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five.”
    Zack waited for Shane Weldon’s reply as he stood—tethered, since Venture was still in microgravity—at the forward control panel next to Pogo. He was still in his helmet, wearing gloves, feeling like a child bundled up for a day in deep snow.
    Houston and Weldon seemed more remote than ever, their signal hissing and breaking up. “Copy that, Venture . . . still go for . . . descent at 78:15:13 MET.” Mission elapsed time . . . had it really been seventy-eight hours since the Saturn VII lit up, rattling Zack and his crew into Earth orbit?
    Tea and Yvonne were strapped in directly behind, but effectively invisible and, for the moment, silent.
    The last word from mission control on that subject had been, “We’ve got the Home Team on it,” the Home Team being a panel of Keanu specialists led by Harley Drake, who was no doubt phoning and e-mailing all over the world, contacting a broad spectrum of experts on NEOs and venting.
    And what was Rachel thinking? What had she heard? Zack had not spoken to his daughter since launch. They had exchanged text messages—her preferred means of communication—during the first sixty hours. Nothing since then. She had sent them; he could see a queue in his personal message file. But he had had no time to compose even a two-word reply.
    Well, he would send her the first message from the surface of Keanu.
    Which was now closer than ever. They were under fifteen thousand meters altitude, roughly the same as an airliner crossing the United States. Three minutes until the twin RL-10 engines on Venture lit up, slowing the vehicle enough to drop out of orbit and head for touchdown—
    “Houston, from Venture . Any word on our Coalition neighbors?”
    “Venture” , Weldon said, after more than the usual lag, “ Brahma is in a lower, more circular orbit . . . plane diverges from yours . . . twenty degrees. Data coming to you.”
    The gravity gauge burn had put the combined Destiny- Venture vehicle in a wide, looping orbit around the NEO. Within twenty minutes, on Houston’s orders (encouraged no doubt by Tea’s report), Zack was injected with a sedative, zipped into a sleeping bag, and stashed in the Venture airlock. While he dozed, Patrick, Yvonne, and Tea completed the tedious work of configuring Destiny for a week—or a month—of uncrewed autonomous flight while transferring gear, food, water, and other supplies into the lander.
    Zack had been awakened for the separation maneuver, which Tea and Yvonne handled, half an hour ahead of the terminal burn. Destiny had been left behind, and now the four-legged collection of tanks that was Venture flew on its own.
    Meanwhile, the crew of Brahma completed its burn, winding up in a relatively circular orbit that had the advantage of allowing them more frequent landing opportunities. Destiny ’s crew, in going for broke with the gravity gauge and jumping to a far more eccentric orbit, would have the first chance to touch down . . . but if unable to start descent this goaround, would have to wait another day.
    While Brahma would swoop in ahead of them. And it would be Zack’s old space station comrade, the excitable-yet-capable Taj, who would take the first steps on Keanu.
    “Three minutes,” Zack said. “Kids, you okay in the backseat?”
    “Yes.” “Fine.” Both voices were so clipped and tense that Zack could not tell them apart.
    “Okay, there’s the Brahma data,” Pogo said, pointing a thick gloved finger at the display. It showed an image of the big ball that was Keanu and two rotating planes representing the orbits of the two spacecraft, along with columns of constantly changing figures.
    “Houston on Channel B,” Zack said, clicking to the encrypted link. “Did you or the Home Team happen to note one of those venting episodes when Brahma did its burn?”
    “Now there’s a good question,” Pogo said.
    The lag stretched beyond the normal six seconds. Finally a new voice came on the line. “Zack, Harley. The