“Oxygen’s steady at twenty percent,” Tobias said, marking the ship’s log. “It’s the way you look whenever she mentions her fiancé. My cat looks like that before he hacks up a hairball.”
“Miss de Vries and I are only—”
“Oh, put a cork in it, Cruse,” he said, laughing.
I sighed. I liked Tobias very much, and I didn’t want to lie to him. “I’m trusting you to keep this secret,” I said.
“So why is she engaged to this Sanderson fellow?”
I told him our whole story as we worked. It was good to talk.
“Well, she’s a daredevil for sure,” chuckled Tobias. “So she’s going to break it off when she gets back.”
“I just hope she can manage it,” I said.
“Will she marry you then?”
I exhaled slowly. “I don’t know. I hope she’d say yes if I asked her.”
Tobias looked over in surprise. “You’re not sure?”
“With Kate, I’m never sure of anything.”
“But she loves you, doesn’t she?”
“I…think so. But now she’s saying she doesn’t want to get married to anyone, ever. She thinks it’d mean giving up too much.” I groaned, shaking my head. “Even if she did say yes to me, her parents wouldn’t approve. I’m not even sure my own mother would.”
“Well, you’re in a heck of a jam,” he said. “Still, she’s very beautiful.”
I glanced over at him warily. “Don’t start getting any ideas about her. The last time someone took a fancy to Kate, things went very badly for him.”
“What happened?”
“He got shot.”
“You shot him?”
“Well, no, but he did get shot.”
“I can see you have a jealous streak,” Tobias said.
“Volcanic.”
“Well, you don’t need to worry about me, buddy. I’m a wipe-out with girls. I always say the wrong thing, or spill a drink on them. Or sit on them.”
“You sat on a girl?”
His eyebrows shot up defensively. “She was really small; I didn’t see her. Anyway, I’m a complete disaster.”
“You just haven’t met the right one yet,” I said. “I’m sure there’s a girl out there who likes having drinks spilled on her.”
“Thanks, Matt,” he said, and laughed. “We need to check the battery charge.”
When Captain Walken and Shepherd came to relieve us at midnight, I didn’t feel ready for sleep. Tobias went to our cabin to turn in, but I continued down to B-Deck. In the kitchen I poured myself a glass of water and carried it out into the darkened lounge.
We were now two thousand miles above earth—a perfect dark semicircle beyond the ship’s windows. Gravity’s hold had slipped even more since lunch, and I felt awfully light. I set down my water glass and gave a little hop. I lifted much higher than I should have. I smiled, wondering if I could hit the ceiling. I flexed my knees and sprang. Up I shot, much faster than I’d anticipated, and banged my head on a light fixture.
“Ow!” I dropped back down, and landed as softly as a cat.
“You’re very entertaining,” whispered a voice from the darkness.
I jerked in surprise as Kate leaned forward from the shadow of an armchair.
“Sorry to startle you,” she said. “I couldn’t sleep. The view’s better down here.”
She was wrapped in a red velvet dressing gown, her hair down, her feet bare. I checked to make sure we were alone.
“If anyone sees us together like this, it’ll cause a scandal,” Kate said.
I wasn’t sure I’d entirely forgiven her for what she’d done. But I’d missed her terribly these past days, and pretending to be just polite acquaintances had nearly driven me crazy. I bent over her and kissed her on the mouth. She reached up and put her arms around my neck, her fingertips in my hair.
“I should go,” she murmured, but she didn’t.
I drew her onto a sofa beside me. We kissed some more, then sat in silence, staring out the window at the stars. It should’ve been like that time together in the Paris Observatory, but it wasn’t. Everything had changed.
“I hate that ring on your finger,” I said.
“Me too.” She gave me a mischievous smile. “It is very pretty, though.”
“Don’t get too fond of it.”
“You’re becoming a very accomplished actor,” she told me. “There were a few times when I looked at you and thought, He really doesn’t care for me at all.”
“No,” I said, but secretly I was pleased. “Anyway, I’m not that good an actor. Tobias knows.”
She looked alarmed. “How? Was it something I said?”
I shook my head. “Apparently it’s the way I look when you talk about Sanderson. Don’t worry, he won’t tell anyone.”
“It’s Miss Karr I’m most worried about,” said Kate.
“I thought you liked her,” I said.
“I like her very much, but she suspects something. Those bright eyes of hers. Scribble, scribble, scribble. Who knows what she’s writing down? If she mentions anything romantic about us in the newspaper, I’m finished. I’ll be considered a hussy. I might as well go live in the Himalayas with the yetis.”
“Well, there was nothing in today’s dispatch,” I said. “I was on the bridge when she read it to Ground Station. She did say quite a lot about Sir Hugh, though.”
“Did she mention how Haiku peed in his soup?”
“No. But she did say he had the bearing of a peacock.”
Kate giggled. “He won’t like that.”
I grinned. “He won’t know till he gets back to earth.”
“I wanted to strangle him at lunch,” she said. “I actually imagined how his fat neck would feel in my hands.”
“You did a good job hiding it,” I said.
Kate gave a big sigh. “I keep thinking about what Dr. Turgenev said. If there’s really no oxygen, no anything, it’s hard to see how there can be life of any sort.”
She seemed very downcast, so I said, “I wouldn’t give up on outer space just yet. Strange things tend to pop up when you’re around.”
“I hope so. I can’t bear it if Sir Hugh’s right.” Her eyes brightened. “Oh, look, another shooting star.”
I caught sight of a tiny bright diamond moving through outer space. We’d seen hundreds of shooting stars this morning. Even though I knew they were just meteoroids burning up in the atmosphere, I couldn’t help thinking of what General Lancaster had said about other spaceships. I wasn’t the only one who’d been watching the shooting stars very closely. I’d seen Shepherd’s eyes lock onto them and wait until they’d flickered their last.
I frowned. “We’re not in the atmosphere anymore,” I said.
Kate looked at me, confused.
“It’s the friction against the atmosphere that makes them glow,” I explained. “That one’s too high to be a shooting star.”
“Are you sure?” Kate said.
I stared hard as the light abruptly angled upward.
“And they don’t change course,” I said, running for the ship’s phone. It was Shepherd who picked up on the bridge.
“It’s Cruse here. Can you see a light moving off the starboard side, about four o’clock?”
I waited for a moment, tracking it myself through the window.
“We see it, Cruse.”
“It just changed course.”
His voice grew muffled as he talked hurriedly with Captain Walken. Then he came back to me. “Cruse, get Dr. Turgenev to see this. And wake Miss Karr too. We want photos.”
“Will do.” I hung up and turned to Kate. “I need to wake Dr. Turgenev and Miss Karr. You should go.”
“It just changed color!” Kate exclaimed, pointing.
Sure enough, the moving star was now blue.
“It’s like the one we saw in Paris,” I breathed.
Kate squeezed my hand. “How far away do you think it is?”
“Could be a hundred miles, could be a
million.” Even after three years of crow’s nest duty, judging distances across the sky was no easy feat. There were so few reference points.
Then, in the blink of an eye, the light was gone.
“Where’d it go?” Kate cried.
My eyes tracked across the dark astral ether, trying to anticipate where it would reappear. I kept thinking of it as a star, even though I knew it couldn’t be. Stars did not move.
“There!” I said. The blue light was stationary now, but it seemed to glow with greater intensity. “I’m waking the others.”
I took a few steps, then stopped. I turned back. I realized the star wasn’t motionless at all. It was moving—only this time, straight for us. It started to pulse. And it was clearly swelling in size.
I rushed to the phone. “It’s coming right at us!”
“We see it, Mr. Cruse,” came the captain’s voice. “I’m sounding the alarm.”
The light was the size of a golf ball now. The ship’s alarm began its slow wail. I heard cabin doors opening on A-Deck.
“What’s happening?” said Tobias, rushing down the stairs.
Dr. Turgenev was close behind.
I pointed. “I think it’s headed our way.”
Miss Karr hurried down the stairs and went straight for her camera.
“What is it?” Tobias said.
It was the size of a billiard ball now, its flashing light so intense it seared my eyes. The entire lounge was bathed in an eerie blue glow.
“Do not look directly at light!” warned Dr. Turgenev as he hurriedly pulled down the polarized blinds we used to screen out direct sunlight.
I didn’t know what the captain’s plan of action would be. Slow down? Or accelerate? It would be like trying to dodge a cannonball. I knew the Starclimber was rising at full speed, and yet the light was still coming right for us. I felt so powerless, I wanted to shout.
“Good God!” said Sir Hugh as he came down the stairs.
Chef Vlad just stood, shaking his head.
Even with the blinds, the light made you squint. Everyone was blue. In between flashes, I thought I caught an outline of something wedge shaped. It was the size of a basketball now.
“Hold tight!” I shouted, even though I knew it was pointless. The impact would be colossal. We’d be obliterated instantly.
Sir Hugh threw himself into a seat and buckled up, as did some of the others. But Miss Karr didn’t budge from her camera, taking picture after picture, and I marveled at her bravery.
Just as it seemed the light was about to engulf us entirely, it veered and was gone, leaving behind a faint tremor in the Starclimber and the sense of something large and immensely fast. I rushed across B-Deck to the opposite windows. There, slanting heavenward, was the blue light, already quite tiny again, and still pulsing before it disappeared from sight.
Chef Vlad served coffee, and we all sat hunched forward in our chairs, cradling our mugs, talking and talking about what we’d just seen. Captain Walken had brought the Starclimber to a standstill, and he and Shepherd were with us in the lounge.
“Dr. Turgenev, what do you make of this?” the captain asked.
“Seeing was very difficult,” Dr. Turgenev said dejectedly, polishing his spectacles on his rather threadbare dressing gown. “Maybe meteoroid.”
“But it changed direction,” I said.
The Russian scientist shrugged. “This I did not see. Is possible it is in deteriorating elliptical orbit.” With his finger he drew a shrinking spiral in the air. “It circles around earth, but to us it looks like it moves up and then down, yes?”
I nodded. It seemed a reasonable enough explanation. After it passed our ship, I’d watched it as it climbed high and then angled back toward earth.
“That doesn’t explain the light,” Shepherd said.
“Or the blue color,” I said.
“This is harder to explain,” said Dr. Turgenev. “Maybe some kind of phosphorescent ore.”
“Rock doesn’t flash,” said Shepherd.
“I have no explanation for this,” said the scientist simply.
“The flash was quite regular,” Kate said, “I don’t know if anyone noticed.”
I hadn’t, and I was very impressed that she had.
“Three seconds bright,” she said. “Two seconds dark. I counted.”
“Sounds almost like a ship’s running lights,” said Shepherd, looking at Captain Walken.
“What are you suggesting, Mr. Shepherd?” said Sir Hugh with a nervous chuckle.
Shepherd ignored him. “Miss Karr, did you get any pictures?”
“Lots,” she said. “But I’ve no idea how they’ll turn out. That light might’ve overexposed my film. Even if it hasn’t, likely all we’ll see is a very bright light.”
“But no one else has a spaceship,” said Sir Hugh impatiently. Then he looked at the captain. “Do they?”
“Not on earth, Sir Hugh,” said Captain Walken. “But there’s been some speculation that they may come from another planet.”
“Like Mars,” said Tobias.
Sir Hugh rolled his eyes. “Oh, not the old Martian canal hoax again!”
“I agree with Sir Hugh,” said Dr. Turgenev. “Is much more likely this is space rock. Maybe type we have not seen before.”
“Thank you, Dr. Turgenev,” said Sir Hugh.
Shepherd’s cool eyes were far from convinced. “Unless you can show me a rock that flashes blue light, that thing was a ship. And it took a nice long look at us. General Lancaster needs to hear about this.”
“You have my permission to radio him the details,” said Captain Walken, and I could tell from his tone of voice he was reminding Shepherd of his place. “Whatever we saw,” he continued, “my chief concern is whether we’ll have another close encounter with it.”
Dr. Turgenev shook his head. “If it is meteorite, no. By time it makes another orbit, it will be below us.”
“But what about the cable?” I said, repressing a shiver.
“Good point, Mr. Cruse,” said the captain. “Could it withstand a collision?”
Dr. Turgenev inhaled sadly and shrugged. “I think no. But let us remember that cable is very thin. Probability of being struck is teeny.”
“I hope so,” said Tobias.
I saw Kate take a breath. “No one’s raised the possibility that it was alive.”
Sir Hugh snorted. “Ah, Miss de Vries, once again leaping to conclusions.” Wrapped up in his plush royal blue robe, he seemed even puffier than usual. Miss Karr’s description of him as a peacock seemed remarkably appropriate.
“I haven’t made any conclusion,” said Kate firmly. “But I think we should consider the possibility.”
“My dear,” said Sir Hugh, “didn’t you hear what Dr. Turgenev said earlier? Nothing could survive outside these walls.”
“Life exists in all sorts of difficult places,” Kate said. “There are organisms that can live in ice, and boiling water, even in acid.”
“You’re talking about extremophiles, perhaps,” said Sir Hugh, with a dismissive wave of his hand. “But they tend to be microscopic. And even they need some kind of food supply. What do you expect would nourish something up here?”
“I don’t know yet,” said Kate. “But it’s something to investigate.”
“Feel free,” said Sir Hugh. “Perhaps you can self-publish a pamphlet like Dr. Ganev. He claimed he saw life bouncing about on the moon. Do you know what his little moon people turned out to be? Moisture inside his telescope.”
“Could anyone make out the shape of it?” Kate asked, ignoring the zoologist.
“It was too quick,” said Tobias. “I was nearly blinded.”
Kate turned hopefully to me.
“I might have seen its outline,” I said, “before it got too close, but I’m not sure. Oval shaped.”
“I thought so too!” said Kate. “And smooth. It didn’t seem like rock.”
“It was a rock, Miss de Vries,” said Sir Hugh.
&
nbsp; Kate’s nostrils narrowed, a sure sign she was annoyed. “Aren’t you the one leaping to conclusions, Sir Hugh? It seems you’ve already decided there’s no chance of life in outer space. I’m willing to keep looking.”
“I’m sure we all will, Miss de Vries,” Captain Walken said kindly. “That’s one of the reasons for our journey. We may see our blue light again. Though I hope, for all our sakes, not at quite such close quarters.”
Captain Walken returned to the bridge with Shepherd, and the rest of us carried our mugs back to the kitchen and headed up to our cabins. Kate went on ahead with Miss Karr, for they were sharing adjoining rooms. I wondered if Miss Karr had noticed that Kate had not been in her bed when the alarm sounded.
As I tried to get to sleep, my head was noisy with thoughts. Part of me hoped that Kate was right, and that outer space was no empty wasteland but home to all sorts of new life. But for the first time I felt the true vulnerability of the Starclimber. We were fragile, with only a thin metal shell between us and the astral ether. We were far from home, and could be broken so easily.
RAPTURES OF THE HEIGHTS
Today, one of us was going to make the first space walk.
I was down in the air lock with Tobias, checking the space suits and the life-support machinery.
“Who’s it going to be, do you think?” I said.
“Shepherd, probably.”
“Probably.”
But we didn’t know for sure whom the captain would choose. All we knew was that, day by day, gravity had slowly weakened, and according to Dr. Turgenev, it would disappear altogether sometime today. As soon as it did, a single astralnaut would be going outside to make history.
It was ten in the morning, day five of our expedition, and we were fifteen thousand miles from earth. If I pressed my face against the porthole and looked straight down, I could just make out the indigo curve of our planet—a small ball I could hold in one hand. It gave me a pang to see it so far away, and to know that we’d get farther still, for we were still three days from cable’s end.
There’d been no more sightings of the blue light, but it was never far from my thoughts—or Shepherd’s. When not on duty, he’d taken to scanning the heavens, and he’d had Miss Karr teach him how to use the cameras, in case he saw anything. He still thought it was some kind of ship, and every day he radioed a report to General Lancaster at Ground Station.