She saw a dark shape move quickly away from the outside of the viewport. It had seen her. She knew it had seen her. For one microsecond, she saw red eyes looking at her…and then it was gone: something large and oblong-shaped fluttering away. Something with wings. She knew what it must have been. But it had not looked solid, just sort of filmy, insubstantial.

A ghost.

Jesus, it had been…a…ghost.

Javonivic stood there unsteadily, trying to wrap her brain around something that was in direct violation to everything that she believed in and held to be true. A ghost. A spook. Yes, there had been talk of such things at Kharkov five years ago, too. Ghosts of the Old Ones. Psychic emanations powered by human minds. Decayed intelligences that had never truly died, not in the human sense of death.

“I don’t believe in ghosts,” she said.

“Well, I’m glad to hear that,” a voice said.

She swung around and Hubbs was standing there, looking amused. He had always been the emotionless, cold type. He smiled rarely, emoted about as much as a marble bust. But lately, and particularly since they’d gotten down to the Neptune, he’d been acting spooky: smiling, acting like he knew something the others didn’t. Some big secret he did not want to share.

“I…I didn’t know you were there,” Javonivic said, feeling more than a little foolish.

“You never struck me as the sort to talk to themselves.”

“I’m not.”

He smiled thinly. “Well, this place changes a lot of things, don’t it?”

She sighed. “What’s that suppose to mean?”

“You tell me.” He walked over to the viewport, staring out into the murky depths illuminated by the exterior habitat lights. Tiny swimming forms darted about. “What did you see out there, Javy?”

“Nothing.”

“Bullshit. You saw something. Don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone. I know what it’s like to see things.”

She turned away, headed back up to the control room and Hubbs followed her as she knew he would and hoped he wouldn’t.

“It’s the shits, ain’t it, Javy?” he said as she studied the telemetry from the Exosuits. “When everything you know or thought you knew turns out to be wrong. It’s just the absolute shits. You come down here not believing in things like ghosts and spooks and aliens…or telling yourself that you don’t…and then it all changes. One day you’re sweet little Pollyanna Javonivic, saying your prayers and watching over the team like little Mother Hubbard and the next? The next, Pollyanna dies a really ugly death when she realizes the world ain’t what she thought it was. Just like the human race ain’t what she thought it was. It’s hard. It’s just the absolute shits.”