by Zac Harrison
He could hear the excited voices of students around him: “This is new” . . . “never heard him sing before” . . . “what kind of an instrument makes a noise like that” . . . “so this is what Earth music is like!”
The chorus was coming up. He threw himself into it, heart and soul.
The lyrics, about an astronaut in space missing his family back on Earth, were bittersweet. He could never have known, back on his home planet, how fitting the words would turn out to be one day.
His parents thought he was at boarding school. They couldn’t have guessed that he was light-years away, feeling homesick at his school in space.
Were the other students enjoying the song? John couldn’t tell. He kept his eyes shut until he’d finished. It made it so much easier.
When the final notes faded away, he opened his eyes, not sure what to expect.
Applause broke out all across the Center. A few of the students gave him an odd look as he made his way back to his seat, but it was obvious that most of the students loved it, even if it was very different to what they were used to.
Kaal clapped him on the back. “That was sweet! I love Earth music. It’s all so different.”
Kritta was gazing at John adoringly. “I think that was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever heard. You’re amazing.”
John had felt like he was floating on a cloud, but with that comment, he abruptly fell off it. “Maybe it should be your turn next, Kaal,” John suggested, hoping Kaal understood what he was really saying.
“I can’t,” Kaal mumbled. “Not with everybody watching.”
“Just imagine your family’s out there cheering you on!” John said. “They’ll be here tomorrow.”
Kaal grinned at that. “I can’t wait.”
“My folks are coming, too,” Tarope added. “Uncle Scront is flying them here in his worn-out old star-skiff. All fourteen of them! If it doesn’t break down on the way, that is.”
“My parents are on a galactic cruise,” Monix said miserably.
“So they’re not coming?” Dyfi asked. “That’s a shame.”
“No, they are coming! That’s the problem! They’ve paid a fortune for the captain to divert the cruise ship to Hyperspace High for the day, just so they can be here! How embarrassing is that?”
With all this talk of visiting families, John’s good mood was beginning to fade away again. Then he saw a sight that instantly cheered him up: Emmie, walking in through the Center doors! Okay, so Mordant Talliver was right behind her, but John was willing to put up with that.
There were so many questions that needed to be answered — and now it looked like there were some new ones. Why were there streaks of black in her silvery hair? And why did she look even angrier than the last time he’d seen her?
He stood up and waved. “Hey, Emmie! Over here!”
She locked eyes with John and came striding over to his table. The last time she’d been tearful, but now she looked angry enough to punch a hole through the ship’s hull. “Go on,” she snapped. “Have a good laugh.”
John looked at her hair, at the thick, greasy-looking black stripes. “That’s, uh, a new look for you. Is it for the show?”
Emmie’s eyes narrowed to slits of pure fury. She glanced back at Mordant, who shook his head in a way that said, Can you believe this guy? She leaned in close and spoke slowly and clearly:
“This is the last warning you’re going to get, John Riley. One more stunt, one more little joke, and I’ll have to tell the Examiners what you’ve been doing. Got it?” Then the mask of fury cracked for a second, and she looked like she was about to cry. “I . . . what did I ever do to you? To either of you?”
Mordant patted her on the shoulder, comfortingly. “Nice one, human,” he said to John, his voice oozing sarcasm. “You had everyone believing you were such a good guy. Looks like you fooled them all.”
With that, he steered Emmie away and walked with her to the back of the Center. John looked at Kaal, who was sitting open-mouthed.
“What just happened?” John said, feeling like Emmie had picked him up and shaken him like a snow globe. “Kaal, did that make any sense to you?”
Kaal pointed a talon. “John. Look.”
Mordant and Emmie had sat down next to each other. Emmie leaned in to whisper something to Mordant.
Mordant laughed, leaned back in his chair, and put his arm casually around Emmie’s shoulders.
“Kaal, tell me I’m not seeing this,” John said hollowly.
“It can’t be,” Kaal echoed. “It just can’t.”
Emmie leaned against Mordant again, whispering cozily in his ear. One of his tentacles draped itself across her knee.
Monix looked puzzled. “What’s wrong? Do you know that couple?”
Couple, John thought, his mind squirming in horror. Are Emmie and Mordant a couple?
CHAPTER 10
John looked down from the edge of the pit, too scared to move. Emmie was down there, sunk up to her waist in gleaming black oil, sheer terror on her face. It wasn’t just in her hair now. It was plastered over her whole body.
With both arms, she reached up to him. “Help me! Please! I can’t climb out, it’s too slippery . . .”
John lay flat on his stomach and reached down as far as he could. His fingertips were almost brushing hers, but Emmie’s hand hovered just out of reach.
“Hurry!” she begged. “He’s down here with me, he’s got hold of me; he’s going to pull me under!”
Bubbles burst in the black oil. From somewhere below came the sound of thick, sappy laughter. Then two dripping black tentacles reared up from the oil and twisted themselves around Emmie’s arms, her neck, and her face, dragging her backward and out of John’s grip.
Mordant’s tentacles.
Emmie let out a muffled scream, as Mordant dragged her down.
“You can’t save her, John Riley,” Mordant gloated, sinking down below the surface and taking Emmie with him. “She’s mine now. All mine!”
“No!” John yelled.
John lunged forward, felt the edge of the pit give way, lost his balance, tumbled down into the oily depths . . .
. . . and woke up in the dark dorm room, gasping.
The bed sheets were tangled around his legs. He was covered in sweat.
The time on the bedside clock said that it was 1:03.
John groaned and sat up, rubbing his eyes. “One in the morning?” he whispered to himself, not wanting to believe it.
Even though the screen to Kaal’s bed pod was shut, John could hear his roommate tossing and turning. It didn’t sound like his best friend was sleeping well, either. Kaal, being a Derrilian, only needed one hour’s sleep a night — but it looked like even that was troubled.
John went to the bathroom to get a drink of water. The sudden glare when he switched on the light was dazzling. His reflection, bed-headed and puffy-faced, looked rough.
“That was pretty crazy,” he told himself hoarsely.
John didn’t need to be a genius to figure out what that nightmare was about. Mordant, Emmie, and the Space Spectacular . . . they were all preying on his mind.
“Hey, John,” Zepp said in a hushed voice. “Are you okay? I was monitoring your brainwaves just then, and there was a LOT going on in that head of yours.”
“Had a nightmare,” John said. “Zepp . . . what time is it on Earth? At my parents’ house, I mean.”
“Eight fifteen in the morning,” Zepp said. “Want me to put a call through?”
“I’d love that!”
John sat down in front of his vidphone in his bed pod, just in case his parents accidentally caught a glimpse of Kaal. The computer sounded its dialing noises, and almost instantly, his mom and dad were there on the screen.
“John!” his mom exclaimed. “You’re still in pajamas! Shouldn’t
you be dressed?”
“It’s a boarding school,” his dad put in. “They run them like resorts nowadays. None of that up-at-six-for-a-cross-country-run stuff!” And he gave John a wink. “Good to see you, John. How’s school life?”
“It’s crazy,” John said. “How are you? How’s Super Rover?”
“The dog,” his father said calmly, “is certifiably insane. But he’s a Jack Russell, so that’s perfectly normal. He runs around the house, shows no respect for other people’s property, eats like every meal is his last, and sleeps whenever he feels like it. Now I think about it, it’s just like having you back home.”
John laughed. “I miss you, too, Dad.”
It hurt his heart to be so far away from his parents, and it was a bittersweet feeling to talk to them now. But, he thought, that’s the price I have to pay for going to school on an awesome spaceship. And there’s not a boy on Earth who wouldn’t want to change places with me.
He spent the next ten minutes speaking with his parents about everything from town gossip to the soccer league scores. Mostly he had to duck the questions about his school friends, but he couldn’t just say nothing, so he’d come up with a trick weeks ago to keep them from suspecting anything was going on. By changing the names a little bit, he could tell them a few things — so Kaal became his best friend “Carl,” Emmie became “Emma,” and Mordant became “nasty Morton.” It helped get things off his chest . . . a little.
“I should go,” he said eventually. “I’m in a school show with Carl, and today’s the dress rehearsal.”
“A show?” his mother exclaimed. “Like when you did Oliver? That’s great! We’ll come and see you, of course.”
John struggled to come up with an excuse on the spot. “It’s in the morning when you’d be at work,” he fibbed.
His dad shrugged. “That’s no problem. We’ll just take some time off.”
“No, really, don’t go to the trouble,” John said desperately. “It’s not really a show, it’s more of . . . um . . . a demonstration. Stuff we’ve learned. Very boring.” He winced inwardly as he said it. I wish you COULD be here, he thought.
A rather hasty goodbye later, he switched off the ThinScreen and clambered back into bed.
He was asleep in less than a minute. This time, he did not dream.
* * *
The alarm went off at eight o’clock. John struggled out of bed, feeling only half alive. Kaal came out of the shower, looking bleary and haggard.
“You look like I feel,” John said. “And I feel terrible.”
“I’ve made myself look like such an idiot,” Kaal said. “I’ve ruined everything. I should have known the Wakan-Dothak would never work with Kritta. And I wasn’t brave enough to do karaoke to impress her. I’ve tried to think of other ways to get her to like me, but I can’t think of a single one.”
“We’d better get ready to face the world,” John said reluctantly.
“Can’t we just hide in the dorm all day?” Kaal said. “We could pretend to be sick. I feel sick.”
But there was no avoiding it. With many a moan and groan, John and Kaal got dressed and braced themselves to leave their room.
“Here we go,” John said, heading out into the corridor.
To his amazement, Hyperspace High was already swarming with unearthly beings — even more so than usual. Through the corridor windows, he could see a huge convoy of spaceships steadily arriving at the docking bay, from a discolored old shoebox-like vessel held together with metal plates to a vast rotating saucer-ship glimmering with thousands of lights. The families had clearly started arriving long before the Space Spectacular was due to begin.
“Hey, that’s Emmie’s family!” said Kaal, pointing to the saucer. “Wow. Isn’t their ship amazing?”
John had never seen so many different ships in one place. Emmie’s family’s ship was a sparkling golden color, a huge saucer encircled by silver and gold laser beams. It seemed to pulse and glow with energy.
Some of the stranger ships also caught John’s eye — a trident-like white cruiser with a glowing ball at the rear, a manta ray-like craft with graceful outlines and transparent fin sections, a dark V-wing with sinister red lights tracking back and forth, and a dumpy spaceship shaped like a bowler hat that John was sure he’d seen in an old book about UFOs.
Kaal joined him at the window and gave a yell of excitement. “I can see my dad’s ship! Look, John!”
The Derrilian cruiser was almost at the head of the line. It was a rugged, gunmetal ship with transparent orange-red wings spread out on either side.
“Energy collectors,” Kaal explained. As they watched, the wings folded themselves smoothly away and the ship moved in to dock.
“Come on!” Kaal yelled, running off down the corridor. “Come and meet my family!”
“Just try and stop me,” John said, running after him. Both of them suddenly forgot how tired they had been moments before.
As they waited in the reception rooms by the hangar bay, Kaal fidgeted in excitement. Some of the students who’d witnessed the Wakan-Dothak laughed, whispering to one another and making flapping motions with their hands, but Kaal — for once — didn’t seem to care a bit. The doors finally slid open, allowing the latest group of visiting families to flood into the school.
“There they are!” Kaal cried out. “Look! Can you see them?”
“Yeah!” John said, laughing. Kaal’s whole family loomed head and shoulders above all the other families, so they weren’t exactly hard to spot. They were wearing long garments that reminded John of Roman togas. Kaal’s mother had a silver headband with ornamental horns on it, while his sister Kulvi had a wrap-around white visor over her eyes. John wondered if it was a high-tech pair of sunglasses.
With much waving across the room, followed shortly after by much joyous flapping of wings, Kaal and his family were reunited. John solemnly wished them all “wide skies.”
Mr. Tartaru clasped John’s hand in his own scaly talons and shook it vigorously, saying, “Kaal tells me this is how you say hello on Earth.”
Then Kaal’s sister Kulvi lunged over to bite him on the face.
John yelped and backed away.
Kulvi grinned. “Gotcha! Kaal told me he got you once with the old face-biting gag, but I didn’t expect it to work twice!”
John rolled his eyes. “Very funny.”
“Don’t tease John too much, Kulvi,” said Mr. Tartaru firmly. “He’s an honorary member of our family for today, don’t forget. And the journey’s over now, so take that 3-D movie viewer off!”
“I am?” John boggled. Kulvi grumpily folded away the visor.
“Of course you are!” boomed Mr. Tartaru. “Since your own family cannot be here, I would like to consider you as part of mine. It is the Derrilian way: no hatchling left behind! If you have no objection, of course.”
“Are you kidding? I’d love that!”
“Welcome to the family, brother,” Kaal said, beaming. “But where’s Varka, Dad?”
“Grandfather Kresh is looking after her,” said Mr. Tartaru. “Sorry to disappoint you, son, but she’s still too little for a long journey, especially just after her first molting.”
“I don’t suppose either of you have had breakfast yet?” Kaal’s mother said. Seeing the looks on their faces, she added, “No, I thought not. All right, everyone. Let’s eat.”
“The Center’s going to be packed right now!” said John worriedly, looking around. “All these families — we won’t get a place!”
“I already booked us a table before we even docked here,” said Kaal’s mother, brandishing a ThinScreen. “Honestly, I don’t know what you’d all do anything without me around.”
As they took a TravelTube to the Center, John’s thoughts strayed back to the Space Spectacular. It was this evening.
His stomach knotted. No ma
tter how he turned it around in his head, he couldn’t see how he was supposed to make Tarope any less hopeless with a LaserPro, or teach Dyfi how to throw a SonicArrow, or show Monix how to hit a target with a Hot Shot. Training them all properly would take ages, and there just wasn’t time — not to mention the fact that he wasn’t exactly an expert in them himself.
Once again, he wished he’d never been chosen as team leader. It wasn’t fun being the person in charge of doing the impossible.
“So!” said Kaal’s dad, as they sat down to breakfast. “Kaal tells me you’re his team leader!”
Great timing, John thought. “That’s right, Mr. Tartaru.”
“Please. You must call me Vorn. And Kaal’s mother is Dulâna.”
The food — most of it looking like multicolored seaweed — came humming up through holes that opened in the table, and all the Derrilians tucked in. Luckily, Zepp provided John with a bowl of cornflakes.
“So who’s the leader of your planet, John?” Kaal’s mother asked.
“M-o-o-om,” said Kaal. “Come on. Don’t pester him.”
“I’m not pestering at all, I’m simply curious. I’m sure John doesn’t mind, do you, dear? Now, do you have a robotic overseer, or do you use global telepathy to select your planetary leader?”
“We don’t actually have one leader for the whole planet,” John explained. “All the different countries have their own leader.”
Kaal’s mother almost choked on her food. “How . . . what . . . really? Every country for itself?”
“Pretty much.”
“That’s madness!” Kaal’s mother said. “Anarchy! No wonder you haven’t developed interstellar travel yet!”
“Now you’ve done it,” Kulvi said. “She’ll offer to come and run your planet for you, just you wait.”
“Now then, Dulâna,” said Kaal’s dad. “Different worlds have different cultures, and we have to respect them — even if they seem strange to us.”
“I just feel sorry for the poor things!” Kaal’s mother protested.
