She didn’t look back as they left. The room was silent behind her; the dust made her eyes water and she walked away quickly.
By the time they reached the dorms the corridors were almost dark, with only a little pocket of dim light that stayed ahead of them as they walked, just enough to see where they were going.
“Well,” called Beth, as she climbed into her new bed, “goodnight, then.” There was a drowsy chorus of goodnights from the others, but Beth hardly heard them; she was asleep almost before the words were out of her mouth.
She woke in darkness to the sound of rain pelting against the window. No, not rain. A hard, tapping sound. Tapping? She opened her eyes and saw Lauryn sitting up in bed and typing at her new pad. The shine of the screen turned the deep brown skin of her face into a white-ish blue.
“Lauryn,” Beth whispered. “What are you doing?”
Lauryn looked up and blinked. “I’m rebuilding my system,” she whispered back. “I won’t be long.”
“It’s two a.m.,” hissed Beth. “Go to sleep.”
“I’m nearly done.”
“Go to sleep, or I’ll have you thrown off the ship.”
Lauryn stopped typing and grinned. “Yes, captain.”
She turned it off and settled down. Beth lay in the darkness, staring at the ceiling and listening to Lauryn’s breath as it deepened into sleep.
She thought about Captain Kier. Was he really out there? Was he really looking for them? Vihaan was right; it was unlikely. Almost impossible. But she knew that even Vihaan had wanted to believe it.
Look after the ship, Kier had told her.
I’m trying, she thought.
They woke early the next day. No one said much; Beth could feel a tight wire of tension running between them. The spacesuits were calling.
She pushed away her breakfast, half finished, and saw that the others were all done too. They were looking at her.
“Well,” she said. “I guess we could—”
Her voice was drowned out by the scrape of chairs and excited chatter of voices as they got to work. Lauryn and Lucille went to the bridge to have another look at the navigation systems; everyone else headed for the suits.
Arnold had clearly been reading instruction manuals all night. He strode to the airlock area with a fixed look on his face, as if he was holding an image of an assembled suit in his mind and didn’t want to lose it. As soon as he arrived he lifted one of the piles and spread it carefully out on the floor.
“It’s easy,” he said confidently. “The underclothes are heated, see, and then the suit goes on top. The suit’s carbon fibre, so it’s pretty much indestructible. Then the boots, gloves, Life Support Unit –” he pointed to the backpack – “and then the helmet. The LSU plugs into the suit here, and locks here. Piece of cake.”
“How do you adjust the size?” asked Vihaan. Arnold pointed out a number – a large number, Beth thought – of straps, fastenings and adjusters. Then Mikkel asked about the controls – how did you fire the manoeuvring thrusters? Arnold went through the procedures. Vihaan asked about safety checks. The talk became quite technical, as they discussed subsystems, modules, communications…
As she watched, Beth became uncomfortably aware of how far they were from the core of the ship. The artificial gravity was weak here, and her stomach floated uneasily.
The side panel next to her lit up and Lauryn’s face appeared. “Hey, Beth.”
Beth swallowed the bubble of spit that was forming in her throat and tried to look relaxed. “Hey, Lauryn, what’s up?”
“We’re looking at navigation and the repairs you need for the Jump. Want to see?”
“I’ll be right along.”
She left them to it and headed to the bridge.
She’d been on the bridge once before; there had been a tour for the children, and they’d been led – very carefully now and very quiet please or you’ll disturb the crew – through the back of the room, seeing the captain and the other crew members in their seats, facing large banks of screens with scrolling information.
This time most of the screens were off, and the only crew members were two children at a set of navigation computers, arguing.
“Hello,” said Beth.
They turned.
“Captain on the bridge!” shouted Lauryn, and she and Lucille stood to attention.
Beth grinned. “Thanks. I mean –” she coughed and looked formal – “as you were.”
She looked at the captain’s chair. Like the others, it was padded, with a headrest and controls in the arms. She climbed into it and admired the bridge, feeling the leather against her back and the smooth glass of the panel under her fingers.
“Pretty cool, eh?” asked Lauryn.
Beth grinned. “So what’s the problem?” she asked.
“These readings,” said Lauryn. “They make no sense.” She pointed to her screen and Beth reluctantly clambered out of the chair and came across. The screen displayed an enormous grid of numbers. Lauryn reached over and swiped at it and Beth saw, to her dismay, that the chart was actually in three dimensions – not just a table, but a cube of numbers.
“Um…” she said cautiously.
“These are the Jump readings,” said Lauryn. “They show the ribbons of space-time near us and how they intersect. We’re in the middle, see? This cluster of zeros here, that’s us at our Jump point.”
“Er, OK.”
“And this –” Lauryn zoomed the screen out, swiped far to one side and back in again to an apparently identical cube – “is the last known location, before the Event.”
“Right,” said Beth, nodding. She glanced up. Lauryn was looking at her expectantly. “So…?”
“Well, look! How did we get from there to here? None of the tau settings are the same, the trajectories are in completely the wrong directions and all of the staging points lead to totally different ribbons. It doesn’t make sense.”
Beth gazed at Lauryn, and then at Lucille, and then back to the screens.
“OK,” she said. “Let’s pretend that I’m an idiot and this means nothing to me and try again.”
Lauryn looked surprised but Lucille said, “We do not know how we could start at this point here, and get to this point here, in one Jump. There’s no connection between these points.”
“So, what are you saying – we Jumped more than once?”
“Ship says we did not.”
“Could we have Jumped without Ship knowing?”
Lucille shrugged. “Maybe. But we do not know.”
“We could know,” said Lauryn, “if we could get to my pad. I was recording all the ship stats, and if we’d Jumped more than once, I’d know. But all I have is this –” she slapped her shiny new pad – “piece of junk.”
Beth nodded. “Yeah. It’s weird, I know. It doesn’t make sense.” She looked around the bridge. “But, look, all we really need to know is this: can we Jump again?”
Lauryn shrugged. “Sure.”
Lucille shook her head vehemently. “Absolument pas!”
Beth sighed. “Guys…”
Lauryn said, “We know we need to fix the emitters outside. They create the Jump field, but they’re misaligned – which is another really weird thing, by the way – but we can fix them.”
Lucille nodded. “Oui. But we must fix all the misaligned emitters before we Jump.”
“How many are there?”
“Two hundred and thirty-eight,” said Lucille.
Beth stared at them. “We need to fix two hundred and thirty-eight emitters by hand?”
Lucille nodded.
Beth rubbed her forehead. “OK, then what?”
“We also need to sort out the navigation software,” said Lauryn. “It’s behaving really weirdly. We can see the maps, we can pick points, but when we look out the window –” she gestured at another screen – “the stars are in the wrong place.”
“That sounds … bad?”
“Yeah, maybe. But only by a tiny bit. W
e can still Jump.”
“But if we do, we might get the same thing as before!” said Lucille. “We might get sent all the way across the galaxy!”
“That’s not going to happen,” said Lauryn. “I tell you, these readings are hokum; this can’t be what happened—”
“And I tell you, they look correct to me and they are showing—”
“Enough!” shouted Beth.
The two girls stopped.
“Look,” she said. “Let’s start by figuring out how to fix the emitters – at least then we can decide. And it seems like it’s going to take a while, so I’ll … leave you to it. I’m sure you’ll figure it out.”
“But—”
“Good luck!”
And Beth fled, back to the perils of low gravity, but away from the squabbling of maths geeks.
Back at the airlock, Arnold was clambering into a suit. He was wearing the long johns and looked like a large grey teddy bear.
“This is really uncomfortable,” he said in a grouchy voice.
They helped him fasten up, then lifted the backpack on to him, and finally the helmet. Vihaan adjusted it and plugged connectors from the pack to the suit until a series of lights pinged green.
“How does it feel?” he asked. Arnold said nothing. Vihaan tried again through the radio link.
“It’s hot,” said Arnold’s voice over the ship’s speakers. “It’s really uncomfortable.”
“Who is next?” asked Mikkel.
One by one they went off to change into their space long johns, then climbed into the suits, heaved the packs on, and felt the helmets go over their heads. Lucille came down to help, and then went to the airlock controls.
Beth looked around. The pack was awkward, even in low gravity. And the suit was far too big; folds of material gathered at her knees and elbows, and her shoulders slipped around inside as if wearing one of her dad’s jackets. The helmet muffled the sounds around her.
They stood in a circle, shifting as they turned to look at each other. Beth’s heartbeat thudded inside her helmet. Everything seemed suddenly very real. Up until now, getting the spacesuits to work had felt like a puzzle to solve, a game, even. Now… Were they actually going to do this? Were they actually going to step out of the ship? Into space? Into space?
She shook her head, hard, and toggled the radio. “Ready?” she asked, as if confident. The others gave thumbs-up. Lucille checked their suit seals, twice, and then opened the inner door of the airlock.
They shambled inside and the door closed hard behind them.
15
Outside
They waited until the light above the airlock door flicked green. Beth realised she could make out a faint hiss as Lucille decompressed the airlock, removing the air to match the vacuum of space outside.
Arnold’s voice came over the radio. “OK… Is everyone still breathing?” Beth snorted, but she held up a thumb and so did the others.
“Well, congratulations, folks – we all ain’t dead.”
They looked at each other, helmets dipping slightly.
“The boots have magnets, so we won’t drift off,” said Arnold’s voice. “The tethers will retract when we get to the surface.” He patted clumsily at the reel clipped to his hip, connecting his suit to the wall. “If we do seem like we’re drifting, they’ll shoot back to the hull again automatically.”
“Remember,” said Beth. “This is just a trial run. We’re just going to step outside for a little bit. If everything seems fine, we’ll look at one of the Jump emitters and figure out how to fix it. We’re going to keep things simple, OK?”
“Agreed,” said Vihaan, followed by the others.
Lucille’s face appeared at the window of the inner door. “Everyone ready?” she asked over the radio.
“Check off one by one,” called Arnold. “Arnold, ready.”
“Beth, ready.”
“Mikkel, ready.”
“Vihaan, ready.”
Arnold said, “We are ready for outer door. Commence outer door.”
Slowly, the door above their heads opened.
Beth had slightly expected to be pulled out, but of course with the air already removed, the pressure was the same inside and out. She tried to look up; the suit wouldn’t move very far, but she could see stars. Billions of stars. She was gazing straight at the thick white stripe of the Milky Way, closer here than from Earth, the mass of suns and solar systems at the heart of their galaxy, a savage tear in the sky.
Don’t be sick don’t be sick don’t be sick.
“Is everybody all right out there?” asked Lucille’s voice.
Beth croaked a reply.
Arnold shouted, “Weeeeeeeee-hooooo!”
“Vihaan to Lauryn, we are on the surface. Roll-call check. Vihaan: OK.”
“Arnold: A-OK.”
“Mikkel: OK.”
“…Beth?”
Beth was still staring at the stars. It took her a moment to realise someone was talking.
“Sorry,” she managed. “Beth: OK.”
“OK. Lauryn?”
“Hello, campers, are we having a lovely day today?” Lauryn’s voice sounded breezy and happy. Beth suspected she was tapping on her new pad while she spoke.
“Hey, Lauryn,” she said. “We’re, ah, OK. It’s…” Awesome. Incredible. Nauseating. Awful. “…pretty cool out here.”
“I’m sending you the path to the first emitter. You should be able to see it ahead of you, about two o’clock.”
With an effort, Beth lowered her head from the vast sky and turned slightly to the right, and saw what looked like a small satellite dish. The screen displayed a path towards it.
“Confirmed,” she said.
“Great! Head for that and we’ll talk you through what you have to do next.”
Their tethers disconnected and zipped back into the reels at their hips, and slowly they made their way across the skin of the ship.
The magnetised boots were odd to walk in. They required a strange technique of stepping – you had to peel your foot off the ‘ground’, heel to toe; swing it, carefully; and place it down, sensing the gentle suck as you made contact again.
Beth’s breathing sounded loud inside her helmet. It was the only thing she could hear; the clump-clump of her boots was something she felt through her feet. But the breathing sound was good. The clumping feeling was good. Everything, anything that distracted her from what she was doing was good.
Because what she was doing was terrifying.
The massive black above her was like a different form of gravity. It shrank her, made her tiny, insignificant. The magnets on her boot were irrelevant. The thin tether cables were irrelevant, and the boosters on her suit. There was nothing stopping her from flaking off this tiny lump of tin and into endless space, with the stars of the Milky Way always ahead, always out of reach, until she became nothing but a drifting speck of dust…
“—you hear me? Beth! Guys, I can’t hear Beth. Can you—”
Beth shook herself. “What? Sorry, I was… What?” She realised the others were ahead and had turned back to look at her. She must have stopped walking.
“You OK, captain?” Arnold’s voice sounded concerned.
Beth blinked. Her heart was battering inside her chest. There was sweat on her face that she couldn’t wipe off.
“I-I’m fine,” she managed. “I just stopped to look at the stars. Carry on.”
They turned back towards the dish and kept walking.
After a while she looked up. The dish was larger than she’d first thought, and further away. She walked, and tried to push the black space out of her head. Was everyone feeling this? How could they not be? Step. Step.
After a long time, she bumped into someone and stopped, looking up.
They were at the dish, and it was huge. It was as big as a house. The base it sat on was a metre high, the dish itself ten metres wide.
They were going to fix this?
She became aware of Lauryn�
��s voice through the radio. “—control panel round one side. It’s square. It should be lit up.”
They walked round. Arnold said, “I’ve found a square, but it’s not lit.”
“Yes, that must be it,” said Mikkel. “That is why we cannot fix it ourselves. The controls are broken. We will have to do it manually.”
“How do we do that?” asked Vihaan.
Mikkel pointed. “There are wheels on the dish mount; do you see?”
They looked up at the dish.
“We need to climb it?” asked Vihaan. His voice sounded calm.
“We can jump!” shouted Arnold. Beth winced. One of the suits – Arnold’s, she guessed – suddenly leapt up and on to the platform. He must have switched off the boot magnets, she thought.
Oh god.
Vihaan jumped after him, and then Mikkel. Beth thought about switching her magnets off and was nearly sick inside her suit. She couldn’t move, she just couldn’t; her feet refused, her legs ignored her. She stayed on the hull.
“How far do we move it?”
Two of the suits turned towards her, and then back to each other.
“Thirteen degrees to the right,” said Mikkel. “There is a marker, see?”
“I see it.” That was Vihaan, taking charge. “Arnold, you turn it.” Beth watched, helpless, as the larger figure gripped the wheel and heaved at it.
“It moved!”
“That’s it! Eleven … twelve … thirteen. That’s it.”
“Very good.” Lauryn’s voice. “The other wheel has to be set to seventy-eight.”
Arnold groaned but gripped the other wheel. “Here we go – heave.”
Gradually, laboriously, he turned the wheel while the others watched and Beth stood at the base. She tried to move. She swore at her legs: move! MOVE! She was paralysed.
“Seventy-six … seventy-seven … seventy-eight! Stop! Stop, that’s it!”
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