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the ones to assume command, but none of the three seemed to be up for it. So, somehow, it was 2Face the freak chick who was making the calls, and so far Yago, who was feeling like a squashed bug as he climbed, rickety as a three-legged chair, from his berth, had decided to play along.

    The plan was to get out of the Mayflower , which was fine as far as he was concerned. He suffered from a touch of claustrophobia — many great men did. Jobs had said something about the external environment being very bizarre.

    “As long as there’s air,” Yago had said.

    “We don’t know that,” Jobs answered.

    “Um, what?”

    Jobs had shrugged and explained in a distracted way that it didn’t really matter much since now thatthey were off hibernation the air in the Mayflower couldn’t last for long. “Suffocate in here or suffocate out there,” he’d muttered. “Take your choice.”

    Fortunately Yago was too dopey still to experience the full-fledged panic that usually followed the word suffocate.

    “Strap it up,” he told himself. “Keep it together. Be out soon. There’s going to be air. You didn’t come all this way to suck vacuum.”

    Of course, there was the question of how exactly they were going to get out. Jobs and Errol, busy little tool-jockeys, were evidently already at work on the problem and managed to open the cargo bay doors of the shuttle. Which was fine, but it turned out no one had ever considered the possibility that the ship would land vertically. The whole idea had been that the ship would land horizontally, like it was supposed to do. Then the hibernation berths would open and the people would simply step out and promptly fall any number of feet to the nearest external bulkhead, then, having survived those injuries, would crawl to the only exit door.

    Idiots.

    “We don’t have a way out?” Yago asked in a shrill voice.

    “They were in a hurry putting this missiontogether,” Jobs said in defense of the NASA people. “To be honest with you, I don’t think they really considered there was much to worry about. We weren’t going anywhere.”

    Yago felt a surge of rage, rage at stupidity. He hated stupidity. Hated having to tolerate it, hated having to bite his tongue and swallow the bile. But, by god, if they weren’t already dead along with the rest of H. sapiens, he’d like to find a way to hurt the NASA clowns who’d put this fiasco together.

    And yet, he was alive. Alive and seething. It reassured him. Anger was an attribute of the living.

    “I have to get out of here,” Yago said.

    “Yeah. We all do.”

    Yago had relapsed back into his berth, too groggy to argue. And some time later he saw Mo’Steel and Jobs come huffing and puffing up the ladder carrying an inert but apparently conscious kid. Jobs kept talking to him.

    “We’re there, Billy. We’re there.”

    That was okay, but it was the next person to climb past that brought Yago up and fully awake with a jolt. A young black woman cradling a great big baby. The baby stared right at Yago with cavernous eye sockets. And no eyeballs.

    “Okay, I’m awake,” Yago said.

    He began to climb after the others.

    Up and up. Past berth after berth of stomach-roiling death. He hoped no one was going to open some of those berths. The smell would probably be fatal all by itself.

    As he climbed, he kept a rough count, anything to avoid thinking about the cramped, crowded, airless . . .

    Maybe forty percent had died, he estimated, weighted toward older passengers. Good. The fewer adults he had to contend with, the better. He could deal with the likes of 2Face and Jobs. Adults would be tougher to manipulate and eventually control, though useful in the short run.

    There was no doubt of the final outcome: Yago would rule these pitiful remnants of humanity. But first, he needed air. Hard to take over a world without air. Kind of pointless.

    He reached the narrow platform just inside the external hatch. The dozen people so