In a Wonderland they lie,
Dreaming as the days go by,
Dreaming as the summers die;
Ever drifting down the stream,
Lingering in the golden gleam,
Life, what is it but a dream?
Caitlin opened the case that contained the MOOSE and climbed into the awkward, ungainly bag. She could only imagine how ridiculous she looked. At once the foam released, encasing her like a mummy. Using her hands, she toggled the switch that activated the twin-rocket engine. It sputtered to life, forcing her up and off the Alley Oop, which tumbled away from her and began its fiery descent into the atmosphere.
As Caitlin punched through into the air above Earth with a sound like distant thunder, the heat shield on the MOOSE immediately went to work and began slowing her descent, forcing the heat away from her as the foam kept her encapsulated. Unfortunately, this particular MOOSE hadn’t been updated or inspected since a time long before its current occupant had learned to walk. Buckling under the intense heat of reentry, the MOOSE, well past its sell-by date, began to flake away around her. Caitlin looked left and right wildly, breathing heavier and heavier as she watched her escape vehicle disintegrate. Then, in one final glorious burst, the MOOSE blew apart, leaving her completely exposed.
Shit.
Were it not for the drop suit, the cold and lack of oxygen would have killed her outright. Tumbling through the sky, Caitlin tried to keep her wits about her and hugged her knees to her chest in a classic cannonball position. At once she flipped over so that she was falling facedown instead of on her back, her arms and legs spread-eagle. Caitlin Taggart found herself in an uncontrolled free fall more than twenty miles above the surface of Earth.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Within thirty seconds of the MOOSE tearing away from her, Caitlin found herself accelerating to almost seven hundred miles per hour, fast enough to break the sound barrier. In order not to be decimated by colliding shock waves in the air in what was called shock-shock interaction, Caitlin had to try to position herself in a head-down, arms-at-sides bullet formation, no easy task at the speed at which she was traveling. She forced her body to cooperate, but it didn’t want to respond. She’d once heard a skydive from space being described as swimming without touching water; she now understood what that meant. She waved her arms and legs helplessly in the air until she was finally able to correct her angle and point herself like a missile directly at the ground.
Caitlin tried to regulate her breathing, doing whatever she could to keep the oxygen flowing through her body. Given the spontaneous nature of the jump, she obviously hadn’t had any time to “prebreathe,” or take in oxygen for hours before jumping, to avoid buildup of nitrogen in the bloodstream. As a result, due to the low-pressure environment of her drop suit, Caitlin was quite possibly inviting a serious case of the bends when, or if, she made it to the ground.
Looking out of her faceplate, Caitlin tried to orient herself. The horizon shook with the force of her descent, and she felt as though she could hear the wind whistling around her as she nose-dived faster and faster toward the ground. The Sun was a thumbprint on the sky. Below her, all she could see were clouds. She had no idea if she was over land or water or about to smash into the side of a mountain. She also didn’t exactly know where she was over Earth in general. She thought she had spotted desert below her while climbing into the MOOSE, but the cloud cover and the suddenness of the jump didn’t allow her the time to orient herself. So whether it was the Mojave, the Gobi, or the Syrian Desert, she had no idea. She could be diving into a rescue or something far, far worse.
Finally, she hit denser air that began to slow her descent to a more manageable 120 miles per hour. It was then that she hit turbulence, sending her into an uncontrolled and violent spin. Caitlin’s suit alarm went off in her ears as she tried in vain to orient herself. She couldn’t see the horizon, and the Sun went from thumbprint to smear in her vision, flashing in and out of her sight like a strobe light.
Fighting against g-forces as well as the urge to pass out, Caitlin reached out and activated the small emergency chute on her suit. The alarm silenced as it fired out and slowed the spin enough for her to gain her bearings. The canopy was designed only for use in extreme situations and, as such, wasn’t connected to the main chute. Having served its purpose, the canopy was released from its moorings inside the suit and went whipping away.
Caitlin came down through the clouds, and she could see roads and highways carving their way through hills and valleys, and neighborhoods dotting the landscape in neat, symmetrical patterns. Off in the distance, she could just make out a thin sliver of ocean and, closer, but still far away, the dusky-orange spires of the Golden Gate Bridge rose from a bank of San Francisco fog. She hit the main parachute. It unfurled above her like a sail and slowed her down instantly. As the chute caught her, it yanked her up hard and forcefully, digging into her shoulders and underneath her arms. When it did, Caitlin screamed. Part of it was the pain, but the other part was defiance. She had made it. She wasn’t going to die on the Moon, or the asteroid, or in orbit above Earth or falling to its surface. She was going to survive, and she was going to see her daughter again. Even if it meant she’d have to crawl over glass back to Washington, DC. One way or another, she would see Emily again. She screamed again, a loud, triumphant yell that she hoped let the entire world know that she was back, and back for good.
Grabbing the links on her parachute to steady herself, Caitlin allowed herself a moment to absorb the view. She smiled. This was her country. And not just her country, but her planet, her world, her home. Everything she had been through in the last year had shown her that people could no longer be separated by boundaries and borders or solely identified by race, creeds, or allegiances.
Before Caitlin could contemplate the view any longer, the ground came up to meet her. Grabbing the links and yanking them downward, Caitlin slowed her descent and made contact with the earth. Despite her attempts at a soft landing, she still came down with a forceful impact, tumbling and rolling into the dust gracelessly. She lay on her back a moment, breathless and panting as her chute slowly fluttered to the ground behind her. The Sun’s rays passed through her helmet and created small rainbows in her peripheral vision. She also thought she heard birds singing somewhere in the distance, but couldn’t tell for sure, partially because her helmet was dulling her hearing and she hadn’t heard actual live birds in more than a year.
Sitting up with some effort, Caitlin slowly unlatched her helmet and drew it off her head, tasting the air as she did. Almost immediately, her head swam. Real air was absolutely intoxicating, filling her lungs with its sweetness and replenishing her entire body in a vigorous rush.
For a while, she just sat there in the dust, hugging herself as she laughed and cried, the sun warm on her skin and the sound of the wind and birds and trees in her ears. She struggled to her feet, her legs shaky after having been in one-sixth gravity and then the almost zero g of the asteroid. She felt like a newborn foal just learning to stand. But she didn’t let it deter her. After a few tries, Caitlin eventually found the strength to walk—hobble—until she came to a small county road that was more dirt than asphalt. Unable to will her legs to carry her any farther, Caitlin tumbled into the dirt and waited until a truck came shambling along. She pushed herself to her knees and weakly stuck out her thumb. The truck slowed down, and the driver, an elderly man in a checkered shirt and CAT tractor hat, eyed the strange hitchhiker.
“You need help, miss?” he asked.
“Yes, I do,” Caitlin said, still somewhat dazed and giddy. “I just came here from space.”
“Yes, well, folks tend to do that these days,” the old man said. “Can I give you a lift?”
“That would be great,” Caitlin said. “Where am I, anyway?”
“Lone Pine, California,” said the old man. “Hop in and I can take you as far as Bakersfield.”
Caitlin worked her way to her feet, using the truck for purchase, an
d then climbed into the cab. Buck Owens was singing “I Don’t Care (Just as Long as You Love Me)” on the radio. The old man studied Caitlin as she shifted awkwardly in the passenger seat, trying to get comfortable while still in her drop suit. He chuckled at the sight, shaking his head, and then put the truck in gear and steered back out onto the road.
“You know, ma’am, you’re pretty damn lucky you got here when you did,” he said as they got moving. “You know we almost got hit by an asteroid?”
“Yes,” said Caitlin as she watched the pine trees roll past her window. “I heard something about that.”
“I thought you were heading out.”
Sara was standing at the door of Alex’s temporary office. He looked up from his holopad, then at his phone and, noting the time, quickly began gathering up his things.
“Yes, I am,” he said, somewhat frantically. “I’ve got to be on a flight back home in the next two hours. I’ve got a whole life there that I don’t even remember. What about you? When’s the last time you saw your home? Or even the outside, for that matter?”
“I’m going to stick around a little longer,” she said. “Wrap things up.”
Alex walked around his desk and put his hands on her shoulders.
“You know you did everything you could for her, don’t you?”
“Keep telling me that,” Sara said. “Maybe one day I’ll believe it.”
“We pulled off something impossible here, Sara,” Alex said. “But there’s a difference between the impossible and the miraculous. The odds were so stacked against that crew from the beginning that I’m amazed they got as far as they did.”
“I’m not,” said Sara. “It’s like I told Caitlin. She was a fighter.”
“And I know you know all about that,” Alex said.
“Damn straight,” she said, and returned his smile warmly, though it didn’t last.
“Do you remember what we promised each other, the last day of college in our senior year?”
“That you would never again take me to another jam band concert as long as we both lived?”
“Yes, but after that,” Alex said.
“Truthfully, right now, I don’t remember anything from before Caitlin decided to call this office,” Sara said. “So please fill me in.”
“We promised each other that we’d take on the world together,” said Alex.
Sara paused a moment, catching a glimpse of her twenty-two-year-old self in her mind’s eye. A reflection in a smudged mirror. She had made that promise, hadn’t she? But a lot of promises made in the warm afternoon of youth turn smoky and disappear when twilight approaches. She gazed at Alex, wondering how the years had turned so quickly, and additionally, how the wheel had landed her in practically the same spot again, standing across from this man to whom she’d made a promise to in another lifetime.
“Yeah,” she said at last, “I remember that promise.”
Alex pointed to the TV screen behind her where one of the endless parades of twenty-four-hour news channels were celebrating the salvation of Earth.
“Take a look,” he said. “I think we finally made good on it.”
Sara looked at the screen, seeing the jubilation around the world, the people from disparate nations, religions, cultures, and orientations all standing together in streets and plazas, dancing, embracing, welcoming the second life they’d been given. It did not ease the sting of losing Caitlin, but Sara had to admit that, for the first time in a long while, she truly felt better.
“Come on,” Alex said, standing up and grabbing his jacket. “Come with me to the airport, and I’ll let you buy me a drink before I have to go home.”
“Thanks,” said Sara. “It’s a tempting offer, but I’m going to hang here for a little while and make sure we’ve got everything buttoned down. And then I’m going to drive to Ashburn and try and figure out how to tell an eight-year-old girl what happened to her mother.”
Alex looked as if he was struggling for something comforting or wise to say. But before he could speak, Ned suddenly came bursting into the room.
“Sara!” he said. “Sara! There’s someone on the phone for you.”
Sara’s stomach tightened. “Who?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” Ned said. “Some old man. He says he’s in a bar outside of Bakersfield, California, and that he’s got someone who wants to talk to you.”
A flutter passed between Alex and Sara.
“Put him through to Alex’s line,” said Sara, barely able to contain the excitement in her voice.
The phone beeped once, and Sara immediately put it on speaker.
“Hello?”
The voice that answered did not belong to an old man, but instead was the one voice that Sara Kent had been certain she would never hear again.
“I know Bakersfield is a long way from DC,” said Caitlin Taggart, “but if you’re up for a road trip, I still owe you a beer!”
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Caitlin had been back on Earth for three days and already she wanted off. She had been picked up by a fleet of black SUVs outside her motel in Bakersfield and whisked to a private airport where a Gulfstream was waiting to take her, not to DC and to Emily, but off to Dallas, where she had spent nearly forty hours straight being grilled by the lawyers for Core One Mining, which, as she had learned, was filing for Chapter 11 in the wake of this disaster. Initially, it seemed as though they were going to hold her responsible for the loss of the ship, the escape lander, and the life insurance policies on the crew members. Additionally, they were hinting that she’d be on the hook for the trillions of dollars in future earnings that were lost when the asteroid was diverted.
“What we are looking at here represents a substantial loss for the company,” the Core One lawyer, who, to Caitlin, looked distressingly like Dr. Bunsen Honeydew from the old Muppet Show. She supposed she was tired and punchy from her ordeal on the asteroid, as there was nothing funny about her present situation. Nevertheless, looking at the round-faced, squinty-eyed man nattering away in front of her, Caitlin fought the urge to giggle.
“I understand that,” said Caitlin, “but, quite frankly, that isn’t my problem. We were given a dangerous assignment with faulty equipment and no time to prepare. The Tamarisk itself could not have been flown legally and was operating with an outdated fuel system. I’m actually shocked we didn’t disintegrate in lunar orbit.”
“Be that as it may,” Honeydew began, “we need to find out—”
“No. I’m through answering questions,” Caitlin barked. “I did the job that was asked of me, in spite of everything that was working against me and my crew . . .”
At the mention of her crew, Caitlin paused and took a second. It was still hard to think of them and how they had all perished so that she could be sitting here, breathing air that didn’t come through a recycling system. And now, after everything they’d gone through and sacrificed, instead of being reunited with her daughter, Caitlin was stuck in a gray, antiseptic room in Texas arguing with this balloon-faced shyster over who was going to get stuck with the bill. She took a deep breath and went on.
“My crew and I,” she continued, “we took on the job and we assumed the risks. Everything else is on you guys. If a cargo ship goes down in a storm in the Atlantic, the shipping company doesn’t pin it on the crew, do they? No, they take the hit and move on.”
This brought forth a sardonic chuckle from Honeydew. He shifted in his seat and began scanning through his paperwork.
“It’s interesting to me how quick you are to assign blame,” the lawyer said, “when we have testimony from a member of your crew that places the burden of responsibility squarely on one set of shoulders. Namely, yours.”
“Wait,” said Caitlin, trying to get a handle on what the lawyer had just said. “A member of my crew?”
The lawyer seemed especially pleased that he was in possession of information that Caitlin was not. His head popped up, revealing an expression of pure delight.
“Oh, you haven’t heard?” he said. “Indeed a Miss . . . Beckett. Valentine Beckett.”
Vee, thought Caitlin in shock, consumed by a wave of emotion. Vee is still alive.
“Yes,” Honeydew went on, licking his thumb and turning the pages of the file. “After the accident in Earth’s orbit, she drifted for fourteen hours before being picked up by a rescue tug out of the London star docks. And she’s had quite a story to tell. Not only did you insist that she, along with her husband and Freddy Diaz and Ellis Shaw, accompany you on this mission, but that it was also your idea to land on the asteroid as well as deploy the solar sail, which, as we know, cost Mr. Diaz his life.”
“The RCS on Diaz’s suit failed!” said Caitlin. “That’s what killed him. A suit that was supplied by Core One—”
“The fact remains that three people are dead, Ms. Taggart, and people are going to want answers,” Honeydew said. “At the very least, they’re going to want someone to be held accountable.”
“So that’s what this is?” Caitlin said. “You’re going to throw me to the wolves to ease your own consciences?”
Honeydew stared at her evenly, the look of a hungry animal waiting for his master’s command. Just then his phone rang, startling the both of them. He angrily snatched it up and put the receiver to his ear.
“Yes?” he asked in an irritated tone. As soon as the other person on the line spoke, his entire demeanor changed. Caitlin didn’t recall him saying anything other than yes during the conversation, but to her it seemed as though he went through every possible tone in his delivery. From fearfulness to deference to shock to dismay and then, ultimately, acceptance. The rather one-sided conversation finished, he set his phone down.
“Thank you, Ms. Taggart. It seems as though we have everything we need.”
“Care to tell me what that was all about?” Caitlin asked.
“It seems that a . . . settlement has been reached,” the lawyer said, clearly dismayed at being denied the chance to carve Caitlin up. “And, as such, Mr. Ross wishes to avoid any further . . . negative publicity from this incident.”
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