I slide out of the tunnel, lowering myself down and carefully placing one foot and then the other, my eyes on the Undying worker the whole while.
For an instant, I’m standing only a few meters away from him, looking at his back as he gazes down at the console, waiting for permission to proceed. It’s the closest either of us have been to the Undying since they arrived. I can’t see his face, but from the back he could be any normal Earth boy, right down to the impatient drumming of his fingertips against the console. His skin is a rich, dark brown, and his hair falls to his shoulders in tousled waves that remind me of Evie’s. My whole body shrinks from the idea of this ancient alien menace masquerading as something so familiar.
It’s so easy to forget they’re not human. Like us. But when I look at this thing, all I can think of are those first few frantic moments after the Undying portals first activated. Jules and I hid, terrified of the bulbous-looking heads and jet-black suits, and got the shock of our lives when one of them took off its helmet to reveal it wore a human face underneath.
A few hours of watching them march about the ship from our ventilation shaft, and Jules whispered, “They’re human—they may be different, but maybe we can justtalkto them? Find out how and why they’re here, explain who we are?”
The suggestion made every hair on the back of my neck lift and prickle, but he’d squeezed my hand and looked at me with those big, brown, Jules-sweet eyes, and for a moment I was ready to lead us out of hiding, to throw ourselves on the mercy of these ancient beings. And then one of them slipped on a patch of melted snow from the ship’s resting place on Gaia, and fell into a bit of exposed rock wall.
With a cry he fell, clutching his leg—and a spray of bright blue blood spattered across the wall opposite.
Jules had frozen, his hand suddenly ice-cold in mine.
Whatever these things are, they’renothuman. They’re nothing like us. And if they catch us, there will be no mercy.
Now, looking at one of them standing casually at his workstation, it’s somehow even worse than if they’d remained bulbous-headed mysteries.
My hands are steady, though, as they slide the drawer back open and retrieve the headset.
I’m retreating slowly back toward the hatch, clutching my prize, when the intercom crackles again with the all clear. He’ll sit once he sends it, and I’ll be well within his peripheral vision. I almost stumble in my haste, grabbing at the edge of the ventilation shaft and withdrawing into its cramped confines like a hermit crab scuttling back into its shell. He turns to hit the button, and I pull the hatch into place with a tiny clang that sounds in time with the whoosh of moving air just above us in the wall.
Neither of us moves for several long, tortured heartbeats. Slacker eases back down onto his bench, and with a sigh, bends over the console. The ship has none of the fancy tech the Undying wear and use as they go about their day, and they rarely seem to use much of the built-in technology that to us seems so advanced. But, without his headset, Slacker’s working like someone forced to switch from digital back to analog.
We wait a few more minutes, Jules’s body still stiff with panic and outrage. Then, as silently as we can, we slip away into the walls once more.
“Of all the foolish, impulsive risks—” Jules’s whisper is infuriated once we emerge into the Junction.
“Shut up!” I retort, scowling. “It worked, didn’t it?” It’s exactly what we needed: a chance to get a step ahead of these alien beings for once, and maybe even find a way home, all without them everknowing we’ve stolen anything, because the headset was on its way to be recycled.
“Mehercule, every time I think I know just how stubborn and reckless you are, you go and pull something—”
“I don’t want to die up here, Jules!” I gulp for breath, trying to stop my voice shaking. “And if I do, I want to go out fighting, not hunted down like a couple of rats in the wall.”
Jules runs a hand over his face, features glinting with perspiration in the pale blue light of the wrist unit. “Let me see the headset,” he says resignedly.
The request is a peace offering, and I respond with one of my own as I hand over the stolen headset. “You wanted more time with it to see if we can call home. Don’t say I never get you anything pretty.”
Jules’s lips press together as he carefully inspects the headset. “Don’t ever buy me a birthday present,” he mutters. Then his eyes flick up to meet mine, and his lips relax into a little smile.
I grin at him and then fold myself into the edge of the meager space in the Junction, to make room for him at my side. My heart is still racing, and every tiny sound—not uncommon, inside the walls of an ancient spaceship—makes me jump. The close call is enough to makemesnap, but I force myself to at leastseemcalm for Jules’s sake.
A quick look at his wrist screen tells me we’ve got a little less than an hour before our neighbors, Atlanta and Dex, finish their shifts and return to their cabin. An hour to talk.
Jules finishes his inspection by slipping the headset into place, which makes it come to life again. “The screen’s cracked,” he reports, his visible eye distant as the hidden one focuses on the glass. “But I can still see most of what’s on it.”
Triumphant, I rummage around in the shadows beneath the pipe that carries water throughout the ship. My fingers locate the remains of breakfast, a block of sponge-like cubes the size of mypalm. I break it apart and bite into a cube, putting the rest aside for Jules. He’s bigger than me, and eats more, and when he goes off into one of his scholar fits of intensive study, he always comes out ravenous. And every time, he’s surprised by how hungry he is.
“What is it saying?” I ask, all too aware that he’ll forget I’m even there, in the midst of his intellectual exploration.
Jules shakes his head. “It’s—hard to say. It’s like it’s interfacing with my brain waves somehow, reading my mind … every little distracted thought I have, it tries to run with.”
“Maybe that’s why it’s in English, not glyphs.” I lean to the side, but I’d have to press my face to Jules’s to see anything on the glass, and I abandon the attempt. “It reads your mind and translates itself into the language you speak most easily.”
“Maybe.” Jules’s voice sounds troubled, but it’s clear he has no better explanation. “I can’t get it to give me anything about communication, except to other headsets. Nothing about transmitting to a nearby planet.”
“What about a map of the ship?” I suggest, chewing, trying not to let my disappointment out in my voice. We have time—Jules may yet figure out how to use the headset to signal Earth to come get us.And, you know, stop the Undying, but maybe rescue us first.
“A map of the ship isn’t exactly going to tell us what they’re doing here, what they want with Earth.”
