I typed away on my computer even as the luxury private jet came to a halt at the gate. Stratt had to nudge me to make me stop working at all.

Three hours later, we waited in a conference room.

Always a conference room. My life was a collection of conference rooms these days. This one was nicer than most, at least. With fancy wood paneling and a stylish mahogany table. It was really something.

Stratt and I didn’t talk. I worked on heat-transfer-rate coefficients while she typed away on her laptop doing gosh-knows-what. We spent enough time together as it was.

Finally, a dour-looking woman entered the room and sat across from Stratt.

“Thank you for seeing me, Ms.Stratt,” she said with a Norwegian accent.

“No need to thank me, Dr. Lokken,” she said. “I’m here against my will.”

I looked up from my laptop. “You are? I thought you scheduled this.”

She didn’t take her eyes off the Norwegian. “I scheduled it because I had six different world leaders on the phone at the same time nagging me to do it. I finally relented.”

“And you are…?” Lokken asked me.

“Ryland Grace.”

She actually backed away. “The Ryland Grace? Author of ‘An Analysis of Water-Based Assumptions and Recalibration of Expectations for Evolutionary Models’?”

“Yeah, got a problem with that?” I said.

Stratt half smiled at me. “You’re famous.”

“Infamous,” said Lokken. “His childish paper was a slap in the face to the entire scientific community. This man works for you? Absurd. All his assumptions about alien life were proven wrong.”

I scowled. “Hey. My claim is life doesn’t need water to evolve. Just because we found some life that does use water, that doesn’t mean I’m wrong.”

“Of course it does. Two life-forms independently evolved to require water—”

“Independently?!” I snorted. “Are you out of your mind? Do you honestly think something as complicated as mitochondria would evolve the same way twice? This is obviously a panspermia event.”

She waved off my statement as if it were an annoying insect. “Astrophage mitochondria is very different from Earth mitochondria. They clearly evolved separately.”

“They’re ninety-eightpercent identical!”

“Ahem,” said Stratt. “I don’t really get what you’re fighting about, but can we—”

I pointed at Lokken. “This idiot thinks Astrophage evolved independently, but it’s obvious Astrophage and Earth life are related!”

“That’s fascinating, but—”

Lokken slapped the table. “How could a common ancestor have gotten across interstellar space?”

“The same way Astrophage does it!”

She leaned toward me. “Then why haven’t we seen interstellar life all along?”

I leaned toward her. “No idea. Maybe it was a fluke.”

“How do you explain the differences in mitochondria?”

“Four billion years of divergent evolution.”

“Stop,” Stratt said calmly. “I don’t know what this is… some sort of science-related pissing contest? That’s not what we’re here for. Dr. Grace, Dr. Lokken, please sit down.”