Vessel

39

THE FIRST THING Cal worried about was that Aaron wouldn’t see him. No, before that, driving over, he had visions of security turning him away at the gate. But he had to try.

Security let him in. As he expected, though, when he tried to swipe his ID card to get past the lobby, it didn’t work. He waited while the guard at the desk tried to contact Aaron, fighting the urge to pace.

It was too quiet. This close to the end of a mission stage, there should have been people hurrying about, even out here. He’d been following the news reports, and had seen nothing about Sagittarius II, but something was wrong. He could practically taste it.

It wasn’t Aaron who showed up to escort Cal back, but a security guard. Hopefully the same guard wouldn’t be escorting him out just as quickly.

Aaron stood and came around his desk. “Cal, I’m surprised to see you.” His tone said, You should have called first.

“I bet.” Cal shut the office door and sat his laptop down on the edge of Aaron’s desk before pulling up the video. “I found something I think you’ll be interested in seeing.”

“Cal, if this is about Catherine—”

“Shut up and look at this, will you?” He looked up at his boss and mentor, wondering if he was about to cross the line between “on leave indefinitely” and “fired,” then pushed ahead. “I ran some of the spectroscopic footage against the heat signatures we found.” He was going to keep Aimee’s name out of this, for now. Someone had to stay out of trouble. “Look.”

He pressed Play, and let Aaron draw his own conclusions.

“Is this for real?” Aaron asked after a long silence. He hit Replay and watched the segment again.

“Pull up the same footage from NASA’s servers if you don’t believe me,” Cal said. Aaron did believe him, though; he could see it. “You have to call the ship back, Aaron. You’re sending them into hostile territory and they don’t even know it.”

“I can’t.”

“Come on! Drop the bureaucratic bullshit! You guys said you needed more proof; how much more proof do you need?”

Aaron was ashen. “Cal, I mean I can’t. Sagittarius reached the Einstein-Rosen bridge thirty-six hours ago.”

Cal leaned heavily against the desk. “How— How the hell did they get ahead of schedule?” There were still a couple of days left. There had to be a few days left.

“You know our schedules are rough at the best of times, especially at these distances.” To his credit, Aaron at least looked abashed.

“We have to get them back here.” Cal said it, but he knew the odds were slim.

“We’re not going to have radio contact again for two years, Cal. There’s nothing we can do. Even if we send a message, they’ll be on the other side of the wormhole before it reaches them.”

“And they’d have to refuel on TRAPPIST-1f before they could come back anyway.” A sick feeling sat in the pit of his stomach. He’d failed his crew. Again. The best he could hope for was that they would be able to refuel and come home without encountering any spores.

“I’m sorry, Cal. We’ll do the best we can—”

“The best you can?” Cal laughed at him. “Have you, yet?” He stood up and closed his laptop.

“That’s not fair.”

“You believed her.” Cal spoke quietly, feeling like if he didn’t, he’d start shouting, and that really would get him thrown out. “I saw your face, Aaron. When Catherine and I were telling our story in Lindholm’s office. You knew she was telling the truth. You believed us, and you still let them lock her up.”

“She’s not locked up; it’s a precautionary measure against—”

“Spare me the quarantine speech. NASA has her locked up in a basement somewhere because of what she knows.” He took a step forward, gratified to see Aaron lean back. “How could you do that? Not just to her, but our crew? They’re counting on us to look out for them!”

“There wasn’t enough proof. It didn’t matter what I believed—”

“Locked up, Aaron. You could have said something!”

“Look, you weren’t there. Lindholm had made up his mind before you guys left the room.” Aaron spread his hands in a supplicating gesture. “There wasn’t anything I could do to change his mind.”

“Did you try? Or did you just go along with his PR plan?”

Aaron’s expression told him everything he needed to know.

“We have to fix this,” Cal said. “We owe it to Nate and the rest of the crew.”

“There’s nothing we can do.”

“Fuck that. There has to be.” Cal grabbed his laptop. “Let me see Catherine. Let me talk to her. We’ve figured the rest of this out, and we’ll solve this, too.”

“You know I can’t do that—” Aaron started, but Cal cut him off.

“Let me see Catherine or I go public with this. What kind of a PR nightmare do you think it will be if the public finds out NASA’s been concealing the existence of hostile aliens?” He put on a shark’s grin. “And before you think maybe you should throw me down there with Catherine, I have a fail-safe. If I don’t contact them, they’ll be passing the information to the media.”

He had him.

“Let me see Catherine.”

Aaron sighed and picked up his phone as Cal reached for his. He knew of someone else who’d want to see Catherine, too.