by John Cusick
He was alone. The captain and crew were either helping passengers to escape or, more likely, had simply escaped themselves. Putting a hand to the bridge’s teleport bay, Phin found it was still warm. Yep, they’d bolted. The ship’s PA was still replaying the captain’s final message to the guests on repeat. Phin switched it off.
Just go! a little voice in his head shouted. Lola will be fine. She’ll get to a teleport. Just save yourself!
The voice was being a bit generous to Lola, whom, Phin knew, couldn’t operate a teleport to save her life—which was exactly what she would need to do in this situation.
Muttering a series of Venusian curses about the pitfalls of friendship, Phin rushed to the security console. He shut off the sirens localized to the bridge. Now he could hear himself think, at least. The console was a wreck. Every monitor save one was dark, smashed, or just a mess of snowy static. Using the single functioning monitor, Phin began to cycle through the ship’s security camera feeds. One by one, images of the state rooms, corridors, and antechambers of the ship flashed by. Quite a lot of these places were on fire. Even the swimming pool.
“Come on,” he hissed. “Where are you? Where are you?”
Picture after picture clicked by. A Martian man grabbing jewels from his private safe, a sluggoid stuffing itself with food from the buffet, the band playing atop the aft deck, refusing to stop until someone agreed to pay them.
Now he checked the underchambers of the ship—the engine room (destroyed), the coolant chambers (drained), the cargo hold—
“Oh,” said Phin. “You have got to be kidding me.”
He zoomed in, adjusted the image, and saw that what he’d thought he’d seen was in fact exactly what he saw.
There was Lola Ray, having what looked like a serious argument with about a dozen Bog Mutants.
“Escape pods!” Lola shouted. “Or . . . transport . . . rafts! Whatever!”
“What about them?” asked a Jeremy. He was carrying an unconscious Gabby over his shoulder while his brethren sealed the door to the smoldering engine room. They’d rushed out into the cargo hold, where Lola hoped there’d be some method of escape. That hope was dwindling rapidly.
The cargo hold was a disaster area. The crash had sent several of the crates sliding into each other, and about thirty or so of the guests’ sleek personal ships were piled against each other in a wildly expensive heap.
“Where,” she said slowly, “are the transport rafts?”
“Oh, I know this one!” said one of the Jeremys not currently carrying Gabby. “All transport rafts are located on the luxury decks fourteen through nineteen, recreation decks eleven through twelve, service decks five through eight, and engineering deck seven.”
“Wow,” said Lola, impressed with his recall. “And we’re on . . . ?”
“Engineering deck one!” said another Jeremy in triumph.
“Right,” said Lola. She looked the way she and Gabby had come, which was now buried under an avalanche of expensive junk two stories high. The service hatch they’d used was now somewhere under two tons of leisure gear.
“Right,” said Lola, with considerably less enthusiasm. “Super.”
Lola scanned the room. The hatch they’d come through was person-sized, but these crates and ships had to get in here somehow. She stepped back, examining the hold’s floor. A seam ran the length of the room, bordered by stripy yellow caution paint. Of course, there were the cargo bay doors! But opening them would suck everything and everyone in the hold out into the cold vacuum of space. Which, if the rumors were true, was not a super-fun place to be.
Thinking fast, Lola hurried to the mountain of wreckage. Her gaze settled on one of the less-badly damaged ships. This one was a sleek red space limo, about the size of a small truck.
“That one!” said Lola, pointing.
“It’s red!” said a Jeremy.
“And it’s in the corner!” said another, excited to be participating.
“It’s going to be our life raft!” said Lola, trying and failing to yank open the passenger side door. Back home, the most she’d ever stolen was some gum (and she was still sick about it), and now here she was, a stowaway traveling under an assumed name, attempting to break into someone’s limo. Life was funny.
But not hilarious.
The ship shuddered beneath their feet, just in case anyone had forgotten what kind of danger they were in.
“Jeremys, congratulations!” said Lola. “You’ve just been promoted to official spaceship stealers. Now get into this thing, and get it started!”
“I’m excited by this new challenge!” shouted the Jeremy carrying Gabby. The young steward was beginning to regain consciousness. She swayed on her feet as the Jeremy set her down.
“Easy there, I’ve got you,” said Lola, wrapping the other girl’s arm around her shoulders. “Gabby, how do we open the bay doors?”
Gabby blinked at her thickly and gestured toward one of the wall-mounted control panels. Together the pair hobbled to the panel. Lola tried a few buttons.
“Like this?” she said, but Gabby’s head lolled onto Lola’s shoulder.
“It looks like you’re trying to open Main Cargo Door One,” said the panel in a chipper computerized voice. “If this is correct, press one!”
Lola pressed one.
“Please enter your twenty-seven-digit pass code, followed by the pound sign.”
“Argh!” said Lola, and smashed her fist into the control panel.
“It looks like you’re trying to smash Main Cargo Door One Control Panel Alpha. If this is correct, press two.”
Over Lola’s shoulder, something went pop and hiss. The Jeremys had managed to open the limo’s aft hatch.
“Great news!” said one, peering inside. “There are eleven seats!”
“There are twelve of us!” Lola growled. She thought of Phin, where he was, and whether he’d found a transport raft. “I could really use your help right now, Phin Fogg,” she mumbled to herself.
“AHEM,” came a familiar voice over the loudspeaker. “SORRY, I DON’T MEAN TO INTERRUPT. IT LOOKS LIKE YOU’VE GOT THINGS PRETTY COVERED DOWN THERE. BUT, IF YOU NEED SOMEONE TO OPEN THE BAY DOORS, I CAN DO THAT.”
“Phin!” said Lola. “I am so glad to hear your stupid voice!”
“Initiating Hold Evacuation,” chirped the little control panel, “Main Cargo Door One will open in thirty seconds. If you would like to take a short customer satisfaction survey, press three now.”
“You did it!” shouted Lola, looking up toward the ceiling and the upper decks where she imagined her friend to be. “Also hi! Also where are you? Also what’s happening?”
“HOLD ON, LET ME COME DOWN THERE,” came Phin’s booming voice. “ACTUALLY, WHAT AM I SAYING? YOU COME UP HERE. LET ME JUST WARM UP THE SHORT-RANGE TELEPORT.”
Lola felt her limbs go tingly. It was the same feeling she’d experienced when she and Phin had teleported to the ticket kiosk back on Luna, but where that had been a sudden, instantaneous yank, it felt instead as if she were being gently tugged away from where she stood.
“Jeremys!” she shouted at the Bog Mutants. “Go! Get in the limo!”
The Bog Mutants hesitated. “And do what?”
“Escape!” said Lola.
“That doesn’t sound like a job,” said one.
“It sounds like quitting a job, actually,” said another.
“Bog Mutants don’t quit,” said a third, with a kind of resolve Lola hadn’t heard from a Bog Mutant before.
The tingling sensation increased. Beads of ionic energy began to sparkle and lift from Lola’s skin. Gabby moaned in her ear, barely able to support her own weight.
“Bog Mutants of the SS SunStar,” said Lola as the teleport took its hold. “I am giving you your final promotion, the task you will perform for the rest of your days.”
The Jeremys blinked. They listened in hushed wonder as the walls crumbled around them.
“Your job is to go out into the galaxy
and live. Go to museums. Read good books. Go to the movies on rainy afternoons. From this moment forward you are professional life-livers. You will find your passions. You will fall in love. You will try new things and see as much of this universe as possible in whatever time you have left. You will be happy. Now”—Lola pointed at the limo with all the gravitas of a space wizard—“I command you: go!”
The Bog Mutants didn’t budge.
“Um,” said one. “That’s a bit vague.”
“Yeah, there’s a lot of room for interpretation there,” said another.
“Are we supposed to fall in love with each other, or . . . ?”
“What if the afternoon isn’t rainy?”
“Drab droof it all,” said Lola. “Fine. Go open a taco stand.”
“Done!” said the Bog Mutants, and they all hurried joyfully aboard and closed the hatch behind them.
The tingling magnified, the air around Lola zapped and sparkled, and then with a soft zzt she felt herself whip through the blackness and rematerialize in a large room with a big steering wheel and lots of electronic panels flashing alarmingly.
“Welcome to the bridge!” said Phin. “Who’s she?”
The teleport had picked up both Lola and Gabby, who was still leaning on Lola’s shoulder. The other girl burped, held a fist to her lips, then stumbled to the nearest trash bin to be sick.
A series of clunking, grinding sounds reverberated through the hold. A fissure appeared from aft to stern, and the floor beneath the ships and luggage opened and fell away. And all of it, every last piece of absurdly expensive hardware, drifted out, like seeds released into the blackness of space. There was a long, interstellar silence.
And then a single ion thruster came to life in the darkness, and a small red space limo piloted by a ragtag crew of Bog Mutants shot away into the void, off to find a nearby planet in need of a taco stand.
25
ON THE DILAPIDATED BRIDGE of the SS SunStar, there was a lot of hugging going on.
“You’re not dead!” Lola was saying, hugging Phin so tightly she lifted him off his feet.
“I’m not dead. I’m definitely not dead,” he said. “But I will be if you don’t let me breathe!”
“Sorry!” said Lola, and released him.
“Where have you been?” Phin asked, hugging Lola now. “I was going to teleport away and then I thought, no, Lola needs my help, but it looks like you totally didn’t need my help. Well, you did a bit toward the end, but the point is I stayed to find you! Aren’t you proud of me?”
“We’re alive!” shouted Lola.
“We’re alive!” shouted Phin. “And we’re going to die any second!”
“I’m feeling a lot of very conflicting feelings right now!” said Lola, a smile and a grimace fighting to gain control of her face. “What’s going on?”
“We were yanked out of hyperspace,” said Phin, “and I think I know why.” He pulled something out of his tux and tossed it to Lola. It was the lavender invitation. “I’m pretty sure that asteroid we struck is Satellite B.”
“The Triumvirate of Pong!” said Lola.
“Precisely,” said Phin. “But more pressingly, the ship is out of control,” he added, reeling toward the guidance system. “The asteroid did a number on it, and I’m pretty sure someone’s spilled egg salad on the navigation system.”
“Can you get control again?” Lola asked. “Oh, Phin, you should have seen it,” she rushed on, “I met some Bog Mutants, but they weren’t evil—”
“Who said all Bog Mutants were evil?” said Phin, then waved this silly thought away. “And yes, I think I can regain control, but I’ll have to reroute power from the—”
“Excuse me,” said a voice behind them.
It was Gabby.
She was leaning woozily against one of the command terminals, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand.
“Hi,” said Phin. “Who are you?”
“Uh,” said Lola, her smile utterly and completely losing the battle for her face. “This is . . . Gabby,” she said.
“Great,” said Phin. “Why is she pointing a gun at us?”
Gabby straightened to her full height, leveling the molecular destabilizer she was holding on Phin and Lola simultaneously—which may sound odd, if you’ve never seen a molecular destabilizer before. They are very nasty weapons with bifurcated barrels, allowing the wielder to kill two people at once in very nasty ways. Gabby’s destabilizer was set to obliterate.
“Gabby?” said Lola. “What are you doing?”
“Step away from the guidance system,” she told Phin, and pressed her free hand to her throbbing head. “And tell me immediately if you have any aspirin.”
“No,” said Phin, not moving.
“To which part?” said Gabby.
“Either?” said Phin. “Listen, whoever you are—”
“Her name’s Gabby,” said Lola.
“It isn’t,” said Gabby.
“It doesn’t matter,” said Phin. “If I don’t get control of this ship in the next three minutes, we’re all going to be toast. And not metaphorically.”
“Correction,” said Gabby, who was not really a Gabby or a Gallabulala at all. “You will be toast. She and I will be miles away.”
Phin swallowed. “Could we vote on this?”
“Gabby!” said Lola. “Or whatever your name is, why are you doing this?”
Phin, suddenly remembering their cover, straightened. “Don’t you know who you’re dealing with? I am the Archduke of—”
“You are the Archduke of Ninnies,” said Gabby, and flinched. This had sounded better in her head. “That is to say, I know exactly who you are, Phineas T. Fogg. And you”—she angled herself slightly toward Lola—“are none other than the infamous time traveler known as Passport.”
“Why does everyone keep calling you that?” Phin asked.
“Oh,” said Lola. “Yeah, about that . . . when I arrived—”
“It doesn’t matter,” said Gabby, reaching behind her back for what—Phin and Lola hoped—was something harmless, like a party hat or a chocolate bar.
It wasn’t either of these things.
“Put these on,” she said to Phin, and tossed him a pair of cellular handcuffs. To the eye, the “handcuffs” looked like a bottle of tiny blue pills. “Do it!” Gabby shouted. “Or I’ll blast you to kingdom come.”
Not wishing to be blasted there or anywhere else, Phin popped open the bottle and swallowed one of the little blue pills inside. Instantly his wrists snapped together, bound at the cellular level by the powerful mutagen in the pill he’d just taken. It also bound his wrists to the nearest object, which happened to be the navigation system control panel.
“Phin, what are you doing?” Lola shrieked.
“Don’t worry,” said Phin, looking much braver than he felt. “You’ll be safe. They need you alive.”
“What’s going on?” said Lola, whirling to face Gabby, who was not Gabby at all. “Who are you?”
“I’ll be happy to answer that,” said Gabby, “after this.”
And with a powerful kick she sent Lola reeling backward into the emergency teleport. Lola vanished with a zap.
Gabby sighed the sigh of a job well done, stretched, and lowered her weapon.
“I’m sorry about this, you know,” she said, programming the teleport to follow Lola’s trajectory through space. “I don’t have anything against you, or your family.”
“He’s insane,” said Phin. “Bolus. He’ll destroy us all.”
The girl who’d called herself Gabby seemed to consider this, then she shrugged.
“It doesn’t matter to me. I have a job to do, and,” she said, stepping into the teleport, “Bog Mutants don’t quit.”
There was a zap, and Phin was alone.
26
TWO TELEPORTS IN LESS than ten minutes is a bit rough on the system, and Lola lurched behind a boulder and was sick. She straightened and found that she was standing in the soft, sandy lo
am of a barren planet. For miles around all was rock and dust, and above her, the open void of black space.
She was standing on the asteroid.
And one thing Lola knew about asteroids—thanks to Tuesday evening’s after-dinner lecture, Space Junk and You—was that they did not have atmospheres.
She collapsed, gagging, hands at her throat. Her vision tunneled. Her life flashed before her eyes—all the boring and lovely and sad bits followed by a quick flash of utter craziness toward the end. This was it. She was doomed. After all those near misses, her number was up. She could not breathe in a vacuum.
“What are you doing?” someone asked.
Lola opened her eyes. She looked up. Standing silhouetted against the stars and the distant glow of a red dwarf was Gabby. She was still holding the molecular destabilizer, but it was lowered at her side. With her free hand she was fiddling with the gunmetal charm around her neck.
“I’m . . . dying?” tried Lola. And then she tried breathing and found she could.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” said Gabby. “There’s plenty of air. Can’t you smell the synthetic atmosphere?”
“Oh,” said Lola, and stood up. “Where are we?”
There were a lot of questions she wanted to ask at this moment, but this one seemed the most pressing.
“The teleport would have sent us to the nearest safe place. In this case, I guess it’s the asteroid that struck the ship.”
Both girls looked up into the sky, toward the red dwarf known as Proxima Centauri.
Against its glare was a tiny speck. If you squinted, you could just see it hurtling and tumbling, end over end, through space. It was the SS SunStar.
“Phin!” Lola shouted, and ran, ridiculously, toward the ship, only getting a few paces across the barren wastes before the futility of what she was doing occurred to her, and she stopped.
“Sorry. I’m afraid his death was necessary,” said Gabby. “Darn this thing.”
Lola turned to see Gabby continuing to fiddle with the charm at her neck. Whatever she was trying to do clearly required two hands, and one of hers was still holding the destabilizer.
“Do you need some help?” Lola asked.