Space Hostages

by Sophia McDougall

  “But you have to come,” raged Carl on ChatPort. Carl is Filipino-Australian with a voice almost loud enough to travel all the way from Sydney without technological help. He’d begun to get lanky over the last year, and he’d let his black hair grow out of the stubble it had been on Mars. “Mum and Dad are letting me and Noel go, and Noel’s nine. Can’t you, like, go some of the way by yourself? It’s not that far from England to Switzerland. Thsaaa could bring you the rest of the way.”

  In cosmic terms, it is no distance to Switzerland at all. If I’d had a Flying Fox or a Flarehawk, I could have flown there in twenty minutes. I’d been trained to fly spaceships, after all. But you can’t do that kind of thing on Earth.

  Josephine sent me a strange little email: “My dad said yes at once. I hope you’ll be there.”

  But Dad wouldn’t budge an inch. I knew it was because he loved me, but I couldn’t help getting furious about it. It was not that long ago that I’d had to make decisions like “Shall I a) walk off alone with a single tank of oxygen across the Martian wilderness, or b) stay with the wreck of the spaceship and wait to die?” And “How can we persuade these aliens to stop attacking humanity?” It is just not fair to put someone in a situation like that and then stick them in a little house on a little island on a little planet, and tell them they have to stay where it’s safe, because they’re only a child.

  And then Mum came home and said, “But of course she wants to go to space.”

  2

  I’d been hoping Mum would be on my side, seeing that she’s a space pilot and feels even more strongly than I do that a life without space travel is very dreary indeed. But I wasn’t prepared for how big a fight she and Dad would have about it. They were apart for so long during the war, and they’d been so happy to be together now that it was over that they hadn’t fought at all, so I wasn’t used to it, and neither were they.

  “You undermine me in front of her,” Dad was saying.

  “Daniel, you made a decision without talking to me and then expected me to fall into line!”

  “Someone has to make the decisions that protect her, and god knows you weren’t here,” said Dad, with something much uglier in his voice than I could remember hearing there before.

  I’d run upstairs, but I could still hear them through the floor. There was a dangerous rattle as Mum stormed across the kitchen and the things on the table shook. “I spend my life keeping the planet she lives on from being eaten by vermin, and you say I don’t protect her.”

  I almost wanted to go down and say I’d changed my mind. I didn’t mind staying anymore. Almost.

  But the skies are wide and dark in Warwickshire, and the night was bristling with stars. The room and the house seemed smaller than ever, so I opened the window and leaned out and breathed in the cold air as if I could smell the stars. Though I knew they weren’t as wild and bright as they’d been on Mars, or how they would be where Carl and Noel and Josephine were going.

  So when Dad came up looking angry and miserable and asked, “Alice, are you dead set on going?” I said, “I want it more than anything.”

  The upshot was that I did get to go, but I wasn’t as happy about it as I’d thought I’d be. I sent a message to Josephine saying so, but she didn’t reply.

  Mum and Dad barely talked to each other and looked miserable for most of the next six weeks, and though they both tried to be normal to me, it was pretty uncomfortable being the reason they weren’t happy anymore. I spent the whole time wishing I could skip ahead to the end of May, so now that I’m writing about it, that’s what I’m going to do.

  I suppose it’s a bit weird that I’ve been to Mars and flown a spaceship, but I’ve only been on a plane a couple of times. This time, the Council of Lonthaa-Ra-Moraaa was paying for everything, and the plane to San Diego was a lot nicer than the nicest spaceship I’ve been in. There were lovely big cushiony seats and little vases with orchids in them. Everyone else looked so important and rich that I felt like a complete mess by comparison, although my clothes had seemed quite nice back in Wolthrop-Fossey.

  “Why, you’re little Alice Dare,” said an American lady sitting across the aisle from us. She had golden hair whisked into a vertical froth and golden eyelids, and she was dressed in the kind of immaculately white suit a film star would wear. “Your book was so charming.”

  “I’m not that little,” I said, and then felt embarrassed. “I mean, thank you.”

  I didn’t mean to write a book, which I suppose is why I still can’t really believe I did. I just wanted to set everything straight. There was a lot of fuss about the Plucky Kids of Mars after we came home. We were made to do interviews and then half the time the reporters would make stuff up anyway. There was even a short docudrama about us. In my opinion, it should have been titled The Remarkably Stupid Kids of Mars, because the people in it sort of bumbled around the Martian wilderness crying and falling over until everything kind of fixed itself by magic. Also the girl playing me had funny teeth and could not act AT ALL. And so there was another round of trying to explain what actually happened, not just to reporters but to people at school too.

  So I thought I would write it all down, once and for all, and then everyone would leave us alone and maybe our lives would become more normal. I didn’t think this would take very long; I thought it would be maybe a couple of blog posts. But it kept getting longer, and when I had written fifty pages and had barely gotten to the place when we landed on Mars, I nearly gave up. Dad persuaded me not to, though, and every evening after school or National Service he would talk me through what had happened next and how I was going to write it.

  While I wrote, he’d read the last bit and tell me if he thought it was good, or if I should hurry things along a bit, or stop making quite so many odd jokes about all the terrible things that happened. And after a while of this, I found writing it made me feel better, not just about the annoying stories in the news but about everything. By the time it was finished, I was hardly having nightmares anymore.

  So I’m pleased about the book in one way, and there is some money from it for when I grow up, but as an attempt at making things normal, you couldn’t call it an unqualified success.

  “You must be so proud of her,” said the lady to my parents.

  “Always,” said my dad, who of course didn’t want to be on the plane at all, but he was very determined.

  Once we took off, a little flock of robotic doves came hovering down the cabin, bringing delicious snacks on silver trays. They kept this up all through the flight, and even Dad thawed a little when they gave him a glass of champagne with a strawberry floating in it to go with the amazing strawberry dessert we were eating.

  “We want everything to be perfect for you,” the doves cooed.

  It was so perfect it was slightly panic inducing. I’d only had strawberries three times before in my whole life.

  “Things certainly can change in a year,” Dad said softly, and Mum lifted her own glass and said, “To change.” Dad hesitated for a moment but then smiled and clinked her glass. I started thinking maybe it would all be okay.

  “We’re approaching the coast of California!” chirruped one of the robot doves at last, landing on an armrest. “You can see our first glimpse of the Space Elevator! Another advance from Archangel Planetary.” It fluttered its wings, subtly branded with the gold Archangel Planetary logo.

  There it was, like a faint line drawn in pencil up the blue sky, stretching up, up, from the edge of the Pacific until it faded out of visibility at the atmosphere’s edge. As we watched, something rose up its length, a tiny silver speck like a dewdrop clinging to a spider’s web, sliding impossibly upward.

  The Space Elevator was one of the things we couldn’t have during the war, because the Morrors would have blown it up. It’s supposed to be safer than taking off from the surface, and you can have bigger, better ships if they don’t have to enter the atmosphere at all. But I couldn’t help thinking the tether linking the Earth to the st
ation on the edge of space looked awfully fragile and what if it broke?

  But there’s always more than one way for things to go wrong.

  We stepped into the bright California sunlight amidst the friendly robot doves as a crowd of shiny-looking Archangel Planetary people came to meet us. It was weird to me to see that many people in uniform who weren’t military and who kept smiling. In fact, it was strange to see an airfield with hardly any EDF planes or starfighters.

  The airport probably wasn’t in great shape compared to how it had been before the war—weeds as tall as me growing through the concrete, one of the terminal buildings still a blackened shell, and even posh people having to actually walk off the plane rather than riding hover platforms. But it still looked pretty grand to me, with the palm trees and the hologram of the Archangel halo logo floating in the air above it. And above that was the elevator’s tether, like a great metallic beanstalk reaching beyond the sky.

  And of course there were some military things—a gang of bored cadets lounging about in the sun saluted my mother when they saw her. A short row of Flarehawks were waiting for transfer or refueling, not far from a charred heap of wrecks that I guess no one had decided what to do with yet. I looked away, because they reminded me too much of what it’s like when the spaceship you’re in crashes.

  “Captain and Mr. Dare, Miss Dare,” said a shiny-looking woman, in a voice as sweet as that of the robot doves. “Welcome to San Diego. Archangel Planetary is delighted to be Taking You To The Stars.”

  Mum, who was used to taking herself to the stars, looked a little annoyed at this, and it was left to Dad to say “Thank you.” Though he was looking at the Space Elevator tether, and his expression was extremely doubtful.

  Then suddenly there was a squawking noise from Mum’s wrist. And from all the cadets’ wrists. They all jumped up, some of them groaning, as Mum stopped midstride, her expression freezing into something fierce and hard and yet a little bit excited.

  Dad and I froze too.

  “We hope everything is perfect,” trilled the robot doves, concerned.

  “It’s not,” I said. I knew what that sound meant. “Vshomu.” The Space Locusts.

  “Incoming hostiles detected. Transmitting coordinates now. All units scramble,” said an electronic voice from the EDF smartwatch on Mum’s wrist. “All leave is canceled. Assemble. Assemble.”

  Mum read the details off her watch. “It’s a big swarm,” she said. “The moon again.”

  The Vshomu have not managed to eat any of Earth yet, and we like it that way. It helps that they can’t see it, because of the invisibility shield the Morrors built around the whole planet. But they can still see the moon, and that brings them a lot closer than you’d want. They breed so fast when they find anything to eat (and they eat anything) that if they ever chewed up the moon, first of all: the tides would get really messed up, second of all: there would be an enormous swarm of Vshomu against which the invisibility shield would be about as useful as a raincoat against piranhas.

  “Stephanie—” Dad began.

  “You have to go, don’t you,” I said. I felt a quiet thud of disappointment, but I knew it wasn’t fair to make a fuss about it. There’s no real way to get rid of Vshomu for good—all you can do is keep their numbers down, and blowing them up was what Mum did; she wasn’t allowed to back out.

  Mum put her hands on my shoulders. “I’ll catch up with you,” she said. “I promise.”

  “I don’t think a Flarehawk can catch up with a deep-space ferry,” I said.

  “I can,” Mum insisted.

  I looked up at the Space Elevator’s tether; another capsule was rising away into the blue. I wondered if anyone I knew was on it.

  “Be careful, Mum,” I said.

  “Oh, this isn’t real war,” she said. “This is pest control.”

  The smartwatch squawked again. Mum grabbed Dad with military conviction, said “Daniel, I do love you,” and kissed him. She let him go and hugged me. “I love you, Alice.” It was easier than she may have realized to read the Just in case I die! subtitles that came with this, but then her eyes fixed on the distant Flarehawks, her face broke into a grin, and she went sprinting off across the concrete, a cheerful cry of “Have fun!” echoing after her.

  Dad and I stood watching her Flarehawk soar across the sky, and Dad said heavily, “Right.”

  So we went to the hotel by ourselves.

  “The Morrors are being so nice to us,” I said. Because it was a very posh hotel, Dad’s room alone was practically the size of our house. I wanted to make sure we were still going, because I was afraid Dad might have changed his mind now that Mum wasn’t around. But if he hadn’t thought of it, I didn’t want to put ideas in his head.

  “Yes,” said Dad, and looked at the soft carpets and vases of flowers and little chocolates as if he thought something might be lurking under the sofa cushions waiting to spring out at us.

  I’m afraid I did not take in much of San Diego beyond the palm trees and sea and only minimal shock ray damage. Dad and I had supper in the restaurant, which I’m sure was very good but was wasted on me as I kept falling half asleep. Once I was in an enormous bed, I was also too excited to sleep, so I lay there, again wondering what it was like on the spaceport and if Vshomu would eat through the invisibility shield and if Mum was okay. And this turned into worrying about the very important exam on ferrets that I’d forgotten to review for, and eventually I realized I must have been asleep after all.

  I lay there for a moment checking in with myself that the ferret exam was definitely a dream, and went limp with relief before it struck me that today I was going to space. The thought kicked me out of bed like an electric shock. I threw open the curtains and beamed at the tether rising across the sunrise. I managed to shower like a sensible person—though my heart kept pounding and I trembled as I brushed my teeth. This wasn’t a very comfortable kind of excitement, but as soon as I was dressed, I went running to Dad’s suite as if I was seven again and it was Christmas morning.

  When I opened the door, I heard sounds. Bad ones.

  “Dad?” I said.

  The bedroom was dark. The bed was empty, the covers thrown aside. I padded across approximately a mile of velvety carpet toward the rectangle of light. Dad was crouched miserably on the bathroom floor, his head over the toilet.

  “Oh, no,” I said.

  “I’m all right,” said Dad bravely, and then proved this wasn’t true.

  “Oh, no,” I said again, and then tried to remember my medical training. “How long have you been like this?”

  “Since about two, I think,” Dad said, shivering.

  I pulled the quilt off the bed and put it over him, then washed my hands extremely thoroughly while I tried to decide what to do. I wasn’t sure if I should be telling the hotel, Archangel Planetary, or the Morrors, and I wasn’t at all sure how to get in touch with the Council of Lonthaa-Ra-Moraaa.

  I went and called reception, and sent a ChatPort ping to Thsaaa.

  Dad had managed to get back into bed by the time I’d finished. “It’s just food poisoning,” he croaked. “It’s probably out of my system now—I’ll be all right in a few hours.”

  But in two hours, we were supposed to be on the Space Elevator. . . . “I think you have norovirus,” I said. I gave him some water I’d warmed in the kettle till it was lukewarm. Cold water is sometimes harder for people with nausea to keep down, although, on the other hand, sometimes it’s easier. Medical knowledge can be very unhelpful.

  After about twenty minutes, the doors slid open and an Archangel Planetary dove hovered through. This one was evidently a medical dove, because it had a little green cross printed on the breast. It emitted a spray of green light over Dad with an angelic twinkling noise.

  “Good morning, sir, you have norovirus,” it sang. “Dispensing: antinausea medication!” It laid two pills like tiny eggs on the bedside table. “Keep warm and take plenty of fluids.”

  “That’s w
hat I said,” I muttered.

  “I have to take my daughter into space,” said Dad, reaching weakly for the pills.

  “Vomit is very bad in space,” I said. Believe me, I know.

  “Passengers with infectious illnesses cannot be cleared for travel aboard Archangel Planetary’s Space Elevator,” said the dove placidly. “We are sorry for the inconvenience.”

  “Have I got it?” I asked, worrying about how trembly I’d felt in the shower.

  In response, the robot dove sprayed green light over me too. “Congratulations. You are completely healthy. You are cleared for travel aboard the Space Elevator. Archangel Planetary, Taking You To The Stars.”

  “But . . . what can I do?”

  “The Helen of Troy departs Orbit Station One for Aushalawa-Moraaa at eleven hundred hours,” said the dove. “The last Space Elevator capsule departs Earth Station San Diego at oh nine hundred hours.”

  It was already half past seven. My stomach felt so tight, I wondered whether the dove had gotten its diagnosis wrong.

  “Yes, but is there any way we could go later?” I asked. Dad would be better by the next day. But how long would he stay infectious . . . ?

  “The Helen of Troy departs Orbit Station One at eleven hundred hours,” repeated the dove. “The next ship to depart Orbit Station One for Aushalawa-Moraaa will be at oh seven hundred hours—”

  “Oh!” I exclaimed, a tiny bit hopeful.

  “—on the fourteenth of November,” the dove finished.

  “Oh. You couldn’t ask the Helen of Troy to wait . . . ?” I asked hopelessly. But the Helen of Troy probably cost millions every day it sat up there.

  The dove beamed a message up to the Morror liaison on Orbit Station One and perched on the head of Dad’s bed while it waited for an answer.

  “You have a reply,” it cooed, and then went ping, and then a quite different voice spoke out of it.

  “Weeeeee are sooooooorry, Plucky Kid of Mars. The ship cannot delaaaaaay; we cannot riiiiissssk using contingency fuel and supplies before leeeeeeaving. If you aaaaaaaaare unable to join us today, our people must hooooonor you in your aaaaabsence.”