Riley has been staring through the porthole for hours, barely moving. His lips tremble as they whisper the same words over and over with quiet reverence: “It’s an angel.”

I know what the Bible says about angels: they’re not fair-haired women with feathered wings or chubby cherubs with rosy cheeks. No. They’re abominations. Horrific assemblages of faces and limbs. Rows of eyes embedded in wheels of fire. They’re awful. Monstrous. Terrifying.

Just like the creature hovering outside our airlock.

I don’t know what the thing is or what it wants with us, but I know one thing.

It’s no angel.

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