Vessel

10

CAL DUCKED DOWN in the front seat of his car, trying to catch his breath after his mad dash out of the Wellses’ yard. Sweat trickled down his forehead from his hairline as he waited to see if Catherine had spotted him, fully expecting to hear her pounding on his window demanding to know what he was doing in her yard.

What the hell was he doing here?

At first, spending the afternoon and evening watching Catherine’s house seemed like a good idea. All of his instincts were screaming that something was wrong. He’d spent hours poring over her personnel files, the transcripts and recordings of her debriefs, and nothing. Nothing! Nate had tried to pick the brains of the medical team to find out more information about Catherine, but they had nothing useful to offer yet. Cal did manage to get a copy of her medical records and the telemetry from Sagittarius, and after going over both, he felt that the answer was right there in front of him. He could almost see it. Something wasn’t adding up, but he couldn’t figure out what.

He kept coming back to the rote way she described her last memory of the mission. And the guilty look on her face when he’d found her down in the archives. The whole thing felt wrong. And yet, all of Dr. Darzi’s reports to the administration cleared Catherine of any form of instability and any problems that would keep her from working. If her therapist didn’t see anything wrong with her, how could Cal be so sure?

On the face of it, Cal knew he was being ridiculous, but he also had made a career out of following his instinct, sometimes to places others would never have considered, and so far it hadn’t let him down. Much, anyway. Besides, he’d tried to leave it alone, but the overwhelming feeling of “wrong” wouldn’t leave him alone. So he wound up here, spending a Saturday afternoon and evening parked outside Catherine Wells’s house, looking for some aberration or sign of what was wrong with her.

When he saw there was a party going on, he almost turned around and went home. Whatever was wrong, he likely wouldn’t see it while she was occupied with her guests. But curiosity drove him to stay, watching the guests arrive—some of them well-known to him, which meant ducking down in his car—watching for glimpses of her through the windows of her home as the sky darkened. Laughter came from the house, and every time he saw Catherine, she was smiling and at ease—a far cry from the tightly wound Catherine he knew. Cal felt an uncharacteristic stab of regret. He liked the Catherine he saw in the window. Maybe in another life they might have been friends, arguing about trajectories over beers and swapping stories.

As the evening wore on, it sank in just how far across the line he’d stepped. Spying on Catherine at home? Aaron was pissed enough at him for prying into the records. If he found out about this, he’d rip Cal a new one—and rightfully so.

Still, as the guests started to leave, Cal stayed. The compulsion wouldn’t fade, no matter how uncomfortable this intrusion made him feel. The thought of driving away now and the risk that he might miss something, however small, some clue to Catherine’s secrets, was worse than the shame of turning spy.

When the flow of guests slowed to a drip, Cal took the massive risk of leaving his car and creeping into the Wellses’ yard. He could see more clearly now, and hear snatches of laughter and conversation through the windows, opened as the night started to cool off. There was nothing out of the ordinary. The party had been a graduation party for Catherine’s daughter. Cute kid. Going to MIT, from what he had overheard, so she must be smart, too.

When Catherine came out with Leah Morrison, the two of them laughing and talking, he ducked behind some shrubbery and watched her. A mad urge to jump out of the literal bushes to talk to her seized him, but he managed to resist. Morrison drove off, and as Cal watched, Catherine paused and looked around. His heart thudded sickly against his chest, as she seemed to look right where he was hiding. He imagined that her eyes met his and that the game was up.

He panicked. The moment she looked away he darted into the backyard.

It was a mistake, because then she saw him for sure and gave chase. He used his head start to loop back to the street and dive into his car, and now here he was, practically ready to piss himself and shocked at his own obsessive behavior.

Five minutes passed. Then ten. Catherine didn’t bang on his window. No police showed up. He was safe.

Let it go. You have to let it go.

The voice in his head was Aaron’s, but Cal was starting to agree with it. Maybe Nate and Aaron were right. Maybe he was jumping at shadows.

But still, he couldn’t make himself start the car and drive away.

Finally, the Wells house quieted, and the lights went out, one by one. It looked as if the family had gone to bed. There’d be nothing else to see tonight.

Except.

Just as Cal was about to leave, Catherine came out a side door wearing dark sweatpants and a T-shirt. She climbed into one of the cars in the driveway and backed out, flipping on her lights and driving down the narrow street.

Before he thought about it, Cal had pulled out a short distance behind her, feeling as if he were in a movie. How close could he follow without her realizing she was being followed? Surveillance techniques were not part of the standard NASA training. Wrong government agency.

This is gonna be embarrassing if I end up following her on a midnight run to the store for ice cream.

But the same instinct that was pushing him along this path to begin with said this was no innocuous search for a midnight snack. But if he was wrong, he vowed to turn right around and go home. If he was wrong, he’d give this whole stupid mess up and fall back into line. He’d risked his career enough for one night. For one lifetime.

He followed Catherine through the Saturday night traffic. When she took the highway exit for Johnson Space Center, he felt a surge of triumph.

Oh shit.

He couldn’t follow her directly through security, as he’d be spotted for sure. But if he held back too long, he ran the risk of losing Catherine in the complex. Damn, damn, damn.

He waited for what felt like an hour—although the clock said it was barely two minutes—then followed her through the security gates, showing his ID to the night guard.

“Busy night tonight, Mr. Morganson?” the guard asked. “Don’t usually see any traffic at all at this time on a Saturday, and there’s two of you Sagittarius folk one right after another.”

“Huh. Who else is here?” Cal asked nonchalantly, fighting the impatient awareness that Catherine was getting farther and farther ahead of him.

“Catherine Wells came in a couple of minutes ago,” the guard said. “Didn’t say what she needed, just handed me her ID and looked straight through me. Was kinda creepy, to tell you the truth.”

Cal’s neck prickled. He forced a smile up at the guard. “This time of night, who knows. Maybe she was sleepwalking,” he joked.

“It’s funny you should say that. I got a kid who sleepwalks, and she looked a lot like that—she might’ve been in her pajamas, come to think of it.”

The prickles turned into the hair on the back of his neck standing up. Cal took back his ID and gave the man a wave. The guard punched the button to let him through.

“Have a good night, Mr. Morganson.”

He passed Catherine’s parked car as he reached the building where the Sagittarius program was based, and his heart thudded sickly in his temples. Rather than waste time parking, he stopped his car in front of the building and ran inside, waving his ID at the night guard as he passed.

Cal didn’t wait for the elevator but took the stairs two at a time to the third floor, where their offices were. Catherine’s door was closed and locked, and the hallway was dark. All the other offices were dark as well. The wing was deserted. Where could she—

The archives.

That’s where she’d been that day last week, the first time she was somewhere she shouldn’t have been.

Cal flew down several flights of stairs, skidding to a stop at the bottom in near-total darkness. That wasn’t right. There should have been exit lights at least. He held his breath, straining to hear anything: footsteps, rustling, anything.

He took a few cautious steps forward. If his memory was correct, the archives were about fifteen feet ahead on the left. The hallway was so narrow he could almost touch both walls if he stretched out his arms. In the darkness he could swear he felt the already-low ceiling pressing down toward him. His imagination was no help: it provided an image of a blank-eyed Catherine waiting for him by the archive door, ready to pounce.

He kept walking, although his skin was crawling, certain that at any moment a cold and clammy hand would reach for his.

Finally, once he was surely next to the archives, he couldn’t stand it anymore and turned on his phone’s flashlight. He shined it around him, but the hallway was empty. No Catherine, blank-eyed or otherwise. Plus, he was still a good ten feet from the archive door. He checked it, but knew what he would find. It was locked. If Catherine had been down here, she was gone before he arrived.