1942664419 (S) (25 page)

“Are we losing cohesiveness?” I asked.

“Cohesion.” His gaze darted to mine as the ship shook around us. “Jess, you have to sit down. I don’t want to worry about … ”

A pop like the explosion of the world’s largest balloon bombarded the cabin. The air rushed out. My lungs seized. I grabbed my throat, before the air returned in a whoosh. I breathed deep, relishing the oxygen, and steadied myself on the wall.

Something creaked, and the temperature plunged like walking outside in the winter. David screamed and stumbled from the console. His back slammed against the wall beside the monitors. He slid to the floor, propped up beside the chairs.

My breath turned to white puffs as Edgar lunged through the air, landing on the growing mass of gray in the hull. His legs worked furiously.

The air about the room thickened and swirled as I dropped to my knees beside David. The cold lashed my cheeks. I took David’s frigid fingers into mine. “What do I do? Tell me what to do!”

His turquoise irises dulled to a pale lavender. His teeth chattered. If I was cold, he was freezing to death.

I punched him in the chest. “You are not going to die, dammit! Tell me what to do. Don’t you dare leave me out here!”

David’s body hardened. The lavender faded to gray.

“David!” I pulled him to me, pressing our cheeks together to give him what little warmth I had. “Help me save us. Please, help me save us.”

I closed my eyes and pushed with all my might, injecting myself into him.

“Tell me what to do, David. Tell me what to do.”

The ship is dying, Jess.

I tensed, sorting out the words in my mind, realizing they weren’t mine.

David?

I grasped his hand.
“How do I bring it back?”

We’ve lost cohesion.

“Then I’ll re-co-heat it. Dammit, don’t give up on me. What’s wrong? Why did we lose cohesion?”

There’s not enough power to keep the molecules fluid. They can’t move, so they freeze, opening a fissure. It can’t be undone without more power.

“I don’t buy that.”

We knew the risks. You mean everything to me, Jess. I’m sorry.

I blinked, jostled him from my head, and stood. David slid the rest of the way down to the floor. I rubbed my shoulders. He’d be dead in the next few minutes, and I’d be right behind him.

I wasn’t ready to check out yet. Not by a long shot.

Edgar chittered and circled in place, clicking his sharp feet on the tiles. He seemed more like a rabid animal than a smart, sentient arachnid. Maybe he had an idea?

I knelt beside him as he wobbled over the gray area. The rest of the ship still shimmered with rich opalescence, probably the only reason I was still breathing. So the problem must have been centered in that steely splotch.

The ugly, dull, gray hue seemed to be growing, despite Edgar’s furious efforts. I shivered as he dribbled clear fluids on the ship, darkening one area before he moved on. But the wall was turning gray faster than he could spit.

A glow emanated from Edgar, as if each blink of his eyes focused a beacon, keeping the area bright. The hull creaked, and the steely tinge expanded. The little dude wasn’t acting fast enough.

Think, Jess. Think.

He was spitting. Spit is liquid, just like the water I’d spilled on the metal beads in the woods. They’d come to life then. Could it be that simple?

I spied my supply case leaning against the wall. I grabbed my last water canister and dribbled the remaining droplets down the hull beside Edgar. The walls instantly absorbed the liquid and darkened.

Water. The ship needed water! Everything needs water to survive. This ship wasn’t a hunk of metal; it was a living thing. It just needed to drink!

I ran to the back of the ship and found David’s supply case. I plucked both water canisters out and sprinted back to Edgar. He screeched, baring his dripping fangs at me. I unscrewed the first bottle and drenched the wall. The molecules shimmered but didn’t take on the opalescent glow of the rest of the ship.

Edgar danced over the wet surface, blinking his glowing eyes.

Light. He was giving them water
and
light.

I dumped the second bottle over the swelling space and grabbed my camera
.

More light.
I needed to give the ship light. I hit the power button and pointed at the discolored hull.
Flash.

I didn’t care about the picture.
Flash
.

Edgar moved back, giving me room.
Flash.

My fingers numbed on the shutter button.
Flash.

The far sides of the hole seemed to harden.
Flash.

Please, God, don’t let the battery go dead!
Flash.

David struggled, shivering behind me
. Flash.
This had to work—it just had to!

The material in the wall darkened.
Flash.

I fell back on my butt as the wall shimmered, churned, and took on an opalescent tone. I stared at the partition separating us from a frozen death. The metal swirled, forming a round pattern that dissipated before shifting back in line with the pattern encircling the newly healed fissure. Moving, like the rest of the ship.

Holy cow.
I was right. It’s like a gigantic plant!

Panting, I pulled myself to David as the temperature rose around us. I covered him with my body, hoping to give him what heat I had left.

A hum filled the chamber, like a generator speeding up. David, Edgar, and I left the ground, flew through the air and smacked against the back wall. David groaned as he slumped to the floor.

He leaned up. “We’re m-m-moving again. What d-did you do?”

I helped him stand. “Just good-old-fashioned Martinez ingenuity.”

He glanced at the wall and seemed to stare at the canisters littering the floor. “W-water? You used water?”

“Apparently your ship was thirsty.”

“Thirsty?”

I nodded.

“That shouldn’t have worked.”

I kissed his cheek. “Maybe you should write a paper on it. It might make you famous.”

The walls melted back into windows. His eyes widened, and he tugged me toward the chairs and the console.

Bright light flooded the compartment as a beautiful blue and green globe greeted us in the distance.

“Earth!” I screamed. “We did it!”

31

I slipped into the copilot’s chair, afraid to blink as I memorized every line, every angle that made up Earth. My planet. Home.

David sunk his arms into the control panel. He shivered, but continued his chore.

“Are you going to be okay?” I asked. “It got pretty cold in here.”

“I’ll make it,” he said, staring through the windows. “Thanks to you.”

I sat up straighter. How many times had he saved my life while we ran from the Army the week we first met? More than I could count. It was nice to be able to do something for
him
for a change. I returned my gaze to my sparkling blue planet, but Earth’s cloud-covered oceans panned off to the left and disappeared from view.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“The ambassador’s ship is still coming up on sensors.”

A molten, elongated, lumpy blob came into view. The ship we’d escaped from glowed with opalescence, but didn’t seem to hold the smooth oval or circular form I’d seen in the other Erescopian vessels.

“Are they losing cohesion?”

“Not yet, but they aren’t in good shape.” He pointed to hundreds of small spheres surrounding the ship. “See this? They’re evacuating.”

“Still? We sabotaged them days ago.”

“It probably took them a while to figure out what we’d done to the spine. I bet they tried to stabilize the infrastructure to try to save the ship.” His eyes remained fixed on the failing vessel. “We’re crowded as it is. I should have found another way to stop him. I never considered how many people would be displaced if we lost a cruiser of that size.”

I touched his shoulder. “It’s not your fault. You did what you could at the time. The greater good and all that. You saved Earth—billions of lives.”

He took a deep breath and nodded, centering his gaze on the shimmering console. What did he see in all that swirling metal?

Was he having second thoughts, fearing for all the Erescopians Poseidon said would die if they took the time to terraform Mars?

No.
David was not the same scientist who created that horrible powder. He’d do the right thing. I shuddered, wondering what the right thing was from an Erescopian’s perspective.

The ships surrounding the dying vessel drifted off before picking up speed. Most seemed to head for the large, black void in the distance, which had to be a ship blocking the view of the stars. A few headed toward Earth.

David pulled his hands out of the console. “A huge life signature is rising out of the ambassador’s ship’s hull.”

“A life signature? What does that mean?”

“Watch.”

The dying ship quaked before overflowing with glowing orbs. The individual circles of radiance sparkled before bursting out in the world’s biggest firework.

“Whoa,” I whispered. “What is that?”

“The
grassen
. They know the ship is dead. They’re leaving with the rest of the crew.”

Edgar scurried atop the console. The tips of his feet sank into the liquid metal as his three sparkling eyes gazed into the screen. His friends’ yellow, shining eyes sparkled among the stars, hanging like a tapestry before dissipating and heading toward the ships in the distance. Hundreds, maybe thousands. Incredible.

“They don’t need air to survive?”

“Everything needs air, but they have pockets that store oxygen. They can live for weeks before they have to replenish.”

“Like wearing your very own space suit. Cool.” I scratched the coarse hairs behind Edgar’s eyes. “Do you want to go with them, buddy?”

He shook out his hair, jumped from the console, and grabbed my ankle, looking up at me like a frightened child. Well, a frightened child with three eyes and ten hairy legs.

A tone sounded, and David moved to the control panel.

“What’s that?” I asked.

His lips formed an O.

“David, what?”

He turned to me. “There are still a few life signatures registering in the ambassador’s ship. One of them is human. Male.”

Pressure built in my chest. “Dad?”

“Most likely.” He touched the console. “That ship is going to lose cohesion within hours.”

“Why hasn’t he been evacuated?”

“There’s a bunch of people still on the detention floors. They aren’t moving toward the departure levels.”

A shiver shot down my spine. “They’re leaving the prisoners behind.”

“That’s what it looks like.”

“We have to get him out of there!”

David’s hands hovered over the controls as he stared through the window. “I’ll find him, but I’ll have to drop you off somewhere first. Problem is, I might not have enough power to get back. I’ll have to change ships.”

“You are not leaving me behind. That’s my father. I left him once. I won’t do it again.”

The lowest part of the ambassador’s ship pinched into a bubble and separated. The bubble drifted from the base of the ship and fizzled into oblivion.

“We don’t have much time.” David turned to me. “It’s not only detainees on that ship, Jess. I don’t want you to get hurt.”

I gritted my teeth. “Okay, this whole chivalry thing is sooo not working for me. You are not leaving me anywhere. We’re a team. We do this together.”

He smirked. “I was hoping you’d say that.”

“Well then, stop your yapping and fly this thing.”

The smile jumped off his face and warmed me like a hug. No, chivalrous alien boy, you weren’t getting rid of me that easily.

As the dying ship became bigger on the screen before us, I gulped. Team or no team, what were we going to find there?

32

A massive wall of churning ebony filled the windows as we neared the cruiser, but David didn’t slow.

I gripped the arms of my chair. “Aren’t we going to hit that?”

“No. We’re landing.” He tapped across the console. “Here we go.”

Our ship sunk into the hull of the larger vessel as if we’d submerged ourselves in a pool of tar. Swirling black coated our windows until we broke into an open, barren space. A glistening, ebony floor met dark walls that rose high above our hovering ship—like a deserted warehouse painted black just to creep people out.

David leaned closer to the glass, looking down toward a single black orb floating in the center of the room. Our ship maneuvered beside the smaller craft and set down.

He sighed and rubbed his eyes.

“What’s wrong?”

“What’s
not
wrong? I hoped there would be extra transport liners so we could borrow one. Our ship can’t take much more.”

“What’s wrong with the ship next to us?”

“It’s a hopper. It barely fits one person let alone three, and I couldn’t fly if you were in my lap.”

I bit back a grin as his eyes narrowed. I pushed the thought of me on his lap out of my mind. I had a father to save, after all.
Stupid libido
.

“Are there other hangars?” I asked.

“Yes. We’ll have to see what we can find.” He steered me to the center of the floor.

Edgar scampered beside us, but backed away. He reared up on his hind legs, chittered, and cooed before hopping into the wall behind him.

“Is it okay to leave him here?” I asked.

David nodded. “He can abandon ship like the others anytime. He’ll be fine.”

The ground opened up beneath us. I furled closer to David to hide from the brash Erescopian temperatures as the waterfall’s energy swirled around us.

David eased me out of the cold elevator into the sweltering heat of the ambassador’s ship. As we stepped away, the waterfall’s shimmering opal particles stopped their downward flow, wavered, and reversed their course up toward the ship.

Our footsteps echoed through the barren room.