“It’s the Book, I…” He looked down. There were hundreds of pages written in Syriac, Greek and Arabic calligraphy. “Did I do that?”

She smiled. “You’ve done nothing else.” Her forehead creased in confusion. “You don’t remember?”

Matt shook his head. “All the people, the entire world is doomed if we don’t stop it.”

She gripped his arm. “Did you find something?”

Matt closed his eyes for a second or two and willed himself to calm down. “I saw it, and it will consume us all like grains of rice.”

Adira’s fingers dug in, and her gaze intensified. “Professor Kearns, did…you…find…something we can use?”

Matt searched his memory, rifling through the images. At last he slumped. “No.”

“Ach.” Adira let him go and leaned back into her chair. She breathed calmly in and out for a few seconds. Abrams and Hartogg sat back down in their own seats.

She smiled sadly. “Buckle up; we’re landing.” She seemed to think for a while, and turned her head. “Matthew, I think you do know, but perhaps you just don’t know it yet. The answer is there. Alhazred found a way – you will too.”

Matt sat back. “I need to rest for a while.”

Abrams’s voice floated back immediately. “Sorry, Matt, not yet; we need to report straight back to base. And you’ll be coming, Professor.” He stood up to look at Adira. “And we’ll be on home soil and safe. Captain, you have been of enormous help, but there are too many people who do not want you roaming around the countryside. I’m afraid you don’t get to leave the airport, and will be on a turnaround plane within twelve hours.” He sat back down.

Adira closed her eyes.

Chapter 17

Moore Observatory, Oldham County, Kentucky

“Amazing, simply amazing. You can almost feel it.” Walter Brayshore held out a hand, flat, and flexed stubby, white fingers, wiggling them in the air. “They…tingle.”

“Huh?” Geoff Swartz didn’t look up from the screen. “Pringles? None left.” He continued tapping keys and rotating the powerful 24-inch Ritchey–Chrétien telescope to follow the celestial body convergence occurring almost directly overhead.

“No, tingles.” Walter swung in his chair to stare at his fellow astrophysicist. The bearded scientist leveled his thick-lensed gaze at his colleague. “Tingles, I said.” He held out a stubby arm and shook the hand in the air. “See?”

Swartz turned, and then let his gaze run from Walter’s face to his hand. He held out his own for a second or two, shrugged, and then swiveled back to his screen. “It’s not related. Focus.”

Walter blew air through his lips and went back to his own screen. Focus, he repeated softly. Geoff was right; this was important. The Moore facility was tiny and its primary responsibility was to measure transiting exoplanets – a fancy name for mapping celestial bodies as they move over the face of another. And what was happening right now, in their own astronomical backyard, was big news.

Walter swung back again. “This won’t happen again for another thirteen hundred years…and we, my friend, are in the box seat.” He whooped, fist pumped, and then grinned, his tiny teeth just showing through his straggly beard.