Offworld (6 page)

After a few moments of working in silence, Terry spoke again.
"Trish?"

"Yeah?"

"What if everyone's gone? I mean ... like everyone? What if
there's nobody but us?"

"That's impossible," she said, then hesitated. Was itpossible that
all of NASA could just disappear? "We just need to figure out what
happened and why. And how."

"But what if they're all dead? Like, what if everybody was wiped
out by some kind of fast-acting super virus, like in The Stand?"

"Then there would be bodies everywhere, wouldn't there?"

"Or what if they didn't go?" Terry wondered. "What if they were
taken against their will? What if ... what if it was some kind of
invasion?"

"I don't recall seeing any little green men on Mars," Trisha
replied.

"But what if-?"

"Terry," Trisha said, stopping him.

"I know, I know," he said, his shoulders slumping. "Focus. Do
the job. One step at a time."

"I have people I've been waiting a long time to see too," said
Trisha. "We all do. Friends, family. For right now, we know only that
Kennedy has been evacuated. Guessing and worrying will only make
us crazy. We're going to put aside our fears, and we're going to figure
this out. Okay?"

"Okay," he sighed. "But I'm getting nowhere with this radio. Dead
silence on every channel."

Trisha frowned. `All that tells us is that no one's using their radios.
Or maybe the ones at Kennedy are all broken. Hmm," she said, moving to another workstation. "I wonder if I can bring up some satellite
images. Who knows, maybe they had to evacuate the base due to
a hurricane."

"In early July?" called out Owen's booming voice. Trisha turned
to see him and Chris descending the stairs at the back of the room.
They both looked as worn and battered as she and Terry did, but at
least Chris' color had returned. "Hurricane season is still a few months
off," Owen added.

`And I don't see any clouds," Terry said, turning to face the bright,
translucent windows.

"Chris, are you okay?" Trisha asked.

"Super," he replied. "What have you learned?"

"If anybody's out there, they're not feeling chatty," said Terry.

"I can also confirm," Trisha reported, "that it was the Ground
Landing System that guided the Ares to Kennedy. Looks like a few
upgrades to the system were made while we were away. It saved
our lives."

"So there's no one on the island, and we can't communicate with
the outside world," said Chris, referring to the fact that Kennedy Space
Center was completely isolated on an island separate from the Florida
mainland. "What about the security video?"

`Just about to take a look," Trisha replied.

All right, pull that up and I'll be right back."

Trisha watched him turn to go. "You sure you're okay?"

`Just need to hit the head," he answered. "Haven't been since we
smelled pavement."

Truthfully, Chris did need to visit the bathroom, but he also
wanted a minute to himself.

How could any of this be real? How could this be happening to
the four of them, of all people? Two and a half years alone with no
one but each other for company, and they finally get home ... to be
stuck in the same situation.

I was off the hook. No more team leader. It was done. It was
over.

Okay, Chris. Get it together

No time for rest. No relief. Not yet.

Game on. Again.

He detoured to a sink, ran cold water, taking time to splash it
on his face. It felt good, nice and cool, a contrast to the bruises that
colored his still-dirty visage. He couldn't let the others see him tired
and hesitant.

He leaned over and splashed water once more, then looked in
the mirror.

It was right behind him. A swirling black mass. A deep, dark
abyss from which no light entered or escaped.

It was the same thing he'd seen when the Ares went dark above
the Earth and entered its descent. This thing had been just beyond
the nose of the ship the first time he saw it. Here in this bathroom it
was huge, right behind him in the mirror's reflection, obscuring his
view of the entire room.

Chris was unable to move at the sight of it.

What was it? And was he the only one seeing it?

He spun around.

The stark dividers of the restroom stalls were right where they
were supposed to be. The swirling mass-that blue-black void-was
gone.

His heart protested against his rib cage. His palms were clammy,
and a trickle of cold sweat slowly skimmed down his back.

What was happening to him? Was this what it felt like to lose
one's mind?

"Chris, take a look," Terry called out as Chris reentered the Firing
Room. He was standing over a console, Owen doing the same. Trisha
sat in front of it, staring at the screen.

"Found something?"

Trisha nodded from the console where she sat, and he noticed for
the first time how she looked. Aside from the bumps and scrapes, the
dark circles under her eyes were painfully obvious. She sat hunched
over, neck and back knotted in tension. He stepped into their little
circle and placed a hand on her shoulder, and at his touch she forced
herself to relax. It was a subtle signal that had developed during their
mission, a quiet reminder from him to her. Relaxing her muscles
didn't come naturally and required focus and concentration on her
part to make happen.

"We can only access the last three months of security feeds from
here," Trisha explained. "Everything before that has been archived.
But it looks like what we have is more than enough. Watch."

She keyed in a sequence of strokes on the keyboard and the
monitor came to life. A view of the hallway just outside the Firing
Room was displayed, with people coming and going in both directions. There was nothing remarkable about it at all.

Chris blinked when every person on the screen vanished.

Trisha froze the tape-now showing a barren hallway-and swiveled in her chair. Her eyebrows popped up.

"Again," he said, and nodded at the screen.

She rewound and played the footage one more time. Just as
before, the busy hallway full of NASA employees became instantaneously empty. All dozen or so of the people in the video frame
disappeared like a camera trick, leaving nothing behind, not a watch,
a shoe, nothing.

"Can you verify that this tape hasn't been tampered with?" he
asked.

Already done," said Owen, who was bending over an adjacent
terminal. "Look at the time stamp on the tape. There's no footage
missing. It advances frame by frame just as it should, but one second
everyone's there, and the next the place is empty."

"Plus," Terry pointed out, "look at the time and date. This footage is from sixty-seven days ago. A little over two months. That's the
exact same day we lost contact with Houston."

Chris stood up to his full height, his mind spinning fast. "Two
months they've been gone ..

"It gets worse," said Owen. He was seated at another station to
their right. The three of them quickly joined him. "I found a particularly helpful satellite that's maintaining a geosynchronous orbit over
North America. It's quite an advanced piece of technology-looks
like it was launched while we were gone-and it can zoom in or out
to incredible levels of detail. Not just down to the city or street level,
but to ground level itself"

While Owen spoke, his fingers whispered to the keys and the
view shown on his screen zoomed in and out as he explained, finally
panning out to a wide view of the Florida peninsula. "I've scanned
random points throughout the U.S.-Orlando, Atlanta, D.C., Boston,
Dallas, St. Louis, Vegas, San Diego, even my hometown-and there's
no movement of any kind. No people out and about, no vehicles in
motion, nothing."

"What about outside the U.S.?"

"I haven't checked that yet," said Owen, "but I'd be willing to bet we'll find the same thing. And there's something else, Chris. Something
you're not going to believe. Watch closely. This is a live view."

"I don't see anything," said Chris, leaning in to peer at the
screen.

"Not yet," replied Owen. "Wait for it."

With that, he directed the satellite camera to pan back farther
and farther until the entire southeastern seaboard was visible, from
Virginia all the way to Texas.

"What's that?" asked Trisha. Burke saw it too.

Owen merely shook his head.

In southeastern Texas, a brilliant white light was shining. It was
gigantic in size, nearly as bright as the sun at its center, and giving
off enough radiance to obscure much of the surrounding area. It was
like staring directly into the sun through a pinhole, and Chris found
it almost painful to his eyes.

Any light emanating from the planet's surface, big and bright
enough to be seen from space, with this kind of intensity, was ...
Well, it was something no one had ever witnessed before.

"Is that ... ? It almost looks like it's coming from Houston. Maybe
even Johnson."

"It does look that way," said Owen. "The light is so bright and
giving off so much radiance, it's obscuring a lot of the map. I can't
tell you exactly where it's centered."

`And you said this is a live view?" he asked.

"Yes," Owen replied. "I've searched the rest of the satellite's viewing range and can't find anything else like it."

Chris stood, crossing his arms and letting out a slow breath. `All
right. Let's work one problem at a time. Cross-reference the time stamp
on that video with at least two more security feeds, and if they match
up-if everyone on every video disappears at the same time-then
we have a starting point."

Terry went to another station to track down one of the two videos Chris requested, while Trisha returned to her screen to find
the third.

"Beech, see how many other satellite feeds you can tap into
with views of Asia or Africa or Europe. We need to know if this is a
worldwide phenomenon, or if it's localized to the U.S. And I want to
know if there are any more lights like this thing in Houston."

Trisha and Terry's task took only a few minutes. Both were able
to verify the data from the first tape, with more people spontaneously
disappearing throughout Kennedy Space Center at precisely the same
time stamp as the video they already had. Owen worked equally fast,
producing live satellite imagery of numerous locations around the
world, all confirming the worst.

The light in Houston was the only one of its kind.

And the planet was empty.

The silence they were left with was empty and enormous. What
words could possibly make sense of what they'd discovered? Terry
looked from face to face, but the others were all lost in their own
thoughts.

"How could something like this happen?" he finally asked.

Chris crossed his arms, thinking fast and making decisions on
the spot. It was how he operated, always. "Listen," he said in a tone
that let them know he was about to give orders. Everyone turned in
his direction. "We have to figure out what's taken place here. I know
that. But first things first. It's going to be dark in a few hours. We've
all got injuries from the crash and we're exhausted. Our time in space
has left us with decreased body mass and reduced immune systems.
So we're going to report to medical, patch each other up, and then
try to catch some sleep, or some rest at the very least. Then well
take a look around the rest of the base, search for clues, and figure
out what to do next."

Everyone stood.

"As much as I hate stating the obvious ... I feel someone should
say it aloud, to mark the moment," Owen said, stepping closer to Chris but speaking to everyone. "Two months ago, every living person on
this planet disappeared. Instantaneously. Simultaneously. And from
the looks of it, very likely unwillingly."

"We know the when," Chris agreed. "Now we need to figure out
how. And why."

Only Owen managed to fall asleep that night. Bright and early
the next morning he volunteered to scour the Administration Building
for clues, while Chris decided to poke around the enormous Vehicle
Assembly Building, Terry reconned Security HQ, and Trisha drove
over to the Visitor's Center at the outer edge of the complex.