” Rachel said, more gently than Xavier expected.
Pav smiled, trying desperately—Xavier thought—to return a bit of humor to this tense situation. “It might be better to call them ‘old friends never met,’” he said.
The jet was taxiing right up to the front of the hangar; the noise of its twin engines effectively eliminated further exchanges.
Zeds looked intrigued. Tea was grim, her arms across her chest. Yahvi blinked and seemed miserable. Pav had his arm around Rachel.
Now Xavier got a good look at the plane . . . sleek, white, clearly twenty meters from tip to tail. Two pilots were visible in the cockpit. Rows of windows confirmed that it was some kind of passenger craft.
On the tail . . . a baby kangaroo? The word surfaced from his deep memory: a wallaby.
“Is this from Australia?” Xavier shouted. The engines wound down just as he opened his mouth, making him sound so much louder than necessary that the others—even Chang and Singh—laughed.
Singh’s lighter moment didn’t last long. As the engines fell silent, Xavier and the others could hear latches on the cabin door being opened. As the door swung down, becoming a ladder, Singh raised his pistol, covering the hatchway.
A thin, middle-aged white male with a crest of blond hair stuck his head out. “Don’t shoot!” he said, hands up. “We come in peace!”
Xavier saw Singh glance at Chang, who nodded. The weapon was lowered.
Pav stepped forward, hand extended. “Mr. Radhakrishnan, I presume,” the man said. His Aussie accent was so strong that Radhakrishnan sounded like “Redda kishen.”
“My wife, Rachel,” Pav said. He quickly introduced all of them, ending with Zeds . . . which caused the Aussie fellow to step back and look up.
When this happened, Yahvi grabbed her mother and said, “Who is this man?”
The man heard her and turned. “Oh, sorry, got your names, forgot to offer mine.” He smiled. “Colin Edgely, young lady. Among my other notable accomplishments, I am the man who discovered Keanu.”
Rachel said, “I thought that name was familiar. Lovely to meet you, and why are you here?”
Edgely looked at Pav, who cleared his throat and said, “He’s come to rescue us.”
Mr. Kalyan Bhat of Hebbal, Bengaluru, Karnatka, admits he was shocked by the news that humans had returned from the Near-Earth Object Keanu. “I lived near the control center,” he said. “I saw the object rising into the sky.” He had a special interest in the event, though Kalyan—who was only thirteen—didn’t know it at the time.
“My older brother, Sanjay, was in that thing. I didn’t find out for a week.”
That shocking news contributed to the death of the boys’ mother, Sima. “She was fighting cancer and doing well, but losing Sanjay like that . . . she gave up.” Sima Bhat died two years later.
Kalyan and Sanjay’s father, Mahavir, a clerk with the State Bank of India in Hebbal, lived until 2037. “I know that losing Sanjay affected him, too. Every year, on the anniversary of the object’s takeoff, he would lock himself in his room.
“But when I tried to get him to talk about Sanjay, he wouldn’t. There was only one picture of my brother in our house, in my father’s bedroom.”
As for Kalyan himself, he served in the Indian army during the conflicts of 2029–2031, and became an engineer with DMC Electronics.
“I was thirteen when Sanjay was taken,” he said. “I can’t wait to see him.” He added, “It’s like something from an old story—a castaway returning, or someone coming back from the dead.”
As for the rumors that Sanjay was injured in Adventure’s crash landing, he said, “I hope they’re wrong. And if he was injured, I hope he’s recovering.” Has ISRO or another agency been in touch with him?