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there was the suffocating, potentially toxic Skyphoi atmosphere.
    No, Dale had probably spent more time in the Skyphoi habitat than any human, but the competition was non-existent.
    And the Skyphoi remained a mystery, the darkest of the three bad habitats.
    Dale didn’t really want to criticize his fellow HBs for their lack of curiosity, but he was pretty sure that he was the only one who had seen them all, who would know much of anything about them, firsthand. At least on purpose.
    Not that he was an explorer at heart. His wanderings had been forced. So now he lurked, he skulked. He had—no doubt about it—spent far too much time alone.
    But now, today, this moment, he was back among . . . people.
    And their unique environment.

They’re here! The outbound Keanu vessel we’ve been expecting entered Earth’s atmosphere early this morning, Perth time, and appears to have landed in southern India . . . likely Bangalore.
We, which is to say Colin, were actually able to track them on approach—a bright streak across the sky, like a meteoroid.
We were unable to intercept any useful telemetry (they may not have been transmitting it or, if so, only in a direct beam to Keanu) or voice, only bursts of what was clearly communication, but likely scrambled.
Of course, this means other parties were surely able to track them, too. And there are indications that someone—guess who?—took a shot at them during final approach.
But none of our eyes and ears in Bangalore reported any crash. And the total blackout of Keanu-related news—and the sudden disappearance of General Radhakrishnan and Director Remilla of ISRO—suggests that the Keanu folks made it, and are safe.
Of course, none of us are truly safe.
But this may be the first step.
ENCRYPTED MESSAGE TO THE KETTERING GROUP,
APRIL 13, 2040

TAJ
    Taj Radhakrishnan ran out of Yelahanka’s operations center, intending to leave his wife behind. “No, you don’t,” she shouted, “not without me!” And she followed him.
    Taj was too concerned with what had just happened north of the Yelahanka runway to really care about his wife’s actions. She was not a member of the official welcoming committee and should not have been in the air base operations center at all.
    But Taj and the other committee members had allowed it, given that Mrs. Radhakrishnan, the former Tea Nowinski, was a space professional and a NASA astronaut—in fact, the commander of the first piloted lunar landing mission of the twenty-first century back in 2016. She may not have worked in the field for twenty years, but, then, neither had Taj.
    Perhaps it was that layoff that contributed to his wife’s loss of operational discipline—the urge that allowed her to race for Taj’s Jeep as it and several similar vehicles started heading for the landing site.
    “I want to see them!” she said.
    “Get in.” She had a right, after all. Taj had wanted Tea with him from the beginning but had run into a bureaucratic barrier: If the welcoming committee had no room for a long list of local politicians, ISRO certainly didn’t want Taj making room for Tea Nowinski Radhakrishnan, even if she was stepmother to one of the Adventure crew . . . and former quasi-stepmom to a second.
    The driver gunned the Jeep with purpose, violently flinging Taj, Tea, and the fourth party, Wing Commander Kaushal, side to side. “Careful!” Kaushal snapped. He was a round little man—short and so fat that Taj wondered how he passed the annual fitness exams. But then, Kaushal was known to be politically savvy if not especially skilled as a pilot. He was, in Taj’s view, a navigator, in all senses of the word.
    And, as the commandant of Yelahanka, a necessary addition to the welcoming committee.
    The convoy consisted of two Jeeps, an ambulance and rescue unit, and a cherry picker. They rolled toward the spacecraft without waiting for an order.
    As the convoy turned onto the runway, Tea looked stricken, so he said, before she could ask,