I hear a slow clap from behind as Palatnik rounds the chair to face me.
‘Brilliant,’ he says.
I clench my teeth. I’m going to just let it sit. I’m not going to bite back, because that’s what he wants.
But I can’t help myself. ‘What?’ I snap at him.
‘I’ve just never seen anybody lose it that badly before,’ he says. ‘With so little control. That was extraordinary, my friend.’
I want to tell him that he’s not my friend. I want to ask him if his training as a pilot was fifteen seconds long. I want to ask him why he always singles me out, why he leans on my back when I’m doing push-ups. I want to know why he cuts sick when I don’t pronounce Russian words clearly. He looks at me in astronomy, when I’m working, like he’s trying to come up with fresh ways to punish me. I’ve been doing better and better on the challenges, working hard in the day, studying at night. But he always cuts me down. Now he’s giving me a hard time for crashing my first time on the sim? I rip off my headset, stand up and head for the door.
‘Where do you think you’re going?’ he says.
I keep walking across the darkened room.
‘I asked you a question, young man.’
But I don’t care. I’ve had enough. He just needs to get over himself, leave me alone and stop being such a freak. I want to turn round and tell him how much his breath stinks when he bends over us in class and that maybe he should stop drinking instant coffee. I want to tell him to buy himself a toothbrush.
But I don’t.
I just keep walking.
I go and sulk in my sleep capsule and read a bunch of Scott’s comics that he left for me. I don’t return to training for the rest of the day. It’s good just to do nothing for a few hours. I’m so sick of thinking and working and trying so hard all the time.
After a couple of hours I start to worry that I’m going to get dumped for walking out on the sim session. Then I worry about what’s coming up tomorrow, the thing I’ve been dreading most of all.
Lying back in my capsule I stare at the picture of my mum. It was taken in the laundromat and she looks kind of annoyed. It’s the only picture I have of her. She always used to take the pictures so she’s not in many of them. It’s kind of faded and yellow with a brown blotch in the top right corner. Every time I look at it I wonder where she is. I usually imagine her sitting in a banana lounge on a white sand beach. She’s wearing a big floppy hat and I can’t see her eyes. She doesn’t look up. She’s drinking a yellow drink out of a tall glass with a wedge of pineapple on the rim. I want to ask her if she left us because of me.
One day I’ll ask Karl.
I think of home. I never thought I’d say it, but right now I actually miss the place. I miss the white tiles and the moist, warm air in the laundromat. I miss the flickering fluoro light over the folding area. I miss the steamy front window. I miss the fires that break out every week or so at the back of the dryers. I even miss the food. The food here is better, but there’s too much choice or flavour or something. At home we have three meals on rotation. I miss Australia. I miss the beaches, even though I never really went to the beach. I sing the national anthem quietly to myself for a bit. I wonder why we don’t use the word ‘girt’ apart from in that song. Has anyone ever said, ‘My house is girt by trees’ or ‘Hey, that banana there is girt by apples’.
I realise I’m going mad and I decide to go ring Karl. I slide out of my capsule and schlep outside. I grab a scooter off the rack and head over to the spaceport foyer, which is empty, apart from a security guy. His waist is girt by a thick, black belt. (See? Doesn’t really work.)
Most of the flights happen in the morning, so it’s usually quiet in the foyer by this time of day. I plunk myself down at a Skype booth. I tap the space bar and the screen comes to life. I log in and click Karl’s username. The ringtone reaches out across the ocean to the grubby old PC in our hot little office room. I wonder for a second how that computer can even run Skype, given the state it’s in. It’s a disgrace. Then Karl’s face comes up on screen.
‘Rocket!’ he says. ‘Thought you’d died. Haven’t spoken to you in ages.’
‘No. Still alive. For now.’
‘How’s Space School?’
‘It’s all right.’ My voice seems to echo in the big empty foyer.
‘Just all right? How long have you got to go? When do you come home?’
I can hear washing machines in the background. I’ve never liked the sound of those things before, but right now I love them.
‘They’re making me jump out of a plane tomorrow,’ I say. ‘And our trainer hates me.’
‘Sorry, mate, the screen froze for a minute. What’d you say?’
‘I said I’ve got to skydive and our tr—’
‘Sorry, I can’t hear you and you’re frozen. Look, can you call me back tonight my time? I’ve got a heap of customers who are ready to neck me for not having their stuff ready.’
‘Yeah. I’ll call you. I miss you.’
‘This thing’s playing up again. Give me a call about seven tonight – whatever time that is for you.’
His face disappears and I’m left looking at my own reflection in the empty screen.
I feel bored and sad and alone. I open up a browser window and google ‘Robert White’. The page that I saw with Yada that night is top of the list. I scroll down. There’s a motocross rider from Manchester called Robert White. There’s a bank manager’s Facebook page, a bird-watching blog by an ornithologist named Rob White. Nothing more about a space kid. I go back to the top link and click.
The page springs up and I scroll down past the others to the picture of White. Nine years old. From Oklahoma. Son of an air force guy. That’s it. How could something so massive have only one web page dedicated to it? Why weren’t people talking about this? You’d think there’d at least be some conspiracy theories on how it happened, but there’s nothing. It just doesn’t make sense. I study the kid’s face for a while and I read over the article again and again.
I make it back to the room just before five o’clock and Yada is there. She jumps out of her capsule, excited.
‘I have an idea,’ she says.
‘What?’
‘It’s brilliant.’
‘What?’
‘Something that will really get up Palatnik’s nose,’ she says.
‘What!?’
‘I’m going to need your help.’
17. Rocket
I don’t know why we did it. I don’t know why I agreed. If you had wanted something since you were six and you were about to be given it, wouldn’t you put it all on the line for a prank? No?
Well, that’s what I did.
Yada and I slip away after lights out. We sneak silently, like foxes, through the central courtyard in the cold desert night. The vast grassy rectangle is about half as long and wide as a football field. There’s a path, then a low hedge and a garden up against the buildings on all four sides. The courtyard is lit by eight or so dim lights positioned on the perimeter walls. It’s the heart of the spaceport. The only way in or out is via three doors. One leads to the hangar. One leads to the foyer. The other leads to the hallway near our dorm.
We stop outside a window not far from the statue in the middle of the courtyard. Yada is certain the window is Palatnik’s.
‘Are you sure?’
‘Positive,’ she says.
I kneel down and set up the rocket we’ve built. It’s seriously homemade, out of an old bottle and other stuff scavenged from the dumpsters behind Spirit. It’s a lot like the rocket that got me into space school.
‘You ready?’ I mouth the words, my breath foggy.
‘So ready,’ she whispers. ‘If we get chased, split up. The other person should keep running. No reason we should both be caught.
’
‘Sure,’ I say. ‘But that’s not going to happen. T minus 30 seconds.’ I pull the box of matches from my pocket. I strike one and move to light the long fuse. An icy breeze gusts across the courtyard.
The match blows out and Yada gives a muffled snort.
‘It’s windy,’ I hiss. ‘Give me a break.’
I light another match and scorch the tips of my fingers. I drop it, shake my hand and suck the burnt skin.
‘Give that to me,’ she says. ‘You take too long. He is probably watching us right now.’
I don’t want to give her the matches, but she grabs them and lights one, protecting it from the breeze. This really annoys me. I’ve done this a million times and now she walks in and takes over. The flame connects with the fuse, sets it alight and travels quickly, eating up the long white cord.
‘Ha!’ she says.
‘She’s gonna blow,’ I whisper and we run for our lives, all the way across the lawn towards our escape door that Yada propped open with the piece of folded-up paper. But we can’t leave yet, before we see what happens.
We leap the waist-high hedge near the door, dive into the garden and peek over to watch. We kneel, fingers in our ears.
‘This is gonna be so loud.’
We wait.
We watch some more.
‘Is it on fire?’ she says.
‘I think so.’
The flames creep higher, eating our creation before our eyes.
‘Perfect,’ she says, deadpan. We stand, jump the hedge and walk over to the launchpad disaster.
‘What do you th—’ Yada starts, when BOOOOOOOOOOOM! The rocket explodes off the pad and a ball of flame soars up, up and up into the night sky. We watch, dead silent, as the fireball climbs higher until it looks like a distant orange star.
‘That is the highest I’ve ever seen one of my rockets go!’ I whisper. ‘That thing is never coming down.’
A light flicks on. It’s in Palatnik’s room. His silhouette appears at the window for a second. Yada and I are out in the open.
He disappears.
‘Do you think he saw us?’ I say.
But she’s already running for the door. I run, too. As we get within a few metres of it, I see someone running along the hallway, right for us. We hit the ground then scramble and crawl desperately for the hedge.
‘Go!’ I snap. It’s about now that I start regretting we did this. It seemed pretty fun at the setting-off-the-rocket stage but, now, not so much. Yada dives over into the garden and lies flat on the dirt. I throw myself over the low hedge, too. The ground is dewy and cold.
The second I hit the ground the door clicks and swings open.
I wait for it. There’s no way we haven’t been seen.
‘Hello?’ she calls out. It’s Bonnie, the security guard that I ran into on one of my first nights here. She stops just outside the door, about four metres away from us. I can see her in shadowy profile. She has a torch and she’s spraying it around the courtyard. I’m looking right up at her. She only needs to look down and to her left and she’ll see me, too. She’s holding the bit of paper that Yada jammed in the door to keep it open.
‘Who’s there?’ she says. ‘That one of you kids?’
A second later, it’s Palatnik’s voice from the other end of the courtyard. ‘What was that?’ he says.
‘An explosion of some kind.’ Bonnie walks over to him.
‘No kidding. That thing scared the bejeebies outta me.’
I can hear Yada laughing softly. ‘Bejeebies’?
They’re both heading for the launch site. Their voices are lowered. I peek over the hedge and there’s Palatnik crouching in that red tartan dressing gown, pyjama pants and sneakers, picking over the burnt debris. He looks at the sky, then they both stand and check around them. I duck down again.
Yada is gone. Actually gone. I’m on all fours. I look behind me and then back to where she was. I can’t believe this. It’s dark down here, but light enough to see someone. And she’s vanished.
‘Yada,’ I whisper.
I start crawling along the garden bed, hidden from Palatnik and the security guard by the hedge. I’m heading for the door, our door. I don’t know what I’m going to do when I get there, because I’ll have to break cover to check if it’s still unlocked. And I know it isn’t.
When I’m nearly at the end of the garden bed Yada rolls out from under the hedge. A little yelp escapes me.
‘What are you doing?’ I hiss at her.
‘Just looking. This is fun, huh? Like we’re spies.’
‘Are you mental? I thought you were gone. Don’t do that again,’ I whisper. ‘This was a stupid idea. We’ve got three doors to get in or out of here. None of them are good options for us. They’re gonna find us. And, if they go and look in the dorm, we’ve got to be there.’
‘Just relax,’ she says.
‘Relax? How can I relax when I’m about to lose everything?’
I look up over the hedge and Palatnik and Bonnie are walking towards us. I pop my head back down.
‘Too late,’ I say. We’re going home. I can feel it. I can’t believe what an idiot I am. Why would I do this? I lie there, face pressed into the dirt. Yada’s sneakers centimetres from my head, ears alert.
I can hear someone’s shoes squeaking in the dewy grass. Every step is amplified by the silence. They stop about three metres from us. I can just see Palatnik’s sneakers under the hedge. I lie dead still, my body numb with cold on the desert ground. I wish I was Fantastic Mr Fox and I could start digging. I’d dig all the way to Palatnik’s chicken shed number one and devour three of his finest hens.
‘Well, they haven’t got any way outta here unless they’ve got a key,’ he says, ‘so I say we circumnavigate this yard, check the gardens, check under the hedges, check around the statue, check the doors and smoke ’em out. If we don’t find anything we go have a look in the snotrags’ dorm.’
I’m not breathing now. I’m waiting for him to take three steps forward, look over the hedge and end my dream. But, instead, he breaks to my right and Bonnie follows him. He goes past our escape door and it sounds like they’re starting to check the gardens on the far right edge of the courtyard.
‘If there’s anybody here I’m gonna flush you out,’ he calls.
I wait a few more seconds in silence then I get up on my knees and peer nervously through the topmost leaves of the low hedge. They’re walking away from us. Bonnie’s flashing her torch into the garden bed, while Palatnik checks under the hedge. They’re moving pretty fast.
I lean down close to Yada’s ear and whisper. ‘I reckon we’ve got about a minute before they reach the opposite corner of the courtyard and start heading back. And that’s if they don’t look this way before then. What are we going to do? There’s nowhere to run.’
‘We should check the door.’
‘I’m pretty sure it banged shut when she pulled that piece of paper out, but that’s about our only chance,’ I say. ‘I’ll go.’
Yada squishes her body up to the hedge and I crawl past, my shoulder scratching against the wall of the building, my knees and palms feel icy. I stand, hunched, staying as low as I can. I step silently over the low hedge onto the small tiled area outside the door. If they turn around now they will see me. My eyes are trained on the bottom of the door, near the ground, where Yada stuck the paper between the door and the frame. I’m hoping that maybe I saw something else in the security guard’s hand, not our paper. But it’s definitely gone. The glass door is closed. I tiptoe towards it and pull the handle gently. It doesn’t budge.
I see a pair of bare feet appear inside the glass door. I look up. It’s Zarif. He’s staring at me. For a second I feel relieved, like the nightmare is over. I motion for him to let me in and I check over my sho
ulder quickly and see that Bonnie and Palatnik are nearly at the other end of the courtyard.
When I look back to Zarif, he’s just standing there, looking at me.
I make a hand motion and I mouth the words, ‘Let me in!’
18. Stand Up Eight
Zarif stares. He knows exactly what he’s doing. He has no expression on his face, nothing in his eyes. He knows what I want and he’s not going to give it to me.
‘What?’ I mouth silently.
Something in his eyes or his body retreats and it seems like he’s about to walk away.
‘Please!’ I say quietly. I can’t believe this.
Yada appears next to me.
I check over my shoulder again. Palatnik and Security are diagonally opposite us in the far corner of the courtyard, near the door to the main hangar. In a few seconds they’ll be turning back toward our end of the courtyard and we’ll be goner than gone.
‘Please.’ Yada has her palms pressed together under her chin, praying for him to let us in.
He looks at her. Then at me. Then back at her.
His hand moves. We hear a click. Seconds later we’re running down the darkened hall to our dorm. I dive into my capsule, pull the sheet up and do my best fake sleeping. Yada and Zarif dive into their capsules, too.
Galactic Adventures Page 8