Space Hostages (8 page)

“I can't see it.” Josephine was worrying. “It
wouldn't have gotten stuck on anything . . . oh.”

Christa was there, curled up in a chair and playing listlessly with her tablet. We all stopped as if we'd run into a massive barrier of awkwardness and resentment, except for Th
saaa
, who couldn't get a handle on anyone's facial expression.

“
Helloooooo
,” said Th
saaa
as Christa glowered at us across her tablet.

Christa shrugged. “I saw your little toy bobbing past the window,” she remarked.

“I have no association with it,” said Th
saaa.
“Also, it is an educational device. Albeit a most annoying one. Josephine has adjusted it to operate in space.”

“Space,”
sneered Christa. “I guess it's pretty exciting for
kids
.”

“There are many adult astronauts in human history,” said Th
saaa
, going increasingly confused shades of orange. “I thought they liked it.”

“Purple, black,”
I hissed, gesturing at her.

“Ohhhh,” said Th
saaa
, shutting up.

“Don't you have your own deck, Christa?” asked Josephine. “Or is this thing where you barge into places no one wants you pathological?”

(Josephine and I had to sleep in the supply closet at Beagle Base after Christa drove us out of our room,
and we didn't even get to keep the supply closet very long.)

“This is
my dad's
ship,” said Christa, sitting up. “That makes it
mine too,
all of it, and that means I can go
wherever I like
.”

“All right,” said Josephine levelly. “Stay.”

And then we all stood around in silence for a bit and looked at her.

Christa bounced to her feet and stalked out, muttering, “Like I want to hang around
here
.”

“Come on, Th
saaa
, you read Alice's book, you know what Christa did,” Carl said once she'd gone.

“I thought, as this is a voyage of reconciliation, perhaps she had made amends,” said Th
saaa
.

“Well, she hasn't.”

“She is here on the ship with you. We are all former enemies.”

“She was even worse than you guys,” said Carl, which was neither diplomatic nor true, seeing as to the best of my knowledge Christa had never blown anything up or killed anyone. But at least at that moment, it
felt
kind of true.

Then the Goldfish came sailing past the window like a kite, and so we all decided not to bother about Christa anymore.

I actually felt jealous of the Goldfish getting to fly about in space, which is pretty ironic considering what happened to me later.

But of course if I could have known about that, I'd have been banging on Rasmus Trommler's door, begging him to take us home.

S
o we were plunging farther and farther into the deep reaches of space, and none of us had anything much to do. Except for Josephine. Who apparently had everything to do.

“Do you think Mr. Trommler's ever going to let me fly you?” Carl asked the
Helen
while we played an idle game of Space Ping-Pong. We'd rigged up a net across the lounge and were floating on either side of it, lunging off the walls and ceiling after the ball. We'd come out of hyperspace into Alpha Centauri's planetary system. There was a new sun far ahead and, much closer, a pale turquoise gas giant, looming within a band of silvery rings. And somewhere behind that was the distant dot that was
Aushalawa-Mo
raaa
.

We were twenty-five trillion miles from Earth. I supposed there really was no chance Mum would ever be able to catch up.

Meanwhile, Noel was being helpful by taking Ormerod for her morning walk around the
Helen
and Th
saaa
was probably writing up their extended essay.

“Maybe, like, the last thousand miles?” suggested Carl without much hope. We hadn't seen Mr. Trommler in over a week.

“He is so busy, and his work is so important,” said the
Helen
apologetically
.
“I don't like to bother him.”

“Maybe on the way back,” I said as cheerfully as I could, which wasn't very cheerfully.

Carl looked at me. “You okay, Alice?” he asked.

The fact was, I wasn't okay. The fact was, I'd been crying. And of course someone asking me if I was okay was lethal, because it set me off again.

“Aww, hey,” said Carl awkwardly. He swooped over the tennis net and hugged me. Of course he didn't
stop
moving when we collided, so we bounced softly off the floor and drifted back toward the ceiling.

“So what's up?” he asked as we tumbled slowly through the air, past the windows full of stars. He hadn't let go. It was pretty nice.

“I guess I'm homesick,” I mumbled into his shoulder.

“Really? Because, sure, we're a long way from home, but you got through all that time on Mars and I don't remember you crying except when we'd nearly been eaten by the Vshomu swarm, so . . . are you sure that's it?”

I sniffed and hesitated and eventually I told the truth. I said, “It's Josephine.”

Carl waited.

“I thought we were friends,” I went on. “But . . . but now I don't know.”

“She has been acting weird,” said Carl. “I mean, like, weird even for her.” He patted my shoulder. “So, I mean, she's not just being weird with
you
.”

“She's always too busy to do anything,” I said. “So I've kind of stopped trying. But I went to Th
saaa
's cabin yesterday. I wanted . . . just to hang out, I guess. Th
saaa
had the door open, and I could hear a harmonica.
Two
harmonicas. They were both in there, with the harmonica she gave Th
saaa
and the
Paralashath
they gave Josephine. And she was
composing music and Th
saaa
was composing on a
Paralashath
. Human-Morror fusion art, you know. It was nice. But . . .”

It felt like such a petty thing to get upset about, but here we were, supposedly best friends, two of a handful of human beings hurtling through the emptiness of space, and when she had a little sliver of time away from the lab, she spent it with Th
saaa
and not me.

I felt ridiculous for doing it, but I crept away before either of them saw me.

“I guess you've just got to talk to her,” said Carl.

“I guess,” I conceded, though the prospect left me feeling even more worried. “But she's never on her own. . . .”

“Well, never mind anyway,” said Carl kindly, patting my back. “At least I'm talking to you, right?”

This was very nice but threatened to make me cry some more, and then the Goldfish swam in.

“Hey kids, have you seen Th
saaa
?” it asked brightly. “I want to check their
Paralashath
Appreciation homework, but I think they might be hiding in the refrigeration unit again. Aww, Alice! Why the long face?”

“No reason,” I muttered, detaching myself from Carl.

“C'mon, Alice!” urged the Goldfish. “With good friends and good imagination and trigonometry, there's nothing we can't solve! Say, I know a lot of songs I bet would make you feel better!”

“No, thank you,” I said, getting a bit watery-eyed again at the “good friends” thing.

But the Goldfish was already jigging about in the air, singing.

“Turn that smile upside down,

Act all goofy like a clown,

You'll feel so good, you just can't lose,

When you calculate the hypotenuse.

Doo, doo, doo-doo doo . . .”

“STOP IT!” I shouted. The Goldfish did stop, eyes flashing in confusion.

“She's upset with Josephine,” said Carl. “It's not a trigonometry situation.”

“You and Josephine?” said the Goldfish in cheerful disbelief. “No way! You're pals, you're buddies, you're a team!”

“Oh, Carl!” I said in despair.

Carl looked abashed, but neither of us knew how bad this was about to get because the next thing the Goldfish said was “Say, let's get this all straightened out right now!”

And to my horror, it shot off toward the door.

“Goldfish, no!” I cried, plunging after it.

“Doo, doo, doo-doo doo . . . ,”
the Goldfish sang as it flew.

Carl followed me. But the Goldfish was awfully fast with its new thrusters, and much better at maneuvering through the ship's lobbies and passages. I bounced off a wall and into a flower bed in my haste, and Carl knocked into me, and the Goldfish's lead on us got even longer.

“Stop, Goldfish, please!” I yelled.

We were too late. The Goldfish rocketed all the way to Josephine's cabin. The doors slid open as Carl and I somersaulted up. Weirdly, I thought I heard Josephine saying my name even before the Goldfish called out, “Say, what's up, Josephine?”

What was up, technically, was everything.

Josephine was hanging upside down against the ceiling, in the midst of all her strange favorite objects: a miniature Oort cloud of stones with holes in them, the cat statuette, her new harmonica and
the
Paralashath
Th
saaa
had given her, the ancient cushion, the Christmas star, and of course a roll of duct tape—Josephine never went anywhere without that. She was holding a book—a tatty paper book, not her tablet—and reading aloud to the
Helen
.

“I wish I could manage to be glad!” the Queen said. “Only I never can remember the rule. You must be very happy, living in this wood, and being glad whenever you like!”

“Only it is so very lonely here!” Alice said in a melancholy voice; and at the thought of her loneliness two large tears came rolling down her cheeks.

So that was why I'd heard her say my name. Josephine was doing impressively different voices for the Alice-Through-the-Looking-Glass Alice and the White Queen.

“What's happening?” the Goldfish pressed.

“Er,” said Josephine. “Nothing? I'm just taking a break. Dr. Muldoon said I had to,” she added unhappily. “We didn't find anything in the Oort cloud samples yet.”

“Aww, that's too bad,” the Goldfish sympathized.

“No such thing as a failed experiment,” Josephine said, moodily kicking at the ceiling.

“So what's this word on the grapevine about you and Alice falling out?” asked the Goldfish.

Josephine came right side up. “Did you say that?” she asked me.

“No!” I cried. But I felt, suddenly, that it was too late to go back.

“I didn't say that, I didn't want it to come zooming down here. But . . . you've been acting funny with me,” I said, bobbing up to join her on the ceiling.

“I haven't,” said Josephine. She looked so genuinely surprised, I realized that whatever was going on, she'd truly thought she'd been doing a decent job of hiding it. “I don't have a lot of free time. If I don't ace these exams . . .” She trailed off.

“Okay,” I said.

“I have to focus on what's important.”

“Oh,” I said.

“There you go, gang! Isn't friendship super?” said the Goldfish, completely missing the nuances.

“So everything's fine,” I said.

“That's right,” said Josephine.

“Well, okay,” I said wanly. I drifted toward the door. So I'd go, I thought. And everything would
carry on the way it was, but at least we wouldn't actually have had a fight.

Except suddenly I couldn't do it. I spun back around.

“It
isn't
fine. It feels the
opposite of
fine. What
is
it with you? Are you okay? Is something bothering you? You could
tell me
. Or have I done something?”

There was a long silence. It felt like long enough for starlight to chase across the galaxy, getting fainter and fainter and colder and colder. Josephine's mouth fell slightly open.

“Have you
done
something?” she repeated, in a quite different voice, raw and rough. “You're really asking me that?”

“Yes,” I said. I was still hanging there in midair, but it felt as if I was falling.

“Aww, guys,” said the Goldfish anxiously. “Let's calm down a moment here. I'm sure if you take a deep breath, and hug—”

“I'll, um, I'll leave you guys,” said Carl. “But . . . we can hang later? . . . Both of you?”

He squeezed my arm, but neither Josephine nor I replied. Josephine blinked several times. “Yes, Alice, you've done something. Do you remember a book called
Mars Evacuees
?”

I couldn't say anything. I couldn't seem to remember
how my voice worked. I thought it had hurt enough when she'd said the book was too melodramatic.

“This is why I wasn't going to say anything,” Josephine went on wearily. “I mean, it's done now. You can't
un
write it. Everyone's already seen it.”

“What's wrong with it?” I asked. It came out like a whisper. “I thought I wrote you as . . . amazing. People who've never met you think you're amazing. I just . . . it was all true.”

“
That's
what's wrong with it!” said Josephine, flinging out her arms wildly, so various floating objects went flying. “Alice, I
told
you things—things I'd never told
anyone—
about my mum—and you go and tell the whole world.”

The cat statue bounced off my forehead. I didn't really feel it.

“Sharing problems, sharing fun,”
sang the Goldfish hopefully.

“Two can get more done than one,

There's no need to scream and shout,

That's what friendship's all about—”

“Shut up, Goldfish!” we both said in unison.

“You talk to me about telling you things,” went on Josephine. “You could at least have told me what
you were going to write.”

In a strange way, I felt a little better when she said that, though it was a nasty, poisonous kind of better.

“I emailed it to you,” I said. “The whole thing, before it was published. But you never answered. I guess you didn't have time for that either.”

Josephine's eyes widened for a second; then she looked away. She pushed off against the ceiling and went floating away from me until she hit the opposite wall. “Well, what now?” she asked.

“I don't know. Like you say, it's done now.” And oh, damn, I was going to cry again. I pivoted toward the door. “Helen, turn on the gravity, for god's sake!”

Everything hit the ground, not quite violently enough to be a relief to my feelings.

“Aww, Alice,” said the Goldfish dolefully.

“You made everything
worse
,” I shouted at it, and I went running blindly, as if I could run back into my familiar bedroom in Wolthrop-Fossey. Short of that, I plunged into the nearest elevator and hit blindly at the control screen.

I lurched out onto whatever deck it happened to be and nearly crashed into Christa.

“Oh, hi, sorry,” I said mechanically. Apologizing to Christa had not been on my to-do list for the
journey or, indeed, the rest of my life, but Christa was not in a state to notice. Christa, confusingly, was also running around crying. And yelling at someone in Swedish.

I backed into the elevator again and peered around the door as she fled down the passageway. Rasmus Trommler followed her wearily. Neither of them noticed me.

I seemed to be on the Trommlers' private deck again. I can't speak Swedish, but, it occurred to me that my tablet could. Feeling nosy at least distracted me from feeling miserable, so I unfolded it from my pocket and opened a translation app:

“Why did you make me come?” Christa was shouting. “I hate space, I don't want to go to some horrible freezing Morror planet. I wanted to stay with Mama. Why did you put me on this ship where everyone hates me?”

“No one hates you, sweetheart,” he said, according to the tablet.

I felt guilty for eavesdropping and shut down the tablet, even though without it, I was pretty sure Christa was saying, “Yes they do,” which, well, was accurate.

I waved my hand at the elevator's control screen again. “Can I be of assistance, Alice?” asked the
Helen
. I didn't feel like going back to my brightly lit, luxurious cabin where everyone would know where I was.

“I don't think so—I want to . . .” I wasn't exactly crying at this point but also not exactly not.

“Yes, Alice, what do you want to do?” pressed the
Helen
.

“I just feel like hiding,” I admitted.

The elevator stopped. “First turn to your left, third door on the right,” said the
Helen
calmly.