Trouble in the Stars

by Sarah Prineas

  “You’re devious,” I say.

  “We certainly are,” the captain agrees.

  “Even more devious than I am,” I say.

  “I doubt,” the captain says dryly, “that is possible.”

  24

  The captain tells me to go back to my room. “And once you’re in there, stay there,” she orders. “I don’t need you underfoot.”

  I gather up the protein bars. “Where are we going, exactly?” I ask.

  “Ah,” Captain Astra says. “You have a question, right?”

  “I have a lot of questions,” I say. Where did I come from? Why was I in a StarLeague prison? What will happen the next time I turn into the Hunter? Is it true that cheese powder is made out of neon cows? Will Electra ever stop disliking me? Why is The Lady smiling? Do stars really sing?

  “I’ll bet you do,” the captain says. “But the main one.”

  My main question is whether there are others like me somewhere in the galaxy. “We’re going to find the shapeshifters, right?”

  “We are,” the captain says.

  “Have you figured out where they are?” I ask, and inside me I feel a strange bubble of excitement and hope and terror and happiness.

  “No,” the captain says. Before the happy-bubble inside me can pop, she goes on. “Not yet. For now, thanks to the stealth-box, we’re hidden from Peacemaker and General Smag. Once we’re sure we’re safe, there’s a place we can go to find out where the shapeshifters are. There is something called The Knowledge, which knows everything about everything in the entire galaxy.”

  “The Knowledge,” I repeat. “Is it a computer?”

  “I’m not sure what it is,” the captain says. “We are going to ask it your question, and we will get an answer.” She tells me that The Knowledge inhabits an asteroid that orbits a weak star that isn’t too far from our current location. “Amby should be able to set a direct course,” she goes on. “It’ll take us about two days to get there.”

  And then an alarm goes off and the captain shoots to her feet. “What?!” she exclaims, and then goes to the communications station, where she peers at a screen. “Peacemaker,” she says, and makes it sound like a curse. “There is no way they could be tracking us.” She punches a few buttons and gives a frustrated curse. “But somehow they’re tracking us.”

  A creepy coldness crawls up my spine. Worry, I think. “Will they catch us before we get to The Knowledge?”

  “Not if I have anything to do with it,” she mutters. Then she points at the door. “On your way back to your room, tell Reetha that I need her on the bridge. Now!”

  * * *

  Quickly and quietly, I make my way from the bridge to the room where Reetha sleeps.

  Except, it turns out, lizardians don’t sleep.

  When I tap on the door to see if she’s there, it slides open immediately, and Reetha looms in the doorway, staring down at me. I’m standing in the dim corridor, the pockets of my coverall stuffed full of protein bars, the metal floor cold under my bare toes.

  She folds her arms. “What.”

  “The captain wants you on the bridge,” I tell her. “The Peacemaker changed course and is tracking us again.”

  She nods and starts to push past me.

  “Reetha,” I say, and she pauses. “I have some questions for you. It’ll only take a minute.”

  “Ask,” Reetha says in a low voice.

  “Well,” I say. “You’ve known for a while that I’m a shapeshifter. Why didn’t you tell the captain? Why didn’t you space me? Do you even like me? It’s hard to tell.”

  Reetha huffs out a frustrated sigh. Then she reaches up with a claw and taps her own ridged forehead. “Not. Human.”

  I blink. Of course. I have taken the shapes of other species before, and they have their own ways of thinking. Reetha has her own lizardian reasons for what she does.

  And, I think, more than anybody else on this ship, Reetha sees me. She sees me.

  I wait, but she doesn’t add anything. “I have one more question,” I say. “How did you know that there are other shapeshifters in the galaxy?”

  Reetha stares unblinking at me with her golden eyes. “Screen.” Then she leaves, heading for the bridge.

  * * *

  I know, I know. I told the captain that I would go straight back to my room. Instead I head to the mess-room so I can look up shapeshifters on the screen, just as Reetha told me to do.

  The mess-room is quiet and dark. Electra is lying on the couch, asleep.

  I sneak across to a locker and get the remote, and then I drag Amby’s nest-chair into the middle of the room. After climbing into it, I push the button on the remote, scrolling through until I find the information I’m looking for displayed in big pictures on the screen.

  It turns out that humans, at least, have things called legends and myths about shapeshifters. There are stories about humans who can change into animals, or about demons—evil creatures—that can change into just about anything and do things like eat hearts and livers and drown humans and drink their blood.

  The nāga is sometimes a snake that has the face of a human, and sometimes a human with snakes growing out of their neck.

  As I’m watching a picture of a nāga on the screen, I realize that Electra is awake and sitting up on the couch. She doesn’t say anything as the next shapeshifter appears. It’s a selkie, which is a mammal called a seal that can become human if they take off their seal skin. I can’t quite figure out how they manage this. It must be messy.

  Electra and I keep on watching. The kitsune, we learn, is a fox that can turn into a human. The legends say that the kitsune is always hungry and eats a lot. Hmmm.

  Another kind of shapeshifter is a human person called a prince who is turned into a frog and then back again by a kiss.

  Did you already know about kissing? It’s when humans, for emotional reasons, touch their lips to another human’s lips. I keep thinking I’ve found out the weirdest thing about humans, and then there’s something even weirder.

  The screen goes dark. I turn it off and get to my feet.

  Electra, on the couch, stays quiet.

  There wasn’t all that much information about shapeshifters, but suddenly I feel sure that if the captain is sneaky enough and The Knowledge is helpful enough and if we can stay ahead of Peacemaker and not get arrested by General Smag and put on trial by the StarLeague and tossed into a secret class-four military prison . . .

  . . . we are going to find them.

  25

  I’m hoping we managed to get away from the Peacemaker again. There’s nothing I can do to help with that, so I do what the captain ordered—I go back to the little room with 147 stars on the ceiling.

  I intend to stay there—I really do!

  But being lonely, it turns out, is even worse than being hungry. I last about another day—we should be almost to The Knowledge’s asteroid—when I can’t stand it anymore.

  Escaping the second time is just as easy as it was the first time. After oozing out, I shift into my human shape and lope along to the mess-room and poke my nose in.

  Electra is on the floor doing push-ups. Seeing me, she pauses. “You.”

  “Yep,” I say.

  “You’re not wearing any clothes,” she notes.

  “They don’t come with me when I shift,” I tell her.

  Then Amby comes out of the galley, holding a bowl of food. Seeing me, their eyes go wide, they shriek and drop the bowl, and stew splatters around their feet.

  I edge into the mess-room and close the door behind me. “Hello,” I say.

  Amby is backing away, their long fingers over their chest to calm themself. “I’d better . . . Oh no. This is . . . well.” The backs of their legs hit the couch, and they fold up, shivering a little.

  I feel shivery too, and it’s not just becau
se it’s cold in the mess-room and I’m not wearing any clothes. Amby’s the one who told me about family and home, and now they are afraid of me.

  After getting some clothing from a locker and putting it on—just a big shirt that must belong to Reetha, because it hangs down to my knees—I head for the galley, where I grab some cleaning spray and a cloth. “Don’t worry, Amby,” I say as I kneel on the floor to wipe up the spilled stew. “I’m not going to bother you.”

  Electra has gotten to her feet and is leaning to the side, stretching her muscles. “You’re already bothering them,” she says. “Almost as much as you’re bothering me.”

  “Sorry,” I say. “I got hungry.”

  “Oh, what a surprise,” Electra says.

  “And lonely,” I add.

  She doesn’t say anything about that.

  Finished cleaning up the floor, I go to the galley, where I roll up my sleeves and start concocting a kind of dessert food called cake. To make it, you combine basic baking mix from a packet and egg powder from another packet and water, and stir it up really well, and then it sets for about a minute, and it’s cake.

  “What are you doing?” Electra calls.

  “Cooking,” I say.

  “Why?” she asks.

  I poke my head out of the galley. “It’s my job.”

  “No it’s not,” she shoots back.

  “Yes it is,” I say happily, and start stirring the cake mix.

  “This is a stupid argument,” she grumbles. “Isn’t it?” she asks Amby, who is still sitting on the couch.

  “I . . . I don’t . . .” Amby says faintly.

  I put the cake aside to set, and start looking through the cabinets to see if we have any grasshoppers, whatever they are, for Electra’s cake.

  I hear footsteps and look up to find that Electra has come up to the counter.

  “I can’t believe Peacemaker and General Smag haven’t caught us yet,” she says.

  Us, she said. That’s interesting. “Captain Astra is devious,” I tell her.

  She leans on the counter. “You are all devious.”

  At that I look up at her and grin, and in response her tintacles go from green to purple, and they wave around her head. She doesn’t smile back at me, though; she scowls.

  I wonder if she still thinks that I’m not a person.

  The cake is ready, so I get out a knife to cut it, and put a piece on a plate and give it to her. “Here. It’s chocolate.”

  Amby is still sitting on the couch, looking from me to Electra and back again with wide eyes.

  I give them my nicest, most normal smile. “Do you want a piece of cake? It’s delicious.”

  “Well,” Amby says, and I can see that they are trying to be brave. “I think . . . yes. I rather would.” They come over to the counter and let me hand them a plate of cake.

  Then I ask Electra, “Do you know if Peacemaker is still tracking us?”

  She’s silent for a moment. Then she says, “They were talking about it at breakfast. Apparently the stealth-box is working properly.” She glances over at Amby. “Isn’t that right?”

  Amby nods. “Yes. We should . . . Well, you know, we should be able to avoid being detected. There is no . . . no way for them to track us.”

  Then I ask them if they will tell me about their family and their home planet, because I want to hear about it again and Electra hasn’t heard it in the first place.

  “I don’t need to hear about Amby’s family,” Electra says. She has cake crumbs on her face, and she’s frowning. “Or their home.”

  “Yes, you do,” I tell her. “Go ahead, Amby.”

  They blink and set their cake plate on the counter. “Well . . .”

  “Please?” I ask.

  “All right.” Leaving their cake uneaten, they settle onto the couch, next to Electra, and I sit on the floor, and Amby tells about their parental units, and about their home in a cozy nest high up in a tree, and their many pod-siblings. As they talk about their family, I can see that Amby misses them all a lot. I lean against the couch, listening, and I can imagine what their home planet was like. At the end of the story, Amby falls silent for a few moments. “But now, you know,” Amby adds at last, “the Hindsight is my home.” I feel the faintest, feather-light touch of their hand on the top of my head. “And,” they go on, “it is home . . . Well, it is home for the rest of the crew too.”

  Then Captain Astra rushes into the room, interrupting. “To the bridge, Amby,” she barks, and then glowers at me.

  “P-Peacemaker?” Amby quavers, getting to their feet.

  “Yeah,” the captain says, heading out the door again. “I have no idea how the StarLeague is tracking us, but somehow they’ve picked us up again. We have got to shake them before we get to The Knowledge.”

  26

  Banished to my room again, I lie on the bed and listen to the pulse engines humming and stuttering, and for a while they roar, as if the Hindsight is in a huge hurry. My guess is that it’s more evasive maneuvers, trying to escape the relentless General Smag. It’s better for me to stay out of the way while this is happening—I make the rest of the crew nervous. I know for sure that even chocolate cake and a pat on the head can’t make Amby stop seeing the Hunter when they look at me.

  To pass the time, and to try to keep from feeling too worried, I count the stars on the ceiling again.

  And I try to imagine what it’ll be like when The Knowledge answers my question and we find the other shapeshifters. I wonder what a shapeshifter place might be like. Will it be like Amby’s home planet? Will there be people who are like me and who aren’t scared of me? Plenty of food? Warmth and color and interesting conversations? Safety? Home? Family?

  But what if it’s not like that at all?

  The pulse engines shut down. The ship goes silent.

  We must have reached The Knowledge.

  “Reetha,” I ask as she opens the door to let me out, “what emotion is it when you feel shaky in your stomach and you can’t sit still and your thoughts keep spinning off in all directions?”

  She shrugs. “Human.”

  I am feeling very human about this meeting with The Knowledge.

  Reetha takes me to the mess-room. There, Electra and the crew, except for the captain, are waiting for a message from The Knowledge.

  As I come in, they all stare at me. Electra’s tintacles are muddy green, and she has them tied with a string so they can’t escape and flutter around her face.

  “Hello,” I say, and give half a wave.

  None of them say hello back to me. They all watch carefully as I cross the room to my corner, where I lean against the wall.

  After a short while the captain hurries in. She spots me at once. “Good, you’re here.” Then she turns to address the others. “The Knowledge has given us permission to fly the Dart to its asteroid.” She frowns. “It wants me, the ‘StarLeague cadet,’”—she nods at Electra—“and our ‘passenger,’ which is Trouble, obviously.”

  “Why does it want me?” Electra asks from where she’s standing at attention not far from me. Then she adds, “How does it even know that I’m being held prisoner on this ship?”

  “That’s what The Knowledge does,” the captain answers. “It knows.”

  She gives orders for the crew to stay alert and for Shkkka to have the ship ready to depart as soon as we return from the asteroid. We can’t stay here for too long, she says. Even though the Hindsight is hidden in one of the stealth-box’s space-pockets, General Smag is out there—searching for us.

  After taking the restraining cuff off Electra’s wrist, the captain leads us to the cargo bay, where Electra’s Dart has been stored.

  It’s sleek and silver and it fills up almost the entire space. Thanks to Shkkka, the damage I did has been fixed. The captain pushes a button and a hatch slides open.


  Before we step inside, the captain stops, turning to Electra. “Star League Cadet,” she says.

  “Ye-es?” Electra says slowly. She was looking at the Dart with shining eyes—now she turns to answer the captain.

  Captain Astra points at me. “That is a dangerous shapeshifter.” She leans closer, speaking right into Electra’s face. “Behave yourself. Try to escape or alert General Smag or do anything that I don’t order you to do, and I’ll send Trouble after you, and believe me, you will regret it.”

  “A threat,” Electra says bitterly.

  The captain straightens. “Yes. A threat.”

  “Fine,” Electra says.

  “Good,” the captain says.

  They glare at each other for another moment. Then we all climb into the Dart. The pilot’s seat is surrounded by blinking lights, buttons, switches, screens, scrolling information. The captain slides into it. Electra sits in a narrow seat behind it, and I sit on the floor nearby.

  “Huh,” the captain says. She reaches out and pushes a button. Nothing happens. She pushes another button, and the outer hatch closes. She flips a switch, and the Dart lurches up, bashes against a wall of the cargo bay, and, with a rattling thump, lands on the deck.

  “Are there seat belts on this ship?” I ask Electra, rubbing a bump on my head.

  “Usually they’re not needed,” she answers. Then she calls, “Do you want me to fly the Dart, Captain, since I actually know how?”

  The captain turns in her seat, looking annoyed. “That must be why The Knowledge wanted you along.”

  They switch places, Electra slithering past the captain to get into the pilot seat. Quickly, she powers up the Dart.

  I watch out the front window as the big hatchway at the end of the Hindsight opens, revealing stars, darkness, and a distant sun. Gently, the Dart lifts from the deck and eases out into space. Once we’re outside, the asteroid comes into view.

  Usually an asteroid is a big chunk of lumpy dead rock drifting in space.