Mike Stellar

by K. A. Holt

Hubble grabbed me up in another hug. As I hugged him back, I could feel his ribs through his jumpsuit and that kind of brought me back to reality.

  “We need to get you home, man,” I said, gesturing at him. “You look like you need a good dinner.”

  “I do, little dude. I surely do.” He dropped his arm over my shoulder.

  “Come on, you two,” Larc said, stepping around us and through the doorway. “We have stuff to do.”

  As we walked quickly through some dark hallways and wound our way up through the belly of the ship, I finally remembered to introduce Larc and Hubble. Hubble gave Larc a hug almost as big as the one he gave me, saying, “I’ve heard a lot about you.” Larc just grinned and said, “Likewise.”

  “How have you heard a lot about …?” I looked at Hubble quizzically.

  “We don’t have time to chat,” Larc interrupted. “Come on, hurry up!”

  “She’s right,” said Captain Wink. “We’d better shake a leg, you two.”

  At the same time, Hubble and I both stopped and shook our right legs furiously. His mother had always said “shake a leg,” so that was what Stinky and Hubble and I did whenever she said it to us. Really, Hubble acted a lot like a kid in his teens. I always wondered how he’d gotten his job at the Project, even if he was a rocket science genius. He’s smart, but not a very serious guy.

  “Not helping,” Larc said over her shoulder. “Let’s go!”

  Hubble took off down the hallway like his pants were on fire. Larc kept pace with him, while Captain Wink and I had to practically jog to keep up.

  We arrived at a small, boring-looking door at the end of a hallway. Out of breath, I asked, “Where are we?”

  It was a simple question, yet it was met with looks of consternation from everyone. Larc chewed her lip and looked at the ground. Hubble opened his mouth to say something, but no words came out.

  I looked at everyone. “What’s going on?”

  “We’re going to try to get home, Mike,” Hubble said slowly. “But there’s something you need to know about Larc—”

  Suddenly the door opened and a small old man stood there. His expression was grim but it brightened as soon as he saw Larc.

  He took her hand. “You don’t know what it means to us to have you on the ship,” he said in a raspy voice.

  “It’s Jim and Albert and Marie you need to thank,” Larc said, walking into the room. “Not me.”

  I leaned forward, dumbly thinking that by moving closer to the scene, I would understand what was going on.

  “You realize the time frame we’re on?” the old man asked as the others filed into the room behind Larc. I followed, mystified.

  “Yes,” Hubble said. He was scratching his head in the way that he does when he’s really impatient. I’d seen that move a lot when he was irritated at me and Stinky.

  “Well, what’s the plan, then, Hubble?” the old man asked, equally impatient.

  “The plan is the same as it’s always been,” Hubble said.

  “But what about …?” The old man nodded ever so slightly in my direction.

  “Without Mike I would have never made it here,” Larc said quickly. “He’s part of the mission now, David.”

  “Fine, then,” David said, waving his hand dismissively. “I trust you. Can we please get started now? One more second in orbit of this dreadful planet is one second too long.”

  Everyone except me looked expectantly at Larc. I was staring at David. I couldn’t believe I was in the same room as the famed David Hazelwood. And that he was so small. And old.

  Larc cleared her throat and said, “Well, we have a bit of a problem.”

  “What is it?” Hubble asked, trying to sound calm.

  “I needed help to power through the wormhole. Mike’s help, actually.”

  “Mike?” Hubble asked. “But how? I don’t under—”

  “That’s not the point, Hubble,” Larc said, interrupting him. “The point is that my power cells have degenerated. There was a short when some liquid seeped into the Wormer.” She held up her scar and poked at it. “I don’t think I have enough power to get the Spirit back to Earth.”

  There was dead silence in the room. Finally Hubble said quietly, “How did Mike help with the wormhole?”

  “It was his RRE, from a tracking serum administered by Albert and Marie.”

  “Wait, wait, wait,” I said, holding up my hands. “RRE?” I knew what RRE was. We had studied that last semester. “That’s residual radioactive energy, right?”

  Larc looked at me expectantly.

  “I’ve been drinking that serum a bunch of times a day since we first got on the shuttle. If you need RRE to help with whatever it is you’re talking about, then I’m sure I have plenty to spare.”

  Larc nodded. “It can’t hurt to try, can it?”

  “Well, if it has anything to do with that finger thing,” I said, involuntarily reaching for my ear, “it probably is going to hurt me.”

  No one said anything for a minute. Then Captain Wink said, “If we’re going to give this a shot, we need to get this show on the road—now.”

  Hubble came over and stood beside me. I gave him a what-in-the-name-of-donkeys-are-you-doing? look, but I didn’t have a chance to say anything, because Larc was talking again.

  “First,” she said, “sit down, Mike.”

  I sat. Captain Wink and David stood on either side of me like guards.

  “Next,” Larc continued, “take this. Jim might want it back. He didn’t specify.” And she took off her hair.

  That’s right.

  Hair.

  Gone.

  She handed the mass of white to Hubble, who plopped it onto the table in front of me. I involuntarily flinched and stared at Larc, mouth agape.

  “You should probably take this, too,” she said, unzipping her jumpsuit.

  “Whoa!” I jumped up from the table, turning my back to her and shielding my eyes in one swift movement.

  Hubble chuckled and sat me back down. “Nothing to worry about, Mike,” he said. I slowly opened my eyes and saw not the naked Larc I was expecting, but a glowing control panel of sorts that seemed to have arms and legs and Larc’s bald head sticking out from it. The hands reached up and peeled off Larc’s face. They handed it to Hubble, who took the face and plopped it onto the table next to the hair. I swallowed and looked around the room. No one else seemed shocked. Then the now faceless control panel spoke.

  It said, “I’m sorry you had to find out this way, Mike. I kept meaning to tell you, but, well, it just never came up in conversation.”

  “Oh, don’t look so shocked, boy,” Captain Wink said with a sympathetic smile. “Didn’t you ever think Larc was a little too perfect? Knew too much about too many things?”

  “Uh,” I said. “Well. I never really thought she was perfect.”

  The Larc/control panel monstrosity hee-hawed in Larc’s familiar way. “Thanks a lot, buddy,” the control panel said in Larc’s voice.

  Trying desperately to set aside my absolute shock, I croaked, “So is-is that a petabyte processor or are you just happy to see me?”

  The control panel laughed again.

  Hubble walked proudly over to the mangle of blinking lights and black wires. “What we have here, Mike, is a very state-of-the-art Liberation and Rescue Cyborg. Or L.A.R.C., as you know it.”

  The control panel harrumphed.

  “Sorry. Her. As you know her,” Hubble said with a smile. “Larc is a very sophisticated piece of machinery, Mike. She’s equipped with the most advanced artificial intelligence, as well as miniaturized plasma-propulsion cells. She’s a walking, talking spaceship engine, with a lot of extras.

  “It’s ingenious, really,” Hubble continued as he pushed buttons where Larc’s stomach used to be. “Her father, and your parents, knew they needed a way to get our ship moving again if a rescue was going to happen. That’s when they thought of smuggling plasma-propulsion cells onto the Sojourner.”

  “So Larc�
�s dad—Jim—figured out how to stuff the cells in a robot,” I said quietly as it began to make sense to me.

  “A perfect Trojan horse!” David said gleefully. “The whole plan worked perfectly until …”

  “My sweaty hand shorted out her—what was it? Wormer?” I asked. “Now her plasma propulsion isn’t strong enough to power the wormhole,” I finished.

  “She’s going to be destroyed,” David said quietly. “She’ll just barely be able to power the Spirit out of here.”

  Hubble stopped pushing buttons and said, “I’m sorry, man. That wasn’t part of the original plan. We’ve lucked out with your RRE. But even with that she’s going to have to use every ounce of energy in her cells to power the Spirit. And we won’t even make it home. We’ll have to stop at the Sojourner and bunk in with you guys.”

  I had a sinking feeling. “I don’t know if that’s—”

  Captain Wink cut me off. “I trust you and Larc have said your good-byes, because the time is upon us.” He glanced at the clock on the wall. “Our window is here.” He walked over to Hubble and helped him with the last bit of button pushing.

  Now that I knew Larc was a robot, a lot of things started making sense. No wonder she knew so much about the ship and the escape pod. And the glowing blue braces and blue veins under her skin must have been the plasma energy charging. Being a robot was a pretty good excuse for never eating or drinking anything. And it also explained why she couldn’t scan her eyeball to open her apartment door, and why her forehead hadn’t bled when she’d whacked it in the escape pod.

  I shook my head in disbelief at my utter, well, belief of the situation. Of all the weird things to happen in the past few weeks, this one made the most sense. And David was right. Creating a robot to hide the fuel cells was ingenious. It made me think of my parents in a whole new light.

  I walked up to Captain Wink and Hubble … and Larc, who was being trussed into some kind of closet at the back of the room. Captain Wink plugged Larc into several outlets in the wall. Her fingers snapped in here, a foot over there…. It was a very complicated process. By the time he finished, Larc didn’t even have a human form anymore. I could just barely make out where her face had been. It was the cool glow of the still-present braces that tipped me off.

  “So you need my ear, don’t you?” I asked, feeling a surprising sense of pride.

  “It’s really very simple,” Hubble said. He took one of Larc’s free fingers and tapped the tip. Her fingertip opened like a hinged lid, and a thin metal rod slid out about twelve inches. “This rod will channel your RRE into Larc. Hopefully it will jump-start her plasma propulsion, just like it did for the wormhole. It’ll only hurt for a second.”

  I closed my eyes and said, “Go for it.”

  “Here goes nothing,” Hubble said, and I felt the quick searing pain. I rolled my eyes to the side to see what Hubble was doing. But the rod was already sliding out of my ear.

  “All done,” he said, replacing Larc’s fingertip and snapping the finger into a small hole in the wall. “Anything you want to say to her before she powers up?”

  I just stood there for a moment, staring at the mass of wires and blinking lights. It still wasn’t really registering that this was Larc. My friend. Even though I’d seen what had happened to her, I still couldn’t believe she had dissolved into piles of wires and chips. I felt awkward trying to talk to a mass of circuitry. It was weird.

  “Sorry I acted like an idiot most of the time,” I said to the braces. “You were a good friend. Weird and everything, but now I guess I know why. And you helped me out a lot, which I appreciate. And … well, good-bye, I guess. Have fun doing whatever it is you’re about to do.” I reached out my hand to touch the braces, but Captain Wink held me back.

  “Ooh, I’d think twice about that, Mike,” came Larc’s voice, sounding buzzy and hoarse. “I promise you don’t want the magnetic energy I’m creating right now to give you a zap.”

  “No,” I said, withdrawing my hand. “No. I guess not.”

  “Well, then, it’s time we got this boat a-rockin’,” Hubble said, slapping me on the back. “I’m gonna flick this switch here and we’ll be on our way. Larc is gonna get us back to the Sojourner just fine.”

  “About that …,” I said hesitantly, giving the blue braces one last look. “The Sojourner may have already turned around by now. My parents, Larc’s dad … creator … whatever—they may all be in jail. Or worse.”

  “How’s that?” Hubble asked distractedly, jamming his hand onto a big red button. The contorted mass that used to be Larc’s body lurched and then started glowing a bright blue.

  “I thought they were expecting us,” David said. The room began to hum loudly. I instinctively sat down and said, “Belt,” but the Spirit was too old to have voice-activated seat belts. The humming grew louder and louder and finally I grabbed the strap and pulled it tightly over my lap.

  “Well, they are expecting us,” I said, raising my voice over the growing hum, “but it’s probably a different ‘they’ than you think.”

  Even the crazy ups and downs and brain-rattling curves didn’t stop me from arguing with Hubble all the way through the Fold. And he STILL woudn’t listen to me. He took me aside and put his hand on my arm. Quietly, he said, “Mike, I understand that you’re a little freaked out right now.”

  “I’ve been through the Fold twice, Hubble!” I shouted, my stomach still churning from the second time. “Twice in one day! Plus wormholes! Of course I’m freaked out!” I wanted to grab him by the throat and throttle him. “But just because I’m freaked out doesn’t mean I don’t know what I’m talking about!”

  “I understand you are concerned, Mike, but you need to just let us carry out our plan, okay?” Hubble continued calmly. “We’ll make sure your parents are safe. Once they’re safe, we’ll worry about everything else. All right?”

  I could feel my eyebrows go as pointy as they’d ever been. I’d just spent what felt like hours explaining to Hubble and Captain Wink and David what was happening on the Sojourner. Even as we felt the Spirit attain air lock with the Sojourner, I repeated, in detail, how evil Mr. Shugabert was and how he would stop at nothing to prevent my parents from saving the people on the Spirit. And now Hubble was telling me to stay out of it. To let the big boys do the fighting.

  “Don’t talk to me like I’m a baby, Hubble,” I growled. “I want to help. I need to help. I’m the only one who’s seen what these goons can do—”

  “Mike,” Hubble said, turning from the computer terminal where he’d been accessing the security cameras on the Sojourner. “Listen. After everything I’ve been through—after everything you’ve been through—I just can’t let you get hurt. I will not be responsible for putting you in any more danger. Plus, I need you to stay here. Help us from the flight deck. I’ve asked Meridiani here to assist you.”

  A rumble of throat clearing came from the doorway. I turned and saw a gigantic man with a bald head shining, even under the low, sick light of the Spirit. His flight suit was tattered, but it still clung to the muscles on his arms.

  “That guy?” I frowned. “He’s supposed to assist me?”

  Meridiani crossed the room and put a heavy hand on my shoulder.

  “Don’t cause trouble, Mike,” Hubble said shortly. “Just stay here on the ship. Once things are settled, we’ll come for you. Besides, if something was really wrong, we’d know about it. We’ve had weekly updates from Albert and Marie and Jim and Venus for almost a full year now. If something was sketchy, they would have let us know during our last contact.”

  “When was your last contact?” I spat.

  Hubble sighed. “A couple of days ago, Mike. Don’t worry about it.” He ran his hand through his beard. “We’re taking precautions, okay? We’re armed. We’re ready for anything they might throw at us. Plus, we’ve already contacted the ship. See? They’re sending some guys to meet us at the air lock.” He motioned to the terminal screen. It showed an image of four black-suited m
en marching down the Sojourner air lock hallway.

  “But, Hubble, those are bad dudes. And there are a billion times more than four of those guys on the ship.”

  “You still have a tendency to exaggerate, don’t you, kiddo?” Hubble laughed. “We may be a little scraggly, but the Spirit crew is still more than seventy-five strong. We outnumber those guys.”

  “This is all such a load of—” I said, disgusted. “They all have weapons, Hubble! They—”

  “Don’t worry, I’m not going to let you down.” Hubble typed a few commands and some more security camera images appeared. He frowned when he saw several huge men walking down a hallway. He turned and looked at me. “Don’t you let us down, either. Stay here, big guy We need you to monitor the air lock connection with Meridiani.”

  Hubble tapped the terminal screen with his finger, turning it off. He stood up, hugged me, and walked after David and Captain Wink, who had already left the room and started down the hall toward the air lock. I could hear the crowds of Spirit crew members waiting to join them as they boarded the Sojourner.

  “ ‘Big guy’?” I shouted after him. “‘Big guy’?!” Meridiani grabbed my shoulder to steer me out of the room. Hubble, David, and Captain Wink were already out of sight but I tore loose from Meridiani’s grip and ran, trying to catch up to them. As soon as I made it to the air lock, the door slid shut. It had no keypad. Just like the rest of the Spirit’s doors, it required an actual key. No chance to hack into it. Low-tech always trumps high-tech.

  Breathing heavily, I slumped against the closed air lock. This Meridiani guy wasn’t going to assist me with anything. He was just a babysitter … maybe even a bodyguard or something.

  I sunk my head onto my knees. What was I going to do? Just sit there and wait for them all to be creamed? Even with what was left of the Spirit crew, they were easily outnumbered two to one. And with the strength of the Project goons compared to the raggedy-ass weaklings these slop-eating Spirit crew members had become … it wasn’t even going to be close.

  I looked up. Meridiani had found me. His hands were placed tightly at his hips.