Gravity. Part 38

"And that's it?" Jack's voice rose in anger. "No punishment, no consequences?"

"It will be handled in the usual manner. The way it's done at any government agency, including NASA. A discreet shuffle to the sidelines.

And then a quiet retirement. There can't be any investigation, any disclosure whatsoever. Chimera is too dangerous to reveal to the rest of the world."

"But people have died."

"Marburg virus will be blamed. Accidentally introduced to ISS by an infected monkey. Luther Ames' death will be attributed to a mechanical malfunction of the CRV."

"Someone should be held accountable."

"For what, a bad decision?" Profitt shook his head. He turned and looked at the closed hangar door, where a slit of sunlight through. "There's no crime to punish here. These are people who simply made mistakes. People who didn't understand the nature of what they were dealing with. I know it's frustrating for you. I understand your need to blame someone. But there are no real villains in this piece, Dr. McCallum. There are only heroes." He looked directly at Jack.

The two men regarded each other for a moment. Profitt saw no warmth, no trust in Jack's gaze. But he did see respect.

"Your friends are waiting for you," said Profitt.

Jack nodded. He and Emma crossed to the hangar door. As they stepped out, a burst of sunlight shone in, and Jared Profitt, squinting against the brightness, saw Jack and Emma only in silhouette, his arm around her shoulder, her profile turned to his. To the of cheering voices, they walked out and vanished into the blinding light of midday.

The Sea

A shooting star arced across the heavens and shattered into bright bits of glitter. Emma took in a sharp breath in awe, inhaling the smell of the wind over Galveston Bay. Everything about being home again seemed new and strange to her. This unbroken panorama of sky. The rocking of the sailboat's deck beneath her back. The of water slapping Sanneke's hull. She had been so long deprived of simple, earthbound experiences that just the sensation of the on her face was something to be treasured. During the last months of quarantine on the station, she had stared down at the earth, homesick for the smell of gra.s.s, the taste of salt air, the the soil under her bare feet. She had thought, When I am home again, if I am ever home again, I will never leave it.

Now here she was, savoring the sights and smells of earth. Yet she could not help turning her wistful gaze toward the stars.

"Do you ever wish you could go back?" Jack asked the question so softly his words were almost lost in the wind. He lay beside on Sanneke's deck, his hand clasping hers, his gaze also fixed on the night sky. "Do you ever think, *If they gave me one more to go up there, I'd take it'?"

"Every day," she murmured. "Isn't it strange? When we were up there, all we talked about was coming home. And now we're home, and we can't stop thinking about going back up." She brushed her fingers across her scalp, where the shorter hair was growing back as a startling streak of silver.

She could still feel the knotty ridge of scar tissue where Jack's scalpel had cut through her galea. It was a permanent reminder of what she had survived on the station. An enduring record of horror, carved in her flesh.

Yet, when she looked at the sky, she felt the old yearning for the heavens.

"I think I'll always be hoping for another chance," she said. "The way sailors always want to go back to sea. No matter how terrible their last voyage. Or how fervently they kiss the ground when they reach land. In time, they miss the sea, and they always return." But she would never return to s.p.a.ce. She was like a sailor trapped on land, with the sea all around her, tantalizing yet forbidden.

It was forever out of her reach because of Chimera.

Although the doctors at JSC and USAMRIID could no longer detect any evidence of infection in her body, they could not be certain Chimera had been eradicated. It could be merely dormant, benign tenant of her body.

No one at NASA dared predict what would happen should she return to s.p.a.ce.

So she would never return. She was an astronaut ghost now, still a member of the corps, but without hope of any flight a.s.signment.

It was up to others to pursue the dream. Already, a new team was aboard the station, completing the repairs and biological cleanup that she and Jack had begun. Next month, the last replacement for the damaged main truss and solar arrays would be launched aboard Columbia. ISS would not die. Too many lives had been lost to make an orbiting station a reality, to abandon it now would be render that sacrifice meaningless.

Another shooting star streaked overhead, tumbled like a dying cinder, and winked out. They both waited, hoping, for another.

Other people who saw falling stars might think them omens, or angels winging from heaven, or consider them occasions to make a wish. Emma saw them for what they were, bits of cosmic debris, wayward travelers from the cold, dark reaches of s.p.a.ce. That they were nothing more than rocks and ice did not make them any less wondrous.

As she tilted her head back and scanned the heavens, Sanneke rose upon a swell, and she had the disorienting impression that stars were rushing toward her, that she was hurtling through s.p.a.ce and time. She closed her eyes. And without warning, her heart began to pound with inexplicable dread. She felt the icy kiss of sweat on her face.

Jack touched her trembling hand. "What's wrong? Are you cold?"

"No. No, not colda" She swallowed hard. "I suddenly thought of something terrible."

"What?"

"If USAMRIID's righta"if Chimera came to earth on an asteroida"then that's proof other life is out there."

"Yes. It would prove it."

"What if it's intelligent life?"

"Chimera's too small, too primitive. It's not intelligent."

"But whoever sent it here may be," she whispered.

Jack went very still beside her. "A colonizer," he said softly.

"Like seeds cast on the wind. Wherever Chimera landed, on any planet, in any solar system, it would infect the native species. Incorporate their DNA into its own genome. It wouldn't need millions of years of evolution to adapt to its new home. It could acquire all the genetic tools for survival from the species already living there." And once established, once it became the dominant species on its new planet, what then? What was its next step? She didn't know. The answer, she thought, must lie in the parts of Chimera's genome they could not yet identify. The sequences of DNA whose function remained a mystery.

A fresh meteor streaked the sky, a reminder that the heavens are ever-changing and turbulent. That the earth is only one lonely traveler through the vastness of s.p.a.ce.

"We'll have to be ready," she said. "Before the next Chimera arrives." Jack sat up and looked at his watch. "It's getting cold," he said.

"Let's go home. Gordon will go ballistic if we miss that press conference tomorrow."

"I've never seen him lose his temper."

"You don't know him the way I do." Jack began to haul on the halyard, and the main sail rose, flapping in the wind. "He's in love with you, you know."

"Gordie?" She laughed. "I can't imagine."

"And you know what I can't imagine?" he said softly, pulling her close beside him in the c.o.c.kpit. "That any man wouldn't be." The wind suddenly gusted, filling the sail, and Sanneke-surged ahead, slicing through the waters of Galveston Bay.

"Ready about," said Jack. And he steered them through the wind, turning the bow west. Guided not by the stars, but by the lights sh.o.r.e.

The lights of home.