Heaven's Shadow (18 page)

Then the Sentry moved.

Its major left-side appendages rose suddenly to its head. Zack had begun to form an image of the Sentry as the Tin Man from Oz . . . stolid, rusted to immobility . . . now trying to salute.

Look at what’s here, not what you remember!

Then the creature took a step . . . and staggered.

“It looks like it’s hurt!” Natalia said.

“Everybody stay back!” Zack said. The Sentry began to flail, like a man in extreme pain.

He could see its chest heave.
Okay, it’s organic, not a machine.

Then the Sentry abruptly turned toward Pogo Downey, who, inexplicably, was walking forward.

The being snapped out a hand, as if trying to reach Pogo—

Swaddled in his suit, Zack could not feel what happened next, but he saw a flash. Lucas had taken an image with that damned Zeiss unit! And in the low light, the autoflash had triggered!

With frightening speed, the Sentry turned toward Pogo, and swung one of its middle arms out and across, like a samurai swordsman.

Pogo’s helmet detached, and with it Pogo’s head, blood spurting from the neck ring of the EVA suit. With three swift moves, the Sentry clove the torso from top to bottom, separating one arm and leg, then the other, finishing its disassembly of Col. Patrick “Pogo” Downey, USAF, with a reverse horizontal slash.

Natalia screamed. Lucas shouted.

Zack was frozen, confused, horrified. All he saw was Pogo’s body, a quartered bloody mess on the ground.

Then he breathed again. He grabbed Lucas and Natalia and herded them back toward the membrane. “Go, go, go!” He wanted as much space between them and the Sentry as he could get, as quickly as it could be gotten.

But Natalia’s visor fogged over, obscuring her view forward. She fell twice in her first ten steps, with Zack and Lucas frantically trying to right her again.

The falls allowed Zack a glance back at the Sentry, who was in pursuit, but more deliberately. “It looks stunned,” he said.

It seemed to Zack that the giant being was losing mobility . . . its arms and hands were roaming over its torso, as if suffering from either heat or pain.

The third time she fell, Natalia was the one who looked back. “I think it’s dying. . . .”

The impulse to flight was momentarily suspended. Zack and Lucas turned. The three watched as the Sentry began to jerk and heave, as if racked by seizures. Vapor rose from its body, as if the creature were burning up from within.

Then, abruptly, the Sentry collapsed . . . and within seconds ceased to spasm.

“What the hell?” Lucas said, clumsily crossing himself.

“I saw an animal being gassed in Leningrad once,” Natalia said. “That’s what it looked like.”

A thought occurred to Zack: “Do you suppose the environment killed it?”

“Wasn’t it designed for this environment?” Lucas said, sounding almost offended at the idea. “Didn’t it live here?”

“We don’t know
anything
,” Natalia said. She was collapsed, almost immobile. Zack wondered what it was like inside her suit.

He barely had time to curse Lucas—and mourn Pogo.

It was clear that Natalia would not be able to move with any speed. Zack realized he would have to help her with every step . . . and every moment they remained in the Beehive they were vulnerable.

“Lucas, get to the rover. Tell Houston and Bangalore what’s happened. Recharge your suit, get food and water, then come back. We’ll be following!”

He wished he could have given the Brazilian astronaut better orders, but he had nothing left, just a firm idea that information on today’s events needed to get out—someone needed to survive.

If he and Natalia managed to survive as well, there might be time then to think about Pogo . . . recovering his remains.

Lucas didn’t argue, which meant that the seriousness of the situation was apparent even to him. Zack watched him go back up the slope, into the heart of the Beehive.

“Come on, we’ve got to move, too,” he told Natalia.

Gamely, she got to her feet. “I’m stable,” she said.

“Fine,” he said, “but take my arm, too.” And so they set off, like lovers strolling through a park . . . and about as fast.

And not very far. Within a few meters, Natalia essentially sat down. “I can’t.”

“No problem,” Zack told her, lying only slightly. “We’ll just wait until Lucas returns.” He checked his own consumables: still two hours, plenty of time to observe, if not act.

The environment in the chamber continued to change. The “weather” had grown calmer; the rain had stopped, even though a gentle wind continued to blow now . . . detectable in the cloud of particles that wafted past Zack’s faceplate.

The corals had completely collapsed everywhere. If Zack’s eyes could be trusted—and what could be trusted at a time like this?—they were being transformed somehow. Zack focused on one area where an older pile of pinkish debris was being replaced by greenish shapes that expanded and stretched.

That
grew
. That was the word. The corals were growing into vegetation of some kind.

Or possibly quasi machines like the Sentry.

Zack wanted to put more distance between himself and whatever was happening in this chamber. In fact, he would have been completely satisfied to be watching these events through a TV camera while safe aboard
Venture
.

Or better yet, back in Houston. He had been frightened before; now he was terrified. It wasn’t just the shocks and the violence . . . it was knowing he was out of his depth, so far beyond a comfort zone that he could no longer remember what it was like to operate normally.

He turned back to the Beehive, hoping for a last glimpse of Lucas, but the World’s Greatest Astronaut had likely let fear fuel his retreat, because he was long gone.

Zack had nothing else to do but look at the Beehive. Now he could see that some of the cells here had changed, too. Formerly open, smaller ones and at least two jumbo units were now sealed, covered with some kind of translucent film that swelled.

That almost breathed—

“This is stupid,” Natalia announced, hauling herself to her feet.

She was already up, if unsteady, and heading back into the chamber before Zack could reach her. “Movement adds heat, kiddo. Don’t run off,” he told her. He peered into her helmet . . . it was so fogged over he could barely make out a face. “How is it in there?”

“Hot and wet. Feel like I’m drowning.” That sounded terrifying. Learning to live and work in suits, under pressure, without succumbing to claustrophobia was one of an astronaut’s biggest challenges. And that was when the suit was operating properly.

If Natalia felt as though she were drowning, she probably was. And Zack could do nothing to help—

“I’m going to try something,” Natalia said. She raised her arms, hands touching the sides of the neck ring where her helmet was attached, and
unlocked it
.

“Hey, Natalia, that’s not a good idea—!”

Too late. The cosmonaut raised the bulky helmet off her head, revealing a wet face and the reddest complexion Zack had ever seen on a human being.

How long would it take for her to die? Would she turn blue from lack of oxygen? Or would she freeze . . . or begin twitching and shuddering like the Sentry?

None of those things happened. She opened her eyes then, looked directly at Zack, smiled, and inhaled.

She was racked with a coughing spasm. “You tried it. Now put the helmet back on,” Zack said. She’d lost precious minutes of oxygen, but she hadn’t killed herself.

But the coughing stopped. And Natalia said, “I’m okay.”

Zack was surprised that he could hear her words, slightly muffled by his own helmet. And surprised that she was still alive, in no more distress than when sealed up in the suit.

“It’s oxygen,” she said. “I saw it on my spectrometer. Ratio is high, maybe thirty percent . . . but pressure is still low here.” She took a deep breath again. “Feels like being on a mountain top. Dry. Lots of smells I can’t identify.”

“Don’t get too comfortable,” he said. He was happy to know that Keanu’s environment was less immediately hostile than open space—at least if you steered clear of things like the Sentry. “Think alien organisms.”

“This place was a hundred degrees below zero a few hours back. There shouldn’t be anything alive.”

“And look at it now.” She was edging back into the chamber, toward the dead Sentry, and Pogo.

“Where are you going?” Because Zack was still using radio inside his helmet, and she was not, she barely understood him. He repeated himself, shouting.

Then she nodded, understanding him. And said, “I always wanted to do an alien autopsy.”

Zack did not follow. He considered his own consumables, the likelihood that Lucas would take longer than expected to return . . . and the fact that Natalia seemed just fine.

And without her helmet, he could not easily hear her.

Was it responsible? At the moment only Natalia was exposed to the Keanu environment—and by extension,
Brahma
. The
Venture
was still safe, and so were Tea and Yvonne.

Idiot: Whatever contaminants you would breathe with helmet off are already coating the exterior of your suit!
Besides, the gravity was still increasing . . . Zack was finding it hard to move.

Not that he was eager to go far. He could see Natalia slowly circling the dead Sentry, occasionally raising her camera, then shifting to her spectrometer.

But Zack was intrigued by what he was seeing in the Beehive cells. They were continuing to swell and discolor. At moments he thought he could see shapes inside several of them.

That was disturbing: the color of the cells was exactly like that of the bubble that had disgorged the Sentry.

God, what if there was some link between the Beehive and the Sentry? Zack was torn between an immediate desire to head directly toward Natalia . . . and a horrid fascination for what was happening here.

Shit. His suit was hampering his ability to get close enough to see.

With one last glance at Natalia, happily performing her alien autopsy, he embraced the decision he had actually made moments earlier.

If the environment within Keanu was changing to suit humans—an idea that was now inescapable—then logic said it would not harm him. It certainly wasn’t harming Natalia.

He stopped the airflow inside his suit, saving it for the return trip through the membrane, then cracked the neck seal of his helmet.

He was immediately struck by the smell of Keanu, a combination of wet soil and fragrances he could not identify, but which were not unpleasant. Something was growing here—with a hell of an accelerated incubation period.

He took in a deep breath. Actually found it invigorating. “Hey,” he called to Natalia. “You were right.”

Startled by the sound of his voice, she looked up. “I still feel good.”

“See anything interesting? Is it man or machine?”

“Both, I think . . .” She stopped, staring past Zack in a way he didn’t like.

“Do you see something, Natalia?”

“Yes.” He could barely hear her. “The Beehive.”

There was no escaping it. He turned.

Several of the smaller cells in the Beehive were now transparent . . . and the shapes within them could be clearly seen. Zack saw a rise nearby that would allow him to get closer, and he began scrabbling up the slope.

Within moments he was incredibly close—he could have reached into the nearest cell if he’d wanted.

Not that he wanted to touch anything. The shapes inside were large, greenish-brown sacs, pulsing, as if alive.

Natalia joined him. “What do you think they are?”

“Well, it looks as though we’ve been watching life evolve,” Zack said, “only a few billion times faster than we’d expect.”

“Evolve into what?”

“Whatever it’s supposed to be.”

“What could that be? Not more Sentries, I hope. Wait—” Natalia was pointing into a different cell, where the “evolution” of one sac seemed close to completion. “My God, do you know what it looks like?”

“Yes,” Zack said. The sac now looked like a cellophane-wrapped human body.

“I don’t like this!” Natalia announced.

Zack was torn between a similar emotion, and a sense of wonder so powerful it was almost sexual. This was why he’d studied stars and planets . . . why he’d become an astronaut.

To learn the secrets of the universe . . . to see new marvels.

The Russian astronaut backed away, crawling down the slope away from the cells. “Natalia . . .” Zack heard his own voice quaver. Almost every part of his being was ordering him to run! Hide!

Zack looked back at the human-shaped sac . . . two legs, a torso, two arms, a head. It was shorter and smaller than the Sentry. It was Zack’s size.

The hands had a thumb and four fingers.

The shape literally writhed, its hands clawing at the translucent material covering its “face.” Zack had to suppress the impulse to help it....

He needn’t have worried. Suddenly the “face” was clear.

It was not only a humanlike face, it was a face he recognized.

Zack Stewart had seen more impossible sights in the past eight hours than most humans saw in a lifetime. Hell, more evidence of alien life than any humans had seen all through history.

But what he saw in that Beehive cell was so unexpected and impossible that by contrast the wonders of Keanu’s interior were a strip mall in Houston.

The face he saw clearly now, brown eyes opening, mouth gasping, was that of his dead wife, Megan.

Part Three

“SOME FRAGRANT NIGHT”

The Crew Systems Division wants it known wide and far:
WE DID NOT AUTHORIZE
Commander Stewart’s actions with the rover. During training,
there was
ONE
discussion between engineers and crew regarding
rover mass and center of gravity. Flinging the entire vehicle into a crater
was NOT DISCUSSED OR CONDONED.

DRAFT MEMO FROM CHIEF, JSC CREW SYSTEMS

“Someone’s emerging!”