Offworld (27 page)

"What is this, Beech?" Chris asked at last, his eyes momentarily
shifting to Terry on the ground before boring once again into Owen's.
"Who are you?"

The void surged into being not far from the spot where Terry had
thrown his glass. Its dark blue-black mass spiraled slowly, and then
a sudden flash of bright light blinded every eye.

When the flash faded, Chris found himself standing on a surface
he didn't recognize. At first he thought it might be another memory
of Mars, with the crystal clear night sky overhead. But he didn't know
the constellations he saw. Worse, the ground beneath his feet was
not red but pale blue. There were no clouds, and no light, save the
starlight.

He tried to breathe in, but his heart jumped into his throat when
he realized he couldn't. There was no oxygen here, no atmosphere of
any kind. It was no different than standing unprotected in the empty
vacuum of space. His hands were immediately around his throat,
trying to ease a pain that would not be quelled....

There was another flash, and he was standing in the steak house again with his friends. Everyone was exactly where he'd left them,
including himself, facing down Owen. But the expressions on every
face told him that he wasn't the only one who'd just experienced
something very unnatural.

And the void was gone.

Terry staggered up from the ground and ran through the front
door, out into the night.

Owen stood across from Chris, his appearance having changed
from the imposing stranger he'd become to alarmed and confused at
whatever he'd just encountered.

Mae remained rooted to her spot, close to Trisha, but her hands
were covering her mouth, as if she was afraid to let herself say anything aloud.

Trisha rose sharply from her table and opened her mouth to
speak. But before any words could come out, her eyes rolled back
white and she collapsed.

Mae was already kneeling over Trisha before Chris had found his
footing. Owen moved to join the two of them. Terry had vanished
into the dark.

"Bag on the table," Mae said as Chris passed the table in question.
He grabbed the bag of medical supplies.

When Chris reached them, Mae was taking off her giant coat.
She balled it up and placed it beneath Trisha's feet.

"Is she all right?" Chris asked.

"Not cold," Mae replied with a hand on her forehead. "Not in
shock... " She looked to Owen, who knelt next to the bag. "Got a
thermalometer in there?"

Owen immediately began rummaging, retrieving a thermometer
and handing it over.

`Any idea what just happened?" Owen asked. "The void appeared
and then I ... I went somewhere. Someplace else. I'm assuming
something similar happened to you? To both of you?"

Mae ignored the question, her attention focused on Trisha. She grabbed a wrist, taking her pulse, but Mae had no watch on her hand
to look at as she measured. Her fingers remained there for only a
moment before moving on.

"Yeah, something similar," Chris replied. `And I think the void
may be getting smaller every time I see it. But right now I'm a lot
more interested in finding out just who you are, Beech? If that's your
real name .. .

Mae looked up just long enough to throw Owen a keen eye,
eyebrows lifted high.

Owen ignored her, instead looking after Trisha as he spoke to
Chris. "Twelve years ago I was a field agent for a special outfit within
the CIA. An outfit most people didn't know existed. It was never
officially on the books, so it didn't have a name. We referred to it as
`the Division'."

"What kind of outfit was it?"

Owen hesitated. "Black ops."

"Black whats?" asked Mae.

"Wet-work," Chris replied with steely calm, not taking his eyes off
of Owen. "Government-sanctioned, stealth assassinations."

"Not just wet-work," Owen hastened to add. Anything the U.S.
needed done that political red tape or international relations got in the
way of The Division's long gone; it was dismantled and abandoned
nine years ago, and those of us working for the Division were cut
loose-all ties severed, all records erased. It wasn't long after that
that I met Clara, and decided it was time to settle down and forget
about the past."

"How did you end up on my ship?" Chris asked, stone-faced.
A little more than a year before the Mars mission, I received a
visit from a man I hadn't seen since the Division went under. He was
one of my superiors there. He said that there was a potential problem
with the upcoming Mars mission, a problem that the U.S. could not
afford to risk. He said he could arrange for me to be added to the
crew, and that my job would be to protect the rest of you and ensure the mission's success. They faked a pair of doctorates for me as credentials, though the skills that those documents profess are real-my
position within the Division required me to become well versed in
any number of disciplines, languages, and skills."

Chris snorted hot air like a bull. "Do you have any idea how many
qualified astronauts were passed over for your position? And you're
telling me you're not even a real scientist?"

"Yes, I know exactly how many were passed over, and technically
speaking, no, I'm not a real scientist. I just happen to know a whole
lot about many different things-a number of scientific disciplines
among them. And I was well trained for the mission, to perform my
role as expected."

It took Chris a moment to swallow all this. "Mitchell Dodd. A
good man, a brilliant scientist, and a friend of mine. You took his
seat on the mission. Did he really go to Russia for advanced cancer
treatments?"

"It was a cover story. Dodd was taken into protective custody
and hidden where the press would never find him. He wasn't told the
real reason why only that it was of utmost importance to national
security."

`And what about your wife and kid?" Chris asked. `Are they really
your wife and kid?"

"I had a blank slate, Chris. I could have been anyone. And Owen
Beechum is the man I chose to be. Yes, I really do have a wife and
son. That part of my cover story was never a contrivance. I didn't
even want to go on the mission. I didn't want to leave my family. I
was happy in the life I'd chosen.

"But you don't do what I used to do for this country without being
a company man, and I am one. Bones and blood. I think this is why
you and I have always gotten on so well; you're as loyal as I am, and
in my shoes you would have done exactly as I did."

"Maybe," Chris replied. "But I haven't always toed the line. There
was one time when I disobeyed a direct order."

Owen was openly surprised. "Really?"

"During the war. I was ordered to drop bombs on civilian targets.
I refused."

For the first time since Chris had known him, Owen was at a
loss. "I did not know that."

"Why wasn't I told about any of this?" Chris asked. "As mission
commander, I'm entitled-"

"Chris," Owen said, standing. "The mission was believed to he
in critical danger. No one was above suspicion."

"So no one at NASA knew? No one at all?"

"Director Davis knew. No one else."

"I can't believe he'd go along with this."

"He didn't. He was vehemently opposed to it. He even kept a
personal dossier on me that no one else at NASA was allowed to
see. He led a bitter, private campaign against my appointment to the
mission that went on for months, right up until just before the launch,
eventually taking his case all the way to the president himself. But the
decision was made, and the president had signed off on it personally,
though this fact was never documented."

"So this Division of yours-which no longer exists," said Chris,
"and the president ... What was so dire that they had to put you
on the Ares?"

Owen took a deep breath, and Chris had the impression of a man
about to divulge his deepest, most impenetrable secret. "They had
very few details. Only scant intel about something they considered
a potent threat. They called it the Waveform."

"And what is that?"

A covert group, a stealth bomb, code name for a conspiracy,
some kind of alien technology they had theories, but no facts. All
they knew was that it exists. The CIA had heard it mentioned among
obscure radio chatter a handful of times over a period of more than
twelve years, and the context of that chatter gave them reason to believe the Waveform was to be used as part of an elaborate plan to
sabotage the mission and disgrace NASA-and the nation.

"It was decided that only a man on the inside at NASA had any
hope of determining just what it was, and stopping it. Plus, it offered
the added security of having someone along for the ride to keep an
eye on the ship and her crew should the Waveform be intended as
onboard sabotage to be used in space or on Mars."

"So, after all this scheming and planning and lying and undermining of my crew and our mission, did you actually manage to discover
what this Waveform was?"

"No," Owen replied, and for the first time Chris saw crease lines
of regret take shape around the edges of his mouth. 'Obviously, the
mission was never sabotaged in any way, your `missing time' experience notwithstanding. I went over the ship, the Mars Habitat, the
mission plan-everything-again and again. Nothing was ever out of
order. But I was able to determine one critical clue. I found reference
to the Waveform in some very old personal notes hidden deep in the
Top Secret, Access Only archives at Johnson Space Center."

Chris leaned his head back and closed his eyes. He let out a
very long breath. "It all comes back to Houston. Did these notes say
anything about what it is?"

"No. But it was mentioned in conjunction with future space exploration. It was almost like a warning of ... something that NASA's
astronauts might one day find."

"So now you're thinking, what? That the Waveform is connected
to D-Day?"

"It would be foolish not to consider the possibility."

`And you didn't think this might be information you should share
with the rest of us before now?"

"Chris, this is above Top Secret information we're discussing. Only
five people in the entire world knew the details about my mission,
and I was under the strictest of orders-"

"The mission is over!" Chris yelled. "It's been over for almost a
week! "

"The mission isn't over. You know it. That's why you're still leading us, and why you still need Terry in line. We both have our roles,
Chris. Only this thing is bigger than any one of us now."

"Well, then give this some thought," Chris said bitterly. "I had
another memory flash this morning, and in it I saw things ... things
that are impossible. Like the moon moving too fast, or a dinosaur
walking out of a cave, or billions of people disappearing in a split
second."

"Then it's as we feared. Everything's connected," Owen immediately said. "The disappearances, the void, the Waveform. They could
all be one and the same. Or at least symptoms of a shared disease."

"Shhhh .. ." Mae said, looking up at both of them. "Needs rest."
She cocked her head toward Trisha, who was still unconscious.

She maintained her station while Owen and Chris walked to the
other side of the room. Terry's pistol lay abandoned on the floorChris figured it had fallen out of the young pilot's pants when he
was backing away from Owen. Chris picked it up and stuck it in his
pocket.

Owen watched as Chris processed everything he'd just learned. So
much had gone wrong since their landing. Owen wondered momentarily how much of it-if any-he might be directly responsible for.
Had he told them what he knew upon their return to Earth, would
anything have played out differently? Would they have found Mae?
Would Chris' arm he in a sling right now? Would Trisha be passed
out on the floor, and Terry gone? Would they have been caught in
the flood in Biloxi, or trapped atop that bridge in New Orleans?