Space Hostages (6 page)

“I'll be there later,” promised Josephine as Dr. Muldoon left.

“Jo,”
complained Carl. “You don't
have
to.”

“I have tests running as well,” said Josephine. “But anyway, Alice. What were you going to tell me?”

I tried to grimace at the Goldfish.

“Goldfish, we need some privacy,” said Josephine.

The Goldfish tilted doubtfully.

“It's GIRL STUFF,” continued Josephine ominously. “. . . Which is okay for Noel and Carl to hear,” she added.

“Okay, kids!” said the Goldfish brightly. “See ya later!”

It bobbed away to the doors.

“So?” Carl asked.

“Well, my dad was never that thrilled about this trip,” I began.

“Say, kids!” squawked the Goldfish, coming back. “It looks like Th
saaa
's heading this way again. Shall I tell them you need some private human girl time?”

“Um . . . no, that's okay!” I called.

“Oh,” said the Goldfish, sagging a bit in the air, and hovered away.

I winced.

“What is going on?” said Th
saaa
, coming to join us at the no-longer-humiliated table.

“I'm kind of . . . not allowed to be here,” I said. And I explained what had happened.

“Ohhhh, mais c'est mal,”
moaned Th
saaa,
going black and amber and tossing their tentacles. “What if you have caused a diplomatic incident?”

“No one will be in any trouble except me,” I said.

“But what will the Council of Lonthaa-Ra-Mo
raaa
say when they find out?”

“Well, don't
tell
them,” I said. “Or the Goldfish,” I added, lowering my voice.

“You ran away to space?” asked Carl. “That's awesome.”

“It isn't! Her dad will be worried, and he's already sick!” Noel exclaimed.

“No, that is pretty cool,” said Josephine decidedly.

I grinned. “I've missed you,” I said.

Something passed across her face that made me uneasy, and I opened my mouth to ask if everything was okay. But before I could, she said, “I've missed you too.”

“We are about to reenter normal space for a while,” said the
Helen of Troy
. “The science team has some tests they need to run. Passengers may want to watch the windows.”

We couldn't exactly
feel
the
Helen of Troy
slowing down, but there was a faint quiver and a buzz that fizzed uncomfortably in our bones, and the strange light faded, and the stars reappeared. But that wasn't all.

“Oh,”
we all said, and dashed to the starboard window.

Jupiter filled the sky. It seemed close enough to touch, marbled with red and brown, feathered with curls of turquoise. The red spot large enough to swallow worlds.

Trommler's voice spoke over the speakers: “Want to see something else cool?”

There was another deep whirring noise, one I recognized this time—the sound of an artificial gravity system being turned off.

“Eeeee!” squeaked Th
saaa
as we all floated up into the air. And then we were gliding and somersaulting from wall to wall, the way I do in dreams. The pool balls, through some clever use of magnetism, stayed put, until we scooped them off the tabletop and started throwing them around and inventing Space Pool, which, I can tell you, is much better than normal pool. Though it doesn't have many rules beyond “See if you can hit a floating pool ball with another pool ball, then float around and laugh.”

Dad, of course, does like pool, I remembered, and had another nasty pang of guilt. But no one who is floating in the air with an enormous planet hanging outside while colored balls and friendly tentacles float around them can be expected to think about that sort of thing for very long.

I
woke early the next morning (although “early” and “morning” become confusing concepts when you're in space) and lay watching the thready glow of the universe through my window before getting up and showering in every available variety of perfumed water from rose to tea tree.

Feeling extremely clean and smelling confusing, I wondered how far from Earth we were.

“Um . . . Helen?” I asked, wondering if I was again talking stupidly to walls. “Are you there?”

“Yes, Miss Dare. Good morning,” said the ship. “Do you need any assistance?”

I pulled my dressing gown tighter around me and
hoped she hadn't been looking at me when I didn't have anything on.

“You can call me Alice,” I said. “Where are we now?”

“From the perspective of an observer in normal space, we are occupying several points in the universe simultaneously, Alice,” said the
Helen
.

“Um . . . ?”

“But on our present course, if we reentered normal space, we would have just passed through the orbit of Neptune.”

“Oh,” I said, equal parts awed and disappointed. “Maybe, on the way back, could we
see
Neptune?”

“Neptune's orbit is nearly three billion miles across,” said Helen. “Besides, it is quite dark. The sun is so far away, it is little more than a bright star.”

“But it would be amazing to see something so huge just lit by starlight,” I said.

Helen seemed to consider for a moment. “Yes, I suppose you are right,” she said, sounding surprisingly wistful. “And apparently Neptune is a very bright blue. It would be well worth seeing. But the Captain sets the course.”

I opened the bedroom doors. No one was about. I set off down the passage, padding over the
underfloor lamps in my fluffy slippers. I still had Helen for company.

“So he's programmed you where to go, and you have to go that way—but he's not . . . flying you right now?”

“That's right,” Helen agreed.

“How can you see where you're going? I mean, I know space is big, but what if we . . . knock into something?”

“We are passing through objects all the time!” said Helen happily.

“Oh!” I said, and shuddered.

“I know,” sighed Helen
.
“The Captain is such a genius.”

I was about to remind her that it was the Morrors who'd invented the technology, but then decided it wouldn't be tactful.

“So long as we don't come out in the middle of a star, I guess,” I said. “Or a Vshomu swarm.”

I'd never been in a spaceship big enough to get lost in before. I passed through a restaurant, a gym, a garden of orchids and tiger lilies. I stepped briefly into a Morror conservatory long enough to look at the strange tall spirals of the red and blue plants, and the globular tank full of rainbow swimming things with many legs, before darting
out again, yelping at the cold.

It was all so empty. We were such a small group for a ship designed for hundreds of tourists.

I stopped at a window and watched the eerie ripples of hyperspace flowing past, and remembered what Josephine had said. Traveling like this was very, very expensive—even traveling like this for
fun
. The Morrors had only ever done it for survival. It wasn't very surprising the EEC hadn't helped Rasmus Trommler very much with the
Helen of Troy
. They had Earth to rebuild.

I wandered into a lift and let it carry me to an upper deck.

At first it wasn't much different from downstairs; luxurious and sweet smelling and empty. But then I found a room with golden statues of mythical-looking ladies with no clothes on (except for flowing hair and seashells and the like), gathered around a slightly pointless pond. And after that there was a lounge with old-fashioned star maps hanging on the walls, along with framed copies of various magazines with Rasmus Trommler grinning on the covers.

And over the little stage area, a hologram map of a star system hung, transparent and glowing.

I hadn't spoken to Helen for a while. “Is that Aushalawa-Mo
raaa
?” I asked. There were twelve
planets, swinging around their star. I tried to remember how many planets were in the Alpha Centauri system. The Morrors' new world wasn't really a planet; it was a moon orbiting a gas giant, and I couldn't see anything on this map that looked quite like that.

Maybe it was more branding from the Taking You to the Stars people, like Archangel Planetary logos everywhere. The planets left trails of light in the air like the halo hovering above San Diego airport.

“I apologize,” said the
Helen.
“I made a mistake. This is the Captain's private deck, I can't think how I let you come up here.”

“Oh! Sorry, all right,” I said, lowering my voice. “I'll go back downstairs and we'll pretend this never happened.” I wasn't particularly worried about running into Mr. Trommler. He might be a bit too pleased with himself, but he wasn't scary. Yet I didn't want to get the
Helen
into trouble.

So I scuttled back to the lift and made it back to the passenger deck without anything bad happening.

“Can you turn the gravity off in just this corridor?” I asked as I neared my cabin after getting a little lost. “Just for five minutes? . . . But I expect you can't unless Mr. Trommler says it's okay.”

“I think I can manage,” said the
Helen,
to my surprise. And I felt that indescribable lightness, as all the weight of my body faded away and I stepped off the ground into the air.

Pushing my way along the walls, I flew laughing back to my cabin in my dressing gown and slippers. I dropped to the ground as the gravity came back on, and got dressed in jeans and a pink top. When I found Noel and Th
saaa
, they were sitting ordering breakfast from the virtual menu screens. Th
saaa
had a cooling cape draped around their shoulders, a visible one, in order to be sociable. I plunked down beside them and asked for some cereal with more strawberries, because I hadn't gotten over being able to have strawberries again.

Carl stumbled in sleepily a few minutes later, talking to the
Helen
. “So, do you need a pilot at all?” he was asking.

“Of course I do,” enthused the
Helen
, her voice getting swoony and breathy again. She didn't sound like that when she wasn't talking about Mr. Trommler. “I
love
my pilot.”

“Yeah, but you could program yourself to fly wherever you liked,” Carl said gloomily.

“Oh,
no
,” said the ship, appalled. “Without Captain Trommler? But I
love
him.”

“Why?” asked Th
saaa
.

“Th
saaa
!” said Noel. “That's probably
private
.”

“Is it? How can I know? It is very difficult to be sensitive to a spaceship,” complained Th
saaa
. “It is bad enough trying to learn all those funny face movements you have instead of colors, and a ship does not even have
those
.”

“I don't mind. I love talking about my Captain,” said the spaceship blissfully. “But I can't explain love. Love is . . . it's just love. You're too young to understand.”

“I'm older than
you
,” grumbled Carl.

“Why are you being so grumpy?” Noel asked.

“I'm obsolete before I've even started,” Carl said, dropping his face into his hands. “What's the point of a pilot when a ship can do everything by itself?”

“What is the point? But I
lo
—” the
Helen
began again.

“Yeah, well, but you
have
to,” Carl interrupted. “He
made
you that way.”

“Yes, of course,” said the
Helen
. “I am so
grateful
to him! Suppose he hadn't? What purpose in existence would I have?”

“Well, you know,” said Carl. “Anything you felt like.”

“You still need a person to decide where to go,” I said.

“
Do
you?” Carl said hollowly.

“The
Helen
's a long-distance ship. You wouldn't want to sit there at the controls all the way across the universe—you'd
always
need a computer for that. I'm sure it's different with small craft like Flarehawks when you're fighting”—I glanced at Th
saaa
and finished awkwardly—“enemies.”

“I'm sure when you have a ship, she will love
you
,” said the
Helen
.

“That's great,” said Carl.

“I wrote a poem about my Captain,” said the ship unexpectedly.

“Oh,” I said. “Did you?”

“Yes. It goes like this,” she said.

“I carry my Captain through space.

I love his adorable face.

I worship his genius brain.

I hope I can keep him from pain.

How happy a spaceship can be

Who loves such a Captain as he.”

There was only a small pause. “It's very good,” said Noel.

“I'm afraid it's not,” said the ship sadly. “But it's my first try. I have a version in Swedish, but it isn't any better. I think it sounds best in Häxeri or binary, personally.”

“I'm sure he'll like it,” I said sincerely. I didn't think Mr. Trommler would care whether a poem was great literature or not, provided it was about him.

“I couldn't tell it to him!” twittered the
Helen of Troy
. “I'm too shy.”

The food came, carried by more of those robot doves.

“Where's Josephine?” Th
saaa
asked, and I was a tiny bit glad I wasn't the one to say it.

“Miss Jerome is on her way to the lab,” said the
Helen
. “She is so busy!”

“Well, let's go and see her there,” said Carl.

“Maybe she doesn't want us there,” I said, and then wished I hadn't. It made the weird feeling I'd had about Josephine too real.

“Rubbish. Of course she does,” said Carl easily.

I poked at my cereal. “Did Josephine have breakfast in her cabin?” I asked the ship.

“I don't think she had breakfast,” the ship replied.

That was enough for me. “Oh, for heaven's sake. Can we have an energy bar or something for her, Helen?”

So when we'd finished eating, doves brought us an energy bar and a glass of orange juice, and we all trooped down to the lab.

Dr. Muldoon's side of the lab was, as I'd expected, full of strange and disturbing things, such as a tree that I was almost sure you could see growing and a box of red rocks that smelled like farts and occasionally seemed to move by themselves. A tiny piglet was asleep on a workbench. Plainly it had some kind of Morror gene treatment, as bands of color were flowing across its flanks as it dreamed—duller and simpler than Morrors, but there. Dr. Muldoon must have upgraded it from experiment to pet, as it had a fluffy dog bed to sleep in and a jaunty little velvet collar round its neck. Dr. Muldoon occasionally reached out to pat it absentmindedly.

The other side of the lab belonged to Josephine's sister, Lena. It was a lot tidier and only smelled of hot metal and plastic, but still, it was full of peculiar stuff. There were things a bit like large, menacing, oddly shaped fridges, and racks of equipment, all punctuated by virtual screens hanging in midair, with data streaming across them. And there were tiny spiderlike robots everywhere that reminded me a little of the much bigger spider robot we'd ridden on Mars.

These tiny ones went crawling from shelf to shelf gathering objects and passing them down like ants with a morsel of food. A great group of them on the floor was busily assembling itself into a latticelike tower. A few of them noticed our presence and scurried across the floor toward us.

“Uh,” I said, backing away.

“They're harmless,” Josephine said. She was sitting at a workbench doing delicate things with a tiny welding torch to the various peculiar components that emerged from a 3D printer. Her face was obscured by goggles.

“Are you
sure
?” I asked as several of them scuttled up Carl's leg.

“Get them
off
!” Carl cried, swiping at them. But the robots crawled determinedly up his torso to his neck. Lena, Josephine, and Dr. Muldoon didn't turn a hair. Then the robots attached themselves to either side of Carl's head and hung there in clusters, as rather attractive earrings.

“Hey,” said Carl, confused.

Noel giggled. “You look lovely, Carl.”

Lena gestured impatiently, and the earrings pulled themselves off Carl's ears and crawled away. I was a bit sorry.

“They're inventing things,” said Josephine. “A
lot of the things aren't that useful, but they turned themselves into a miniature molecular assembler the other day.”

“And they also do
jewelry design
?” I asked.

“Sometimes,” Josephine agreed.

Apart from the robots, the most striking thing in Lena's lab was that you could get out into space from it. There was a big window showing us the uncanny glow of hyperspace, and an airlock pod with two sturdy sets of doors leading out into the void.

What would happen if you jumped out
here
? I wondered, remembering what the
Helen
had said about passing through different places at the same time. You'd be lost forever, scattered.

Lena, meanwhile, stayed entirely still, gazing thoughtfully into a virtual screen hovering above her workstation, two fingers pressed against her lips as though she was hushing herself. She was so very, very tall—easily a foot taller than I was—and so neat and somber in her plain black suit and chignon that I usually found it surprising that she and Josephine were related.

But now, since Josephine kept her hair tightly scraped back, they didn't look as different as they used to.