by Adam Holt
“Crew on alert, code orange.” Little Bacon began to babble about different types of codes and their meanings, but I hardly noticed. My mind spun in circles, wondering where it should go. If only our situations was as straightforward as Cave-In!, where I could spot bad guys instantly and fight them with my friends—or die trying.
“Crew to standby, civilians stay in your rooms.”
And more time with my spinning mind.
“Crew to stations, civilians move only with permission. There has been a problem on board, and Commander Harper will explain soon.”
This last announced wasn’t DORIS but Sylvia Moreline’s comforting voice. My mind began to clear, but I wanted to figure out this whole mystery as soon as I could. I needed to ask the right questions and find some answers. I needed Sunjay and Tabitha.
In the meantime, I turned back toward the Harper Device, glowing softly through the vines. “You lousy excuse for a planet. I’m starting to understand the Visions, but I may be too late. The next time you show me something, help me save someone, will you?”
PRAYERS
“We are gathered here today to pay respects to a dear colleague, a great father, and a trustworthy friend…”
This was my first funeral, and it occurred to me this was the first funeral in space. Plenty of people had died trying to get into space, but they had never been mourned out here in the stars.
There was a lot to mourn, too. Redshirt helped us feel at ease on board. Sunjay sniffed a bit to hold back tears. Tabitha wept silently. Her tears didn’t flow anywhere—they clung to her eyes in growing droplets. I leaned over and daubed them away with a handkerchief, then used it for myself.
The ten of us stood around Anderson’s coffin, a storage container that once held Queen Envy’s extra recording equipment. Everyone contributed to the ceremony. Sylvia Moreline used a laser cutter to print a Bible verse on the lid. Buckshot and my dad had guided the container in to the Observation Deck. Sunjay, Tabitha, and I had arranged the chairs and moved the table. Lincoln helped with arrangements, so I could not tell my friends what I knew.
“…He served the Space Alliance well, for eight good years we had him. He took care of this ship with a sense of duty that inspired us all…”
Trackman brought a bouquet of flowers to place on the coffin. He covered up the Bible verse with the flowers, and I wanted so badly to push those flowers off the coffin. He didn’t deserve to put flowers there, as far as I was concerned. My dad pushed back the flowers to reveal the verse: I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. 2 Timothy 4:7.
Now all of us stood there, the crewmembers wearing their uniforms, Sunjay and I wearing the jeans and t-shirts we wore the day we left, and Tabitha wearing a simple black dress she had borrowed from Queen Envy. In the dress Tabitha looked about five years older than either of us.
“…Anderson flew with me on my first mission to Mars. He was there for the discovery. He was the kind of man who didn’t take credit for things, just did his job, raised his family, and lived the best life he could.”
If you haven’t guessed, my dad spoke. It was his duty to deliver the eulogy. He stood at the head of the coffin and spoke the words over his fallen friend, his eyes and voice steady like a general who has lost a faithful soldier.
We all held hands around the coffin as he spoke. I was sandwiched between Sunjay and Tabitha in her black dress, and any other day my heart would have beat double-time to hold her hand. Today my heart just skipped beats whenever I looked to see who held her right hand—Sawyer.
I noticed a camera in the corner of the room. It hadn’t occurred to me, but this funeral would be recorded. No one knew about the death yet. His family will hear these words and see these images if we make it home.
“…And now we send him out on his last mission. We will miss you, old friend.”
Before we saw Anderson off on his final mission, Queen Envy stepped forward, wearing a plain black dress like Tabitha’s. She began to sing a song I had heard before.
May the road rise to meet you
May the wind be always at your back.
Her voice sounded different, sort of personal, like she wasn’t singing in front of fans anymore, but for someone she knew, for Quentin Redshirt Anderson. I began to remember where I had heard the song. My dad used to sing it to me at bedtime before he left for missions:
May the sun shine warm upon your face
The rains fall soft on your field.
It was an Irish blessing. My grandmother taught him the song when he was a boy. Queen Envy closed her eyes and sang:
And until we meet again
May God hold you in the palm of His hand.
The words kept ringing in my head after she finished. I hoped that Anderson got to hear the blessing somehow. I hoped the blessing was for us, too. I didn’t know what road we were on, and the sun grew dimmer every day as we approached LG Alpha, but maybe God would hold us in the palm of His hand. I hoped and prayed that He could reach all the way out here into the darkness of space.
SPEECHES
As far as I was concerned, we were now at war. The first soldier had fallen. My dad didn’t believe this, but would my friends? I found out soon enough. After the funeral they moved the body into the cargo hold and the three of us stayed on the Observation Deck. We floated to the dining table and Tabitha and I sat down. Sunjay made a peanut butter and jelly sandwich before joining us. When we were all situated, I told them what I saw in the hall and heard in the lab. This was murder, plain and simple to me, but to them…
“Murder?” asked Tabitha. “Sawyer said it was a heart attack.”
“Well, of course he did. Sawyer and Trackman committed the crime. They’re covering their tracks.”
“I don’t know about that. They’re both creepers of the direst degree, but murderers?” asked Tabitha.
“Trackman’s weird,” Sunjay chimed in. “He mumbles to himself all the time, but he just seems like that kid that kept talking to himself during tests, the one who licked that frog during bagel break.”
“You’re comparing Trackman to a kid who licks frogs! Are you crazy?”
“Are you, Tully?” Sunjay shot a pretty nasty look my way. If only I could bring myself to tell them about the dreams, I thought.
“I just don’t see it,” said Tabitha.
“Well, I did—I mean, I do. Anderson probably caught them as they were releasing the escape pods. Or he found out about Operation Close Encounter and decided to do something about it.”
“No, he would tell your dad, like we should have. And anyway, why would ‘they’ want to release the escape pods?”
“They wanted to trap us all on board.”
“I thought you said they wanted to get rid of us, Tully. Maybe Redshirt launched the escape pod on purpose,” she said. “I mean, if he was dying, he probably tried to get everyone’s attention the only way that he could.”
“An astronaut wouldn’t do that!” I said, pounding my hand against the table. “I’m trying to get your attention right now, and it doesn’t seem to be working. How can you guys be so blind? Lincoln Sawyer did the autopsy. He’s lying through his perfect white teeth about the heart attack. I’m telling you, it was Trackman and Sawyer.”
I tried to keep my frustration in check, but at some point emotions took control. I was breathing heavily and felt faint. My friends disappeared for a moment. I felt like I was going to black out, only everything went red again. In that moment the words from the Red Vision returned to me: Cassandra cries to the skies / but no one listens anymore.
When I came back, they were both still looking at me, so I guess I hadn’t blacked out after all.
“…I know you have all these theories about what’s going on, but how do you know it was Trackman and Sawyer?” Tabitha asked.
“I just do. Look, you’re right. We should just sit back and relax. We’ll make it to LG Alpha soon, and then our lives will end just like Redshirt’s, and I can say ‘I told you
so’ when we get to Heaven or whatever. It’s going to happen. That’s all.” How could I tell them about my visions? Hey, guys, I see dead people. Also, we’re going to run into a space jellyfish pretty soon. I would go from being “frustrated Tully” to “crazy Tully” in a nanosecond. I looked around the deck for inspiration. The camera in the corner. “Wait, I can prove it.”
“What, cameras?” Tabitha asked, looking at Sunjay. “There’s one in here. Is there one in the hallway?”
“No,” said Sunjay, “there are a lot of cameras on board, but none for the hallway.”
Tabitha shook her head. She was always one step ahead of me, but I couldn’t give up.
“Sunjay, when did you see Trackman talking to himself ?” I asked.
“Oh, the other day I was making a PBJ when he entered the room. He floated to the window over there and looked into space. He started talking to himself, like this.”
He pushed himself over to the bay window and kept his hands behind his back, like a soldier addressing a general. We could see his reflection in the window, a serious look on his face.
Tabitha grabbed my arm. The wheels were spinning. “Sunjay, did his lips move like that?”
“Yes.”
“So he wasn’t mumbling,” I said, “he was giving a speech.”
Tabitha spun her scarf. “Well, that pickles the cat then. Just jump right into the tape recorder and press play, right?” she said, seeming proud of herself.
“Huh?” Sunjay said.
“Try to keep up, Space Boy! It was your idea.” She pointed at the camera in the corner of the Observation Room. “We have the whole thing on camera now. I just need to see it. Maybe we can figure out what’s going on in his creepy crawly brain.”
“But I copied him perfectly!” said Sunjay. “Why do you want to see Trackman do it?”
“Because he was giving a speech, and I can read lips.”
Finally! I was glad Tabitha could read lips but not minds, because my mind would have embarrassed me. I would have been redder than the Harper Device. Finally someone believed there was at least one lunatic on board bent on destroying us all. He already killed a good man. Now we could prove it.
“So Tabitha needs to see the recording. Where are those kept?”
“On the Flight Deck,” Sunjay said. “It won’t be easy. She’ll need to access DORIS’s files.”
“Not easy?” said Sunjay. “How about impossible? There’s no way we can just walk in there and ask your dad.”
“Of course not, Sunjay. We’ll need to distract my dad. That should be easy for you.”
“Okay, and if I distract him, where will Tabitha access the files? Redshirt was in charge of monitoring those cameras.”
Tabitha looked out the window toward the passing Moon. “You two just distract Commander Harper. I can handle the rest.”
“How?” we asked her.
“It will work better if you don’t know ahead of time,” she said.
PROOF
When the three of us arrived on the Flight Deck, my father gave Buckshot a few commands and turned his full attention to us. He offered a tour of the deck while Sunjay warmed up his question cannon. I watched Tabitha. She seemed really down, distracted and staring out into space, like her heart was still at the funeral. My dad noticed. He put an arm around her. She looked at him.
“Where did he do his work?” she asked.
“Here’s Redshirt’s station. From here he was the eyes and ears of The Adversity,” he said, pointing to a chair behind his own command chair.
Tabitha looked pretty shaken. When she saw Anderson’s empty chair, she squeezed my hand hard. She grew pale. Tears pooled in her eyes. Is she acting? I wondered.
My dad seemed worried, too.
“Tabitha, maybe this is too much. You can see all this later,” said my dad.
“No, I want to stay, Commander. It’s just so sad,” she said. Either she was about to fall to pieces, or she was putting on a very good show. Or both. “Could I just sit down for a minute? Please, just give me a moment by myself.”
My dad offered her his chair, but she took Redshirt’s command post instead. My dad continued the tour with me and Sunjay. She looked at me a moment and then picked up something from the armrest. It was a pair of hologlasses—more advanced than mine—that could project images and audio from all around the ship. Anderson’s hologlasses. In that moment I saw Tabitha’s plan taking shape.
My dad continued the tour. Tabitha leaned forward with her head in her hands. She wasn’t sobbing, she was motioning in mid-air whenever my dad turned his back. She flipped from scene to scene, skimming through holographic videos, looking for video of Trackman. All the while, Sunjay fired questions.
“No, we probably won’t run into any black holes or—what else?—supernovas? No, Sunjay, you know that. Anyway, here’s where Buckshot pilots us. If we can dock at LG Alpha, if it’s even there, Buckshot will use the piloting headset you see here. Right, Buckshot?”
I was paying more attention to Tabitha. She swiped past video after video. Finally she must have found a video of Trackman. She grew very still and intense. Not Sunjay though. He had forgotten our plan entirely and was wrapped up in every word my father said. He even had some questions for Buckshot.
As quickly as they could, the two men threw out answers:
“No, piloting is not hard if you practice.”
“Yes, I’ve piloted dozens of missions.”
“The only other pilots on board are Commander Harper, Lincoln Sawyer, and myself.”
“No, Sunjay, uh, you can’t try to fly it. Well, you could try, but that would be an expensive mistake. Wait until you graduate from the Naval Academy, or at least high school.”
“Bananas.”
“Grapefruit.”
When he asked them about their favorite fruits, I figured he was almost out of ammunition, and so did dad and Buckshot. After answering about three thousand questions, both men turned to each other and shrugged.
“Guys, you should get some sleep now,” my dad said. “It’s been a long day. Tabitha, are you better, hon? You still look pale.”
I turned to look at her. She looked paler than when we arrived.
We slid through the portal on our way to the Observation Deck. Tabitha explained what she saw. Well, she delivered a classic Tabism.
“What a speech! You should’ve heard. Who’s the Commander? Commander Observation Deck Sharktooth Turncoat Benedict Arnold.”
“Thanks for that, Tabitha,” I said calmly. “Now please repeat in some form of English.”
Through the headset, she flipped through a number of rooms until she found the Observation Deck. She found the recording of Trackman with Sunjay in the background, chomping his sandwich.
“It didn’t make much sense at first, but I realized Trackman was not looking out the window. He was looking at his reflection in the window. Just like we thought, Trackman was preparing a speech. He bowed toward someone, then he gestured to stage left and smiled. He pretended to give something to somebody,” she explained. “Stars! He has those terrible sharky teeth.”
“Well, what did he say?” I asked.
“I couldn’t catch everything, but he said something like, ‘Greetings, Lord blah blah blah. We’ve long awaited this day. I am Commander Trackman, Commander Trackman, here to blah blah blah the Harper Device. Then he said something about ‘the arrival of the lion’s mane’? I don’t know what that could be, but that’s what he said.”
“The lion’s mane,” interrupted Little Bacon, “is a medicinal mushroom in the tooth fungus group.”
“That’s not helpful, LB,” I said. I forgot he was in my shirt pocket. He turned around and poked me in the chest. I tried to shove him deeper into my pocket but he resisted.
“It is also the largest known species of jellyfish,” he said.
Trackman’s words suddenly became clear to me, as if I heard them myself. It all came together in my mind in a flash.
“S
o that proves it. The jellyfish is the Lion’s Mane—it’s a ship! It ate the fish. The fish was the space station—or maybe it was The Adversity! Either way it’s planning on eating us. Little Bacon, you’re a genius!”
“At your service,” he said, burrowing back into my pocket.
Operation Close Encounter was now revealed. Sunjay gave me a strange look when I high-fived him.
“Okay,” I whispered, hiding my mouth in case others could read my lips, “we’ve got to keep this secret. Trackman plans to take over The Adversity and give away the Harper Device to Lord Somebody. Obviously we’ll meet them at LG Alpha. We need to act now before it’s too late.” My friends listened to me in silence, waiting to hear the rest of the plan. “He probably plans to kill us all before he gives the Device to the aliens. It’s aliens, right? Of course it is! Ha! We have to stop him. Do you believe me now?”
It was one of those strange pauses, like when you space out and ask a teacher the same question someone else just asked. Everyone in the class stares. Everyone knows the answer but you.
Tabitha had pity in her lovely green eyes. “Tully, okay, that’s possible—minus the aliens. Now what was all that about a jellyfish?”
“Don’t you see? He’s clearly working with aliens,” I said.
Tabitha shrugged. “But what if he’s, he’s just, you know, pretending? He delivered an odd speech, but he’s an odd guy.”
Sunjay nodded his head. “Yeah, maybe he is pretending. He could just be crazy.”
“Operation Close Encounter? A dead crewmember? That’s what’s really happening right now!” I whispered. “This is a conspiracy. Now keep your voices down. People might be listening.”
They look at each other. Tabitha said, “This could be a conspiracy, or it could be a lonely, weird guy talking to himself. Aliens and jellyfish, Tully? You sound a little…”
“What? Worried? Yes, that’s the word you’re looking for, Tabitha. Worried. Sunjay, back me up here.”
Sunjay sighed. “Tully, what if you’re wrong about all this?”
Those words stung. Sunjay always had my back, and now I was alone.