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Chapter 20

Helen Sutter stared around her in confusion. Now that she saw the buildings in front of her, she knew where she was. At various times, Jackie had sent her postcards with pictures of the installation—that part of it, at least, that wasn't restricted for security reasons. But it wasn't a location she'd ever really expected to be at, and she still had no idea of what she was doing here.

"Now that we've arrived," she said to the Marine next to her as they entered the NASA complex, "is someone finally going to tell me what the hell is going on?"

"The general will brief you very shortly, ma'am," the sergeant replied. "I'm not cleared to say anything about the situation at this time."

"Brief me?" she repeated incredulously.

This was surreal. The whole thing was like some kind of bad thriller script. She'd been sitting out at the dig, cataloging some of the fossils found in the past few days, when all of a sudden a huge military helicopter had come whup-whup-whupping over the ridge and landed so close to the camp that it damn near blew over the tents. From it had emerged an Air Force captain and this sergeant— Sergeant Ney—along with several other soldiers.

They'd told her they were there to pick her up, and made noises about national security. After she scanned their papers—which all looked very official, but weren't warrants and thus as far as she was concerned meant they had no hold on her whatsoever—she'd called Director Bonds. The museum director had informed her that he also had been contacted, that as far as he knew she wasn't in any trouble, but someone wanted to talk with her very, very badly and was apparently willing to pay for any inconvenience on anyone's part. She'd also gotten the impression that there was probably an implied, genteel threat on the other hand—that if she didn't go, the government might make things sticky for the museum.

So she'd gone, finding herself bundled politely into the chopper and flown out with Sergeant Ney—while the captain and the rest of the soldiers stayed behind, apparently to prevent anyone from calling out about her semi-abduction!

Sergeant Ney had been completely uncommunicative throughout the entire trip down here to New Mexico. And now here she was, at NASA of all places!

The sergeant stopped at a large door and gestured for her to enter. "The general is just inside, ma'am."

The room inside was a good-sized office, which had hastily been made over into the unnamed general's headquarters. It looked as if it had been used by a senior researcher up until maybe a few days or a week ago.

As she entered, the uniformed man behind the desk stood up and crossed the distance between them with a few quick strides.

"General Martin Deiderichs," he said, shaking her hand. "Welcome to NASA, Dr. Sutter. I apologize for the extremely urgent and I'm sure inconvenient way in which you were brought here. But once you see the situation, I think you'll understand."

She returned the handshake mechanically, but managed a reasonable smile. There was no point in being impolite. "Well, that will probably depend on the situation, General."

"No doubt, Doctor. You were brought in at the suggestion of some of the people currently on this project. The situation is . . ."

He seemed to be at a loss for words, for a moment. "I think it's probably just best to show you. Please, follow me."

Helen shrugged and did as he asked. At least it seemed as if this was neither a practical joke nor the result of some kind of terrible mistake she'd made. Though what would an Air Force general care about her mistakes at a paleontological dig, anyway?

After a short walk down a hallway, they entered a far larger room, one whose layout she recognized from many images: space mission control. At a centrally located screen ahead of her, she also recognized a tall, elegantly-dressed figure with slightly tousled salt-and-pepper hair.

She slowed involuntarily, then stepped forward. "Dr. Glendale!"

Nicholas Glendale almost jumped. His attention had been so riveted on the screen that he hadn't heard their approach. "Dr. Sutter— Helen, you've made it here. I arrived myself just two hours ago. Fortunately, I was in California when I got the summons."

"What, exactly, have I made it to?" she demanded. "And why in God's name is NASA summoning paleontologists in the first—"

Glendale stepped aside and around her, and with gentle pressure guided her to a seat before the console. "Please, Helen. Just take a look."

She looked.

She needed no one to tell her what the central object in the image was. She had done so many reconstructions, sketches, and 3-D models that no possible method of displaying it would have slowed her down for a moment.

"Bemmie?" she whispered.

No one said anything. Slowly, she became aware of the background to the image. Sharp-edged shadows falling across distorted-looking panels, everything oriented at odd angles as though a clumsy amateur photographer had been trying to take artistic pictures and failed. The viewpoint progressed around, staying focused on Bemmie, but revealing other things in the process. Walls of some kind of metal and rock. Those weird highlights and shadows on Bemmie and the background—they weren't like anything she'd ever visualized. Well, except . . .

A chill ran down her spine. She saw gooseflesh literally spring out across her forearms. This couldn't be a practical joke. But if it wasn't, then the only thing that could possibly, conceivably connect her, NASA, Bemmius secordii, and these images in front of her was—

"This is Phobos!" she blurted out.

"Correct, Dr. Sutter." Deiderichs' voice carried a pleased tone. She got the impression he appreciated people who were quick on the uptake.

"I hadn't heard from A.J. in a while, but I knew . . ." She looked up at the general. "His Faeries found this inside the moon, didn't they?"

Deiderichs nodded. "Mr. Baker recognized Bemmie immediately, the moment he saw the thing. So did Ms. Secord."

She stared at the screen. It was still too much to grasp. "Bemmie . . . came from Phobos?"

"From somewhere in space, certainly," Nicholas Glendale said. "It couldn't possibly have evolved on Phobos itself, of course."

She turned to look at him, to find the famous grin even wider than normal.

"Helen, if I recall correctly I said that I'd have to change my position if you'd found a fossilized repeating shotgun. Instead, you had your friend go and find an entire base, complete with a second fossil. Not even that—a mummified body." He gave her a very old-fashioned little bow. "You were entirely, completely, and inarguably right in every particular. I cannot imagine the vindication you must feel— or will feel, when you finally grasp it all."

He turned to Deiderichs. "I am immensely honored that your people thought of bringing me on board. But I'm a bit old to be considering space travel. And in any event"—he pointed to Helen—"I really think Dr. Sutter is the only reasonable choice. She can now claim, with perfect accuracy, to be the world's first—and only— qualified xenopaleontologist."

He flashed the grin at Helen again. "Besides, I have a large helping of crow to consume, and a great deal of catching up to do on the work Helen did already."

"Space travel?" Helen repeated inanely.

General Deiderichs cleared his throat. "Yes, Dr. Sutter. We will want someone on the expedition which we are currently planning who can conduct what amount to autopsies and studies on bodies mummified for millions of years. And with your training and background, you may have other insights into things such as base designs and so on."

"Me? Go into space?" She flashed back to her childhood, staring at the moon and wondering what it was like. All the TV shows she'd seen, including some of the ones A.J. was so fond of. A dream that had been diverted when she found her first fossil in a nearby park.

"You're kidding. I'm too old."

"You had your fortieth birthday just a few months ago, Dr. Sutter. Popular mythology about daring young men and women aside, the fact is that forty is just about the right age for an astronaut. John Glenn was forty-one years old when he made his orbital flight; Yuri Gagarin, only a bit younger when he made his. Thirty-seven, as I recall. And Neil Armstrong was just two weeks short of his thirty-ninth birthday when he was the first man to set foot on the moon."

A smile came to Deiderichs' stern face that made him abruptly seem more human. "You certainly don't appear old, if you'll pardon me saying so. Had I not known otherwise, I would have thought you to be a woman in her mid-thirties. Furthermore, Doctor, we did a quick check of your medical records which are publicly available and you seem to be already in excellent condition. People who know you confirm that impression. 'Strong and stubborn as a mule' was the way Mr. Baker put it, as I recall." The smiled widened a bit. "I should add in fairness to Mr. Baker that he spent considerably more words assuring me that you didn't look like a mule."

Helen couldn't help but laugh. "Well, I hope so! Him? Comparing anyone else to a mule? He should talk!"

His face serious again, Deiderichs continued: "In short, unless a thorough and careful examination shows some hidden problems, there is no physical reason you cannot go into space. Unless you have some mental disability we don't know about. Perhaps claustrophobia?"

"What?" Helen shook her head, somewhat absent-mindedly. "No. Nor agoraphobia, either. Space?"

"Space indeed!" A.J.'s voice shouted from behind her. He'd just entered from the other side. "What's gonna be up, Doc, is you. Several million miles up. And me! And Jackie, and Joe!"

It was finally starting to penetrate, and for a moment Helen Sutter felt something that she hadn't since she was seven years old. Coming down the stairs on Christmas morning to see a vast expanse of wonders laid out before her and realizing that they really, truly, were all there for her.

But, no, it was something she hadn't felt even then, it was something most people only have in their imaginations. Helen's exhilaration didn't stem from childhood fancies of being an astronaut. Those had long ago faded away. It stemmed from her life as an adult. All those long hard years of work and study, now come to as triumphant a conclusion as anyone could wish for.

Bemmie really had come down from the skies sixty-five million years before and fought for his life beneath the crackling skies of a bolide impact. His people had watched the solar system from a great base built inside a twenty-mile-wide asteroid. And she herself would step foot inside the first alien structure ever discovered by mankind!

"Well," she said finally, her voice sounding almost conversationally inane in her own ears. "Where do I sign up?"

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Framed