He figured Phoebe would be mad, but she spoke quietly. “Please, no more killing. I know they’ve done terrible things, but they’re like family. And I don’t have much left.” Tears welled up in her eyes.
“Sorry.” Liam grabbed Tarra’s legs. She wasn’t very heavy in Delphi gravity, and they carried her swiftly back through the complex to the steamy bath hallway.
Barro was still there, rolled over on his side, his chest rising and falling slowly. Liam could only see the back of his head and worried for a moment that he might be pretending to be unconscious, but he didn’t move. They dropped Tarra beside him, and as Liam backed away, Phoebe pulled off Tarra’s helmet. She stood and crossed her arms, staring at them.
“Are they really family?” Liam asked.
“No. They were my dad’s coworkers.”
“Like in the army or something?”
“They’re scientists. . . . They used to be.”
Liam fought another swell of anger inside. He knew the urges were wrong, to shout at them even though they were unconscious, to kick them while they were lying there. He balled his fists and shook it off. “We should go.” He stepped toward the door and pulled on Phoebe’s arm.
She didn’t move. Still gazing at them. “Phoebe.”
When she turned, she was unhooking her helmet from her space-grade suit. Her eyes were wide, fearful, her mouth small.
“What are you doing?”
“Before we go back on board, I should show you. I don’t know how else to do it, and now is as good a time as any.” She pulled her helmet off, bent, and placed it on the floor. When she stood, her face was beaded with sweat from the scorching, dripping air, her eyes swollen and red. “This way, if you decide you want to leave me with them, you can.”
“Phoebe,” said Liam, his pulse speeding up, “I’m not—”
“Just . . . listen, Liam. This is going to be hard. You’ve known this person for three years, spent all kinds of time with her, at school, at the field station. You kissed her once on the cruiser.”
“What do you mean—”
“Shh. Let me finish. The thing is . . .”
Liam was about to interrupt her again, but he stopped because a strange thing had started happening to Phoebe’s face, like it was softening somehow, getting shiny, in a way he couldn’t quite understand.
“That was Phoebe,” she said. “And Phoebe’s real, but she’s not the whole story. I had to lie to you, and I don’t want to anymore. So before we leave, you need to know who you’re really leaving with.”
She stood there, helmet off, trembling in spite of the heat, and ran a finger down her cheek. The motion left a thick purple streak there, spotted with black, but no, that wasn’t quite what had happened. More like her skin had been rubbed away and Liam was seeing something beneath it.
Tiny black dots began to appear all over Phoebe’s face, prickling up through her skin, as drops of sweat swelled all over—except they were more than just sweat: glistening, opaque beads, as if her skin itself was bubbling. Phoebe’s entire face seemed to slide, to droop, like it was becoming liquid, her skin thinning into channels and running down onto her space suit, leaving behind more of the lavender with black spots. Melting and melting, until the person standing before him no longer had human skin at all. She pinched at her eyes and they changed completely, then fiddled around on her scalp and pulled off her pale red hair: a wig. Beneath it was a long, slim braid of silvery, silklike hair that spiraled around the top of her head.
“This is the real me.”
Phoebe blinked her blue-and-black eyes, her pupils sparking gold.
“My name is Xela.”
9
DISTANCE TO CENTAURI B: 3.3 LIGHT-YEARS
“I can’t actually see you like this,” said Phoebe. “The star where we came from is a red dwarf, so we mainly see by infrared. Without the adapters on my eyes, all this steam is making everything a big bright blur. It’d be like if you stared up at the sun.”
Liam rocked on his heels, and the thought that flashed through his mind was: Run. Get out of here while she couldn’t see. Back to the ship, shove her parents’ pods out the door and take off, run for it and never look back. Get back to his people, his world. . . .
Except he had no idea where his people even were. And his world was long gone.
He exhaled hard, hands fidgeting at his sides. “Are you an alien?”
Phoebe risked a slight smile. “Aren’t we all?”
“I guess, but you’re not human.”
Her smile faded. “Do I look it?”
“No.” Liam turned to Barro and Tarra. Streaks had appeared on their faces too, the purple, spotted skin showing through. Back to Phoebe. His heart was racing, his nerves ringing. It seemed impossible that what he had just seen had really happened, and yet in some ways it felt as much like a relief as a surprise. But she’s part of the enemy—
“Are you still there?”
Liam took a deep breath. Her nose was still the same. Her mouth the same shape, her lips a sort of pink, and her teeth humanlike, or were they also a costume? He wanted to ask, but maybe now wasn’t the right time.
“Yeah. I’m here.”
Phoebe cleared her throat. “We even had our vocal cords surgically altered, to make learning your language easier.”
“What did your old voice sound like?”
Phoebe’s throat moved up and down. “I can’t really do it anymore. It was sort of like human sounds, but also I remember one time we watched a video in class about the rain forests on Earth, and there were these big birds? We made noises like that, too. More musical, I think.”
Liam had a million questions knocking urgently on all the doors in his head. Where to even start? And he had to ignore that voice that was still saying Run! “Where are you from?”
“A planet called Telos.” Phoebe blinked over and over. “Can we talk about this once we’ve gotten out of here? It’s weird talking to a blob, and seriously, if I stay in this steam much longer I might pass out. Our bristles are heat-sensitive too.”
“Bristles?”
Phoebe ran a finger over the black dots on her cheek. “We shave them down from time to time, but yeah. Bristles. Plenty of Earth animals have them.”
“Does that hurt? Shaving them?”
Another half smile. “It all hurts.” She held out her hand. “Help me toward the door?”
Liam looked at her hand. Over her shoulder toward the doors. This is your last chance—
But he reached out. Nothing weird about her hand, at least through her space suit, and he reminded himself that, technically, Phoebe wasn’t even the weirdest alien he’d seen in the last hour. Still, he’d thought she was one thing and now she was something else. Except she was still Phoebe . . . wasn’t she?
He stepped beside her, put his hand on her shoulder, and turned her toward the door. Bent and grabbed her helmet and raised it over her head.
“Just a sec.” Phoebe pressed the adapters back into her eyes, one at a time, and blinked until they were set. “Okay.”
Normal-looking eyes made a big difference, Liam found, but he still gritted his teeth and held his breath as he leaned closer to her and lowered her helmet into place. Seeing the bristles on her skin up close . . . like he had to keep telling himself that she wasn’t going to bite him or something.
Her fingers fumbled around the helmet. “Everything’s still a little fuzzy.”
“I got it.” Liam attached her clasps, then took her by the wrist and tapped her link, setting the suit controls to maximum to compensate for the heat and steam.
“Can you grab their links?” Phoebe asked. “We don’t want them letting the others know about this.”
“You mean on the main ship,” said Liam. “How many of them—of you—are there?”
“Fifteen, including me and my parents and Barro and Tarra.”
Liam stepped over to them—they were stirring a little now; a brief moan came from Tarra. He tensed as he neared th
em. “You guys don’t have any, like . . . alien powers, do you?”
Phoebe frowned. “Yes, we have lizard tongues that shoot acid.”
Liam paused. “You’re kidding.”
“Liam!”
“Sorry. I just . . .”
“It’s okay. You get a pass . . . for like five more minutes.”
Liam knelt by Barro and gingerly lifted his arm. Barro twitched just a little and Liam flinched, but Barro’s eyes remained closed, his head on the ground. Liam unclipped his link and slid it free. He turned—
Tarra’s eyes were open wide. She blinked over and over. “Who’s there?” she said groggily.
Liam shuffled closer to her, held his breath, and snatched the link from her suit. She grabbed at him, but too slow, as Liam jumped back to his feet.
“Don’t do this, Xela,” said Tarra. “Don’t betray your own people.”
Liam started to shake. He couldn’t tell if it was from anger or fear. He wanted to shout at her, felt the urge to kick her again. “Sorry,” he said through gritted teeth, and he didn’t even know why or what for, but he hurried back to Phoebe. “I got them.” He took her by the arm and opened the airlock doors.
They stepped out through the instantly freezing folds of steam. Liam shut the airlock doors and guided Phoebe through the casino wreckage. “Getting any better?”
“Yeah, almost there.”
Liam tried to think of what else to say but nothing came out, and they ended up walking through the casino and the halls without speaking.
“Just a sec,” said Phoebe as they returned through what had once been the station’s comm center. Phoebe stepped around the giant hole in the center of the room, to where the body they’d seen when they first arrived was pinned under rubble. She pulled a piece of ceiling panel free and tossed it across the room. Liam joined her, yanking away twisted lengths of carbon bar and wall sheeting. The body was in a human pressure suit, but when they uncovered the face, Liam saw lavender, bristled skin, and eyes with gold pupils frozen and staring.
Phoebe’s head dropped.
“Did you know her?”
“No. She was with us on the way to Mars, but I never talked to her. I’m sure my parents did.”
“Do you want to bring her body with us?”
Phoebe shook her head. She pulled away a cracked section of the body’s mask and reached inside. “May Ana keep you,” she said, trying to push the eyelids down, but they were frozen solid. She spun away and hurried across the room.
Liam took a last wary look at the body—it seemed to stare at him, almost accusingly.
Outside, the wind howled, smaller flecks of the black, rocky ground joining the ice that pattered against their suits. Liam’s link flashed; the temperature was dropping fast.
JEFF was outside, rolling between the cruiser and the Comet, his chest lamp illuminating the sleeting crystals. He’d attached a thick hose between the two ships.
Phoebe stopped and turned away from JEFF. “I don’t want him to see me,” she said quietly over their link channel.
“JEFF,” said Liam, summoning his courage. “You heard what I said about overriding your security protocols.”
“Acknowledged.”
“You’re not allowed to change that, no matter what, you understand me?” He tugged Phoebe’s arm and she turned back around.
JEFF studied her, eyes flickering. “Acknowledged.”
“It will be all right,” Liam said to Phoebe.
“I don’t know about that, but thanks.”
“How’s it going with the fuel and parts?” Liam asked JEFF.
“Nearly complete. I’ve siphoned all of their remaining fuel and salvaged the thruster that we need. I also tried swapping in their long-range antenna, but it is sadly not compatible. Still, our pursuers will have quite a bit to do before they can lift off.”
They leaped on board while JEFF stowed the fuel hose.
Phoebe began to pull off her suit and surveyed the streaks of melted skin putty around the collar and down the front. “I guess I should have brought some towels or something.”
“Oh, it just looks like a usual face-melting,” said Liam. “Happens all the time.”
Phoebe smiled. She scraped at the suit with her still-human-looking fingernail, causing flecks to drift to the floor. “Mom would kill me.”
“For leaving those two?”
Phoebe laughed darkly. “I just meant about the suit. I don’t even know what she’d do if she knew about that.” She headed for the bathroom.
Liam pulled off his suit and hung both on their chargers, put the stun rifles away, and then went to check on his parents. He paused in front of the four pods and stepped between Phoebe’s parents first. Their sleeping faces looked as normal and human as ever. He peered closer: Could he tell that their skin was fake, knowing what he now knew? He felt a fresh surge of anger inside, an electric sensation, thinking of how he’d never really liked them, how they’d seemed mean and strict, and now it made sense: they were the enemy, evil . . . except maybe that wasn’t exactly what he felt. Maybe it was more like a kind of sadness, but he wasn’t quite sure why.
He moved to his parents’ pods. Their faces were the same, readings the same. He tried to imagine what they would say if they knew: that their research partners had been aliens, had meant to steal the work they’d spent their lives on, that the entire human race was depending on. He could imagine Dad getting furious, and Mom . . .
But then he thought that actually, she’d probably be sad like he’d felt a second ago. Angry too, but he remembered what she’d said to him back on Mars: We’ll take it one unknown at a time. She would want to know more before she made up her mind. About Phoebe. About all of it.
Liam pressed his palms against the glass above their faces, waited a moment until his skin had warmed the smooth surface beneath his touch. “I think I’m doing the right thing,” he said quietly. “I hope you’re not disappointed.” Then he returned to the cockpit.
JEFF was back in the pilot’s seat, firing up the thrusters.
“Are we good to go?”
“We have fuel,” said JEFF. “I calculate that we can get out of the atmosphere without any catastrophic problems.”
“That’s not very reassuring.”
“I doubt that much about our situation is.” He brought up the navigation overlay on the windshield and loaded a departure vector.
Phoebe entered. She’d replaced her wig and put the covering back on her face. She smiled. Same old Phoebe, the girl he’d known for years—except for a purple streak on her neck just below her ear.
“You didn’t have to do that,” said Liam.
“I thought it was best—what? Did I miss a spot?”
“Yeah.” He touched the same spot on his own neck. “You’re really good at that. I mean, like a professional makeup artist or something. You could work for VirtCom entertainment.” He couldn’t help studying her face, looking for signs that it was a mask.
“Well, it’s not exactly makeup. It’s a smart polymer that conforms to your face. I guess it’s technically alive, or something? But I did practice every morning before school for three years, with my mom’s help. It didn’t look this good at first, but nobody looks at you closely when you’re the new kid.”
“I thought everybody was pretty nice to you.”
“Kinda. But remember at the field station how you and Shawn used to go off, just the two of you, and play with your Raiders figures?”
“Oh. I don’t think we meant to ignore you. We just didn’t really know what to say.”
“I had to map those first couple lava tubes myself before you guys finally started paying attention. And school you in grav-ball.”
“Yeah, right.”
Phoebe grinned momentarily. “So now what?”
“We will depart and set course for Centauri B,” said JEFF.”
“Can we catch the Scorpius?” Liam asked.
“Even if they are still able to achieve their m
aximum velocity, our engine is slightly faster. We should be able to make up a four-day head start. And if they have sustained further damage, we should come upon them along the way.”
A silence passed over them.
“Is it still going to take thirty-three years?” Liam asked.
“Give or take a month.”
Liam felt a sensation like a balloon filling in his head. “But what if the Scorpius is being attacked right now? Or next week, or even next year?”
“I know it seems like an impossible time span given the situation, but there is nothing we can do to shorten the distance.”
Liam turned to Phoebe. “You said they had another ship. Do you know what the Teloses’ plan is?”
“Telphons,” said Phoebe. “That’s what we’re called. I don’t know any specifics. My parents were only tasked with the Phase Two data. We’ve barely been in contact with the rest of the team these last three years. The mission was all need-to-know, for safety. Maybe my parents knew more, but they never even told me what Barro and Tarra were doing.”
“But you knew about this attack,” said JEFF. “Which was why you were delaying our arrival.”
“After the attack at Saturn, I figured this was their next move based on what I’d heard.”
Liam felt his anger boiling up again, thinking of Mina, of Shawn, the Scorpius exploding around them. “What good did you think it would do for us to be late?”
Phoebe shrugged. “I wasn’t even sure. I was just trying to keep us out of harm’s way.”
“That didn’t really work.”
“You and your parents are still alive, aren’t you?” Phoebe glared at him momentarily but then held up Barro’s and Tarra’s links. “I checked them for messages, but there’s nothing. The communication system we use doesn’t save anything, for security. Clearly the two of them were looking for us, to get the data. But I don’t know what the rest of our—their team is planning next.”
“And what do you know about this ship they have?” said JEFF. Liam thought he could hear a tone of disapproval. “Its weaponry appears to be extremely advanced.”
The Oceans between Stars Page 14