Martians Abroad

  The shuttle had gone quiet, as if everyone shut up because they thought I needed absolute silence to concentrate on the controls. So I heard it.

  “Does anyone else hear that?” I said, and somehow it got even quieter, because now everyone was holding their breath. And there it was, like someone blowing air through their teeth.

  “Oh, no,” Ladhi said, going pale.

  “We have to find that,” Ethan said.

  “What?” George said. “What’s happening?”

  “We have a leak,” Charles said.

  I looked around, even though I probably wouldn’t be able to see it. “Where’s that coming from?”

  Charles ordered, “Polly you stay there and monitor systems, we’ll handle it.”

  Ethan already had one of the emergency packs down from the wall, which if it was like every other emergency pack included a kit for finding and patching hull leaks. He tore off a couple of plastic strips from the packaging and handed one to Ladhi. The two of them started crawling all over the cabin, along the corners, across the ceiling, holding out the thin flimsy strips, looking for the draft of air that would cause the strips to shudder.

  Meanwhile, I called the Tranquillity control official. “Hi, Ms. Andrews?” I said into the headset. “We … I think we have a hull leak.”

  She swore under her breath, like she was trying to hide it. But I heard it.

  “Okay. Slow leak or explosive?”

  “Slow.”

  “Have everyone put on masks. You don’t have far to go; you should keep enough atmosphere to make it here. You have your mask?”

  Charles retrieved it from its box on the back of the cabin wall and handed it to me. “Yes, ma’am.”

  He handed out masks to everyone else.

  “Polly? How is everyone doing?” Ms. Andrews’s voice crackled at me over the transmission.

  “Fine. We’re looking for the leak.”

  That was when the engine compartment exploded.

  24

  At least, I guessed it was the engine compartment, because it came from the bottom and rear of the shuttle, booming forward from there and throwing us all against our safety harnesses. Or against the bulkhead, because Ethan and Ladhi were still up and around looking for that leak. There were screams of shock that fell off quickly, mostly because no one knew what was happening.

  All the alarm lights and warnings on the instrument panel turned red and blinking.

  “Polly, what is it? What just happened?” the Tranquillity traffic control officer demanded.

  “I don’t know, something just blew up.” The air seemed to be hissing louder now, as if the leak had gotten bigger.

  “Is everyone all right?” Ethan called. Anxious murmurs answered him, except for Angelyn, who said, “Ladhi fell, I think she’s hurt.”

  “It’s just a little blood,” she said, her voice woozy.

  Elzabeth exclaimed, “No, you’re gushing!”

  My rushed breaths fogged the inside of my air mask. Had to calm down. Had to look after the shuttle. I couldn’t tell what the automatic systems were doing.

  “Polly, please tell me you’re still there, what’s happening?” Ms. Andrews demanded.

  “There’s been an explosion. We’ve lost rear thrusting engine, we’ve started rolling.” Momentum kept us moving forward, but it didn’t keep us stable. The horizon outside the view port was slowly tilting.

  Charles put a hand on my shoulder, and I jumped. He caught my gaze and frowned. The twin telepathy worked just fine then because I knew exactly what he was thinking: Stanton hadn’t just drugged the pilots—she’d sabotaged the whole shuttle.

  “How are we going to get out of this one?” I asked.

  “One step at a time. What’s traffic control say?” He nodded at the headset.

  Ms. Andrews was talking. “You know where the lateral-thruster control is?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Lean on that baby, stabilize the roll.”

  The lateral-thruster control was a lever on a square patch of control panel, lined up with several other levers—all controlling various thrusters that could get the shuttle pointed in any direction. I shifted it opposite the roll, hoping it worked.

  The horizon line outside matched up with what the sensor display was telling me: we were still rolling.

  “Ma’am, I think the thrusters are out completely,” I said.

  “Polly … everyone in the lifeboat … listen close…” Static had started creeping into the communication, drowning out her voice.

  I held the headset close to my mouth as if that would help. “Control, can you repeat that? I think something’s gone wrong with our antenna, or the power, or something.”

  “Roger that, Polly. You need … gain enough altitude … safely launch the lifeboat … under the instrument … open panel … bypass main fuel line…”

  I had to figure out what she meant from half the instructions. I heard stuff going on in the passenger cabin, spared a glance at Charles, who was directing people—getting them into the lifeboat, helping them with the two unconscious pilots. I could feel air rushing out of the cabin now. My ears were popping, and my eyes felt dried-out and watery. Meanwhile, I listened as hard as I could, asked Ms. Andrews to repeat instructions, and I figured it out.

  We weren’t going to make it to the base with the shuttle falling to pieces, so we had to abandon ship. We needed at least a kilometer in altitude for the lifeboat to launch safely. We’d been slowly descending on the approach to Tranquillity and were now too low, about seven hundred meters, and dropping. Not far to go. Unless your thrusters were giving out.

  Under the instrument board was a panel, easy enough to unhook and remove. This provided access to the actual guts of the ship, a mass of cables and wires that let the flight crew communicate with the rest of the shuttle. So many cables and wires. I was supposed to learn all this in flight school, not now. But Andrews talked me through it. There was a switch under here, a mechanical rather than electronic switch in case power went out, that would physically bypass the damaged fuel system and bring a backup system online.

  White smoke was curling up from under the panel, and sparks jumped. The static on the line was getting worse—our antenna was also losing power, I guessed, and couldn’t transmit the signal to my headset anymore.

  “Ms. Andrews? Ma’am?”

  “Pol … come in … are you … Po…”

  Then nothing. But I had her instructions, I had the switch.

  The slow roll had turned us on our side; I was braced against the copilot seat with my arms in the guts of the instrument panel. I didn’t know how everyone else was doing; I couldn’t take the time to look. But no one was screaming, so I assumed everything was okay. Okay as it could be, which meant people strapping into the lifeboat.

  I turned the switch for the power bypass. The whole shuttle rattled as thrusters roared on. A short scream from the back as someone got knocked off balance. I jumped up to the maneuvering controls to get us pointed up, away from the surface. Outside the view port, the black of space spread out before us. Good.

  Then we started spinning. Not a slow roll—a corkscrew. I fell, smashed up against the back of the cabin, then into the tops of the chairs. I grabbed hold of the pilot chair and worked against the centrifugal force to pull myself back to the instrument panel, got thrusters going in the opposite direction to counter the spin. Didn’t stop it completely, but slowed it, so it was time to cut the thrusters and let inertia carry us on. I had to find the switch by feel. It was sticky, as if something held it in place, but I managed to get it switched back. With the bypass off, the power cut out again, and the thrusters died. That was okay, because we were pointed up now. In a couple of seconds we’d be high enough to launch the lifeboat. Then I wouldn’t have to worry about it.

  “What was that?” Ethan demanded.

  I looked up to see both him and Charles hanging on the door of the cabin. Gravity was vanishing, no such thing as up and down anymore.
I was sprawled on the floor in front of the pilot’s chair, Ethan was standing on a wall, Charles was just hanging there, keeping his place while the passenger cabin spun slowly around him. Made me dizzy, and I swallowed back nausea. Their breathing masks hid their expressions.

  “We had to gain altitude to be able to release the lifeboat,” Charles explained, because of course he did.

  “I lost contact with traffic control,” I said. Sweat was dripping down my face inside the mask, even though the cabin was getting cold. The air was thin, heat bleeding out.

  “Surely they’ve sent help by now,” Ethan said.

  “Polly, let’s get going,” Charles said.

  I let go of the switch. Or I tried to let go of the switch, but it slammed back into place, turning the thrusters on again, throwing the shuttle into another corkscrewing spin. Fortunately, this time I was braced in place and was able to go through the process again, reaching the controls to turn on the counterthrust with one hand, stretching to reach the emergency switch with the other. Something in the mechanism had fried, and it wouldn’t stay where I put it. The spring-loaded pressure was pulling against me.

  For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Netwon’s Third Law of Motion was going to kill us.

  If the ship fell into a corkscrew spin, the lifeboat wouldn’t be able to launch. To keep the ship from spinning, I was going to have to hold the switch in place to keep the thrusters from firing.

  “Um. Charles? Do you have any tape or adhesive or loose wire or something?” I looked around but couldn’t see much from where I sat. I didn’t dare get up again, because every time the shuttle went into a spin, the damage got worse, and the chances of successfully launching the lifeboat went down.

  “Why?”

  “The switch is stuck,” I said. He started digging through one of the emergency packs.

  Ethan looked at me, and his eyes held despair. “We don’t have much time. The atmosphere’s almost gone, everyone else is in the boat, we have to go.”

  “Here.” Charles shoved around him and threw me some white first-aid tape.

  It wasn’t sticky enough. The switch’s pressure tore right through it.

  “Can you make a run for it?” Ethan said.

  Even my messing with the tape made the switch spring back, and the thrusters fired for a second, and the shuttle’s spin got faster. During the time it would take me to run from here to the lifeboat, the spin would become so fast, the g’s so forceful, we’d all get slammed into the hull and smeared into paste.

  I shook my head.

  Charles was still looking for tape, wire, glue. But we didn’t have any more time. They had to get out, or we’d all be stuck in a vacuum.

  “Go,” I said.

  Ethan hesitated, and I almost yelled again because we didn’t have time to argue. But he was smart. I didn’t have to explain. He nodded and squeezed my ankle, which was sticking out over the seat and the closest part of me he could reach. That touch steadied me. Convinced me I was doing the right thing.

  “Get him out,” I said.

  “Charles, come on,” Ethan said.

  “No. We can fix this, we can figure this out—”

  Ethan grabbed him around the middle and hauled back.

  “No!” Charles screamed the word over and over again. I’d never heard him make a sound like that. I squeezed my eyes shut, because I hadn’t even thought about crying until Charles started shouting.

  The bulkhead door to the lifeboat slammed shut—I felt the vibration through the metal hull rather than heard it. Not much air left for sound to travel through. Charles’s shouts cut off.

  I concentrated on holding the switch in place, keeping the thrusters off-line long enough for the lifeboat to get away. Just another minute. A charge fired, sending another shudder through the hull. I craned my neck to look at the instruments—and yes, the lifeboat was gone, on its way to a thrust-assisted landing and rescue. The shuttle was quiet now, mostly, except for the faded beeping of a malfunction alert. I couldn’t even hear the sound of air venting through a crack that couldn’t be sealed. Most of the air was already gone.

  I could let go of the switch now. But I didn’t. People could survive in a vacuum longer than you’d think. Especially if you had oxygen. Sure, your blood started boiling and the internal pressure of your body caused your capillaries to burst and pretty soon your whole body failed. But that took time. I had oxygen. I’d survive for a little while.

  On the other hand, all I had to do was let go of the switch, let the thrusters go out of control, and the high gravity would kill me.

  I wondered what Mom would think when she got the news about what happened. Not exactly what she planned for me. Maybe she’d be proud.

  My arm was cramping, so I shifted my body, trying to get to a different angle. The air coming through the mask felt stuffy. I didn’t have a way out, and for some reason, I was kind of okay with it. Everyone else had escaped. Charles was alive. It was okay.

  It was okay.

  I didn’t notice at first when my air canister started to run out. My lungs were hurting, but that could just have been nerves. I sucked deep breaths at the mask but couldn’t seem to catch my breath. My vision started going splotchy, black with flares around the edges, like I was about to faint. It was sort of comforting—I’d pass out before I died and wouldn’t feel a thing. When I passed out, I’d let go of the switch, and the shuttle would tumble out of control. At least I wouldn’t feel anything at that point.

  I hadn’t wanted to pick a death, so I waited for the air to go. Now, it looked like I was going to get all three—vacuum, asphyxiation, g-forces—at once.

  I listened to the alarm, beeping in time with my heart, until all I could hear was my heart, then nothing.

  25

  POLLY’S EYES ONLY

  I don’t even know where to start. Well. Let me start at the end: Why do you have to be so stupid? Scratch that. You’re not stupid. So why do you have to be so brave? You wouldn’t even realize it. You wouldn’t call it bravery. You’d say something noble about how you just did what needed doing, you were just the one stuck holding the switch, and you’re not really brave or a hero or anything, all the standard clichés, but that would be okay because you’d mean it. You’d get nervous that everyone was making a fuss.

  People keep coming up to me and patting me on the back and telling me how proud I must be of you. And I am, I suppose, if I had to admit it. But I’m also very angry. One of these days I’ll figure out how we could have saved everyone without leaving you behind. Then I’ll be right and you’ll be wrong, and you’ll never have to do anything that brave ever again.

  So next time just step back and let me fix things, all right?

  Charles

  I folded the note and held onto it. I had to think about it for a while. My brain seemed to be running at half speed, and the doctor said that was because they were keeping me sedated until some of the bruising healed. I’d apparently been tossed around the cabin of the shuttle pretty hard before the rescue ship got it stabilized. I didn’t have brain damage from anoxia. At least, they didn’t think I did. I couldn’t really tell. I felt tired.

  I’d woken up and hadn’t known where I was. The room was pale, filled with light, and something beeped, just like the alarm on the shuttle. Then people came in, and I realized I was in a bed, and I wasn’t moving—at least relative to the room, I wasn’t moving. I didn’t feel heavy or light. I didn’t feel much of anything. One of the people—a guy in a white coat, a doctor—asked if I could hear him. I nodded and tried to talk, but my voice scratched, and there was a tube in my nose. The doctor seemed relieved.

  Then I’d felt the square of paper under my hand. Polly’s Eyes Only. I kept it hidden so people wouldn’t try to take it away. Charles had been here, sitting by my bed, watching over me. I tried to look for him, to see if he was still here, but moving hurt and the guy put a hand on my shoulder, keeping me in place. Some medical folks did some test
s and poked and prodded, asked some questions, and I asked them what had happened in a scratchy, dry voice that didn’t sound like me at all. Rescued, they’d said, and taken to the hospital at Collins City. I’d been rescued at the very last moment, just as my air was going out and the g’s were about to pound me to jelly. I’m a very lucky girl, they assured me.

  I tried to ask them where Charles was, but my voice faded. They gave me a cup of water, explained about the sedation, and left me alone. I read the note. Charles had been here. I assumed that meant he and everyone else were okay, that they got rescued, too.

  It seemed very much like a dream, so I went back to sleep and expected everything to be different again when I woke up. Maybe I’d be able to feel the gravity enough to figure out where I was.

  * * *

  When I did wake up, I felt clearer. The room wasn’t as bright, and I could see the walls, the medical equipment, the blanket over my skinny body a lot better. And Charles was sitting by the bed. Neither of us said anything for what seemed a long time. He studied me like he was trying to figure out a problem.

  “Hi,” I said, because that was all I could think of.

  “They said you’d woken up. That I should be here for you. A familiar face.”

  He didn’t look comfortable. He didn’t look in control. He must have hated this.

  “Is everybody okay?” I asked.

  “Mostly. Everyone got a little banged up. Ladhi had a concussion, but she’s all right. Very proud of the scar she’s acquired.”

  “Ethan?”

  “He wants to see you, but the doctors are keeping everyone else out for now. How do you feel?”

  “Not too good,” I said. My head might have been less fuzzy, but even so I’d rather lie still than try to move.

  “You almost died.”

  I hadn’t really thought of it like that. I just did what I thought I had to, and now I was dealing with the consequences.

  “Are you mad at me?” I asked.