by Eoin Colfer
Cosmo began to talk to himself, for some company. “Okay, Cosmo. Nothing to it. Collect the conduit and plug it in to the port. Attach the piggyback, wait for sixty seconds, then reel the conduit back in. Easy.”
Floyd’s boots were not magnetic, so Cosmo had to drag himself along the ship’s hull inch by inch. Space seemed to suck him gently, willing him to let go. But even if he did, there was a bungee cord securing him to the HALO. “Nothing can go wrong. Get to work.”
Stefan and Mona were at the porthole, watching him anxiously. Cosmo gave them the thumbs-up, then bent low to retrieve the conduit from the air-locked tube through which Ditto was feeding it. He dragged the ribbed white tubing out, attaching it to a Velcro strip on his chest. His movements were slow and awkward in the low gravity.
Cosmo headed for the port, struggling to control his limbs, while all around dish jockeys bounced and pirouetted across the face of the dish.
The safety rail seemed tiny as he held it from inside his bulky padded gloves, and he checked constantly to make sure that he actually had a grip on it. Inch by inch he hauled himself along the walkway, his boots floating behind him, the bungee umbilical undulating like a slow-motion jump rope.
At last, Cosmo reached the Satellite dish. His first job was to attach Lincoln’s pirate plate. He slipped the Lockheed panel from a flapped pocket and clamped it directly onto another one. The panels were so thin that from a distance it would be almost impossible to spot. Only ten more feet to the uplink ports. Handrails crisscrossed the dish’s surface, and Cosmo pulled himself upward, trailing both cables behind him. Five feet now, almost within reach.
The modem and power sockets had a flip-up safety cover. All Cosmo had to do was open it up, and plug in both cables. Simple, except that he couldn’t reach. With the dish’s curve, the safety cover was farther away than the solar panels, and Floyd’s bungee cable was a couple of feet too short. Cosmo stretched the cable to the limit of its elasticity, but it was still too short. It seemed incredible to come this far, only to be foiled by the last few feet.
He turned slowly toward the shuttle. Inside, Mona was beckoning him back. “What can I do?” he asked himself, his voice bouncing around the helmet. “There’s no other way.”
Except to untie the bungee cord. Just for a second.
The idea popped into his head from nowhere. Untie the cord? Madness?
Just for a second. Clip it to the rails and plug in. Two steps and you’re there.
Maybe, but one false move and you’re lost in space.
Two steps.
“Idiot,” said Cosmo to himself, unclipping the cord.
He saw Stefan from the corner of his eye. Basic lipreading told him the Supernaturalist heartily agreed with Cosmo’s opinion of himself. Mona was slapping her palms against the plasti-glass screen. She wasn’t too impressed with him either.
Cosmo used one hand to clip his bungee cord onto the handrail, being extremely careful not to let go with the other. It wasn’t as if he were going to make a habit of this. A one-time-only deal. Providing he didn’t allow his concentration to lapse, he should be fine.
A mere two steps later he was at the uplink port. Cosmo threaded his arm through the handrail, locking his elbow. Two rhinos tugging at his boots couldn’t force him to let go now. He ripped the conduit from the patch on his suit and screwed it into the port. Inside the conduit a power lead and modem cable locked into place. A light flashed green on a panel beside the portal. Contact. Now all he had to do was count to sixty.
Stefan was hunched over the laptop that he had wired into the onboard computer.
“Is it running?” asked Mona, hands and face pressed against the glass.
Stefan raised a finger. Wait!
“I can’t believe he actually untied himself. Estúpido. I hope he doesn’t think this will impress me, because it won’t. Is it running?”
Stefan clapped his hands. “It’s running. Now all we need are sixty seconds.”
Whereas Mona was pretending to be unimpressed, Ditto actually was. “There goes another Spotter. We’re going to have to take out an advertisement on TV. Wanted: crazy kid with a death wish. Robotix plates supplied.”
“Think positive,” snapped Mona. “All he has to do is hold on for sixty seconds.”
Ditto chuckled. “Sixty seconds. The way his luck’s been going lately, it may as well be a lifetime. I wouldn’t be surprised if a meteor picked this exact moment to strike the dish.”
Which of course, wasn’t what happened at all.
Cosmo was counting.
“. . . Fifty-eight elephant, fifty-nine elephant, sixty . . . elephant.”
An extra elephant, just in case. Time to head back to the bungee cord. He was unscrewing the conduit when a tiny tremor shuddered through the entire Satellite.
Cosmo glanced upward. Overhead, a residential unit seemed a little askew. Inside, people were tumbling past the windows. Another tremor. This time much larger. Around him, dish jockeys were dislodged and floated out to the end of their tethers. The residential unit was definitely not right.
Two of its corners had come completely away from the main structure. A third tremor, a monster compared to the other two. The residential cube came away completely, and so did Cosmo.
With a surprised shout that only he could hear, the teenager’s fingers were wrenched from the handrail, and he floated off into space.
All around him, emergency lights began to flash on the helmets of every dish jockey, alerting them to the danger. The residential unit drifted farther from the main structure, driven by the gas venting from its torn life-support tubes. Cosmo could only watch and try not to panic. Panic would mean deeper breathing, and his oxygen readout was already edging toward the red.
The rescue was fantastic. Dozens of dish jockeys hurled themselves into the void, latching on to the unit before it was out of range. They wrapped their limbs around any protuberances, clinging on like human anchors. Several more jumped repeatedly on one end of the unit, spinning it around, so the gas jets propeled it back to the Satellite. It was stupendous. These people were space cowboys. Cosmo wanted to applaud. Then he remembered his own plight.
Something collided with his chest. Cosmo’s first thought was fleeting and ridiculous. Alien! But no, it was a dish jockey. The man’s face was red, and he shouted spittle onto the inside of his visor.
Cosmo pointed to his ears, shaking his head.
The jockey took a sonic sucker from his belt, sticking the little speaker onto Cosmo’s helmet. Contact was immediate.
“. . . the hell are you doing, boy? Untying yourself like that! Are you soft in the head?”
“Eh . . . sorry.”
“Haven’t you read the company mail? The Satellite is unstable. We’ve been having more and more of these breakaways lately. Lucky for you I saw you. What company are you with?”
Cosmo racked his brain. “Eh . . . Krom. I’m with Krom.”
The jockey rolled his eyes. “Krom. Typical. I bet you haven’t had more than a couple of hours space time. Employ amateurs, save money, that’s the Krom way. You can’t be much more than a boy. How old are you?”
“Twenty-two,” mumbled Cosmo hopefully. “I drink a lot of water. It keeps me young looking.”
“Twenty-two,” repeated the jockey, casually reeling them back to the dish. “I must be getting old.”
The jockey completed a space roll, depositing them back on the platform. He clipped Cosmo back onto his bungee.
“I’m going to have to write this up,” he said, stripping a pad from a computer on his wrist. “What’s your name?”
Just in time, Cosmo remembered the name on his suit. “Eh . . . Floyd. Floyd Faustino.”
“Well, Floyd,” said the jockey, typing on the computer’s keyboard. “This is going to mean a fine for Krom, and probably for you.”
He printed off a card, stuffing it in Cosmo’s spacesuit pocket.
“You have fourteen days to pay that fine, or else your dish-j
ockey license will be revoked.”
“Yes, sir,” said Cosmo humbly. “I’m sorry, sir.”
The jockey was unimpressed. “Never mind the sorry sir, just pay the fine.”
And with that, the jockey propeled himself across the dish to help secure the residential unit. Cosmo dragged himself shakily to the shuttle.
Mona was waiting inside the airlock. “Moron,” she said, punching him on the shoulder.
“I know,” said Cosmo miserably, his legs wobbling inside the suit. “Can we please go back to Earth? Please?”
Stefan was reading the results of the scan. “I don’t know, Cosmo. When you hear the results of this scan, you might want to stay up here.”
Cosmo took off his helmet. “What is it? he said, laughing. “It’s not as if the Parasite nest is under Clarissa Frayne?”
No one else laughed. Not so much as a smile.
CHAPTER 8
Pulse
Abracadabra Street
Cosmo hadn’t spoken much all the way back from space. He wasn’t sulking exactly, because there was no one to be angry with. He was just wondering when it was all going to end? How many times did one person have to escape death in a week? And now he was being asked to go back to the place of his nightmares. The place that he had spent the past fourteen miserable years trying to get away from.
“Will you do it?” asked Stefan, when they were gathered around the table.
Cosmo studied the faces looking back at him. The Supernaturalists. He was one of them now—after all, he’d gone into space for them. But it wasn’t all about him, or even the group. This energy pulse had to be detonated for every human on the planet. When you grew up an orphan, sometimes it was difficult to think about anyone besides yourself. But now he had Mona to think about, and Stefan and Ditto.
“It’s a simple plan,” continued Stefan.
“Oh, like the last simple plan,” said Cosmo.
“That was a simple plan, until you began improvising. This time you will simply be pointing the way.”
“You make it sound simple, but something will happen, it always does. I’ve noticed that my new knee starts to itch when trouble is near, and it’s itching like crazy now.”
“Trust the knee, Cosmo,” said Ditto in a spooky voice.
“Shut up, Ditto,” snapped Mona. “This is important.”
“Sure, it’s real important that we plant Myishi’s bomb for them.”
“It’s a pulse. An energy pulse.”
“So they say. Who knows what this thing really does?”
Stefan opened the briefcase, swiveling it to face the Bartoli baby. “It’s a pulse, Ditto, okay? I checked it myself.”
Ditto ignored the device. “Yeah, whatever. Did Myishi give you stock options too?”
Mona lost her temper. “Can’t you say anything positive? I’m beginning to wonder whose side you’re on.”
Ditto jumped to his feet, which didn’t make much difference. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Stefan put a hand on Mona’s arm. “Leave it.”
“No. I’m starting to think that you don’t want us to catch the Parasites.”
Ditto’s face was crimson. “Maybe I don’t want us to catch them for Myishi.”
“Well, then, maybe you should find some other line of work.”
They stared at each other for several seconds, then Ditto broke eye contact, storming off to the elevator.
“You were out of line, Mona,” said Stefan, when the echoes of the argument had faded.
Mona folded her arms stubbornly. “So was he.”
Stefan stood, selecting a suit from a hanging rail. “You’re going to have to apologize before I get back.”
“Before we get back,” said Cosmo. “You’ll never get under there without me.”
Stefan threw him a smaller suit from the rack. “Well done, Cosmo. I need you to lead me into the lion’s den. You’re going back to Clarissa Frayne, one last time.”
The Clarissa Frayne Institute for the Parentally Challenged
Marshall Redwood wasn’t unduly concerned when the two suits came in the front door. The men were probably medical reps looking to test some new product. They looked a bit like a comedy double act. One tall one and one short one. They could have been slave traders as far as Redwood was concerned. If they wanted to kidnap the orphans, Redwood would help them load the truck. He didn’t owe the Clarissa Frayne Institute a single thing. Especially not since they’d stuck him behind a desk in the security booth pending an investigation. And all because of that slippery no-sponsor Cosmo Hill. Apparently Cosmo had survived the dive he took from that rooftop and was now listed as a fugitive. If Cosmo had just been a good little boy and died when he was supposed to, then Redwood would not have to sit here with the other lame idiots, watching TV eight hours a day.
Fred Allescanti, possibly the biggest idiot in Satellite City, was drinking sim-coffee in the security booth’s only decent chair.
“Hey, Fred. You want to give me a turn in the swivel chair?”
Fred took another annoying slurp of brown liquid. “No can do, Redwood. My back plays up something terrible if I don’t support it right.”
Redwood frowned. “What if I just take the chair? Let’s say I just go crazy and throw you straight through the window, and just occupy the chair while you’re getting your sutures?”
“Go ahead, big shot,” grinned Fred. “I could use the compensation money.”
Maybe Allescanti wasn’t as dumb as he looked.
“Well, at least stop slurping that sim-coffee. I swear, Fred, you’re driving me demented. Who knows what I might do?”
Fred pointed at the camera over their heads. “Make sure you do it on camera, Redwood, I can use the footage in my court case.”
Redwood’s face burned red. Even Fred Allescanti was getting lippy since he’d been demoted. He needed to get back on the streets, back where he had some power. If only he could somehow recover Cosmo Hill.
A red alert began to bip softly on a security computer. The icon was in the shape of a running man. One of the no-sponsors was on the move outside a designated area. At last, someone to vent his frustration on. Redwood activated the tracker-pattern program, running a match on the pattern. One by one the orphans were eliminated, as they were located in their beds or designated leisure areas. Who was on the move? Who was left? The signal was very faint, as if most of the electronegative micro beads used to track the orphans had been removed, or shorted out.
Shorted out? Redwood’s heart rate speeded up. Only two orphans could have shorted out their micro beads. One was dead, and the other was Cosmo Hill.
Redwood called up Cosmo’s pattern. It was very faint, only the faintest pulse, but definitely active. The ex-marshal doubted if the scanners would have picked him up at all if he weren’t close by. Very close by. On his way down to the basement by the looks of it.
Redwood consulted the security screens, checking the two suits he’d mistaken for medical researchers. The short one must be Cosmo. For some insane reason, Hill had actually returned. Redwood didn’t know why, and he didn’t care. This was his chance to redeem himself. He could bring in Hill and his accomplice. Of course, he would need to talk to Hill alone first, to make sure they had their stories straight about the night of the crash. Redwood stood, taking a rod from the gun cabinet.
“Hey, Redwood,” said Fred. “What are you doing with a rod? You’re not a floor marshal anymore.”
Redwood didn’t even look at him. “I’m going on my rounds.”
“Rounds? What are you, a doctor? We’re security, we don’t do rounds here. That’s why we have cameras.”
“Not in the basement, we don’t. It’s about time someone checked down there. You want to come?”
Allescanti lolled back in the swivel chair, wrapping his hands around a warm coffee mug. “No thanks, Redwood. It’s all yours.”
“That’s what I thought,” said Redwood, holstering the rod.
Cosmo and
Stefan walked straight in through the front door. Cosmo’s knees almost buckled as soon as the smell of the institute’s cheap disinfectant hit his nostrils. He stood still for a moment, allowing the memories to wash over him. Ziplock, Redwood, and years of medical experiments. He took several deep breaths, steeling himself. Stefan peered at him from under the brim of a felt hat.
“Are you okay, Cosmo?” he said, the bristles of his false moustache waving slightly.
“I’m okay. Let’s go.”
“Are you sure?”
Cosmo nodded. “Ten minutes, and we’re in and out.”
They approached the admissions booth, and Stefan flashed two laminated fake IDs at a guard playing a handheld video cube. Cosmo kept his head down, in the shadows of his own hat.
“Komposite,” said the guard, trying to look as though he cared. “You guys had quite a fire over there last week.”
Stefan nodded. “Yeah. Took out the entire canteen, worse luck.”
The guard shook his head sympathetically. “What are you testing this time?”
Stefan patted the attaché case under his arm. “I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you.”
The guard gave him two visitors’ passes. “Yeah, sure. Good one. You can collect these ID cards on your way out.”
Stefan clipped a pass to his lapel, handing the other to Cosmo. The guard was back playing his video game before they had taken half a dozen steps.
“He never even looked at me,” whispered Cosmo.
Stefan smiled. “They don’t pay these guards enough to pay attention.”
Cosmo led them through a vaulted reception area lined with 3D photos of a long-dead Clarissa Frayne doing noble things with youngsters. Hiking, reading, digging holes, among various other outdoor activities. There was nothing noble about the Frayne Institute. The authorities were more inclined to dip the no-sponsors in experimental vats than take them mountaineering.
They passed several guards, but no one questioned them. They were simply two more suits from some medical company. And anyway, who would possibly have a motive to break into an orphanage? Cosmo kept his eyes down and his collar up, hoping that people would think he was a short man and not a tall kid.