“Sagittarius, this is Tom Wetherbee; if you’re there, come in. If anyone’s alive, please come in. Someone must be out there. The ship is locked; I couldn’t get in.”
A chill shot down Catherine’s spine.
“Sagittarius, I’m wounded. My suit’s torn; I’ve got some burns. I think something scratched me. Please help me.”
Part of her mind insisted this was a trick, told her not to answer him. He sounded so desperate, though. So terrified.
She settled in front of the console. “Tom, it’s Catherine.”
“Oh thank God!” he cried. “What happened? The Habitat—it’s gone.”
“Where are you?”
“I’m in the storage shed,” Tom said. “The ship was locked, so I thought someone must be inside… Tell me what happened!”
“You don’t remember the explosion?”
“Jesus. No. Where is everyone?”
I don’t know what I did last night…
Catherine’s mouth was dry when she tried to swallow. “They’re dead, Tom. I thought you were dead, too.”
There was silence over the comms, and when he came back on, it sounded as if he were barely holding on to himself. “All of them? No. Oh God. How much time have I lost, Catherine?”
“It’s been a day since the explosion. How did you get out?”
“I don’t know. Last thing I remember I was under the console in the command center, elbow-deep in some wiring, trying to figure out how things had gotten so fucked up. Then I’m sitting in the middle of nowhere burned and bleeding.” He paused. “I think something attacked me.”
Did he really not remember? Or was this all a ploy to draw her out? “You tried to kill me today. You’ve been sending me threatening comm messages.”
“That’s ridiculous. I would never— I could never hurt you.” The betrayal in his voice sounded so real that she wanted to believe it.
“I’ve got the bruises to prove it.”
“I don’t remember that!” The quaver in his voice also sounded real. “Cath, I think I’m getting a fever.”
“I can’t let you back on the ship. You’ve got to be quarantined, Tom.” Even if I trusted you, which I don’t.
Tom’s voice grew hard. “You’re going to leave me behind. You’re going to just let me die.”
“No.” Yes. Maybe. “Look, there’s plenty of food and supplies still in the storage shed. I’ll leave the antibiotics and painkillers you’re missing outside the ship. I-I’ll wait through your quarantine with you.”
“You’re a shit liar, Wells.”
“Hang on.” Catherine ran to the infirmary and grabbed the promised medication. If he was lying and was right outside instead of in the storage shed, she was taking an enormous risk, but she had to. Even if she wasn’t sure she could trust him, she needed to be trustworthy herself. She opened the ship’s main hatch. Tom was nowhere to be seen. She put the containers just outside the hatch before ducking back in and resealing everything. When she got back to the comms, she said, “The meds are waiting for you now.”
“I don’t know if I can walk that far.”
“You tried to choke me. I’m not coming to you.”
“Fine. God, you always were a heartless bitch.” That was real, even if the tears had been fake. “If I die, my blood is on your hands.”
Yeah, well, she knew that much.
“If the meds work, we’ll talk.” Then she shut off the mic and walked away.
There were no other messages that night.
Exhausted as she was, Catherine barely managed to sleep. When the sun came up, she crept to the main hatch.
What she saw shocked her, and, if she was honest, touched her a little. The meds she’d left were gone, and parked in front of the ship was the rover, loaded with supplies. Judging from the other crates stacked around it, there were plenty of supplies for a return trip home. Tom must have spent all night making trips back and forth.
Was it a trick? Then she saw the message scratched in the dirt:
PEACE OFFERING. QUARANTINE 48 HOURS. WAIT FOR ME? WILL MESSAGE.
He was willing to wait outside the ship for two days to see if he came down with something or, like Catherine, stayed well. Even if she didn’t trust him, she couldn’t turn down what he was offering. The supplies he left weren’t tampered with. The seals on all the crates were still intact. He couldn’t have gotten to the contents.
Faced with the prospect of trying to get a different batch of supplies and possibly having to fight off Tom again, Catherine decided to take the chance. She started loading the crates. It took the better part of a day, hauling things between the rover and the open hatch. By the time she was finished, she’d reached a decision: She’d wait forty-eight hours. If Tom was still alive, she’d worry about making a final decision then. In the meantime, she’d stay locked in the ship where it was safe. With the long trip back home, a couple more days wouldn’t make a difference one way or another.
30
CATHERINE WOKE IN her own bed, confused at first, thinking that she’d had a strange nightmare.
The sound of someone moving around in her living room brought it all back. It had been real. Cal had driven her home in her car, made her tea, put her to bed, and—from the sounds of it—slept on her couch.
Details were fuzzy, but she remembered what she’d gone to NASA to do. I almost killed them. I almost killed everyone on Sagittarius. The thought stuck in her head, echoing and rebounding. She crawled out of bed and pulled on her robe.
Cal was in the kitchen making coffee. “Hey,” he said. “I heard you get up. How are you doing?”
Catherine’s voice came out in a rusty croak, as if she had a cold, or had been shouting. “I tried to kill six of my friends last night—seven, counting you—but otherwise, I’m doing okay. You?” There were bruises on his face, but the cut on his cheek didn’t look as bad this morning. Her aches weren’t physical, but her soul felt bruised. How could she live with what she’d done? And what if she tried to do it again?
“Yeah, okay, so maybe that was a dumb question.” He changed the subject, holding up the coffee can from her cabinet. “Seriously? You seriously drink this? You know dirt would be cheaper, right? And probably taste better.”
Despite her misery, she smiled. “It gets the job done. Some of us don’t care about hand-roasted, carefully ground artisanal beans from some obscure corner of the world. It’s caffeine.”
“My God. I see I have a lot of educating to do here.” He shook his head. Still, he started the coffee machine and came to sit next to her on the couch. “Were you able to sleep?”
“Surprisingly, yes.” She lowered her face to her hands and rubbed with her palms. “Who knew attempted murder was so exhausting.”
“You weren’t in control—”
“That doesn’t actually make it any better.” She looked up at him, needing to voice her fears aloud to another person. “What if I try again? What if I already did kill someone, and just don’t know it?”
“Now we know what the plan is,” Cal countered. “That makes it easier to stop. And maybe it will give us a clue about what’s going on here.”
“But whose plan? Cal, there is someone in my head. Maybe more than one. I felt them!” Catherine sighed, slumping against the back of the sofa. “God. This is such a nightmare.”
“I have a theory about that.” Cal turned, sitting sideways to face her. “The Longbow Protocol was supposed to prevent any sort of alien life-form from coming to Earth without our knowledge, right? The thing is, it already failed. We failed. There was one outcome we didn’t predict: that someone would bring something back with them, something we wouldn’t be able to detect until it was too late.”