‘Dr. Foletta’s been transferred. I’m in charge now.’ She holds out her hand. ‘My name’s Dominique, and I’m here to help you.’

The transport soars through the wormhole like a pebble flowing through a garden hose, the effects of the supernova twisting and turning the currents of energy, until the massive spaceship is forcibly spit out the other side.

The blackness of space returns.

They soar toward a yellow sun and familiar star patterns. Up ahead, a bright blue world.

Home.

The asteroid-sized transport slows, establishing orbit around the watery planet.

The elder male Guardian paces the conn, his transhuman blood simmering. What happened? Every calculation was accounted for!

Apparently not every calculation. The younger male Guardian’s telepathy burns in his superior’s mind. The Balam entered the wormhole before us. Its presence apparently altered the wormhole’s trajectory.

The female, positioned within a comm link station, opens her eyes. Cartography confirms we overshot both third and fourth dimensional coordinates. She activates the viewport, the image of the blue world they are orbiting appearing below. The planet we are now orbiting is not Earth, it is Mars. Ancient Mars. The computer positively identified the planet’s moon as Deimos.

Mars has two moons, not one. Where’s Phobos?

I believe we are Phobos.

The elder male stares hard at her. How far into our past have we traveled?

She looks up at him. The time period equates to 127 million years before the time of Osiris.

And the wormhole?

Gone. We are stranded in this time period.

Warning lights and a telepathic siren blare throughout the vessel.

WARNING: TACHYON DRIVE OVERHEATING. PRIMARY AND BACKUP COOLING SYSTEMS OFF-LINE. EXPLOSION IMMINENT.

The female works her control. The ship’s engines have seized, so have our shields!

The gargantuan internal explosion violates the hull, igniting a flash fire that races through the vessel, consuming everything in its path. Sections of infrastructure melt and collapse, the Guardian crying out in agony as the intense heat bursts their hairless elongated skulls into flames, melting their eyeballs, peeling their charred skin away from their bones.

Steam fills the corridors as rows of cryogenic pods begin to melt. Glass fractures, a river of gel pouring from the shattered vessels percolating along the gridded floor.

It is over almost as quickly as it began. Within seconds, the vacuum of space inhales the ship’s air supply, dousing the flames, leaving death and destruction in its wake.

The damaged iridium-and-iron satellite continues orbiting Mars, its interior hull now lifeless—

—save for two isolated souls.

An azure lagoon, surrounded by lush tropical foliage. A cool breeze stirs the palm fronds.

Dominique lies naked on the cool pink sand, watching in delight as Mick climbs to the top of a twenty-two-foot waterfall.

‘Dom, watch!’

‘I’m watching, but you’d better hold on to your you-know-what.’

With boyish charm, Mick leaps from the rock, executing an awkward somersault.