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spun off away from their planet. Others brushed by or collided head-on, overloading electrical grids and telecommunications systems. In 2009, the crash of Air France 447 was thought to have been caused by a fluctuation in Earth’s magnetic field above South America, killing two hundred passengers and crew.
    Marcus gestured for Steve to take his place at the computer. “I’m sending our files to SWPC,” he said. “If you want to correct anything, now’s your chance.”
    “Okay, okay.” Steve rolled his eyes, defeated.
    Marcus scooted back in his chair. Steve slid over. He began studying the plots in detail while Marcus reexamined the data himself, searching for errors. There were none.
    As he worked, Steve changed the subject. “How’s it going with Roell?”
    Marcus’s son had been visiting for his summer trade-off between Marcus and Janet, so he’d come to the array with his father. But their relationship was… complicated.
    “He’s mad at me,” Marcus said. “I should have left him at home.”
    “Sometimes you want to strangle ’em.” Steve had two children himself, although they were younger than Roell, aged thirteen and eleven. “Try not to be too hard on him or yourself,” he said. “I read somewhere teenage minds are different than ours. I mean physically different. Their frontal lobes haven’t developed. They’re more impulsive.”
    Marcus nodded.
    At seventeen, Roell was interested in two things, girls and balls, which sounded like a bad joke, but it was an honest assessment of his son, who lived for basketball and football. Marcus couldn’t help feeling exasperated. That he hadn’t been more involved with Roell’s school activities or Boy Scouts was a constant regret.
    “Christ,” Steve said, reacting to the computer screen.
    Marcus felt his insides flip-flop. “You think I’m right.”
    Steve hesitated. He gazed at Marcus with a troubled expression. “I’m going to call my family,” he said. “Then let’s wake everyone up and get ’em back at the computers. We need to figure out what’s going on.”
    Minutes later, Marcus hurried through the station’s hallway. The building consisted of two prefabs joined in a T. The control room and a small lounge formed the extremities. The hallway led down the spine of the T to four compact offices and storage closets. Marcus had arranged two cots in one office, planning to bunk with Roell until Roell asked to move. A ranch house stood near the station, but Marcus and Steve hadn’t wanted to impose on the site staff by evicting anyone from a real bed.
    The office Roell had chosen stank of athletic shoes. He kept the window shut and his Air Jordans off, yet it wasn’t necessarily a bad smell when Marcus knocked on the door and leaned in. The room smelled like a healthy young animal.
    Roell sat in his sleeping bag with his iPhone, his lean body folded around the gadget as his thumb worked at its screen. In the dim room, with the blinds drawn, the phone illuminated Roell’s face like a spotlight. That must have been part of the appeal. Marcus had seen enough of his son’s texts to know his conversations amounted to
What up
and
Nuthin.
Nevertheless, texting seemed to fulfill the boy’s need for attention.
    “Come to the control room with me,” Marcus said.
    “I want to go home. To Mom’s.”
    “You like computers,” Marcus said. “We’re networking with some of the greatest technology in astrophysics. IBEX. Hubble. Let me show you.”
    “Have you seen what’s happening in the real world? The Chinese are bracketing our guys.”
    “Right.”
    Most of the news lately had been focused on the Marines, who’d returned to Vietnamese soil after forty years, this time in support of the communist government. Vietnam, Korea, and Japan were all potential flashpoints in America’s standoff with China, but Marcus wished Roell wasn’t so attracted to the drama. The boy’s fascination was strange. He played at being involved in gangsta rap,