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  “I hear that,” Sara said. “Believe me; I do. If it makes you feel any better, early readings are showing that the sail might have worked. Your course has been adjusted slightly.”

  “So we’re out of danger?” asked Caitlin.

  “Oh no,” said Sara. “You’re still driving headlong into danger. But there’s a chance that you might not kill as many people as you would have before.”

  “You’re right. I do feel better. I’m so glad you called.”

  “Well, now that I’ve successfully wrecked your day,” Sara said, “why not go for broke and wreck your whole week?”

  “Do it up,” said Caitlin, not caring what Sara had to tell her.

  “The word’s out about what’s coming to Earth.”

  That did get Caitlin’s attention. She sat upright in her chair.

  “What?”

  “Yeah,” Sara said. “Some skywatcher in Montana picked you up and lit the signal fires. The press is all over it. But, look, don’t worry. It was only a matter of time. Something that big and coming in that fast wasn’t going to stay hidden for long. It’s actually kind of a miracle they didn’t find out sooner.”

  “Do they know about us?” asked Caitlin.

  “Not yet,” Sara said. “But, the truth is, it might not be too much longer before someone puts two and two together. Once they figure out that the asteroid was being mined, there are going to be some online detectives who might be able deduce who you all are and where you came from.”

  “Emily,” said Caitlin. “If they find out about me, they could—”

  “Emily’s already on her way to DC,” Sara said. “She and your friend Ben are going to stay with my sister in Ashburn for now. She’ll be safe for the time being.”

  Caitlin breathed a heavy sigh of relief, but she also knew that relief was only temporary. Sara was right. Soon, someone somewhere would figure out how 1222 Thresher ended up playing the world’s worst game of chicken with the people of Earth. And once they had that piece of the puzzle, anyone who knew how to ferret out information would have no trouble turning over the right stones to uncover the Tamarisk.

  “You OK?” Sara asked.

  “Is that a rhetorical question?” asked Caitlin.

  “Kind of,” Sara said. “But I can feel the weight on your shoulders from down here. You feel like unburdening yourself?”

  Caitlin let forth a bitter chortle that broke off midway through.

  “I wouldn’t even know where to start.”

  “Well,” Sara said, “why don’t you start with how you ended up there in the first place?”

  “How did I end up here?” she asked. “Bad choices. A string of them, in fact. A lovely daisy chain that starts on Earth and stretches all the way to the Moon.”

  “Bad choices, huh?” Sara asked. “If I could turn my bad choices into cash, I wouldn’t be stuck sitting here talking to you.”

  That produced a real laugh this time, and Caitlin started to feel better. Or at least a little less doomed.

  “I just thought it would be different, you know?” she said to Sara. “My life, my job, everything. It feels like since I came back from the campaign, nothing has made any sense. Then Emily came along, and I saw a glimpse of what life could be like. Of what I could be like. And I don’t mean to say that I didn’t have an identity or anything before I became a mother, but suddenly, for the first time since the war, I had a mission, if that makes sense. I was going to give her the best parts of myself. All the things I could have been, all the things I’d wanted to be but wasn’t, I was going to pass those on to her. I was going to fill her up with everything that I’d been denied. Everything I’d denied myself. She deserved that. She deserved so much and what she got . . . it just wasn’t right. I’d promised myself that this wouldn’t happen to her. That she’d never be left alone the way I was when my dad . . .”

  She couldn’t finish the thought. Trying to speak hurt, like forcing something sharp and spiny from her throat.

  “Hey,” Sara said, “what happened to you wasn’t your fault. You ended up on the Moon because of circumstances you could never have foreseen! You were caught up in something completely beyond your control.”

  “That’s true, I guess,” Caitlin said. “And now we all are.”

  “Yeah,” Sara said. “We’re all caught up in this. Which means we’re all in it together. You’ve got the best minds in the world down here trying to figure this out. And I know you fou—three are doing the same thing up there. Now, I don’t know you all that well, Caitlin, but everything I do know tells me you’re a fighter. And every fighter gets knocked down. The question is, how long are you going to stay that way?”

  Against the odds, Caitlin found herself smiling. She liked this woman more and more and found herself hoping that they would have a chance to meet so that she could tell her so in person.

  “I’ll take your silence for consent,” Sara said.

  “Yeah, yeah,” Caitlin responded. “Are you going to start charging by the hour now?”

  “I could definitely use the money.”

  “Tell me about it,” Caitlin said.

  “Hey,” Sara went on, “if you don’t mind my asking, what happened to your father?”

  “Caitlin? It’s your father . . .”

  Something dark crossed over Caitlin’s heart and she fumbled to answer, only succeeding in making stilted hemming and hawing noises. In the wake of all that had just happened, she wasn’t prepared to talk about her dad.

  “Sorry,” Sara said, backing down immediately. “I didn’t mean to pry. Just, the way you talked about him, it didn’t sound like . . .”

  “No,” Caitlin said to her. “No, it’s OK. I mean, I may as well tell you now, right? I don’t know if we’ll ever get to talk about it over glasses of rosé on my couch.”

  “Never say never,” Sara said.

  “He died when I was fifteen,” Caitlin said suddenly, not wanting to dance around the subject anymore.

  “Oh, Caitlin,” said Sara, now realizing the full extent of the wound she had been picking at. “I’m sorry. I didn’t—”

  “It’s all right, really,” said Caitlin, brushing off Sara’s pity with the words. “It’s fine. It was just one of those things. We’d been on Earth for about nine years by that point, and I guess his heart couldn’t take it. He’d been living on the Moon since it was first colonized, so his body just wasn’t ready for the strain of Terran gravity. I came home from school one day, and my mother told me. She’d found him in his study. She said he looked like he was asleep . . .”

  “That’s awful,” Sara said. “I’m sorry I brought it up.”

  “I was going to go to California that summer,” Caitlin continued. She suddenly realized that it was the first time she’d talked about her father’s passing to anyone, including her ex-husband, since it had happened. She felt oddly liberated. “I had signed up for a four-week biology camp along the Napa River Ecological Reserve.”

  “Biology camp,” Sara said. “So you were one of the cool kids?”

  “Oh, you have no idea,” Caitlin said. “But it didn’t pan out that way. After he died, I stayed behind to help my mother, then dropped out of school to work at my father’s mill. And when that went under three years later, I was off to the army.”

  “Did you ever get back to Napa?”

  While talking about her father, the question felt somewhat random and unexpected. Caitlin paused.

  “Sorry,” said Sara again. “I’m sure that’s kind of out of the blue, but it’s important. Sometimes life gets in the way, you know? The things we plan for ourselves never materialize. The little things fall by the wayside, and we promise ourselves that there’ll always be time to come back around to them. Then we wake up and it’s twenty years later.”

  “No,” Caitlin told her. “I never did get back there. After the war, I came back home, married Eric, and set in motion the events that led to you and I having this conversation right now. I regret it, though,
you know? Never getting down there. Even for a wine tasting or something. Like you said, I guess I always thought I’d have more time.”

  Sara paused for a moment.

  “You know what I think?” she said.

  “What’s that?”

  “I think that everything that’s happened to you is the reason you’re going to make it out of there alive. I think that life has hit you so hard and so many times that you’re just waiting for your chance to hit back.”

  “We’ll see,” Caitlin said simply. There was more that she wanted to say, but the words were lost. “So what about you?” she said instead. “What’s your tale of woe?”

  “That’s going to have to wait,” Sara said. “I’ve got to get back to this whole saving Earth thing. Meanwhile, any ideas you have about how to get yourselves out of this mess, I’m all ears.”

  “We’ll keep thinking,” Caitlin promised her. “And I’m going to hold you to that story.”

  “Oh yeah, girl,” said Sara. “But you’ve got to bring the rosé.”

  “It’s a deal,” Caitlin said. “Straight from Napa Valley.”

  “Now you’re talking,” Sara responded. “Catch you later.”

  A click and the line went dead, leaving Caitlin alone with her ghosts.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  The scene at the White House was nothing short of total chaos. Although news of the asteroid’s approach was only a few hours old, it had traveled quickly through the circuitry of social media, galvanizing everyone in the world into panic or action. As a result, when Alex returned to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, he found the presidential residence surrounded by protestors. Some were angry with the government. Some were angry at society. Others were just perpetually in search of something to be angry about, and this new catastrophe gave them the perfect opportunity. People danced, formed human chains, and cried up at the sky while shaking their fists. On a makeshift dais, a band performed a rousing, punk-infused cover of “Eve of Destruction.” A handmade banner hung behind them, proclaiming the event to be the “First (and Last) Annual ‘Rock’ Concert.” Amid the bedlam, some enterprising souls sold merchandise, ranging from homemade, cheap-looking T-shirts to equally off-brand mugs and bumper stickers. The items were doing a brisk business.

  All along the avenue, signs were everywhere, bouncing up and down angrily inside clenched fists. Most were covered in colorfully worded invectives directed at the president, many repurposed from previous protests. However, to his complete and total shock, Alex saw that some of these signs were actually proasteroid. “Rocks Have Rights, Too,” said one, while another one blared “They Were Here First.” He shook his head.

  “Maybe we deserve to get wiped out,” he muttered to himself.

  After what felt like an interminable wait, the White House gates opened and he was waved inside. Parking his car, he raced into the building, where he was met by Chief of Staff Dawn Meyers. She looked ashen and worried, as though she had gone a long stretch between rests. He imagined that, if he could see his own face, it probably wouldn’t look all that different.

  “Thank you for coming over so quickly, Dr. Sutter,” Dawn said as they began walking briskly down the hallways of the White House. “In light of everything that’s happened with China and with the news getting out all over the world, the crisis has become much more complicated.”

  “No problem at all,” Alex said. “Are we headed to the Situation Room?”

  “No,” Dawn said, “we’re going right to the Oval Office.”

  Alex felt his sudden pallor. “The Oval Office? I thought the president was still in California on vacation.”

  “He cut it short,” said Dawn. “As much as he loves golf, he loves his approval ratings more. A crisis like this couldn’t go ignored, especially after the impactor plan failed so spectacularly. So he’s back, and he wants answers. And, as you know, when he wants answers . . .”

  “I know,” said Alex with a weary sigh. “You’d better be prepared to give them to him.”

  They walked down the narrow Oval Office corridor, past offices where various staffers were busily receiving and relaying information from around the world. Screens everywhere were lit up with images of the asteroid and the faces of various press secretaries and communications officers from around the globe as the president’s staff strategized and planned for the coming disaster.

  A few more steps and Alex found himself being led through the oddly angled door and into the Oval Office, where the president was seated behind the Resolute desk and bellowing into the video display on it. His face was practically purple, his suit rumpled and oversized, his tie impossibly large. As the president shouted, phlegm rattled in his throat, making his various demands sound like a gargle. At first, Alex couldn’t quite make out what he was shouting about to the person on the other end of the video conference. Only that he was angry. That wasn’t a surprise. As Alex drew closer, however, the conversation became clearer.

  “Look, I’m not saying that the thing is going to drop right in that damn wasteland you got up there in that country of yours, Yaroslav, only that it could.”

  “Mr. President,” said the person on the other end of the video conference, whom Alex immediately identified as Yaroslav Visiliev, the president of Russia, “please understand that if American scientists redirect the asteroid so that it enters Russian airspace and puts our people in jeopardy, my government will have no choice but to interpret this as an act of war.”

  “An act of . . .” The president just about spluttered. “Did your mother drop you on your head, son? This ain’t an act of war. Hell, it’s an act of God!”

  “Nevertheless, if you intercede and Russia bears the brunt of your actions, then we will have no choice but to retaliate. The peace that our two nations have worked so hard to achieve over the last sixty years will be undone, perhaps irrevocably.”

  “Well, you undo whatever you have to, my friend. Right now, I’m just trying to figure out how to save my people.”

  Alex bristled at the use of the term “my people.” With what was approaching, the idea of “yours” and “mine” seemed outmoded at best. He wished the president felt the same way, although it was no surprise that he did not. To him, the world was a big playpen, and the only goal was to amass the most toys and devise the best ways to keep them out of everyone else’s hands.

  “Then I believe that our goals are the same,” Visiliev answered in clipped, measured tones. “Our best scientists are trying to come up with a solution as we speak.”

  “Well, hell yeah they are,” said the president. “What in the blue-blooded Christ do you think we’re doing over here?”

  As the president yammered on, Alex looked around the Oval Office, thinking of the other men and women who’d served the nation. He remembered reading that William Taft had created the Oval Office in 1909, modeling it after the White House’s Blue Room. The Blue Room had been created as a formal meeting place for dignitaries and prominent people from around the world, a tradition held over from English court. With all the guests in a circle, everyone was at an equal distance from the president, the perfect representation of democracy. Alex’s eyes now fell upon the ruddy-faced, boorish man seated in front of him and wondered what Taft and the other occupants of this office would make of its current resident.

  Taking stock of the president fuming behind his desk like the world’s biggest two-year-old, Alex still couldn’t figure out exactly how he’d been elected. A loudmouthed rabble-rouser from Alabama, he had risen from car dealer to congressman in a short amount of time and ridden the wave of public paranoia and fear all the way into the most powerful office in the world. During the time of his campaign, tensions between Earth and the Moon were growing, and the tide of opinion against Moonborn travelers to humanity’s home planet was taking a turn for the worse. Still, for all his shortcomings (and they were many), he was a great orator, and he’d used that skill to his advantage time and again. In speeches from small towns to massive convent
ion halls, the president had played on the country’s anxieties masterfully, gently stoking the fire until it grew into a conflagration. One that, as far as Alex saw, was now threatening to engulf the world.

  Also in the room were Secretary of Defense Kittredge, Secretary of State Katz, and White House Press Secretary Karen Peralta. They were talking among themselves over the din of the president’s tirade. Alex considered approaching them, but given his last encounter with Kittredge in the Situation Room, he opted to hang back.

  Finally, the president pressed the screen on his desk with a meaty thumb and ended the call, turning around in his chair. His eyes seemed to look past the people in the room to a point somewhere off in the middle distance. His gaze was glassy and his eyes flicked back and forth nervously, the look of a man slowly becoming unhinged.

  “Mr. President—” Dawn began.

  “Who’s this?” the president barked, seemingly to no one in particular.

  “Alex Sutter, Mr. President,” he said, extending his hand. The president eyed the hand as though being presented with something offensive, but then shook it briefly. “We’ve met before. We—”

  “Oh, you’re the asteroid doctor, huh?” the president said. “Well, you sure got us into a real mess, didn’t you?”

  Alex was puzzled. “Um, I’m sorry, Mr. President, I don’t see how I got us in—”

  “You don’t see, huh?” the president said. “Seems to me that’s exactly your damn problem. But I see a little different, and what I see is a goddamn Chinese rocket that just zipped past your asteroid without leaving so much as a scratch on the surface.”

  Alex opened his mouth to offer some sort of an explanation, but the president’s glare tamped the words back down his throat.

  “Like I said,” the president continued, “a real mess. So what are you going to do to get us out?”

  Alex, deciding that the initial line of questioning was no longer worth pursuing and would in fact invite further controversy, took a seat in front of the president’s desk and opened his notes.