by Eoin Colfer
Stefan extended a hand. “Let’s shake on it.”
Lincoln ignored the gesture. “We can shake when you bring my ship back in one piece.”
Lincoln led the Supernaturalists around the rear of the junkyard, to what appeared to be a solid wall of salvaged cars. He fished a garage-door remote from a string around his neck and hit the button. The wall split down the middle, rolling apart on rickety tracks. Immediately half a dozen stocky dogs lunged forward on bungee chains. Their lips were drawn back to reveal yellowed teeth, and dribbles of slobber swung from their jaws like jump ropes.
Lincoln hit another button on the remote, and the bungee-chains were coiled in.
“I don’t care how hi-tech things get, you can’t beat a hungry mutt for security.”
The dogs were a curious breed, with blunt snouts and red pelts.
Lincoln threw them a handful of bones from a bucket. “You like my babies? They cost me a pretty penny. I ordered them test-tubed from Cuba. Mostly pit-bull genes. Some bear too, and a few strands of chameleon for color.”
The HALO sat on a grille surrounded by a cage of ice. Refrigerator pumps spewed subzero crystals onto the glossy surface. The ship’s hull shimmered inside the frozen panes.
“You are a very fortunate young man, Stefan,” said Lincoln. “We had a launch planned for tonight. Nothing special, just a routine trawl to see what we could pick up. Otherwise it would take a few days to ice up the frame.”
Cosmo shuffled close to Mona. “What’s the ice for?”
“Camouflage, Cosmo. The HALO needs a couple of liquid-fueled boosters to shoot her the first half mile before the solar band kicks in. That kind of heat is going to show up on Myishi scanners. They don’t have any patience for pirates messing about in space. The ice stops the launch site showing up on-screen. Pirates have been using ice boxes for decades.”
Floyd and Bruce hauled one of the ice panels across with bailing hooks. The HALO sat on four blocks like a car that’s had its wheels boosted.
The Supernaturalists stepped inside the icy sheath. Cosmo touched the ship’s cold paneling. “This thing flies?”
Lincoln clipped him on the ear. “Of course she flies, cheeky boy. She flies, she soars, she glides. But most important, she lands.” He handed over the starter card with a flourish. “I don’t suppose you’ll be sharing the purpose of your voyage.”
Stefan pocketed the card, handing over the Lockheed Martin solar panel.
“You suppose right, Lincoln, old bean. We leave at dusk, so you have three hours to transfer whatever software you need onto the panel.”
“Do you have a mechanic?”
Mona was already busy with a screwdriver at one of the access panels. “We have a mechanic. Gimme an hour and I’ll tell you if we have a ship.”
Mona reported twenty-four electronic, computer, and mechanical glitches on her HALO checklist.
“Twenty-four,” said Stefan, rubbing his chin. “Anything critical?”
Mona consulted her list. “Mostly comfort stuff. The air filters are due for a change, but if it’s a quick run we should be okay. I did pressure tests on the space suits. They all need patching, except one. So you’ll be going out alone, Stefan.”
“Good. No more unnecessary risk for anybody from now on.”
“The flaps barely move, so no sharp turns. Most of the circuits are held together with tape from the last century, and the windscreen is filthy.”
“Wipers?”
“No.”
“Okay. Get a sponge and some hot water. We blast off in an hour.”
The HALO weighed fourteen tons and was roughly conical in shape. The craft was steered by tail flaps and a dozen gas jets, six of which were actually working. At some stage the hull had been painted European Union blue, but most of the color had been scraped off during various salvage missions. At the ship’s base were two fixed boosters that would provide the propulsion for the initial gravity break, at which point the “wedding band” would take over.
The wedding band was a gold-plated ring of solar panels that oscillated continuously as the ship moved. Each panel charged in turn, then moved back to make contact with a magnetic ring on the hull, to deposit its charge and make room for the next cell. In outer space, the HALO resembled nothing so much as a surfer girl twirling a Hula Hoop.
“How far into outer space are we going?” Cosmo asked Mona.
Mona was running a final system’s check, with a little help from a dog-eared manual.
“Technically, we’re were not going as far as outer space, just past the edge of the atmosphere. What’s the difference, Cosmo? A fall from anything over fifty feet will kill you. In any case we’re far more likely to die from a pressure leak than a fall.”
“Thanks,” said Cosmo. “I feel better now.”
“Good, because you’re my copilot.”
Cosmo pulled his combat jacket closer against the chill from the ice sheets. “Copilot? Mona, I can’t even send automobile coordinates to the Satellite.”
“Don’t worry, Cosmo. The computer does most of the work, and when we get close enough, the Satellite will guide us in.”
“If we get the access codes,” Cosmo reminded her.
Mona frowned at a red light on the console. She rapped it with a knuckle, and it turned green. “If Stefan isn’t worried about that, then I won’t worry either.”
Lincoln poked his head through the hatch. “The Lockheed,” he said, handing Mona the piggyback panel. “Make sure you get a solid contact. Liftoff in ten.”
Mona didn’t take orders well. “Liftoff in ten? Is there a mission control somewhere that I didn’t notice?”
Lincoln smiled sweetly. “No, my sarcastic little munchkin, there is no mission control. But my fridge pumps are out of gas, so you go in ten or the ice frame melts, and if that melts, then you don’t go at all. I’ll let you explain that to Stefan, shall I?”
Mona returned to her final check. “Good point. Ten minutes it is.”
Nine minutes later the Supernaturalists were strapped in gyro chairs, their ribs protected from g-force by armored vests. Above them the ice plates shimmered in the twilight.
“That ice will break, won’t it?” asked Cosmo. “It looks pretty thick.”
Mona’s finger hovered over the ignition button. “It should, in theory. The prow has been fitted with an icebreaker.”
Ditto and Stefan sat in the rear. In fact there were only three proper seats, so Ditto sat on Stefan’s knee, secured by an extended harness. The Bartoli baby was not pleased. “Of all the humiliations my condition has forced me to endure, this is the worst.”
Stefan patted him on the head. “There there, little fellow. Shall I tell you a story?”
“Stefan. This is not the time. I may be small, but I can still do some damage.”
Mona twisted in her gyro chair. “You seem a bit cranky, Ditto. Maybe you have gas.”
Ditto lunged forward, but the harness held him fast.
“Let’s go, Mona,” said Stefan. “Before he gets loose.”
Mona flipped the ignition’s safety cap. “We’re gone,” she said, pressing the red button.
With a massive roar, the boosters sparked, turning the ice to steam in seconds. The container melted around them. Steam billowed around the HALO, obscuring the view screen.
The craft left the launch pad slowly, struggling against the gravity that weighed it down. Power gauges fluttered into the red as the computer upped the thrust. The ice-cutter nosepiece cracked the overhead ice pane, then punched through. Below them water boiled and recondensed to form a thick mist.
Cosmo felt as though he were being shaken to pieces. This was not flying the way it was depicted in the TV holiday vids. Then again, this was not a Satellite-controled executive leisure craft. The HALO was a twenty-year-old twin booster pirate craft with barely enough memory to power an entertainment system.
The nose dipped slightly.
“This is the dangerous time,” said Mona, through c
hattering teeth. “If the initial burn is too strong, the stern goes up faster than the nose.”
“Then what?”
“Then we pinwheel.”
“Pinwheeling doesn’t sound good.”
“It isn’t.”
The computer throttled back a fraction, straightening the ship.
“Okay, we’re vertical. Now for the fun part.”
Cosmo, the novice, was going to ask yet another question. The fun part, he wanted to say. What’s the fun part?
Then the wedding band deployed, adding the power of superefficient solar cells to the fading boosters and the HALO’s own lithium batteries. The ship took off at fifteen hundred miles per hour through a bank of green-tinged cloud, like a stone from a sling. G-force stuffed Cosmo’s words back down his throat.
Mona managed to speak, though the cords in her neck stood out like bridge struts. “The fun part,” she said.
Blue sky, thought Cosmo, when the shuddering stopped. The sky really is blue. Strands of viscous smog still clung to the windscreen, but beyond that was an azure sky dotted with stars. It was an amazing sight. Blue, just like old postcards. The view from the Myishi observatory had been impressive, but this was even better, because the sky was all around them.
Cosmo even saw a white cloud hovering on the edge of space.
A message droned from a computer speaker. Gravity one fifth Earth’s norm. Activating artificial gravity.
“Good,” said Mona. “This floating around is not doing my stomach any good.”
Then the computer said, Artificial gravity failed.
Mona banged the gravity switch several times, without success.
“Oh, great,” she muttered. “Vomit comet.”
“What?” asked Cosmo, then he felt the contents of his stomach rising.
“Stay very still,” warned Mona. “Reduced gravity takes a bit of getting used to. Don’t take off your harness.” She glanced over her shoulder. “No gravity. Try not to move about.”
“Too late,” said Stefan.
Ditto was hanging forward in his harness. His face was green, and there was a brownish pool floating in the air before him.
“I shouldn’t have had that pazza this morning,” he moaned.
Stefan pulled a miniature vacuum cleaner from below the seat and cleaned up the vomit. “Thanks, Ditto. This is just the kind of job I like. You can be sure I’ll be bringing this up again, if you’ll pardon the pun.”
The computer applied the brakes, or more accurately the forward jets, slowing the HALO to four hundred miles per hour. The Satellite hung on the edge of space like an alien mother ship. The stylized Myishi logo pulsed gently across the dish’s concave belly.
“I read that it takes as much power to run that logo as it takes to light twenty city blocks,” said Mona.
As they drew closer, the Satellite filled their field of vision, and they could make out hundreds of maintenance dish jockeys working on repairs across the dish’s surface. They wore magnetic boots and were tethered to the dish’s gantry by bungee cords and climbing rings. Their movements were skilled and graceful, as they launched themselves into space, then snapped back to exactly the point where they needed to be.
“I bet that’s not as easy as it looks,” said Ditto, wiping his mouth. “I’m glad it’s not me going out there.”
The consol radio beeped three times.
“Incoming,” said Mona, opening a channel. A voice issued through the speakers. The voice was as cold as space itself.
Unidentified HALO, this is Satellite Command, you are in Myishi space.
Stefan removed his harness, pulling himself and Ditto along the floor railing.
“We read you, Satellite,” he said into the reed mike. “Just fishing out the access code.”
“Thirty seconds,” said the voice. “Then we will initiate targeting.”
Stefan pulled his vid-phone from his pocket and searched the menu for outgoing calls. He selected the last call he had made to Ellen Faustino at Myishi Tower, and ran the video. On the phone’s tiny screen Ellen appeared, explaining to Stefan why she could not get a spot on the Satellite. To illustrate her point, she swiveled her computer screen to show him the backlog. The company list was clearly visible on the screen. And beside each company, its access code and timetable.
“Okay, Satellite. We’re a maintenance team from Krom Automobiles.”
“You’re from Krom?” said the security man. “In that bucket of bolts?”
“Hey, we’re maintenance, not royalty,” said Stefan, trying to sound injured. “The five P.M. advertisement is skipping, so they sent us up to clip on a new panel.”
“We could have fixed that from up here. Seems an awful long way to come.”
“No offense, but you guys charge an arm and a leg just to polish the solar panels, and we were in the neighborhood. We have the code, so just light up the port for us.”
“Punch in the code first. Then we’ll talk about your maintenance port.”
Stefan handed his phone to Mona, who punched in the relevant ten-digit code twice, the second time to verify.
“Okay,” said security grudgingly. “You’re in. Port seventy-five. Follow the landing lights, and don’t leave your port.”
“Roger that, Satellite. You have a nice day now.”
The order to follow the landing lights was unnecessary, since the computer locked onto the red beacons’ frequency and directed the HALO to port seventy-five. The beacon lights were arranged in concentric circles that acted like a target, pulling them closer to a steel walkway that extended from the dish, one of several hundred that were attached in this quarter. The Krom logo was painted on the walkway. The ship docked with a grating thud, and two dish jockeys rushed to secure forward and aft cables.
“We’re in,” said Stefan, unhooking Ditto. “Get the cables ready while I put on my suit.” He grabbed a suitcase from the overhead locker and disappeared into the latrine.
Ditto unwound a snaky conduit from the loading bay. Inside were two cables: a power cable and a modem lead. The ancient ships was not equipped with wireless capability for this volume of information. “As far as Myishi knows, we’re just charging the batteries and replacing the Krom video chip, but while he’s out there, the bossman slips in the modem lead and we hijack the Satellite for a sneaky search.”
“How long will that take?”
“Not long, Cosmo. About a minute should do it. Any longer, and Myishi will realize what we’re doing. There’s also the fact that the real Krom team is due here soon.”
Stefan emerged from the latrine. He was not wearing the suit.
“It’s off,” he said. “We’ll have to find another way.”
Mona swiveled her chair to face him. “What? Another way? Why?”
Stefan held out the suit. The name Floyd was scrawled on the nametag in red paint. “This suit. It’s too small.”
“No,” said Mona. “Spacesuits are one size fits all. The arms and legs are concertina design.”
Stefan sighed. “Generally, yes. But this suit is last-century. Tailored for an individual. A short individual. It’s not going to work. Cast off, before we’re found out.”
Mona popped the clips on her G-Vest. “I’ll go then, Stefan.”
“Even if I liked the idea, it’s not practical. You’re the pilot, Mona. If the computer goes down, which it very well could in this flying junkyard, then it’s up to you to get us home, or within a hundred miles of it.”
Mona chewed her lip. Stefan was right. “Ditto. You’ve been around computers. You go.”
The Bartoli baby folded his arms across his chest. The body language was clear for everybody to see. But just in case there was some uncertainty, he said, “In your dreams, Vasquez. A case full of growth hormones couldn’t tempt me into that suit. In any case, like Stefan said, the suit isn’t adjustable. You put me in that thing, and I’ll look like a baby playing dress up.”
Cosmo’s throat dried up suddenly. No one would ask hi
m to go. He was the rookie. It was up to him to volunteer. “I’ll do it,” he blurted.
Stefan pointed a stiff finger at him. “No,”’ he said. “Shut up, Cosmo. You don’t know what you’re saying.”
Cosmo’s brain agreed. He had no idea what he was saying, but he was part of the team, and this job needed to be done. “I’ll go. The suit will fit me. I just have to plug in a few wires, right?”
Mona was not as ecstatic as he thought she would be. “I don’t know, Cosmo. It could get dangerous. Maybe we should forget it.”
Ditto floated to head height. “Listen to Vasquez, kid. It’s not the job I’d worry about, it’s the drifting off into space for all eternity.”
Cosmo pointed out the windscreen. The walkway was barely twenty feet long. “I can see the port from here. I’ll be tied on all the way. What could go wrong?”
Ditto slapped his own forehead. “You had to say it, didn’t you? You’re jinxed now, for sure.”
“I know how important this is,” argued Cosmo. “If we go back to Satellite City without the scan, then how long will it be before we get another chance? I don’t see what the problem is. This is far less dangerous than running around rooftops, and you had no problem with that.”
“I know, Cosmo,” said Stefan. “But I’ve learned a lot in the past week. I’ve come to my senses.”
Cosmo held out his hands for the suit. “Five minutes and we have a map of every Parasite nest in the city.”
Stefan gave it to him. “Five minutes, Cosmo. Then we’re pulling you in.”
Cosmo had the world at his feet. Looking down through the walkway’s wire mesh, he could see Earth more than fifty miles below. From up here it seemed damaged. Through gaps in the multicolored smog banks, Cosmo could clearly make out the Los Angeles brush fires that had been worldwide news for over a month now.
The Satellite dish loomed overhead like a frozen tidal wave, poised to crash down on him and all the shuttles docked at the various ports. There were at least forty other ships anchored along this level alone. Dozens of dish jockeys were doing exactly what he was doing now, linking their HALO computer with the Satellite.
There was no intercom in Floyd’s helmet, so the only thing Cosmo could hear was his own breathing amplified by the bubble helmet. At least, the visor had been coated with an antifog spray, so his vision remained clear, apart from several scratches and pockmarks.