Space Hostages (12 page)

“Hal ra'thruu arth-Shal, ushoor uha-porshelel,”
keened a Morror voice. “Where can we go? We have already traveled so far.”

“Have you really thrown a child out into space?” asked President Chakrabarty in a winded voice.

“Of course,” said Sklat-kli-Sklak easily.

“Can . . . can one of the humans you have with you answer?”

“They have,” said Dr. Muldoon. “Mr. President. They have. It has to be possible to get him back on board—”

“The scientist says she will restore the moon to its proper state. Does she have the assistance of Earth and the Mo-
raaa
uhu-
raaa
?”

“Aulereth-laa. Ath-thraal Shasuu,”
cried one of the Council of Lonthaa-Ra-Mo
raaa
. “Seven million of us,” I heard. “You can't . . .”

“You do realize,” said President Chakrabarty softly, “that this amounts to an act of war?”

Sklat-kli-Sklak rattled amusement. “War would be a far greater misfortune to your peoples than the loss of a handful of spawn. If you meet us in war, it will never be by
your
choice. You will by now have tried to locate the source of our transmission. You will never find it. And if you could, you have nothing that could threaten the Grand Expanse.”

“Perhaps not yet,” said President Chakrabarty.

“Is that a refusal?” asked Sklat-kli-Sklak.

“We need time,” said President Chakrabarty, the steely note in his voice giving out.

“We were under the impression that humans and the Mo-
raaa
uha
-raaa
placed disproportionate value on lives of spawn,” grumbled Sklat-kli-Sklak. “Were we misinformed?”

There was a silence as everyone realized she expected an answer to the question. Her eyes swiveled toward Dr. Muldoon.

“I don't have sp—I mean, children, myself,” Dr. Muldoon said.

“That is not what I asked.”

Dr. Muldoon hesitated. I could see her trying to decide which of the possible answers was the least dangerous. “No,” she said.

“Well, then,” said Sklat-kli-Sklak.

“No,”
said Dr. Muldoon again, but this time it meant something different.

Krnk-ni-Plik was advancing toward us. And we shouted and clung together, and I could only think, No no no no, and which of us—which of us was it going to be this time?

Pincers closed around my arm.

My turn.

Krnk-ni-Plik hoisted me up from the ground. I felt hands and tentacles clutching at me, but how do you fight back against someone covered in spikes? My body seemed to have shut down—I couldn't make it do anything. There was no time, anyway.

Krnk-ni-Plik gave me a dizzying little shake to disentangle me from the others. I'd seen every detail of every moment when this was happening to Carl, but now that it was happening to me, I couldn't keep up with it. I barely felt the oxygen canisters pulled from my back, or felt myself drop through the trapdoor into the chamber beneath. I heard screaming, but I couldn't single out words, and then the airlock snapped closed. I heard the roar of escaping air as the hatch underneath opened.

And then just the rasp of my own breath. And all around me silence. It dragged me spinning into its depths and bore me away like a gnat in a torrent of water.

Silence that was going to last for the rest of my life.

T
here was a light, where there hadn't been a light before.

I couldn't get a good look at it. My eyes were still plugged with tears, and I was spinning headfirst through the bright and dark, tasting a hot dried-up emptiness on every breath. Josephine hadn't told me how long the oxygen would last, and every now and then I would come back to myself to notice how I seemed to be blurring out at the edges and to wonder whether that was the spinning or the onset of suffocation. And then I would wonder whether my mum was happily shooting Vshomu at the moment, or whether she'd been on Earth to hear all those ringing phones, and I'd think, Sklat-kli-Slkak must
have told President Chakrabarty that they'd thrown one of the human female children out of the airlock. Would my dad know yet that it was me? And then I would start fading away again, and my eyes would drift closed behind the bandaging of tears.

But whenever I opened them, each time my tumbling brought me around to face the ship again, the little orange pip of light was there, and each time, it was
bigger
, which should have been impossible.

Something was coming.

A pulsing orange light, with two bright blue eyes . . .

The Goldfish was powering through space toward me. And it wasn't alone. Someone was clinging to its tail fin, body extended like a diver's behind it.

I sucked in a big reckless gasp of air, and my head cleared a little. Someone was coming for me, soaring through space in the Goldfish's wake, silhouetted against the stars. Somebody human, and too big to be Noel, and too small to be Lena or Dr. Muldoon, and I
knew
who it was.

Josephine let go of the Goldfish and flew free. I tumbled over again and lost sight of her, but she was there. I no longer felt as if it might be a wishful trick of my oxygen-starved brain; I could
feel
her there, now.

How did she have the Goldfish with her? Krnk-ni-Plik wouldn't have thrown it into the airlock with her.

But somehow I didn't think the Krakkiluks
had
slammed her through that trapdoor. It was something about the purposeful way she was moving. She came closer, and I could see she still had her oxygen canister. She hadn't been thrown out. She had
jumped
.

Of course she had, I thought. It was the sort of lunatic thing she would do.

Josephine crashed into me. She gripped me by both shoulders, and at last I wasn't spinning anymore. We glided on above the golden planet, still traveling at enormous speed, and yet I was lying still, like a shipwreck victim on a raft, Josephine beside me.

She leaned forward and put her helmet against mine.

“Hello,” she said, and through the contact between the layers of transparent ceramic, through the air that filled our helmets, I could hear her.

“Josephine,” I croaked. “What—?” I shouldn't be glad, I thought, I shouldn't be hopeful—what could she
do,
out here, even with the Goldfish?

“Be ready to grab Carl,” she said. She took my
hand. The Goldfish swooped back toward us, Josephine reached out with her free hand and grabbed its tail again, and we were swimming through the airless sky toward the tiny, flailing figure in the starry distance.

I grabbed Carl by one foot. He flipped and twisted like a fish on a hook—trying to see what was happening. And I pulled him and Josephine pulled me and the Goldfish pulled Josephine, and we skimmed along in one crazy line like that through space, until I could no longer see the Krakkiluk ship behind us.

There was something else here in orbit, I saw. Something shaped like a crown or a throwing star, made of red-painted metal, bristling with barbs and dotted with lights like eyes. A satellite, squatting above the planet like a spider in a web.

Carl managed to arch up to look at us in amazement. His mouth was moving but I couldn't hear what he was saying.

Josephine pulled me toward her and we both grabbed at Carl until we were floating in a huddle, our helmets together again.

“The Goldfish wants me to tell you: ‘Hey, kids,'” said Josephine.

“Oh, god, oh, god, what the hell,” Carl said,
which was probably what he'd been saying the whole time.

“What next?” I whispered. “Where can we go?”

“Only one place,” said Josephine. She pointed. Down toward the planet.

“We'll burn up in the atmosphere,” I said.

“There's probably no
oxygen
down there,” Carl moaned.

“None up here, either!” said Josephine, almost cheerfully.

“I guess . . . it's worth a try,” I said.

It wasn't as if there was a real choice.

The Goldfish ejected a cable from its tail. It wasn't meant for grappling kids floating in space; it was an ordinary, plastic-coated data cable for connecting to other robots or computers.

Josephine grabbed it, twisted it around her arm, and passed the end to me. I did the same and passed it on to Carl.

“Hold on as long as you can,” Josephine said.

We didn't have a ship. We didn't have a parachute. We had one fish-shaped teacher robot.

It was too late to think about it—it had been too late ever since Josephine jumped out of the ship. The Goldfish dipped toward the planet, towing us
with it. The atmosphere of the planet pummeled us, scraped at us like flying gravel; my ears screamed with pain; pressure battered me all over. I felt my skin scorch. The suit, I was pretty sure, was starting to
melt
. I saw sparks fly from my boots.

Hello down there, I thought madly as we ripped through, into freefall above an alien world.

Green-tinted clouds rushed up to meet us, looking as welcomingly soft as sponge. Of course we plunged straight through, though the wetness swept a little heat from my skin. Miles below us, a green sea glittered like a spill of emeralds against a red-and-gold continent.

The upwinds wrenched at me. I tried to keep hold of the cable, but the howling sky tore me loose, away from the others, away from the Goldfish, and whirled me out of consciousness.

I don't know how long I fell like that. But then something hit me, and I came to, still hurtling helplessly through the air—but somehow I was moving through a steep
arc
, flying sideways, not plummeting straight down. Then it happened again: a hard, rounded shape knocked me sideways, and this time I clutched by instinct and found myself clinging to the Goldfish's back. The Goldfish strained upward,
against the current of my fall.

“Gosh, Alice,” said the Goldfish conversationally, its voice tinny in my abused ears, through the roaring wind. “This sure is hard work!”

I couldn't answer. I couldn't see Carl or Josephine; they'd been torn away, just as I had, and the cable lashed loose in the air. I tried to grab for it, felt it whip against my arm, but then I slipped from the Goldfish's back, into the fury of the air.

The sea and the land below spun into a whirlpool of color. This time I glimpsed the others scattered through the air around me—but we were plunging so fast that I couldn't tell who was who. And there was the Goldfish, swooping to meet another falling body, slamming it sideways, darting onward to the other, then speeding back toward me. The Goldfish was more or less
juggling
us, darting between us and bouncing us sideways, never stopping our fall but
slowing
us, soaking speed from us with each bruising strike.

It won't be enough, though, I thought. It
can't
be enough. The planet was rising to meet us like the open mouth of a hungry animal.

I could see separate crests of foam on separate waves now. On the land I saw glossy, vaselike structures of many sizes that might have been buildings or plants or volcanic vents for all I knew, and
purple-red, moving specks that might have been—what? Vehicles? Animals?

The Goldfish batted me sideways again. The sea was so huge and close that the huge expanse of ground had dwindled to a narrow golden band of shore, then even that vanished. I thought I heard the Goldfish say my name again, but there wasn't anything else it could do to help me. I brought up my arms to protect my face.

And then the surface of the water hit me like a brick wall, or at least that's what it felt like for the split second I had to think about it. Because I think I passed out again.

That only lasted for a second or two, I'm pretty sure. But it meant I had to go through the unpleasant business of
waking up
, which I guess is better than the alternative. Ow! What? Why? Help! I thought, if you can call it thinking rather than just an unspoken accompaniment to my muted screaming into my helmet.

And then my brain began filling in what had happened, in a series of questions
,
none of which were at all reassuring.

1.
 
Alive, which is surprising, because . . . ? Oh. Yes.

2.
 
Everything green? Underwater! Help! Why underwater . . . ? Oh. Yes.

3.
 
Everything hurts because . . . ? Oh. Yes.

I broke the surface and glimpsed the green sky, uttered a strangled yelp, then promptly sank again. I don't know if you've ever tried to swim in a pressure suit, but if you ever have to do it, try not to have just plunged from outer space first. You will be confused and upset and will have a limited grasp of what your arms and legs are for. Also make sure the water you're swimming in isn't teeming with little pink wriggling things—it's off-putting.

My helmet had miraculously survived, though it didn't feel as if there was more than a puff of oxygen in it now. But at least it meant none of the pink things got inside, because I think that might have sent me right over the edge. The pink things were various sizes—mostly the size of a newborn kitten, I suppose, but some as big as a large dog, and they were six-legged and bristling with fluttering little rosy cilia and sometimes emitting little yellow puffs of I don't know what. I'm not sure it was rational or fair to find them so disgusting when they squiggled past my face, but I would refer you back to the recently-kidnapped-and-nearly-murdered-and-fell-
seven-miles-from-outer-space thing. Fortunately the creatures were at least as alarmed by me as I was by them and were wriggling away for all they were worth, and soon I was left in a clearing of empty water.

“Hello!” I croaked into the green waves. The first human word to sound in the air of that strange world.

The next words were not any more impressive, although they were extremely welcome:

“Hey, Alice!” The Goldfish was hovering above me. It looked a little melted around the edges.

I flipped open my helmet. There wasn't any good reason not to; the air outside would either kill me or it wouldn't. It was not as if waiting a few minutes would help matters.

I did not instantly die. In fact, there was a kind of heady rush from the air that made me feel . . . not
better
, exactly, but a little more alert. It also smelled funny.

“You're okay!” the Goldfish exulted. “Boy, that was a close one, huh?”

“Yes,” I said. “Where's—? Where's—?” I wondered if I was in fact badly brain damaged, because I couldn't seem to manage things like my friends' names.

“JOSEPHINE!” called a voice, most of the boom stripped out but a desperate quaver in it that made me feel as if I'd swallowed a lump of half-melted snow.

“Carl?” I tried to shout back. “Goldfish, what's wrong?”

“Grab on, Alice,” suggested the Goldfish, spitting out the cable from its mouth.

The Goldfish towed me through the water—it
was
water, I established, when some got in my mouth. It tasted awful, but at least it wasn't sulfuric acid. And it was relatively warm. The strange blue sun was bright overhead, so hypothermia wasn't going to be one of my immediate problems. I kicked as best I could, but you couldn't really call it swimming, and the Goldfish had to do most of the work.

Something colorful was bobbing gently on the water—a puffy cluster of squashy-looking spheres, each perhaps the size of a beach ball, gathered like grapes into heaped bunches as big as a car. The puffballs ranged from orange to yellow to white to violent blue, and a sickly sweet scent drifted off them across the waves and made me cough. I thought they might be something like flowers or fruit or maybe fungus, but if they turned out to be eggs on the point of hatching into something nasty, it would hardly be
surprising after the kind of day we'd had. And enormous round scarlet leaflike things spread around the clusters like lily pads on the surface of the sea.

Carl was clinging to the edge of one of the leaves, his helmet off, gasping as if he'd just surfaced from the water.
“Josephine!”
he shouted. Then he took a breath and forced himself underwater again.

“Carl?” I called, splashing toward him.

Carl's face was pale when he surfaced. “She was here—she hit the water here—but she was tangled up in something—Alice, she
didn't come up
.”

“She had oxygen,” I said. “She still had oxygen.”

But Carl shook his head. “Something was
wrong
, the oxygen tanks—it's like they were pulling her
down
and I think they were broken; there were all these bubbles coming up. I couldn't stay down, I couldn't—and when I went back I couldn't see her
.
”

I flipped my helmet down again and ducked underwater. The great leaves had many thick, ropy stems under the water, all coated in a gooey golden fuzz, on which all kinds of creatures were happily feeding. Blue, blobby things with lots of eyes, and orange things with lots of mouths. And yet more of the pink, wriggly things.

The water was murky. I couldn't see any sign of Josephine. No bubbles, even.

I couldn't dive very well. Not only was every inch of my body vigorously protesting my doing anything at all, but the air in my helmet kept pulling me up. I grabbed one of the stems and tried to pull my way down, hand over hand, and the fuzzy stuff glued my hand to a stem. I tore it free only to trap a foot in a gummy loop. I wrenched back in a panic and lost a mouthful of air in a burst of gold-green bubbles. Someone yanked at my arm—Carl, pulling me free of the glue.