The dead had stilled in our absence. The worms drifted among the corpses, delicate as filaments, without any obvious motion. The alien parasites—it was hard to think of them like that, as things from another world, created by inhuman hands. They were quiet, but I knew better than to think they were destroyed. They were only waiting.

“Radio is here,” Bhattacharya said. His voice was rough, and he was doing everything he could not to look at the glass-walled room. When I hesitated, my hands hovering uncertainly, he reached out and opened the channel for me. “You can talk to Homestead, if they’re listening.”

I slid into the chair and swallowed, trying to gather moisture in my desert-dry throat. The large displays at the front of the bridge still showed the navigation chart: an array of lights and symbols, words and numbers, bewildering in its complexity. I hadn’t thought I would have to do any of this without Malachi or Boudicca or the others. I had never even been in open space, untethered from Earth, until today.

“Homestead, this is House of Wisdom. This is Zahra. Is anybody listening?”

There was no answer. Beside me, Bhattacharya listened to radio traffic across all frequencies. Orbital Control was tracking the ship with Bhattacharya’s friends and was preparing a transport to intersect them. Pangong was trying to contact us again. They were trying to contact Homestead too.

Homestead wasn’t answering.

“Please,” I said, trying again. “Homestead, this is House of Wisdom. Can you hear me? Is there anybody there?”

Nothing. I tried again. Nothing. Fear curdled in my gut. I tried to think of rational reasons for their silence. Adam could have forbidden the bridge crew from answering hails from me or anybody. There could be nobody on the bridge—but why would they abandon it, if they were making course adjustments to approach Providence? Images of what might be happening aboard the ship flashed through my mind.

I slid back from the console and looked at Bhattacharya. I wanted to know what he was planning. He would not have lied to his friends and sent them away unless it was something he did not think they or SPEC would condone.

“You want to stop the parasite,” I said.

“Right.” He nodded absently; he was still listening to the radio chatter. “But first I need to figure out how. And I’ve got no fucking idea.”

“What did your mother and the captain do before?”

“Vented the air and suffocated the parasite’s hosts, which gave the captain a chance to set the command override so they could alter the course to a stable orbit.”

I stared at him. “Suffocated the—”