It would still take days, but what a journey! Unfortunately, this voyage was not one of exploration. It was to deal with a crisis.
And, based on what he was seeing now, a mystery.
To Dale’s surprise, the mining track and Skyphoi tube continued on. He wondered where they would lead—his Keanu map was fuzzy regarding the space directly in front of him. He assumed there would be another habitat, possibly two . . . but how big?
And who or what would be living in them? If anyone or anything?
Wait! Whether it was the Keanu map inside his head or his own heightened senses, Dale realized that he was being followed!
He slowed long enough to glance behind him, but saw nothing, no one. Heard nothing.
Yet . . . he knew. But what choice did he have? It wasn’t as though he could turn and ambush his pursuer. Keep walking—
There, in his peripheral vision—a shadow, meaning there was light behind it.
He began to walk faster, a desire complicated by his instinct to look back. Yes, something bright was behind him in the passageway, and getting closer.
The passageway curved, which allowed him to feel as though he was putting space between himself and the pursuer.
Not far ahead he could see a second branch, too. Which presented him with a decision . . . go right or go left. Or follow the twin rails and pipes straight ahead, to their terminus.
He assumed he would learn nothing by merely escaping. There was also this: Of all the humans living on Keanu, Dale Scott was the closest thing to a master of the NEO that could be found.
Why the hell should he be running away? What was there on Keanu that was a real threat? Even the Skyphoi, while indifferent and uncooperative, were never hostile. He’d never felt unsafe in his few encounters with them.
Suddenly he was at the end of the line . . . the rail and tube structures made a curving turn to the left into a large entrance.
And now Dale could hear his pursuer. He could smell something unusual but also somehow familiar. It was the acid tang of the Skyphoi atmosphere.
Which mean that he was about to be caught or at least met by one of the gasbag aliens.
But first—
The entries to habitats were deep, wide at times, and always complicated, usually involving several membranes and, once you penetrated past the initial opening, branching side passages. The membranes played the role that hatches did in spacecraft airlocks, since the atmospheres inside habitats were rarely the same as that in the tunnel system.
Dale slipped through the larger opening and saw immediately that the whole unit had been further rearranged to accommodate the human and Skyphoi pipes. Rather than press on through the obvious central entry, he chose to climb on top of the railcar track and squeeze through a series of membranes that way.
He emerged into a habitat, and immediately had to stop.
First reason . . . there was almost no floor. He was standing on a platform of sorts that jutted into a spherical chamber perhaps a fifth the size of the human or Factory habitats. The platform extended around the perimeter, broken only by the railcar and pipe system. From where Dale stood, he saw that the Skyphoi pipe brought material into the chamber, and the railcars took it away. In the center was a giant filmy balloonlike thing at least thirty meters across that Dale recognized from twenty years past.
A vesicle, the same type of object that had carried the HBs from Houston and Bangalore . . . and had delivered the Reivers to Earth, apparently.
Dale had no idea that anyone knew how to make another one.
This one didn’t seem complete . . . the top seemed to be open. Nor was it solid; the entire shell quivered as if made of gelatin—
Shit, he’d let himself get distracted. The Skyphoi had managed to invade this habitat! This one was less than half the size of those he’d known . . . but here it was.
Dale was torn between sudden, unreasoning, but definite fear for his safety and amazement that the large alien gasbags had learned to change their size.
His sense of wonder and curiosity had gotten him into trouble before. Now it had led him into a trap. Well, he had had no choice.
He turned to face his pursuer. Too bad the map in his head and his linkage, however tenuous, with Keanu had failed him.
Seen closer now, this particular Skyphoi seemed odd . . . it wasn’t just smaller than those Dale remembered meeting, it was the wrong color and filled with what appeared to be a human shape.
As if, Jonah’s whale–style, a Skyphoi had swallowed a man whole.
Which boded ill for Dale’s immediate future. Having nowhere to run, he decided to stand his ground. “What do you want?” he said.
To his amazement, the Skyphoi answered! “Fuck you, Scott!”
Then the Skyphoi collapsed, the filmy yellowish bag falling to the surface of the platform and turning to powder . . . leaving an actual human wearing a Sentry-style environment suit.
The human removed the mask. It was Zhao, the Chinese agent who had become one of the HB leaders, the one Dale had asked Harley Drake about.
“So that’s where you were?” Dale said. “In the Skyphoi habitat?”
“What are you doing here?”
Dale gestured at the piping. “Following the not-so-yellow-brick road.”
“Are you happy you did?”
“I don’t know yet. What’s it for?”
“Why do you care? You opted out of our activities a long time ago.”
“Maybe I’m opting back in.” Zhao continued to stare at him. “What?”
“I was merely wondering how long it has been since I’ve seen you.”
“Ten years at least. Why?”
Zhao’s face was impassive, unreadable, as always. “I had hoped that your isolation would lead to some kind of personal evolution. Apparently not. You are the same clueless fool I remember.”
Zhao was wrong, however. The old Dale would have taken a swing at Zhao for a statement like that. But new Dale, Keanu-attuned Dale, just laughed. “And you are the same arrogant asshole. Depressing, isn’t it?
“Now . . . forget trying to prove how superior you are, and tell me what the hell this thing is.”
THEY’RE GONE!
Sources in ISRO report that the crew of the Keanu-based spaceship Adventure, supposedly on their way to Delhi two days ago, were, in fact, diverted to an undisclosed location and may have left the country.
HEADLINE AND LEAD IN NEW DELHI TIMES,
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 18, 2040
RACHEL
Rachel barely noticed the landing, which was smoother than she expected, given the bumpy nature of the last half hour.
It was still night in Darwin, and apparently overcast, so her one glance out the window failed to give her any sense of the size of the city, which seemed to extend to the south of whatever airport they flew into. And their path was east off the ocean.
Besides, she was too busy comforting Yahvi, who had gotten hysterical at the news of Sanjay’s death. Even Zeds seemed shocked, retreating into his suit.
Rachel knew that Yahvi had never warmed to Sanjay—that she barely knew him. But deaths were a big deal for the HBs, and death here, now, when the girl was feeling so vulnerable—it had to be shocking.
So she curled up in the seat next to Rachel and sobbed all through the touchdown and the brief taxiing to a stop at what appeared to be a small executive terminal.
Pav sat still and, to unfamiliar eyes, unmoved. But Rachel knew her husband; he was stunned, too.