It’s a teardrop, floating just beyond my eyes.
My arms rise, and automatically I try to pull them down again, my body struggling to understand why my shoulders have to work to stay in my seat, and as a faint blue glow appears at the edge of the viewscreen ahead, upside down, I’m flailing for the armrests, trying desperately to find something to hold on to.
Then my mind catches up with my instincts, and I remember I’m strapped down, that I’m not falling, that this is weightlessness. This is space.
Unable to resist, I lean forward until I can see out a little triangular viewport to my left. All I can see is stars. More stars than I’ve ever imagined, more stars even than I could see on Gaia, which had the darkest, blackest nights I’d ever known. My breathing quickens until a touch at my elbow drags my eyes away from the view.
Jules is watching me, his face difficult to read behind his helmet. He can only brush the edge of my arm with his fingertips from where he sits, but I can read his worry in the tautness of his frame as he strains to reach me. But as soon as he sees my face, the taut muscles relax and let his arms float as carelessly as mine are.
I never got to see this, the first time.
Jules did, though. Still, his face doesn’t wear a smile like mine. Little jets kick in at intervals around the exterior of the craft, tilting us at an angle, intensifying the glow of light still out of view. But it’s enough to see his face. His head turns forward, and I know what he would say, if we could risk speaking.
Dex.
My mind plays the moment over and over. The intense gaze, the stiffening body, the flash of recognition mixed with confusion and horror. He saw us. I don’t know if it was my voice that gave us away, or my height or face, or if something Jules said had raised his suspicions already, but hesawus. He knows we’re not Undying.
And he hasn’t said a word.
“We’re right on target,” comes Atlanta’s voice, tinny and artificial, but crystal clear within my helmet—we must be miked, with speakers in the helmets, wirelessly connected to each other. “Trajectory at ninety-nine point eight—hah! And you said we’d be scrambling to readjust.”
Dex shifts, and I stiffen, but he’s only reaching out to tap at some display I can’t read from back here. “The lixo heap does a better job at launches than I guessed.”
I glance at Jules, who’s listening and staring as intently as I am, and wearing an expression of such bafflement I’d laugh if I wasn’t so frightened. I can’t think what will happen to us once they’re secure enough in their “trajectory” to deal with stowaways.
Is there an airlock on this thing?
An image flashes before me: two spacesuited bodies, spinning out of control, surrounded by inky darkness and stars, just a breath away from each other but without a way to close that distance.
I choke on my own breath as I try to bury that image.Don’t even think it.
In front of us, the spacesuit on the right moves, helmet twisting a fraction. “Okay back there, Mia?” Dex’s voice is mild.
For a moment, I can’t speak—a genial question about my well-being was not what I expected. “Yeah.” I clear my throat. “Yeh. Beno.” I want to look at Jules, but with Dex eyeing me sidelong, I can’t risk it.
Was I wrong? Had I mistaken something else for recognition? Except that Jules saw it too, I know he did.
Abruptly, the thoughts that had been suppressed by the sheer strangeness of spaceflight kick into overdrive. I don’t know how long we’ve got until we get far enough into the atmosphere for the weightlessness to vanish—long enough for me to get out of my seat, incapacitate the other two somehow, and get back? But even if I could, we’ve got no idea how much of the controls are automated. We can’t hijack a spaceship we don’t know how to fly.
Hijack, my mind repeats. I could threaten one of them—they’re close, as close as me and Jules, and if someone held a gun to his head I’d do anything they asked. I don’t have a gun, but I do have …
Damn, damn, DAMN.I do have my multi-tool. I made sure to shove it carefully in the waistband of my pants before I pulled on the suit, because I didn’t want to leave it behind on the Undying ship. And now I’m all zipped and buckled up with no way of retrieving it.
Even an idiot would notice me stripping down right behind them in order to retrieve a knife—and these two are no idiots.
The little exterior jets are still rotating the craft, and abruptly the source of the glow out front swings into view, completely interrupting my scramble for a solution.
Earth.
Dazzled, my eyes can only drink it in, this glorious blue-and-white arc bisecting the screen. Fantastic landscapes of sculpted cloud glow in the sunlight behind us, casting shadows upon the oceans below. Like shapes coalescing out of the fog, the outlines of a continent show through the gaps, but in the strangest moment of confusion, I cannot for the life of me tell which continent it is. Earth looks nothing like the maps we memorize in school, with their neat, consistent outlines and conveniently colored countries and states. All I can see is a coastline.Somewhere down there, I think giddily,some kid is making a sand castle.
“This is really it.” Atlanta’s voice, usually so quick and decisive and bright, is soft now. So soft the microphones struggle to pick it up, delivering it amid a burst of white noise. “We’re really going planetside.”
I hear Dex’s intake of breath, and my own heart seizes. He’s going to tell her what he saw. He even shifts, helmet tilting as he looks back at us again. “It doesn’t really look like the pics, does it?”
“It looks enough like them,” replies Atlanta more firmly this time. “The protos have no idea. No idea what they got.” Her voice sharpens, the warmth draining from it. “No idea what’s coming.”
“We made it,” Dex agrees. “It’s gonna be beno, Peaches.”
