Chasing Stars

by Helen Douglas

  And then I heard footsteps clanging rapidly up the steps.

  ‘Put the bottle down,’ said the guard, ‘and no one needs to know any of this happened.’

  I didn’t know what to do. A figure appeared in the doorway. I risked a look. It was a man silhouetted against the open hatchway.

  ‘Don’t come any closer or I’ll go for his jugular!’ I shouted, trying to hide the quiver in my voice.

  ‘It’s me – Peg,’ said the figure.

  ‘Thank God!’

  Peg ran down the aisle. He was wearing a set of cleaner’s overalls. He reached across the guard for the gun and pushed the nozzle into the side of his neck. ‘Where’s the key for the handcuffs?’

  The guard lifted a bunch of keys hanging around his waist. I took the key from his belt and started unlocking Ryan’s handcuffs.

  ‘What’s the plan?’ whispered Ryan.

  ‘We have an escape shuttle on the other side of the space­port,’ I said, unlocking the handcuffs. I pulled them free of Ryan’s wrists. Underneath, his skin was pink and raw. I ran my thumb over the tender spot and felt the throb of his pulse against my skin. He moved one hand and tilted my chin so that our eyes met.

  ‘Put these on,’ I said, pulling the kitchen porter’s uniform out from my waist.

  A loud screech, urgent and insistent, began to sound.

  ‘Oh God,’ said Peg. ‘Security alarm. They must be on to us.’

  ‘It’s not that,’ I said. ‘It’s the ten-minute warning for the airlock. There’s a supply ship coming in. We have to get off the dock within ten minutes.’

  ‘Or stay on the ship,’ said Ryan.

  ‘By the time the airlock is shut again, Wolfe will be waiting for us at security,’ Peg said. ‘We’ll never make it.’

  ‘Why don’t we take this ship?’ I said. ‘If they’re opening the airlock, we could just fly out. It’ll be a lot easier than trying to cross the spaceport to the emergency shuttle bay.’

  ‘This is a little trickier to fly than a space hopper or escape shuttle,’ said Peg.

  ‘I thought you said you could fly anything?’ I said.

  Ryan laughed sharply. ‘Did he really say that?’

  ‘I might have exaggerated a little,’ said Peg.

  ‘We have about nine minutes,’ I said. ‘So make up your minds right now.’

  ‘Does this ship have an escape pod?’ Peg asked Ryan.

  ‘It has two. One right through that door.’ He pointed to a doorway with a green arrow above it.

  ‘You’ve got thirty seconds to get in that escape pod,’ said Peg to the guard. ‘Or I’m gonna be forced to shoot you.’

  He held the gun to the man’s neck and pushed him towards the door.

  ‘Do you think you can fly this?’ I asked Ryan.

  ‘I’m going to give it a try.’

  ‘That doesn’t fill me with confidence.’

  ‘There are flight suits in that locker,’ said Ryan. ‘Put one on. And a helmet. Just in case.’

  ‘What about you?’

  ‘There’s no time.’

  Peg shoved the guard through the doorway. Ryan opened the locker and chucked me an orange flight suit.

  ‘I can’t believe you’re here,’ said Ryan as I ripped the plastic off the suit. ‘How the hell did you manage to get to the spaceport, get everyone off the ship and then show up just as they’re about to open the hatch for a cargo ship?’

  ‘It’s a long story,’ I said, as I stripped off my kitchen tunic. ‘And – for the record – this is Plan B. The first one didn’t work so well.’

  Ryan helped me with my flight suit, pulling up the zip that ran from the waist to the neck. He rested his hand on the side of my neck. ‘Kiss me?’ he said quietly. ‘Just in case Plan B doesn’t work well either.’

  I reached up and brushed my lips against his. Ryan wrapped his other arm around my waist and pulled me closer to him.

  The door to the escape pod slammed, making us both jump. We pulled apart.

  ‘He’s in the pod,’ said Peg. His eyes swept across mine and then continued to the hatch.

  ‘Thank God you showed up,’ I said.

  ‘I had a hunch you’d need some help in here.’ He met my eyes again, but fleetingly. ‘You did great.’

  Ryan dragged another flight suit from the locker. ‘Peg, you want to put this on while I start the engines? We need to go right now.’

  Peg looked from me to Ryan and back to me again. ‘I’m not going with you.’

  ‘What?’ I said. ‘You have to come. You’ll never make it off the landing bay in time.’

  ‘I will.’

  ‘You might never get another chance to fly a Guardian Class ship,’ said Ryan.

  ‘I thought you wanted an adventure,’ I said.

  He pushed his fingers through his hair. ‘You two need to make this journey on your own.’

  Ryan and Peg locked eyes for a second and then Ryan backed into the cockpit.

  ‘Please come with us,’ I said.

  Peg shook his head and made for the metal stairway. ‘I need to make sure Lyra’s OK.’

  I followed him to the hatch, wishing we had more time. In a different time, a different timeline, our paths might have crossed and led us to a different destination. But in this lifetime, this place in the universe, this was where our paths diverged. I followed him halfway down the stairs. ‘None of this would have happened without you,’ I said. ‘Thank you, Pegasus.’

  He nodded. ‘Say goodbye to Ry for me. We sort of ran out of time up there.’

  ‘Look up Penpol Cove in Cornwall one day,’ I said, my throat constricting.

  ‘Penpol Cove?’ he repeated.

  I nodded, not trusting myself to speak. Peg kissed my cheek, turned and clattered down the stairway.

  ‘Come on, co-pilot,’ Ryan called from the hatch. I ran back up the stairs. Ryan pressed a button and the metal stairway slowly retracted. ‘We have four minutes.’

  I followed him into the cockpit. It was no bigger than the cockpit of the space hopper Peg had taken me in. I strapped myself into the co-pilot’s seat. In quick succession, he tapped a grid of buttons on the panel.

  ‘You realise I’m not going to be any help to you,’ I said.

  For a second, Ryan stopped tapping buttons and looked at me. ‘I can’t believe you did all this. You’re crazy.’ Then he was back at work on the screen. I heard a hiss and felt a jolt as the ship freed itself from its constraints.

  The alarm stopped sounding.

  ‘Hatch is opening,’ said Ryan. ‘We’re going to have to slip through the opening at the same time as that cargo ship comes in. It’s going to be tight; our ship isn’t exactly small either.’

  ‘Have you ever flown a ship like this before?’

  ‘Only simulations,’ said Ryan.

  The ship slowly backed away from the dock.

  ‘What do you know about security?’ asked Ryan.

  ‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘We didn’t have the chance to check it out. I didn’t notice any security shuttles on the docks, so I’m guessing they’re on another part of the spaceport.’

  ‘They’ll probably be waiting for us on the other side of the hatch then.’

  ‘What are we going to do?’

  ‘I’m going to fix a portal while you fly us through the hatch.’

  ‘Ryan . . .’

  ‘Just take the controller for a minute. You’re going to fly under that cargo ship. It’s just a matter of steering. Like driving a car.’

  I wrapped both hands around the controller in front of me and Ryan pressed a button to transfer the control to me. The controller vibrated in my hand.

  Ryan went back to tapping away on the screen in front of him. I watched through the window before me. The hatch was fully open now and a ship – a mammoth ship ten times the size of ours – was slowly floating through it.

  ‘What’s the destination?’ I asked.

  ‘I’m gonna set the coordinates for Titan,’ said Ryan. �
�It’s the obvious choice.’

  ‘If it’s that obvious, won’t they follow us straight there?’

  ‘It’s the first place they’ll look,’ said Ryan. ‘They’ll portal there and try to intercept us. Everyone goes to Titan.’

  ‘Then why are we going there?’

  ‘We need a decoy. Something to throw them off our real destination. And once we get beyond the asteroid belt, our portal signature will be harder to trace.’

  We were approaching the cargo ship now. Its colossal bulk almost entirely filled the window in front of us.

  ‘Coordinates are set,’ said Ryan. ‘The portal should be ready in sixty seconds. I’m going to transfer the controller back to me now.’

  The cargo ship was completely inside the airlock. I held my breath as its shadow passed over us and the doors to the outside came into view. They were closing, but slowly. Ryan accelerated the ship and swore. ‘Come on, come on,’ he muttered. ‘The acceleration on this ship is a piece of shit.’

  Frowning, he bit his lip and moved the controller abruptly to the right, turning the ship on to its side. I could see the doors to the hatch closing faster. We would make it. But only just. Then there was a ping on the side of the ship, followed by another.

  ‘They’re firing on us!’ shouted Ryan. ‘We’re not even through the freakin’ hatch and they’re already on us.’

  Something hit the side of the ship hard. We jolted sideways.

  ‘Oh God,’ I said.

  ‘It’s a Guardian Class ship,’ said Ryan. ‘Reinforced hull. It can take a little damage.’

  Another blast of something jolted our ship once again.

  ‘They’re targeting our portal drive,’ said Ryan. ‘We still need ten seconds for our portal to stabilise. Hold on.’

  Ryan began tapping rapidly on the screen. A third jolt flung our ship sideways.

  ‘Amber alert,’ said the computer. ‘Danger of hull breach.’

  ‘Hold on,’ said Ryan.

  He spun the ship in a three hundred and sixty degrees roll. My stomach leapt into my throat and a shiver of nausea rippled through me.

  ‘Portal stabilised,’ said the computer.

  That now-familiar sense of moving backwards gripped my stomach. I held my breath until the blackness outside the window formed a tunnel shape with a bright yellowish hue at the far end. We began to race through the tunnel.

  ‘We’re going to Titan first,’ said Ryan. ‘Let them think that’s where we’re headed. Just before we arrive, I’m going to set new coordinates.’

  ‘You’re going to create a portal from within a portal?’ I asked.

  ‘It’s going to be OK. Trust me. We’re going somewhere no one goes. Somewhere no one knows about. The portal will hold.’

  Ryan started tapping in a new set of coordinates. The yellow moon curved off to one side.

  ‘I’ve set up the new portal,’ said Ryan. ‘We’d better release our passenger. It will look like we had to do an emergency eject.’

  The ship jolted forwards as the escape pod was released.

  ‘Get ready for portal number two,’ said Ryan.

  Another narrower, blacker tunnel emerged within the first one. A faint blue glow shone through it. Ryan flew straight towards its narrow entrance. Curved around the outside of the larger tunnel, I could still see the spaceport, the yellow hue of Titan, and the frisbee-shaped rings of Saturn. Ahead, growing rapidly brighter, our destination glowed blue.

  ‘They’ll probably think our portal collapsed,’ said Ryan. His eyes were glued to the screen in front of him. ‘All they’ll be able to find is one of the escape pods. With a bit of luck they’ll assume we were in the other one and didn’t make it.’ He almost laughed. ‘No one is crazy enough to portal into the unknown.’

  We entered the smaller tunnel. The Inter-Planetary space­port had now disappeared. Titan and Saturn were still within view, but elongated and distorted into thin sausage shapes. Other moons were alongside them, but I had no names for them.

  ‘Ten seconds,’ said Ryan.

  Titan disappeared. Then Saturn.

  ‘Three,’ said Ryan. ‘Two. One.’

  The tunnel vanished. In our window were two moons, one larger than the other, but both white and pockmarked just like Earth’s moon. Ryan eased the controller to the right until a planet, a blue-green and white, Earth-like planet, floated in the velvet darkness in front of us.

  ‘Welcome to Eden,’ he said.

  Twilight was rapid. First, the halo of light over the planet turned copper, then it deepened to scarlet. Seconds later it had gone and we were plunged into darkness. There were no artificial lights on the planet’s surface to show the shape of the continents. It was as though there was nothing but this ship and the eternal blackness of space.

  Ryan had put us in a stable orbit above Eden, from where we saw the three suns rise and set every ninety minutes. He explained that trace signatures of our portal could be discovered for up to an hour after we’d closed it. Five hours later he was still scanning the space around us for incoming ships.

  ‘No one knows we’re here,’ I said, unstrapping my seatbelt. The cockpit was cramped and my muscles felt tight. ‘It’s been hours. You said yourself they probably think our portal collapsed.’

  ‘But what if they did catch a trace of our destination? I’d have risked everything just to save myself.’

  ‘But they didn’t.’

  ‘I shouldn’t have brought us here. I panicked.’

  ‘Of course you panicked. You were under fire,’ I said, standing up. ‘But no one has followed you. And no one will because no one else knows this place exists. No one except Cassie, Ben and your dad. But they’re not going to risk telling anyone about this planet. They know the consequences.’

  ‘Let me run one last scan,’ he said, dragging an icon across the control panel.

  ‘Fine. I’ll give you ten minutes. And then I want you to come out into the lounge area with me.’

  I left him frowning at the control panel and went to explore the rest of the ship. There were a couple of rows of airline-style seating just behind the cockpit, and then the body of the ship opened out into a lounge area with white leather couches, a bar and a massive window. Right at the back of the ship was a small galley with a fridge and an oven. I opened the fridge and squatted down to look inside. There were a number of pre-packed meals that had pro­b­ably been brought on board to feed the admiral and the journalists on the trip to the moon. I counted them. Forty-four. I opened cupboards and pulled open drawers, locating plates and utensils, condiments and napkins. We wouldn’t go hungry for a few days.

  Next I located the bathroom – an airline-style toilet and sink – and unzipped my bulky orange flight suit. I assumed that we were safe now we were in orbit. In any case, Ryan wasn’t wearing one so if anything happened to the ship, there would be no one left to rescue me. I’d prefer to die quickly if death was inevitable. I dressed in my green cotton kitchen tunic and adjusted my hair in the mirror.

  When I got back into the main cabin, Ryan was standing at the bar, untwisting the wire top of a bottle of champagne. He smiled, but his eyes looked tired and the prison clothes he wore were hanging off him.

  ‘Nice outfit,’ I said.

  ‘You too.’

  I looked down at the frumpy tunic I was wearing and laughed.

  ‘I never thought I’d see Eden again,’ he said, his thumbs pushing out the cork. ‘Not the planet and not you. I can’t quite believe we’re here.’

  ‘Nor me.’

  He poured the champagne into two crystal glasses. The bubbles caught the light and twinkled like stars.

  ‘A toast,’ he said, passing one of the glasses to me. ‘To Eden.’

  I wasn’t sure whether he was referring to me or the planet, but I tipped the glass against my lips and bubbles shot up my nose.

  ‘If it wasn’t for this planet, we wouldn’t be here,’ I said. ‘You’d never have travelled back to 2012 to stop it being discover
ed. I’d never have met you.’

  ‘I always wanted you to see the planet that was named after you.’

  ‘I’d love to land on the surface. See it up close.’

  ‘We could do that.’

  ‘What about the parasite?’

  ‘We’d have to stay away from the infected continents. But we could visit one of the small desert lands; it’s safe there.’

  I wanted to do that so much. Space scared me – the endlessness of it.

  ‘What about where you lived when you were a boy? Can we see that?’

  He shrugged. ‘Sure. We can do anything. But if we went there, we’d have to stay on Eden for ever. That’s where the parasite lives. We’d never be able to return to Earth.’

  ‘What do you think we should do?’

  ‘Dance,’ he said. ‘I think we should dance. Everything else can wait.’

  He put his glass on the table and went over to a small com-screen. Seconds later, music began playing softly.

  ‘Come here,’ he said. He took my hand and led me towards the window. ‘Lights off.’

  The inside of the ship was thrust into a darkness so intense, even the outlines of furniture were invisible. I stepped forward, lost my balance and fell against Ryan.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said.

  ‘Don’t be.’ His hands wrapped around my waist and pulled me close to him.

  There was nothing but blackness and starlight. Through the window, the ship turned in its orbit, and then we were dancing, chasing stars across the sky.

  Epilogue

  The Southern Desert of Eden, three days later

  ‘I promise it’s worth it,’ he says.

  I nod; my mouth is too dry to waste words. We’ve been walking across the desert for about an hour by now, only it’s not like the endless sand in the deserts of my imagination. Here the desert is bare, brittle rock. Thin sliver of rock upon thin sliver of rock. It snaps and splinters underfoot, like walking across thin ice. I peel my shirt from my damp skin and squint against the bright sunlight, wishing I had sunglasses or sunscreen. Or both.

  And then, abruptly, the rock turns to sand. We turn a corner and I see why. We’ve reached the ocean; its surface is like blue silk.