by Wendy Mass
“You okay?” Robin asks. “We’ve almost cleared the wake zone around the station. We’ll be able to switch on the autopilot and accelerate soon.”
His voice sounds calm, but his face is as pinched as mine.
I nod as we slip alongside, and then quickly past, the Royal Horizon. Our ship looks like something the Horizon sneezed out.
“Okay,” he says. “Ready?”
I nod, or at least, I try to. I’m not sure my head actually moves. His finger presses the button beside the words To Destination. He then places his hand on top of my clenched ones and holds it there as the stars around us suddenly begin zooming past. It takes a few seconds for my brain to catch up and realize we’re the ones moving faster, not the stars. Faster, even, than the trip here in the Horizon. At this rate, we’ll get to Earth in no time.
After a few minutes where we haven’t exploded or gotten an angry message from the commander demanding our return, we both visibly relax. We even joke about how it’s a good thing we’re going so fast because this thing has no bathroom.
Robin shows me how to trick someone into picking whatever card you want them to from his plastic card deck. I’ve never heard of a magic trick before, so it takes me a while to catch on to what he’s doing. Then I laugh with delight as he makes one of the cards disappear and reappear in my messy half braid.
More time passes, and when I don’t see the sun approaching, I start shifting in my seat. I notice Robin glancing back and forth between the coordinates and the view outside.
“Hmm,” he finally says.
I don’t like the sound of that hmm. “Everything okay?” I ask, trying to keep my voice light.
“I’m sure it is. I mean, I hope so. About how long did it take you to get to Delta Z in the Royal Horizon?”
I can only guess. “Maybe a few hours? I was kind of stuck to the window.”
“Hmm,” he says again. It sounds even worse the second time. “If this ship goes faster than the Horizon, we should have gotten to the inner solar system a while ago.”
“Guess we didn’t pass it by mistake?” I ask.
“Not a chance,” he says. “Even though I’ve never seen it before, pretty sure we’d notice the giant yellow ball of gas in front of us.”
“We must have gone off course, then,” I suggest. “Maybe while a jack of clubs was being pulled out of my hair.”
“Glad you still have your sense of humor.” He checks and double-checks the coordinates in comparison with our current location. “Still heading to our destination.”
We grow quiet.
After a few more minutes without the scenery changing, he asks, “When you overheard Prince John, did you definitely hear him say that King Richard was on Earth?”
“I certainly thought so,” I reply.
Robin takes one more look out the front, sides, and behind us before saying, “I don’t know where your coordinates are taking us, but it’s not Earth.”
The next hour feels like ten. I’m trying my best to comfort Marian, but I’m not sure it’s working. She keeps clenching and unclenching her hands, and every few minutes she checks her face in the reflection of the dashboard when she thinks I’m not looking. She shouldn’t worry; she’s just as beautiful in the middle of outer space as she was on Delta Z.
Oh man, even Will would make fun of me for being so corny.
Everything has moved so quickly since her arrival that I haven’t had a second to think about the hugeness of what I’m doing. Now we have plenty of seconds. Too many seconds. And all I’m doing is thinking. What if Prince John wrote down fake coordinates that don’t actually lead anywhere? Or, worse yet, will lead us out of the galaxy, where even our full tank of Aloxxite won’t be able to get us back? The other option — that they’re real — isn’t much better. Going to Earth — a planet I’d always been grateful not to live on — was crazy enough, but at least it was close by, and I’d be going with a native. None of the other known habitable planets have fared much better than Earth. Sure, some still have a few patches of land where things grow, and some managed to escape the devastation of wars, but most places these days don’t take kindly to strangers.
I reach out and take Marian’s hand in mine again. She squeezes back.
Finally, FINALLY, something changes outside the window. The darkness around us is lightening up ever so slightly. I check the dashboard screen. We’re out of light speed! With no warning, a brightness the likes of which I’ve never seen surrounds our tiny ship, instantly blinding us.
We fling our hands in front of our eyes. I press my palms down hard, trying to quell the searing pain. “Wha — what was that?”
“It was a star,” she replies. “We flew extremely close to it. Space lit up like that on the Royal Horizon when we passed the sun, but not nearly as bright. The ship must have had shields up to protect our eyes.”
“Is it bright like this on Earth?” I ask, unable to move my hands away. If she says yes, it’ll be a good reason to be glad we’re not landing there.
“No,” she says. “It lights everything up, but as long as you don’t look right up at it, the sun is only a small yellow ball in the sky. I mean, that’s what it’s like on Earth, at least …” Her voice trails away at the end, and I’m guessing she has the same worries that I do about where we’re heading.
“We’re past it now,” Marian tells me, resting her hand on my arm. “I think you can open your eyes.”
Slowly, I lower my hands and blink away the black spots floating across my vision. My eyes still ache, but the brightness has dimmed enough that the pain is bearable. The light illuminates the scene around us, and I realize the view has changed again. Our ship whizzes by a large planet, and then a series of tiny ones. None of these constellations look like any I’ve learned about, and my teacher is very thorough. “I don’t think this part of space has been explored yet,” I tell her.
“I’m so sorry, Robin,” she says miserably. “The coordinates were obviously wrong, or fake, or don’t mean what we think they mean. Maybe Prince John just wanted to trick his staff into thinking he was holding King Richard somewhere. Maybe it’s just a bluff to show how much control he has. Whoever had me steal the coordinates was fooled, too.”
Her theory made sense. I wish I’d thought of it before suggesting this trip. I’ll bet she did, too. “It’s not your fault,” I assure her.
We’re slowing down further. We stare, transfixed, as a planet appears in the distance. Then the not-so-far distance, as we are suddenly nearly on top of it. The ship banks to the right and begins a trajectory to the dark side of the planet.
“We’re going to land!” she exclaims. Then she gulps and adds, “On a planet that no one has heard of, hundreds of light-years away from our own solar system, where we may not be able to breathe the air.”
We reach for each other’s hands as the Solar Hammer 2000 slows once again. The planet is still much too far away to reveal any surface details, but I don’t see any control tower beacons, grids of city lights, or any satellites in orbit that we’d have to avoid smacking into. If there are people below us, I don’t think they have technology yet.
“Don’t worry,” I tell her in as brave a voice as I can muster. “The autopilot will get us down to the surface safely. Then we’ll simply activate the homing device to bring us right back to Delta Z. You’ll be able to continue your journey with your classmates to Earth Beta, and I’ll … well, I’ll come visit you there.” I grin. “I’m getting the hang of this space travel thing.”
She smiles back, her face relaxing for the first time in hours. “Quite the adventure, at least, right?”
“Definitely,” I reply, my mood also lifting considerably. “Everything is going to be fine.”
“Yes,” she agrees. “Better than fine.”
Then the autopilot shuts off.
Turns out that a strange calm overtakes you when faced with your almost certain death as your tiny airship plummets toward the ground at two thousand miles per
hour. Without the automatic guidance system, the ship is completely at the mercy of fate and gravity. And I don’t think either of those are on our side right now.
“Um, any chance you know how to fly this thing?” The casual way Marian asks this tells me the same sense of calm has fallen upon her, as well. Either that or we’ve both descended into madness.
Dang my short attention span again! Why didn’t I listen when the pilots talked to us? I’m pretty sure no sleight-of-hand magic trick or fancy unicycle maneuver is going to get us out of this one. Neither my charm, nor my skill with the hoverboard, or the sword, or the VR archery game is going to help, either.
But wait — maybe I do know something! BullsEye is right next to the VR Starfighter. I’ve played around with that one a few times while waiting my turn for the bow and arrow.
Marian is now gripping the sides of her seat, although she’s trying to hide it. A sense of impending doom is chasing away my calm. My heart begins to pound as I desperately search the various screens on the dashboard in the hopes that something will look familiar. A lot of flashing lights and diagrams stare back at me. The speed indicator reads 420 knots. I have no idea if that’s too fast or too slow. Plus, it doesn’t really matter. The planet is so close now that I can see land and water formations. I’d calculate impact at thirty seconds or less. It’s now or never.
First I stab at the autopilot button, trying to get it to turn back on. I’m not surprised when that fails. I know from the VR flying game that the circular object directly in front of me that looks like a miniature steering wheel is called a yoke. In the game I use that to move the ship up and down. I grit my teeth and grab onto it with both hands. Yanking it toward me has the immediate effect of causing the airship to jerk and buck while emitting an unpleasant hissing sound. Marian yelps, then clamps her mouth shut.
I let up on the yoke and grab the lever that sticks out halfway between us. The name for it comes to me as I pull down on it. Throttle. We finally slow down a small amount. But now we’re zigzagging across the sky in a dizzying back-and-forth pattern.
“I’ll take the stick thingy,” Marian says, reaching for the throttle. “You do the wheel thingy.”
I nod. Our hands collide briefly as I release the throttle and she grabs it. For a few seconds, neither of us moves our hands. Then I reluctantly move my hands back up to the yoke.
Between Marian controlling our speed, and me doing my best to keep us steady, we manage to cross into the planet’s atmosphere without spinning out of control. From here, the light reflecting off the planet’s three moons is more than enough to reveal the features on the surface. And what it reveals — in between large bodies of water and smaller ones — is a dense dead zone, just like on Earth and the other known habitable planets where the people have killed off their forests. Good thing we plan to leave here as soon as we can. All I can do is try to steer us toward a safe landing in a clearing.
If I can find one.
I glance at Marian. She’s checking out the landscape, too, and her brows are furrowed. Then she turns and says hurriedly, “You know, we don’t actually have to land now. The autopilot isn’t in control anymore, so we can just turn around right now! Right?”
“Yes! Let’s do that.” Hope flairs up in both of us as we get to work pulling and yanking and twisting.
It takes us only a few seconds to realize it’s too late. The gravitational pull of the planet has our ship firmly in its grasp. We’re not going fast enough to break away, and there’s no way to get up enough speed to turn before striking the planet. Anything we do barely nudges us off our course. In an unspoken agreement, we stop fighting it. I point toward what looks to be a small patch of dark ground without any of the tall spiky things in the way. I barely have time to register that I’m about to see trees for the first time — even dead ones — before our ship is skimming the tops of them.
Marian pulls on the throttle with all her might, and I use all my flying skills to keep us from hitting the trees. But really, VR Starfighter isn’t my game. I manage to hit every third tree or so, but we barely feel it. The clearing is coming up fast, and the ship’s headlights reveal it’s more water than land. Still, it’s better than crashing into a tree and breaking into a million tiny shards. But at this speed, the ground is going to be just as hard and will do just as much damage if we can’t slow down enough.
“How do we engage the shields?” Marian shouts.
Shields! Yes! We need those! For once the solution comes easily. To the left of the yoke is a picture of the ship in a bubble. I take my hand off the yolk for a split second to press the button. Nothing happens. Then Marian points out her window, where we’re still skimming trees. “Look at the branches!”
It takes a second to realize that the branches are now breaking off three feet or so away from the ship instead of directly hitting the ship. The shields are working!
I barely have time to rejoice at that small victory because five seconds later we hit the ground with a sickening thud, the rear of the ship hitting first, then the nose. We sink down in our seats, bracing ourselves as we bounce along the ground, skid on a shallow body of water, slide on a sludgy mixture of earth and water, and finally screech to a stop. Our view out the front window is totally obscured by dirt and debris, which makes me think the front end of the ship is buried in the ground. We’ll have to dig ourselves out before we activate the homing device and head back to Delta Z.
“Are you okay?” I quickly ask as I fling off my seat strap. I hadn’t realized how much it had been digging into my chest and stomach.
Marian hesitates a second, then nods. “I mean, we did just crash-land on a strange planet — but yeah, I think I’m okay. You?”
I make a show of feeling my arms, legs, and torso, then quickly pat my face. “Phew, my best feature survived unharmed.”
She looks at me and bursts out laughing. “How do you know your face is your best feature? What if your best feature is your left elbow? Or your belly button?”
I shake my head. “My belly button’s pretty ugly.” Soon we’re laughing so hard we’re gasping for breath. It’s obvious we’re laughing because we’ve just survived the scariest experiences of our lives, but man, it feels good.
We eventually stop and gather our wits about us, wiping our cheeks and surveying the damage. The ship has gone totally dark, no headlights anymore, no flashing lights, just a faint clicking sound. I poke and prod, but only one gauge flickers — the one that says Low Fuel, with a series of numbers running below it. We must have damaged the fuel tank as we landed and fuel leaked out. I lean forward to scrutinize the readout to see if I can make anything out of the numbers.
“Um, Robin?” Marian says, tugging at my sleeve. Her voice is higher pitched than usual, which only makes it sound more musical.
“Hmm?” I reply, my attention focused on the screen.
“You need to see this.” The tugging continues until I finally look up. She’s turned around in her seat, facing the cargo area. I swivel around, wincing as the yoke jams into my side. Not sure what could be so interesting back there. The only things behind us are the boxes.
Or, more accurately, the only things behind us WERE the boxes. Now there is only a huge, gaping hole and half a billion stars.
Everything we brought with us is gone. Robin’s treasures from his parents. My jeweled headpiece from Grandmother. The laughter and relief I felt only moments ago after the relatively safe landing has vanished. Fear, dread, and regret are now competing to take their place. Even before Robin confirms it, I know this airship will never leave the ground. Even if we could somehow get the homing device to set a course for Delta Z, even if we could miraculously find more fuel, the ship is way too badly damaged to fly. We are stuck on this planet.
On the positive side, we can breathe the air here. The brisk night breeze rushing into the ship proves that. Beside me, Robin shivers and pulls his cloak closed. His teeth begin to chatter. This pulls me out of my dark thoughts a bit. “I
t’s not that cold, Robin.”
He flips up his hood and wraps his arms tighter around himself in response. Even in the moonlight, I can see his lips have gone blue. Guess life in a temperature-regulated spaceport thins the blood.
“We’re going to have to huddle together for warmth,” I say. He doesn’t complain as I move closer to him until we’re leaning against the backs of the chairs, our legs curled under us.
“Any chance there’s a tracking device on the ship?” I ask hopefully. We may not be able to get ourselves off the planet, but maybe someone else will come rescue us.
He shakes his head.
I try again. “Maybe you gave a copy of the coordinates to someone before we left? Your uncle, or Will, or Elan? Even Finley?”
He shakes his head. “That would have been too smart. But even so, we went off course as soon as the autopilot shut off. We could be hundreds or even thousands of miles away from where those coordinates would have taken us.”
Hope flickers away. He’s right. And the people who sent me to get the coordinates likely realized right away that they were fake, so it’s not like anyone from Earth will be showing up. If King Richard really is in danger, hopefully they will not give up on him. I’ll never find out now who they are, or if they chose me because of who my father is, or because they saw something in me that I don’t see.
One thing I do know is that Grandmother will never braid my hair again. A knot forms in my throat that makes it hard to swallow. I must have let a tear escape, because Robin’s finger brushing my cheek startles me.
“Don’t worry,” he says. “We’ll figure this out in the morning. Everything looks bleaker in the middle of the night.” He pauses, then adds, “Except for the sky. The sky here is awesome.”
I nod, not trying to speak yet. If I could make myself ignore all the unfamiliar sounds around us, I’d be better able to appreciate the show the sky is putting on for us. The Royal Horizon had been moving so fast that the stars were a blur of light. Even on Delta Z, they seemed to be in motion, since the spaceport was in orbit. But from the planet’s surface, the stars are frozen in place, glittering like diamonds. Every few seconds one streaks by.