“I’m human, too.”
Laura gave her a small smile and briefly squeezed Eve’s hand before stepping out of the habitat and into the exit corridor.
God help her, a big part of Laura wanted to believe that.
3
“Look at it,” Melissa said dreamily. “Have you ever seen anything like this?” She glanced at Patrick and he smiled and followed her gaze to where she was staring, out the best window at The Willows Steakhouse. The view from this prime corner booth was indeed spectacular: on the other side of the glass was a rare, clear night sky showing a faint sweep of crystalline stars overhead, their sparkle diminished only by the butter-yellow glow of the White House in the distance. Not many places in Washington, D.C. could boast a panoramic scene like this, and not many people rated the one table in the restaurant that offered it.
“It’s very pretty,” Patrick agreed, and he meant it.
“Oh, silly,” Melissa said. “I know you’re only indulging me—it’s probably nothing compared to what you saw while you were on the Excursion.”
The smile he sent her was genuine, and the warmth in his dark eyes made Melissa’s breath quicken. “What it can’t compare with is how beautiful you look tonight. The dress suits you perfectly.”
“A-hem,” Senator Ross said with mock seriousness.
“No kidding,” Dennis Gamble put in. “The two of you could light the candle here without touching it.”
Melissa blushed and made herself ignore the other two men, instinctively smoothing away a fold in the red-velvet fabric along the line of one hip, knowing that Patrick’s gaze would follow the movement appreciatively. She didn’t want to be rude, but she wished Senator Ross and Dennis would just go on home and let the two of them have the rest of the evening together. The dress was right, the mood was right—even if the quarantine wasn’t lifted yet, she could at least make sure Patrick was thinking only of her. God knew, the competition for his attention got harsher every day, especially now that his dark-haired, handsome features were plastered across the front of every news magazine in the world. She was about to hint to Patrick that they should leave when a stranger’s voice cut into the conversation.
“Uh, excuse me, Commander Ross?”
The four of them looked up to see a young man, hardly out of his teens, standing nervously about four feet away, clearly too afraid to come any closer. “I, uh, hate to bother you, but . . .” He aimed a glance over his shoulder at a table somewhere in the room, swallowed, and tried again. “I was wondering if I could, uh, get your autograph?”
Melissa beamed with pride as Patrick gave the admirer a friendly nod. “Sure,” he joked as he pushed aside the remains of his dessert to make room on the table. “What am I signing—a napkin or a menu?”
“Actually,” the stranger said shyly, “it’s just a piece of paper my girlfriend had in her purse.”
“That’ll work just fine,” Patrick said as he scrawled out his name with the pen the guy offered. “There you go.”
“Wow, thanks—now I’ve got yours and Michael Jordan’s!” His face split in a huge grin, the young man hurried back to his table, his prize autograph clutched firmly in one hand.
“Well, you made his day,” Dennis said with a chuckle.
Patrick looked at Melissa. “Hey, you think Michael Jordan gets hand cramps?”
Before she could answer, Senator Ross leaned forward. “Popularity, boy. That’s the name of the game.” Melissa’s pretty features slipped a notch as she heard the slur in the senator’s words. Darn; he wasn’t going to get loud right here, was he? Jesus, not tonight. This time, however, he surprised her by lowering his voice instead of raising it. “I got the head of the Republic National Committee telling me you’re a shoo-in for a Senate seat, Patrick.”
Like Melissa’s, Patrick’s expression sobered a bit. “No thanks.”
The senator leaned back again, studying his son, and Melissa could’ve sworn the look in his eye was more calculating than anything else. “Come on, son. There’s no harm in at least exploring the possibilities. You could be one of the youngest ever—”
Patrick cleared his throat. “I’ll leave the politics to you, Dad. It’s just not my line of work.”
“I spent four years in flight school with your son, Senator.” Dennis smiled amiably. “He doesn’t lie well enough to be a politician.”
Bless Dennis for making them all laugh and turning the conversation away from government employment and exactly the kind of future Melissa, if not Patrick, wanted to avoid. She supposed it was probably inevitable—didn’t all astronauts grow up to be politicians of one sort or another? What a strange predicament to find herself in, madly in love with the son of a powerful United States senator and who, let’s face it, was destined to someday sit in an office in the nation’s capital.
“So, Dennis,” Senator Ross said when the gaiety had diminished, “Patrick only talks about the good stuff for dear old dad. Tell me what it was really like up there for eleven months.”
For just a beat too long Dennis didn’t answer, and Melissa frowned. Before Patrick’s father could pick up on the hesitation, however, Dennis looked over at Patrick and gave him a sappy smile. “Not much that I can tell you about the details, sir. But I will say this: Patrick and I are getting married.”
“Hey, just a minute,” Melissa exclaimed around the hoots of the three men. “He’s mine!”
“But you could draw a lot of liberal votes like that,” put in Senator Ross.
More laughter as the talk turned again to Senator Ross’s favorite subject and Melissa’s least preferred, and it was only a few minutes when she noticed that Patrick had sort of faded from the conversation. Now it was mostly Dennis and Patrick’s father, bantering back and forth like old college buddies while the older man put away his usual few too many. “Patrick,” she said in a low voice, touching his arm. “Are you feeling all right?”
He shook his head and Melissa saw him squeeze his eyes shut, then open them, his gaze darting around the restaurant in a way that struck her alarmingly like the gaze of a trapped animal. “Hey, you guys excuse me, okay?” he said abruptly. “I need some air.” Without making further excuses, he rose and headed away from the table, and Melissa noted with amusement that most of the women in The Willows seemed to be tracking his every move.
Dennis and Patrick, of course, had cleaned their plates and then some—understandable after eleven months of vacuum-packaged food on board the Excursion. Across from her, however, the senator’s slice of tiramisu had hardly been touched in favor of his once-again-empty drink glass. “What’s the matter with him?” he asked, bewildered.
Melissa folded her napkin and stood. “I’ll take care of him.” As she headed after Patrick, she had to smile at Dennis’s candid quip:
“Actually, I think there were two too many people at this table.”
In good weather, patrons of The Willows often waited outside, in a tiny, tree-lined plaza to the side of the restaurant. Melissa found Patrick there, sitting on one of the wrought-iron benches with his hands folded between his knees, staring down at the quaint pattern of cobblestones on the ground. Around them a soft, warm breeze ruffled the leaves and drove away the last of the humidity that had been so stifling earlier in the day. She joined him on the bench and sat quietly for a moment without touching him, sensing that he needed undisturbed time to collect himself. It seemed like a peaceful oasis here—private and dark, lit only by the glow of the four old-fashioned gas lamps at each corner of the paved square.
Finally Patrick lifted his head, his expression a little more relaxed. “My head was ringing like crazy,” he explained. “For a minute I felt like I could hear people whispering about us from thirty yards across the room.” He laughed ruefully. “Meet Commander Patrick Ross, the Amazing Hearing Aid.”
Melissa touched his knee. “Patrick, I think you should talk to the doctor. These spells you’ve been having—”
“Sweetheart, I had a full physical from
the NASA physician after the landing, you know that. He and his team said I was fine.”
“Maybe you need a second opinion.”
He shook his head. “Forget it. I’ve been poked and prodded enough for now. They can wait until the next mission.” He lapsed into silence and studied her, and she watched his eyes tracing her features. “You’re so beautiful, you know that?” His fingers reached out and lifted a strand of her hair and held it up to the soft light. “These lamps make your hair almost look like sand spread with stardust.” He let the hair fall, then rubbed his face with both hands. “You know what I think it is?” he said. “The damned pressure. People think this is fun, but it’s not—it’s just a drag, like having a boulder tied around your neck. ‘You gonna fly another mission, Patrick?’ ‘You gonna run for office, Patrick?’ ” His voice lightened a bit. “ ‘You gonna marry Melissa, Patrick?’ ” He gave her a sideways glance, a sparkle in his eye that hadn’t been there a moment before.
“I tell them ‘maybe,’ ‘no,’ and ‘yes.’ ”
Melissa blinked. “What—”
“You’ll marry me, won’t you, Missy?”
“You’re proposing to me?” she asked. “Right here? Now?”
“I sure am.” He raised his hand and opened his fingers. Melissa didn’t know how long he’d been hiding it, but nestled on his palm was an exquisite filigreed gold band with a pear-shaped diamond mounted on it. Patrick took her hand in his and slipped the ring onto her ring finger, then brushed her knuckles with his lips. “Don’t you know that I’ve loved you since the day we met? You’re everything to me—my love, my world, my life. I want you until death do us part.”
Tears filled her hazel eyes. “Oh, Patrick—I don’t know what to say.”
He grinned. “ ‘Yes’ would be a good answer.”
She threw her arms around him and hugged him fiercely. “Then yes! Yes, yes, yes!”
He laughed happily and stood, pulling her upright with him. There in the small, shadowed plaza, his mouth came down on hers in a sweet, slow kiss that warmed her like nothing else in the world could or ever would. Melissa responded without thinking, pressing her body against Patrick’s, her well-toned form molding to his in a way familiar but long denied. The pressure of his lips increased as he pulled her closer, hands slipping down and along her waist as her lips parted to admit his tongue. Heat coursed through her, riding on the hunger for him that she had controlled for nearly a year. His mouth broke free and found its way to her jaw, then down her neck.
“If we keep going,” she said breathlessly, “I’m going to say to hell with the quarantine—”
“Hey, Patrick!”
Startled, she and Patrick broke apart, turning their faces in the direction of the voice. The flash of a camera sent a spike of light into the plaza, then another; suddenly flashbulbs were popping all around the main entrance, nearly blinding them and utterly destroying any notion of privacy. A dozen reporters crowded through the wrought-iron archway and rushed toward them.
“Look this way, Patrick!”
“Smile for us, Melissa!”
“Right here, Patrick!”
Patrick grabbed her arm and pushed through the knot of paparazzi, guiding her back to the restaurant, where he knew the maitre d’ would cut off the photographers at the door. “Come on, sweetheart.”
Smiling despite the pesky cameras, Melissa hurried to keep up with Patrick’s longer stride. “Let’s go back inside and tell your father the news.”
But Patrick stopped just outside the door, ignoring the still-flashing cameras. “You go on.”
“By myself?”
“Go on—get Dad and have him take you home. I’m getting out of here.”
“Patrick, what’s wrong?” Melissa demanded. “Are you not feeling—”
“I’m fine,” he insisted. His hand on her elbow turned her toward the maitre d’, who was hurrying to meet them, an apologetic look on his face. “I just need to clear my head.”
Hurt, Melissa started to step away, but Patrick turned back and pulled her close. “I’ll call you later,” he whispered. “I promise.” He gave her a quick, sweet kiss, ignoring the camera flashes that increased to a frenzy when their faces came together.
“Hey, lovebirds,” Dennis said from behind them. “I have to fly—my date awaits.”
“For heaven’s sake, Dennis,” Melissa said. “Why didn’t you include her tonight?”
But Dennis shook his head. “Nah—this is too much like family. Takes a little more time to get to this level.”
“Later,” Patrick promised her again. “Come on, Dennis. You go one way and I’ll go the other. They can’t follow us both.”
“I hate to tell you how many famous people have thought that,” Dennis retorted. Nevertheless, he dashed in one direction while Patrick headed in the other.
And left Melissa standing there with the maitre d’, staring after him, feeling strangely frightened.
4
No doubt there were people somewhere within the bright cluster of government buildings that made up the Goddard Flight Center in one quadrant of the NSEG grounds, but they were certainly few in number at this time of the night. On the most complicated matters, however, Dr. Ralph Orinsky worked best alone, and on those things he also worked best during the darkest of the night hours.
Or at least he’d once thought so.
Now the white-haired man walked back and forth in front of the specimen table in his laboratory, a cordless telephone held so tightly in one hand that his fingers hurt. “If I can’t speak to him, then I need to leave a message for Mr. Herman Cromwell,” he said urgently into the receiver. He jammed his bifocals up to his forehead and they immediately slid down again. His voice was rising in desperation and he tried to control it—if the operator on the other end decided he was a loony, she’d pretend to take a message and Herman would never know he’d called. “He’s a patient there,” he said. “I believe he’s in Ward B. I realize it’s rather late, but if he could call me at his earliest opportunity, it would be most helpful.” He bit his lip at the woman’s reply but managed to hold his tongue—getting angry would only destroy any chance he had of getting through to Herman. “Yes, of course,” he said. “I realize it’s late. Tell him that Dr. Orinsky called. I’m a former colleague.”
When the Garberville operator broke the connection, Dr. Orinsky allowed himself a full scowl as he clicked off the telephone and slammed it on the table. Foolish woman—could she not tell from the tone of his voice how important it was that he speak to Herman Cromwell? If it hadn’t been so far and so late, and if he didn’t have these samples on which he needed to run further tests, he’d drive there tonight, demand to see the administrator and generally raise hell until he made them let him meet with his old partner.
The samples . . .
Orinsky whirled and stared at the lab table, but of course everything was as it should be: sample bottles, beakers and burners, several clipboards of crumpled paper upon which he’d scribbled copious notes, and obviously, the rack holding the tubes of blood that had prompted his post-midnight call to the Garberville Psychiatric Institute in a vain attempt to connect with Herman. They’d all come from the half pint that made up beaker number three, and Orinsky picked up the wide-mouthed glass container and peered at it as if his naked eye could somehow explain what he’d seen only a few minutes earlier beneath the lens of the electron microscope. The thought almost made him smile, and he set the beaker back on the table and returned to his stool in front of the microscope. How he wished Herman would call, if only to hear an apology from Orinsky for scoffing . . . no, for condemning the findings that Herman had tried so hard to share. Foolish people, it seemed, came in all walks of life.
Unable to resist, Dr. Orinsky bent his head to the microscope and peered into the eyepiece. He wanted to view these cellular changes again—
Something rattled and Orinsky looked up in time to see the container he’d set down had inexplicably fallen on its side and r
olled to the edge of the table. The contents had sloshed over the side and were now sending a slow, scarlet stream onto the floor. For a second, he just stared, trying to reconcile in his mind how this could have happened. “Damn it,” he finally muttered. “I knew I should have capped that.”
Sliding off the stool, he grabbed a towel and yanked a pair of disposable rubber gloves from the box next to his microscope. But before he could pull on the gloves, the blood on the floor . . .
Moved.
Dr. Orinsky froze for a moment, then gave a hard, mind-clearing shake of his head. Too many damned late nights, too many hours, too much work—now he was seeing things that couldn’t be, hallucinating alone in his laboratory in the middle of the night. I’m getting too old for this, he thought as he shifted the towel and gloves to one hand and rubbed at his eyes with the other.
But when he opened his eyes again, he watched with open-mouthed amazement as the crimson puddle of blood moved again, more rapidly this time, pushing itself across the room with a snakelike rippling motion until it reached the junction of the wall and the door to the medical-supply storage room.
“Mother of Mercy,” Dr. Orinsky breathed.
What was causing this? Some kind of unseen electromagnetic charge? He should stay away, call for an assistant—a witness, for God’s sake—but it was too fantastic to let out of his sight. And if it didn’t happen again, who would believe him anyway?
Moving cautiously, Orinsky followed the blood trail left by the now-placid puddle over by the doorway. A thin track, really not much more than a smear . . . nothing notable. If he hadn’t seen it with his own eyes, if he wasn’t looking at this puddle right now that was ten feet away from where it had dripped off the side of the lab table, he wouldn’t have believed it. Heart pounding with a mixture of excitement and fear, Orinsky stood over the stain and peered down, then bent lower when nothing appeared to be out of the ordinary. What on earth—
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