by Wendy Mass
After he recovers from the shock and hears my explanation, he sits unmoving for quite a while. “Have you opened any of the others?”
I shake my head. “They’re still in quarantine.”
“We need to talk to the commander about releasing them. And you’ll need his permission to leave the station on your own — not that he’d try to stop you, but there’s a process.” He scratches at the stubble on his chin. “Boy, you go years without much happening up here and then suddenly everything changes.”
I swallow hard. “I know.” Then I add, “Is it okay if I talk to the commander myself?”
He looks surprised. “You sure?”
I nod. “Plus, it’s almost your shift, and I’m pretty sure Vinnie is going to beat you up if he winds up on the ceiling again.”
“Guess you may as well start practicing taking care of your affairs.”
I want to reassure him that I’m not going to be gone forever, but the way these last few days have gone, I’m starting to doubt my ability to predict anything anymore.
Finley is in the command center with the commander when I walk in. He startles a bit when he sees me, his eyes darting to his father and back. He doesn’t need to worry; I have no plans to reveal any part of his family’s history.
“I’m sorry to bother you, Commander. Can I talk to you for a minute?”
The commander presses a few buttons on his massive control screen, adjusting the lighting levels to the nighttime setting. He then turns toward me. “Ah, it’s Robin. Twice in one day I get the pleasure of your company. Lucky me.”
“I’ll be quick,” I tell him. “First, I want to give you this.” I pull a strand of gold out of my pocket. “You’ve always treated me fairly and with kindness, and I know I didn’t always deserve that.”
He takes the chain and lets it dangle from his hand. Finley looks like someone who just won the intergalactic lottery.
“It was inside one of my parents’ boxes,” I continue. “I’m sorry I took it from quarantine and opened it, but I’m pretty sure I didn’t release a deadly virus onto the spaceport. The box contained only the necklaces and an inventory of a bunch of random items from the other boxes.”
Since neither of them has found their voices, I keep going. “Plus, I would like permission to ask the next ship heading to Earth if it would take me and Marian with them.”
“Who’s Marian?” Finley asks, still mesmerized by the swinging chain.
I feel like I’ve known Marian forever, but of course it’s only been a few hours. “She’s the yellow-haired girl from the Royal Horizon. She needs to go back home, and her own ship must continue its course. So do I have your permission?”
The commander clears his throat and hands the chain back to me. “I did not think you’d be able to resist opening the boxes. I’m surprised you stopped at one.”
I chuckle. I should have figured him leaving me behind outside the quarantine room wouldn’t have gone unnoticed.
The commander sits down in the large chair by the main security control unit. “Your uncle has given his blessing?”
“Yes, sir.”
Now it’s his turn to laugh. “After fourteen years I finally get a sir out of you.”
I try to hand him back the necklace, but he shakes his head. “Keep it. You may need it.”
Finley opens his mouth as if to argue, but his dad shoots him a look and he closes it again.
“Thank you again, sir,” I say. I honestly believe my voice is sounding more respectful by the minute. “I know it might be a while, but will you let me know when the next ship heading to Earth arrives?”
The commander nods. “It may be more than a while, I’m sorry to say. Prince John has just put a halt on interstellar travel to or from Earth for any ship that didn’t originate from there. That will lessen your chances by a considerable amount.”
My stomach twists as he flicks on a digi-pen and a screen fills the space between us. “There are only two Earth-based airships off-planet currently. One is the Royal Horizon, which as you know is headed out of the solar system. The other is currently in the Gamma Quadrant and won’t be back this way for six months.”
“Six months!”
“ ’Fraid so,” he says. “I’ll let you know if anything changes.”
I mumble a thank-you, and as I pass by, I drop the necklace into the commander’s coat pocket. Consider it my final magic trick.
I then walk slowly from the room. I’m not in any hurry to tell Marian about this giant setback. She may as well still go on her trip to Earth Beta. She’d make it back home quicker that way.
I haven’t made it more than a few yards down the corridor before Finley comes rushing up behind me. He pulls me aside and whispers, “I have a way to get you to Earth. I said I owed you one, so this will make us even.”
“That would make us more than even, Finley.”
He leans closer. “Your only chance will be to leave while the Royal Horizon is still docked here. It will block the view in case anyone is looking, and their signal will block the radar, too.”
I glance back at the command center to make sure the door is shut. “I appreciate the help, Finley, but you heard your dad. There aren’t any Earth ships heading toward us, and the only other ship on Delta Z besides the Royal Horizon is Shane’s shuttlecraft, and I already asked him.”
Finley shakes his head. “That’s not the only other ship on Delta Z.”
The guest quarters here aren’t as fancy as my bedroom at home, but they’re comfortable enough, with soft blankets and a holo-picture over the dresser of an ocean lapping against a beach. I find myself entranced by it, admiring how the water leaves imprints in the sand as it roars in and retreats, over and over. At home all of the images of how the earth used to be have been destroyed, or at least hidden away. No one wants the constant reminder of what we’ve lost. Up here, though, they must not think of it that way.
Sarena knocks on my door and comes in without waiting for my reply. Lying to my classmates wasn’t easy. I couldn’t tell them the real reason, though, and risk them getting in trouble simply for their knowledge. Gareth and Asher tried to convince me that I’ll get over the homesickness as soon as our journey continued and we got busier. Sarena was quiet, watching me steadily with her dark eyes.
“I know why you’re really not coming with us,” she says now, plopping down on the edge of the bed.
I keep unpacking my large suitcase, trying to keep my hands steady. “You do?”
She nods. “It’s because of Robin.”
I rest my pajamas on the pile and look up. “Robin?”
“I’ve seen how you two look at each other. Like love at first sight.”
I laugh at that. “He tried to grab my suitcases at first sight. That’s hardly love.”
“Believe me,” she says, “I remember. My arm still aches. And look!” She pushes up her sleeve to reveal a widening splotch of purple and blue on her skin.
I gasp. “What is that?”
She smiles. “It’s a bruise! Without the medi-bots, this is what happens when we get hit — or, in my case, when someone backs into us!”
Fascinated, I reach to touch it with one finger. “Look at all those colors!”
Sarena pulls back. “It’s pretty, but it does hurt a little.”
“Sorry!” I say.
She twists her arm around to see it better. “Actually, I think it’s kind of interesting.” She rolls down her sleeve and looks up at me. “It’s not so bad up here, you know, where our every move isn’t monitored?”
I nod in agreement. “I’d miss the medi-bots, but I wouldn’t miss the grid, that’s for sure.”
“Marian,” she says, turning serious. “Whatever you’re doing, be careful.”
I don’t answer. How can I? I can’t promise anything.
“When are you leaving?” she asks.
I shake my head. “It could be a while before the right ship comes along.”
“You sure you’ll
be okay up here alone after we leave? No offense, but before this trip I don’t think I ever saw you outside the classroom without your maid or your mother accompanying you.”
She’s right, of course. I’ve never been on my own before, except for the night of the break-in, but I can’t very well tell her about that.
She tilts her head at me with a sly smile. “Although you won’t be alone, will you? You’ll have Robin to look after you.”
I throw the nearest item of clothing at her, which happens to be my nightgown. I have to admit, though, that doesn’t sound like a bad way to pass the time. I could always beat him at a few more archery games!
“Wake up! We have to leave.” Even though we only just met, I recognize Robin’s voice shaking me out of a deep sleep. Turns out sleeping in an unfamiliar place isn’t that hard after all.
I sit up in bed. “Lights!” I demand. But the lights don’t turn on. I call out again, louder. “Lights!”
Robin laughs and switches on the light from the wall. “Even when you’re shouting, it sounds like singing. Does yelling at the lights make them work on Earth?”
I cross my arms. “As a matter of fact, it does. And didn’t anyone ever teach you it’s not polite to barge into someone’s room uninvited?”
“I’m pretty sure I knew that, but this couldn’t wait until morning. We have to leave tonight. Now, actually. I found us another ship — and we can only take it while the Royal Horizon is still docked. Captain Pratchett is apparently ready to continue your journey, as is your ship. Figures this is the one time Shane actually worked quickly on a project. They must have been paying him well.”
I hurry out of bed and begin grabbing clothes from the drawers and shoving them back into the suitcase. I needn’t have bothered unpacking.
“There’s more,” he says. “The ship we’ll be taking has no record anymore, although it once belonged to people from Earth. We won’t be expected, and chances are, we won’t be welcome. From what you’ve told me, you are well known. You should wear a disguise.”
I stop tossing my clothes and turn around. “Did you say we? We won’t be expected? You’re coming with me?”
He nods. “I am. I mean, if you’ll have me. Seems like I do unselfish things now. The last one paid off with a ship! Who knew?!”
I realize now that it was crazy to think I could do this alone. “Yes,” I say. “I shall allow you to come with me.”
He doesn’t reply right away, and I worry I’ve misspoken. Then his eyes twinkle, and he laughs.
I laugh, too, relieved. “Now what did you say about a disguise?”
He surveys my clothes and shoes. “Looks like you have enough stuff here for six girls. Have you been seen in all these clothes?”
I nod. It would be too embarrassing to admit it’s not unusual for me to wear three or four different outfits over the course of a day.
He glances over at the small suitcase on the floor by the closet. Ivy’s suitcase. I haven’t even opened it.
“Anything new in that one?”
“It belongs to my maid. She decided not to come at the last minute.” Ivy wouldn’t mind if I opened it, yet it still feels like an invasion of her privacy. Most people don’t think of robots as needing or deserving privacy, but I’ve never thought of her as a robot. She’s simply … Ivy. The girl who takes care of me.
I flip open the lid. One crisp top, one skirt, one pair of pants, one pair of thick-soled shoes. That’s all she brought for three months away. I rub the collar of her uniform between my fingers. It makes me miss her. Even the mindless gossiping. She’d be asking me a hundred questions about Robin if she were here. I suddenly get an idea.
“I could dress as a maid,” I tell him. “On Earth, all the maids are robots. It’s a very respectable and important job, but an invisible one. I bet I could walk past my own parents in Ivy’s uniform and they wouldn’t notice me.”
“Sounds perfect. I’ll be outside. Fast would be good.” He hurries out, leaving me to dress myself for the first time I can remember.
Donning the top of the maid uniform is easy, at least, with no complicated straps or hooks to fumble with. I’ve chosen to wear the pants and my own boots, leaving the skirt and shoes in the case. Braiding my own hair proves impossible, so I just twist it together and pin it back. Grandmother and Ivy would no doubt cringe if they saw the final, messy result.
I quickly determine that I’d like to travel lighter this time. I add a few pairs of underwear and socks to Ivy’s suitcase, and as plain a top as I can find. I find my eyes keep darting to the center of the room, waiting for my daily schedule to appear. How strange it is not to know what the day will bring, and even stranger to think of the things you miss once they’re gone, even if you thought you didn’t like them.
“Before the sun goes supernova, please,” Robin calls to me through the door.
“Almost ready.” I fold a nightgown around Grandmother’s headpiece, then add the bundle to the suitcase. I use my digi-pen to send Sarena an audio message that the rest of my belongings are now hers, grab my traveling cloak and the small suitcase, and hurry out to whatever’s waiting on the other side of the door.
Turns out what’s waiting is a two-person ship called the Solar Hammer 2000, which has apparently been hidden in the bowels of the spaceport for over a decade. “Amazing, isn’t she?” Robin beams with pride at the ship, as though he built it with his own hands.
“It’s … pretty small.” And by pretty small, I mean it could fit into my bedroom at home. It’s barely tall enough to stand up in. “Is it a short-range shuttlecraft?”
He shakes his head. “It’s a state-of-the-art mini airship, complete with a homing device, whisper-quiet propulsion, light-speed technology, comet and asteroid warning system, and shields, of course. And it’s all gassed up with high-octane Aloxxite, enough fuel to get us to Earth and back ten times. What it lacks in size, it makes up for in speed.”
“And no one will miss it?”
“Only the commander and his son seem to know it’s here. It was abandoned a long time ago. They’ve kept it in case of an emergency and never needed to use it. We’ll just use the homing device to send it back up here when we arrive on Earth. The commander might not even notice it’s missing.”
He yanks open the door to the cockpit. “Ladies first.”
I take a deep breath, tell myself it’s only a few hours’ journey, and climb in. This isn’t one of those occasions where the space looks bigger on the inside than it does from the outside. If anything, it looks smaller. This isn’t helped by the fact that all of Robin’s boxes are piled in the back, filling most of the cargo space. “I couldn’t leave them,” he explains, sliding into the pilot’s seat beside me. “Plus, you never know. We might need some of these things to barter with when we get there.”
I nod. “Smart.” I scan the dashboard in front of us. It’s full of knobs and levers, one red button, and a lot of silver ones. At home, the elevators in each building only had one red button, too. “You sure you know how to fly this thing?”
“I totally don’t,” Robin admits. “But I have help coming right about now.”
As he says it, three faces appear at his window. Finley, who led us to the arcade yesterday, Will, and a shorter, curly-haired boy I don’t recognize. They’re all wearing green pajamas and slippers.
Robin hops out and the curly-haired boy jumps in. “I’m Elan,” he says. “I’m the smart one.”
“Um, nice to meet you.”
“You have the coordinates?” he asks, holding out his hand.
I dig out the folded paper from its usual spot in my boot and hand it to him. Like Robin and me before him, he rubs the paper between his fingers. Then he holds it up to his nose and sniffs it. “Interesting,” he says. “I hadn’t expected paper to smell so much like feet.”
I redden. Perhaps I need to find a better place to keep it.
He rests the paper on his knee and then presses a button on the dashboard. A keypad slides
out. It takes about five minutes for him to type in all the numbers, letters, and symbols. He double-checks it twice before sliding the keypad back in and handing me back the coordinates. “You’re good to go.”
“That’s it?” I ask. “We just sit back and the ship sends us to King Ri — um, I mean, to our destination on Earth?”
“Yup. But whatever you do, don’t press the big red button.”
My eyes widen. “Why? What does that do?”
He shrugs. “No idea. I’ve just always wanted to say that.”
He climbs out, leaving the door open behind him. I hear Finley tell Robin to return the ship without a scratch. Robin says he’ll do his best and thanks the older boy. He shakes Elan’s hand, and then only he and Will are left on the platform. Will hands Robin a cloak and says, “Dad wanted to make sure you had this cloak. Guess it was his from before he came here. It’s for the cold. Or rain. Or for whenever it’s not exactly seventy degrees all the time like up here.” Robin thanks him and Will wipes away a tear even though he pretends he’s scratching his cheek.
My stomach clenches as it hits me how big a deal this is for Robin. He’s leaving a place he’s lived his whole life to fly off into space with a girl he hardly knows, all to try to rescue a king who may or may not actually be in trouble. How will I ever repay such a gesture?
When Robin leans over to hug his cousin goodbye, I see his hand dart out and drop one of the gold chains into the pocket of Will’s pajamas. I think Robin’s a more thoughtful person than he would have others believe.
A few minutes later, we’ve managed to find the right buttons to open the exit hatch, start the nearly soundless engine, and float out into the dark of space. We both turn to look behind us as the hatch slides closed. “Well, that’s that, then,” Robin says, almost to himself. Then he adds, “Finley told me to stay in the shadow of the Royal Horizon as long as possible.”
I try to focus on his words so I don’t think about how tiny our ship is and how huge outer space is, and the fact that my hands are tingling. I slide down in my seat until my face lines up with a shiny panel on the dashboard. Seeing my reflection calms me, as usual, even though my brow is all pinched together. It grounds me.