“No way to tell.” Jerry spread his hands. “Just no way. How fast the aliens decay naturally, temperature, germs involved, whatever chemicals it may have used when it went into suspended animation with the others … We don’t know any of that stuff. What’s the old line? ‘The probability of predicting correctly in complete ignorance is zero.’” He’d got the line from an Analog he’d read in high school. That made it old for him, anyhow.

“He’s right,” Dale said. “We need to do more work before we try anything we can’t repair.”

“I agree a hundred percent—I said so already.” Steve gave the mission director a nod that seemed more than half a salute.

“Let’s talk some more after the photos get developed,” Jack said. “Then we’ll all be more or less on the same page.” Nobody said no, so the meeting broke up. Gator nodded to Jerry and Steve as they came out of Dale’s cabin. Jerry nodded back. He would have done the same with any other guard dog.

Jerry heard some grim news at dinner that night, brought by one of the B crew newcomers. He didn’t know who the man was; more unfamiliar faces sat at the table every day, it seemed. The engineer who’d had the little heart attack—Bob was his name—had flown from Midway to Honolulu to head home to the mainland. The connection was tight. He’d had to run to make it. He did … but moments after he fastened his seat belt, he had a big coronary and died on the spot.

“He was a good guy. I bet his family will miss him like anything,” Jerry said. He knew people his age to whom death seemed unreal: something to worry about in the great by-and-by, maybe, but not now. He wasn’t like that. He hadn’t been since he was seven. Death was real, and death was forever. He’d noticed his friends who’d fought in Vietnam had the same attitude.

So did Stephen Dole. Jerry supposed years piling up could also give it to you. “Too young,” Steve said, and then, “Anyone younger than I am who dies is too young by definition.”

Said a different way, it would have been a joke. Steve sounded altogether serious. Jerry nodded and said, “I hear you, man.” He sounded the same way.

After they ate, they headed for the Special Measurements container. Documents that had to do with the spaceship lived there. That included the photos Jerry and Steve had taken inside Humpty Dumpty.

Gator stood outside the door. “Hello again,” he said. Jerry said hello back, but made sure he shielded the keypad with his body as he punched in the entry code just the same.