The Cydonia Objective

something rattling around inside the hollow space.

Nina cocked her head, staring at it. “Congratulations. Just like old times, wouldn’t you say?”

“So now what?” Caleb asked. He looked behind him, waiting. “Why didn’t you shoot me?”

The pounding of feet on stairs, and then three men in suits rounded the corner. Nina held up her free hand in a fist. “Under control,” she said. “Fan out into the lobby. Stop anyone from following us.”

“But—” one of them started, only to be silenced by a deadly look. They passed by, and then Caleb found she had grasped his hand and was pulling him back, back up the stairs.

“What the hell are you doing?”

“Shut up, and follow me. We’ve got no time to argue.”

“I’m not going anywhere with you. This…” He raised the bar, “Isn’t going anywhere.”

Nina stopped after taking one step up the next flight. Her grip was fierce, and yet intimate. “Caleb. You touched me, and I saw…” Her eyes faltered, the cold melting away.

“What?”

“I’m probably going to get killed for this, but I’m going to help you. Because I believe what I saw in your vision.”

Caleb narrowed his eyes. “Yeah, well I still don’t trust you.”

“And also, because if that bastard thinks he can keep my—our kids—from me for all those years, and then act like a hero for reuniting us, he’s got another thing coming. I was only biding my time until I could shoot him in the back of the head, but you’ve shown me that if he gets his hands on this thing, then it’s all over and I won’t have my chance.”

Caleb squeezed back. “Okay, but…”

“Shut up and stop thinking for a minute. Come on, they’re coming.”

He chased after her, still dragged along by the hand. “Where are we going?”

They burst out into the now familiar floor, the start of the climb. Not again, he thought, rushing up the steps behind her. He glanced back and saw the crossword-loving Dan Brown fan smiling up at them, nodding his appreciation of their reunion. Nina let his hand go and tapped at a device set in her ear. She muttered something lost in the pounding of their feet on the stairs.

Up two more flights, and then–

Gunfire roared and echoed back and forth inside the stairwell. Something struck the underside of the platform below his running feet. Another shot punched through the wall to his left. Nina squeezed off two blind rounds, hoping to slow them down.

“Calderon’s men,” she yelled back. “My escorts. Must’ve realized I turned on them.”

“Or maybe,” Caleb said, wheezing. “They got new intel. From the twins.”

“Cocky kids, Caleb.” She flashed him the start of a smile. “And creepy. Definitely missed out on years of discipline.”

“Something to remedy if we make it out alive.” He leapt up three stairs to catch up. They were nearing the pedestal top, and he could hear the rain and rumbling thunder, broken by another gunshot that went wild. “And how exactly are we getting out?” He stopped at the top of the stairs, doubled over and feeling the start of a cramp.

But his attention remained fixed on the view out of the tunnel to the exterior, where he saw something that wasn’t there before.

“Is that a ladder?”

Nina turned back and hauled him up by his sleeve. “Helicopter. Pilot’s loyal to me. Had him circling. Then just told him where we’d be coming out.”

“Wait. I am not–”

Another gunshot, one that cracked the glass around the elevator cage. Calderon’s men were right around the bend.

He took off, passing Nina who had dropped to a knee and squeezed off three more rounds, one striking home as the first man ran into view.

Heading for that shaking ladder, he couldn’t tell if it was on this side of the balustrade or outside, with one hundred and fifty feet separating it from the base. He started to slow down just as he hit the rain, but then felt a hand on the back of his shirt, drawing him backwards, slowing his momentum, and then she was sling-shotting past him. She had hooked her gun under her belt, and like a gymnast, used her hands to vault up onto the slick stone wall and still in a crouch, she pushed off.

Nina launched, swan-like, into the air just as a lightning bolt ripped across the gray-black clouds. She caught the ladder, swung all the way out and then back, gripping it with one hand and using her weight and momentum to propel it back, right to the edge of the wall…

Where Caleb, seeing her intention and realizing he only had one chance at this, vaulted up as she did—and then just reached out and grabbed the rungs beneath her. He hooked an elbow around one rung, and his knees around another, leaving his left hand free to grip the bar and his prize.

Two gunshots roared in his ears, Nina firing on the men who darted into the passage. But Caleb couldn’t look to see the result. The helicopter swung away, and he was soaring out into space, pelted with stinging missiles of rain, completely drenched and hanging precipitously to a slippery ladder far above the ground. Then they were over the churning waves.

And only later did he realize he was laughing, his emotions overwhelmed. He looked up, seeing Nina climb into the helicopter, and then he raised the metal shaft, shaking it victoriously in defiance of the lightning-rippled storm.

11.

Mount Shasta—Stargate Facility

“Two space programs?” Orlando asked. “You mean us and the Russians?”

“No, I mean a public one and a secret program. The Russians,” Diana said, “were in on it. We may have been Cold War enemies to all other purposes, but once the early probes got out there, once the Russians shared with us what they found on the far side, well… after that point we were really all on the same side.”

“Just not as far as the public knew,” Temple said. “Tell them about the Brookings Report.”

Diana nodded. “The Brookings Institution, a Washington DC think-tank, put together a report entitled The Proposed Studies on the Implications of Peaceful Space Activities for Human Affairs, commissioned by NASA and delivered to Congress in 1961. It talks about the need for research into a lot of areas of space exploration, but the explosive section that has gained the most attention is the part called Implications of a discovery of extraterrestrial life.” She took a breath, then turned to her notebook and read a passage. “Page two-fifteen. While face-to-face meetings with intelligent extraterrestrial life will not occur within the next 20 years (unless its technology is more advanced than ours, qualifying it to visit Earth), artifacts left at some point in time by these life forms might possibly be discovered through our space activities on the moon, Mars, or Venus.”

“Cool,” said Orlando. “How did I miss that?”

“Too busy with video games?” Phoebe quipped.

“Page two-fifteen and two-sixteen,” Diana continued, “go on to talk about the consequences of such discoveries. They cite cultures that have disintegrated when faced with unfamiliar and more advanced societies, resulting in a breakdown of values, and sometimes complete destruction of the people itself.”

“And,” urged Temple, “what was the recommendation of this section, on the question of such a discovery and its implications?”

Diana smiled. “The only logical one. They posed a question that might shape policy. How might such information, under what circumstances, be presented to or withheld from the public for what ends?”

“Withheld,” Temple said, “being the key word.”