1: The U.S. Senate
I thought we were safe.
Once the truth was known, they wouldn’t kill us. Dead scientists with a story in the newspapers would become martyrs. If they got to us before the story came out, we wouldn’t be martyrs, we would just be dead, like the others.
At the last minute, the Senate declared the hearing closed. No reporters. No public gallery. No cameras broadcasting our testimony to the world.
Our story might never leave the building.
Two armed Capitol Police officers stood outside the chamber. I smiled at one of them. He didn’t react.
I looked across the anteroom at Gladys.
Dr. Gladys Ewing, one of the finest cyber-technology experts I had ever known, was studying the room as anxiously as I was. She caught me looking at her.
“Good luck, Victoria,” she whispered. “I have faith in you.”
Ana Svesson sat nearby. Our language expert. Calm, composed Ana.
Was she frightened too? After everything we had been through, maybe we had simply learned different ways to show fear.
The steady ticking of Andrew Jackson’s clock filled the anteroom. Every few seconds, muffled voices escaped through the closed chamber doors—speeches, arguments, bursts of conversation, nothing intelligible.
Tick.
Tick.
Tick.
My shoulders ached from holding myself rigid.
Two of our colleagues had not lived long enough to reach this room.
A tremendous bang made me jump. The chamber doors had swung open. I forced myself to breathe.
A man in a blue suit and scarlet ascot stood in the doorway. “Dr. Campos,” he announced without enthusiasm, “you may enter.”
I smiled as though I did this every day and walked past him.
The Senate Chamber was all polished wood, marble, heavy furniture, and an ornate ceiling. It was impressive, but at that moment it mostly reminded me who had the power and who didn’t.
Am I a prisoner approaching her execution or a rocket scientist about to save the world?
I had dressed carefully for the occasion: a tailored business suit that flattered my hundred-pound, five-foot-nothing frame, my hair pulled into a severe bun and secured with oversized pins. Geeky glasses completed the effect. I wanted to look attractive enough to hold the old goats’ attention but nerdy enough for them to believe my science.
The senators sat in concentric semicircles, with me at the center—in more ways than one.
Most were men. Most were elderly. Many were scowling.
Oh God, I prayed silently. Please don’t let me throw up.
The clerk administered the oath. I took my seat before a microphone large enough to hide behind. For several seconds nobody spoke.
I stared at the rows of senators and wondered how a lifelong fascination with astronomy had brought me here.
I was the American-born daughter of Cuban immigrants, a scientist who had once expected to spend her life studying other worlds. Now I was hiding from people who might kill me.
I need to stay cool and calm, even if it goes against every instinct I have. Don’t let them see the fiery-Latina side I usually save for people I like.
I recognized Senator Broadwater of Oklahoma. He had spent the previous year promoting something called the Freedom of Speech Act, which seemed primarily designed to restrict speech he didn’t like.
He shuffled through several sheets of paper before finally looking up. “Please state your name and address for the record.”
My hands trembled. I took a sip of water. “I am Dr. Victoria Campos.”
“And your address?”
Another sip. “I cannot give you my current address, Senator. It is classified.”
His eyebrows rose. “Miss Campos, this is a closed hearing.”
“That doesn’t mean secrets don’t leave this room.”
A few senators shifted in their seats. Broadwater stared at me.
“With my life in jeopardy,” I continued, “I respectfully decline to provide information that could reveal where I live. My address is available to anyone with proper clearance.”
He grumbled. “Then I suppose Victoria Campos isn’t your real name either.”
“It was the name given to me at birth and my legal name during the period we’re discussing. It is not the name I use now.”
“And I suppose your current name is another secret.”
“Yes, Sir.”
“Where do you work?”
“I can’t tell you where.”
“What do you do?”
“I’m a waitress.”
That produced several raised eyebrows. Broadwater leaned back. “A rocket scientist waiting tables? That seems strange.”
“It seems strange to me too, Sir.”
A few people chuckled.
“It helps me stay hidden.”
“So we have no address, no current name, and no place of employment. We have no choice but to call you Miss Campos, if that is acceptable.”
“No, Sir. Please call me Dr. Campos.”
His mouth tightened.
“If you prefer, you can call me Victor. Most of my life, that’s what people called me.”
“Victor?”
“Yes, Sir.”
“You must have been quite a tomboy.”
“Something like that.”
He looked me up and down.
“Well, I must say, you are the prettiest little Victor I’ve ever seen.”
I wanted to tell him that I had a Ph.D. in interplanetary geology and that the future of the planet might depend on what I knew. Instead, to my everlasting shame, I heard myself say, “Thank you, Sir.”
Broadwater smiled. “Good morning, Miss Campos, and thank you for appearing before us.”
“You’re welcome, Mister Broadwater.”
He either missed it or chose to ignore it.
“Tell us about the jobs you’ve held that you are permitted to discuss.”
My blouse suddenly felt two sizes too small around my neck. I took another breath.
“After receiving my doctorate from the University of Central Florida, I worked for NASA at Kennedy Space Center as a development resources technician on what became Project Goddess. Later the project was transferred covertly to the Treasury Department’s Kansas City Financial Services Center.”
Broadwater looked confused. “What was your position there?”
“Interplanetary geologist.”
“Why did the Treasury Department need an interplanetary geologist?”
“I suppose they didn’t, Sir. That may explain why I’m a waitress today.”
This time the laughter was louder. Even I smiled.
“My official title was Resource Technician. My actual work remained with Project Goddess.”
“And after Treasury?”
“I resigned to join Interplanetary Resources, Incorporated, in Orlando. I worked as a flight-path designer for their Venus probe.”
“When did you leave?”
“A little over two years ago.”
“Why?”
I hesitated. “On paper, I was fired for violating the company morals policy.”
Broadwater stopped turning pages.“Would you care to explain that?”
No—I absolutely would not, but refusing would make me look guilty.
“It was a pretense. Someone needed an excuse to remove me and the rest of my team.”
“What exactly were you accused of?”
I tightened my grip on the water glass. “Improper conduct during a private outing.”
Broadwater consulted his papers. “I believe the accusation involved nude dancing at a company function.”
His eyes practically sparkled. I felt heat rise into my face.
“No, Sir. It was not a company function, and we were not dancing nude.”
“You were nude?”
“That is not what I said.”
“Were you or were you not—”
I stood so fast my chair scraped the floor.
“No!”
The room went silent. I realized everyone was looking at me.
Broadwater smiled. “Now calm down, Miss. We are only trying to get to the bottom of this, if you’ll forgive the expression.”
A few senators laughed.
I didn’t.
“The incident was a private outing at Lovers Key. Nothing illegal happened. Months later, photographs and financial records were manipulated to make it appear that my colleagues and I had violated company policy. The accusation was used to fire us.”
“And that caused you to go into hiding?”
“No.”
I sat again. “Not immediately.”
Broadwater waited.
“After we were fired, two members of our team died.”
“Accidents.”
“That is how the deaths were officially classified.”
“And you believe they were murdered?”
“I believe I would be a fool not to consider the possibility.”
“Miss Campos, don’t you think you’re being a little paranoid?”
I looked directly at him.
“How would you react if senators suddenly began having fatal accidents?”
His expression hardened. “This hearing is about you, young lady, not me.”
“No, Senator. That is exactly my point. This isn’t about me.”
I leaned toward the microphone. “It is about what we discovered.”
“What makes you think anyone would want to kill a pretty little thing like you just for doing her job?”
There it was again: Pretty little thing.
I was still scared, but I was getting angry. “It isn’t about whether I’m pretty, Senator. It isn’t even about whether I’m important. Our findings are important. They threaten powerful interests.”
“Oh, come now. How can pure science threaten anyone?”
“Science threatens people whenever facts threaten profits.”
The room became very quiet. Broadwater stared at me. I stared back. For the first time since entering the chamber, my hands had stopped shaking.
He spent several more minutes questioning my personal life, my employment, and my judgment. Not once did he ask what we had discovered. Eventually he surrendered the floor.
I wiped my forehead and took another drink of water.
Senator Reitzig of Maryland leaned toward her microphone. “Dr. Campos, do you believe the storms that devastated the Mid-Atlantic last month were caused by climate change?”
“Attributing one storm solely to climate change is impossible,” I said. “But the pattern is not. Extreme weather events are becoming more frequent and more destructive. Ocean temperatures are rising. Sea levels are rising. Glaciers are melting. The trend is clear.”
“We also have earthquakes and volcanoes,” she said. “Did humans cause those?”
“No, Senator. Geological cycles are natural. What is happening to our climate is different. The change is extraordinarily rapid, and greenhouse gases produced by human activity are driving it.”
She looked ready to challenge me again, but Senator Nelson of Texas raised his hand.
He studied me for a moment. “Dr. Campos, I want to get to your actual research.”
“Thank you, Senator.”
Broadwater frowned.
Nelson continued. “You claim your team found signs of intelligent life on Venus?”
Everything inside me stopped. This was why I was here, why two people were dead, and why I had abandoned my career, my name, my home, and nearly everything else I had once considered my life.
I leaned toward the microphone. “Yes, Sir. We did.”
Nelson stared at me.“Why aren’t you famous? That would be the greatest scientific discovery in human history.”
“We were ordered to keep it secret.”
“So this is another Project Blue Book? Claims, rumors, no proof?”
“No, Sir.”
I looked around the chamber. “We had hard evidence.”
Nelson leaned forward. “Where is it?”
I swallowed. “It disappeared.”
For a moment I heard nothing but the faint ticking of that clock beyond the chamber doors.
The evidence was gone. Two of our people were dead. The rest of us had scattered into hiding. All I had left was the story.
So I began at the beginning.