The fog was so heavy that they couldn’t see but fifty feet. It came in rolling, gentle waves that brought with them a muffling silence. Not far away, there floated something magical, an onion dome, pale in the soft light, appearing and disappearing as billows of fog first revealed it, then hid it again in gray.

It was all so strange, so very alien in its silence, so exotic, that Mark thought they might somehow have slipped into another reality altogether, or perhaps another time. At this point, as far as he was concerned, anything was possible, anything at all.

“God knows where we are,” he muttered.

Gina walked toward the dome, moving faster as she got closer. Black tendrils began spinning down around her, all that was left of the disintegrated machine. Rather than let it fall into human hands, it had been destroyed.

Just as she was about to disappear into the fog, she turned and gestured to him.

He joined her at a trot. “What is it?”

She moved a few steps closer. Then a few more.

More hesitant, he followed. “Careful, Gina.”

It loomed now, the white structure in the fog, as alien a place as he had ever seen. More tendrils swept from the sky and were blown in eddies with the fog.

But what was this place?

She walked up to it, hesitated for a moment—and then, to his horror, went inside.

He drew his knife from the deep side pocket where it was stored and clipped the scabbard to his belt.

He entered a dim space, warm and humid. Before him loomed an enormous plant laden with fleshy red flowers and drooping, dark green leaves. He thought, I’m face-to-face with a living creature from another world.

Perhaps they had been projected by some unimaginable power associated with the drone to a planet across the galaxy. As he reached out to touch the leaves, though, he noticed a vaguely familiar object along a path off to his right, facing away from him. Dark blue and wheeled, it had handles that indicated that it was designed to be pushed.

“Gina?”

There was no reaction. He moved closer to the small vehicle. As he looked down at it, the sense of familiarity increased. He leaned over and saw something with smooth, pink skin. It was covered deep in blankets, and he knew immediately what it was. With a trembling hand, he reached down and touched the soft face of the baby that was sleeping in the stroller.

Then something was on his back, a light, lithe form grabbing his face from behind and shrieking like a cat set on fire. Lurching back to avoid upending the stroller, he plunged into the huge plant in an attempt to shake off what he thought was a cat.

“It’s okay,” Gina’s voice shouted, “he’s okay!”