Michaela immediately called up the landing-pad video—the images recorded by the camera that constantly monitored the pad. Once they’d watched Kalico Aguila barely survive her departure from that hovering A-7 shuttle.

Michaela ran the feed backward to replay the last half hour, watching as first Yosh, and then Kevina appeared and hurried around in reverse, leaving the pad empty but for the rolling cup as the wind played with it. The binoculars stood on their tripod as a solitary reminder of Yee’s mission. After fast-reversing through twenty minutes, Michaela watched Kim Yee drop magically from the night sky.

She stopped, forwarded at normal speed. And there, to her disbelief, she caught the image as something big swooped down from the night. It might have been a four-winged pterodactyl, little more than a dark image, spectral in the darkness. A sort of night-flying terror beyond belief.

Little more than a black silhouette, it came winging in, coasting into the wind like a macabre glider. The thing impaled the unsuspecting Yee from behind, driving claws through the man’s back. Yee’s zero-g cup dropped from nerveless fingers. Then, with all four wings beating, the night creature lifted, bearing the kicking and screaming man away into the night.

All that remained were the tripod-mounted binoculars, and the zero-g cup rolling around on the pad.

50

Only the faint hiss of the air conditioning could be heard in the darkness. Outside of the clock on the wall that glowed with the time—a little after two in the morning—the only illumination came from Felix’s pad. It provided just enough light to see Mother’s body. She lay on her back, the bed coverings thrown off in the warm night. Her long, thin left leg crooked at an angle. He had watched her take a pill, one that she had told him would make her sleep. She’d said it was better than crying all night. Especially since Breez was staying with them. Mother often took pills when she couldn’t sleep.

Father was dead. Taken into the sky by some flying thing. Felix should have been sad. Instead, it just felt distant. Somehow far away. Like he was sad way down inside himself.

He had wanted to cry, but a weird voice inside told him, “It’s all right not to.” And it was.

He didn’t hear the Voice like a real voice. But it seemed to know things. Kind of like Mother and Father did, but it was inside, and it had started to tell him things. Like to get out of bed, and take the pad, and turn it on. When he did, he watched his fingers tap in commands that brought up images of something called anatomy.

Breez had climbed out of bed, too. She just stared at him, and then Mother, with wide and waiting eyes.