The Far Horizon

by Patty Jansen

'Who's that?' asked Bianca.

  'It's the Union Secretary, Joyelin Pahini Akhtari. She's like President Gonzales, but for the entire Union.'

  'A woman? Can I have a look?'

  Cory passed her the reader.

  Her eyes wide, Bianca ran her hand over the crystalline screen. 'Where does she come from?'

  Cory shrugged; his knowledge didn't extend that far. There were more than two hundred Union worlds, and he could barely remember three of them.

  'I heard there's lots of different . . . kinds of people. She doesn't look like your mother, does she?'

  He shook his head. 'There are lots of different people, like Erith, like the Union observer at Midway . . .They're all different, like horses and donkeys and zebras all have hooves and a long face and ears like horses but they're not horses.' That was how his tutor had explained it. Different species of humans.

  'Let me see.' One of the twins snatched the reader from Bianca's hands; he turned it off.

  'Hey!' Cory scrambled to his feet. 'Give that back.'

  The boy passed the reader to his brother, who stuffed it inside Cory's bag. 'Catch.' The twin threw the bag across the room to Joseph, who managed to grab it in a one-armed catch.

  One of the twins slid open the door. 'Go on, show this stupid fig the station.'

  Bianca's shouted, 'Joseph, don't be stupid. Your father will be so angry.'

  The twin said, 'Go, or we'll never let you play Doomland again.'

  Joseph eyed the empty corridor and then the twins.

  Cory lunged across the room, catching Joseph around the knees in a rugby tackle. Joseph went sprawling. In mid-air, Cory caught his bag. He scrambled up, clutching it to his chest. In a moment, all the other boys were around him. Cory tucked his reader in the waistband of his shorts and balled his fists.

  'Stop that! Stop that immediately!'

  The older girl with the curly hair had risen from her chair, her eyes blazing. 'Go back to your stupid games and leave him alone. Unless you want me to—'

  A wail cut her off. Joseph sat on the floor, lifting his jumper, his eyes wide. 'Flopsy. Where is Flopsy?'

  Bianca gave a cry, staring at the open door. 'Oh Flopsy!' She ran into the corridor. 'Flopsy!'

  Bewildered, Cory turned to Joseph. 'Uhm—just who is Flopsy?'

  'My rabbittooh! You made me lose him! Flopsy!' He, too, ran into the corridor leaving Cory to wonder what a rabbittooh was.

  Pia shouted, 'Joseph, come back here, or your father will see you.'

  His face white, Joseph ran back into the room, hissing at Cory. 'It's all your fault.'

  Anger rose in Cory's chest like a hot bubble. 'Excuse me? Who was going to run off with my reader five minutes ago?'

  'I wasn't.'

  'You were!' Cory's shout fell flat. In all truth, Joseph hadn't looked as if he liked what the twins told him to do. Cory realised something else: Joseph's last name was Sullivan.

  'All right. I'll go and find the stupid rabbittooh. My father might be the director and too posh for you, but my father wouldn't punish me for something as silly as walking in the corridors. I don't want to stay here anyway.'

  He ran out of the room.

  Chapter 9

  What did a rabbittooh look like?

  Cory had read on InterSearch that scientists had genetically engineered an animal for meat production in space colonies. Most of the animal was rabbit, but it had some other genes, like a kangaroo's. The official name for these animals was SULs, for Space Utility Livestock. Cory guessed the kids called this creature a rabbittooh. The problem was—he had never seen one.

  Cory strode down the empty corridor, scanning the walls for a hole big enough for a rabbit-sized animal to get through. But walls were smooth, made of a material that felt like plastic. All the doors were closed, and had signs like No entry to unauthorised personnel. Soon, he stood at the bottom of the stairs, looking up into the stairwell.

  Rabbittoohs couldn't climb stairs, could they? Footsteps thudded on the steps and a worker in blue overalls came down.

  'Excuse me, have you seen a rabbittooh?'

  The man frowned. 'A rabbittooh? Take the lift to B level.'

  'Wow, thanks.' So it seemed rabbittoohs could climb stairs. Cory ran up into the central hall, which was almost empty. This morning, he had noticed the big yellow B on the doors of one of the lifts. The lift was there; the doors were even open. Cory ran across the floor, his footsteps echoing eerily in the silence. He flicked his access card into the slot. Lights on the panel lit up and the doors hissed closed. The lift shot into action. Cory leaned against the wall. See? No problem at all. He'd find the rabbittooh and then—

  Uh-oh. Wasn't the lift supposed to have stopped by now?

  The display panel above the door showed a dot travelling along a line.

  The dot kept moving . . . and his feet felt light . . . where was this lift going? Not the central hub, please. There were security cameras everywhere, and Sullivan had said . . . No, please He hit the panel, pressed all the buttons, but the lift continued on.

  How could this be? Sullivan had said his access card wouldn't allow him to leave the outer ring of the station. He wriggled the card from his pocket and looked at the name printed on it. John Wilson. His father's pass.

  The lift came to a stop and the doors slid open. Cory pushed himself out, holding onto the wall railing, his feet floating up, and peered into a dimly-lit alcove. To his left yawned the dark space of the central hub, the no-gravity zone in the axis of the station, used for storage. Cory was about to press the button to take him back to the outer ring when he noticed the large yellow B next to the lift opposite him.

  Things got ever more strange. The rabbittooh had gone in there? He stared into the darkness of the hub, where a crane sat lifeless between racks holding containers. It was so quiet here that the thudding of his heart sounded really loud.

  Something rumbled behind him. Cory gave a frightened squeak, whirled and cursed himself. Stupid. It was only the lift doors closing. But then he noticed that he had lost his grip on his bag. It drifted away from him like a ball in a pond.

  He lunged for the strap, but it was already too far away. Then he strained to push himself off the wall, and just in time realised that would be extremely stupid. The hub cavity was huge; there was no gravity. Once he let go of the railing, how would he get back?

  So he hung on, his heart beating furiously.

  What was he going to do? If he'd stay here much longer, he'd get space sick and puke all over himself. Already his stomach felt queasy.

  Cory pulled himself back towards the lifts. He hesitated for a moment. The B lift would probably take him to the equally forbidden maintenance level, the inner ring of the station. Some little voice in his mind told him that the rabbittooh couldn't possibly have gone in here, but the other half of his mind wanted to get his bag back before he returned to the outer ring, because if someone found it, everyone—but especially Sullivan—would know where he had been. In the maintenance level, he might find a rope to tie around his waist, or someone friendly enough to help him.

  So he went into the B lift, and used his father's access card to operate it. The lift ride didn't take as long as his previous one, and his stomach thanked him for returning to gravity. He still felt light-footed. Gravity was less here than in the outer ring.

  The lift doors opened to a white corridor, which also curved a lot stronger than the outer ring, and the slant of the doors ahead was even more scary. Fluorescent lights flickered in the ceiling. About three or four doors on either side were closed, but a bright glow came from an opening further down.

  In this room there were rows of benches with plants growing in tubes, forming a mass of lush green. Little white flowers peeked out from between the leaves, and lower on the plants grew the crop: beans.

  Another room exuded the smell of animals. Shelves with cages lined the room, each cage with six animals. They had long floppy ears, but stood on their hind legs, supporting themselves
with long bushy tails. They were white, brown, grey, black or combinations of those colours, sticking their heads between the bars and peacefully munching away at concentrate pellets, wriggling noses like rabbits.

  Rabbittoohs. That's what the man had been talking about. Not Flopsy, but rabbittoohs in general. Rabbittoohs for eating.

  And then another thought came to him. If an adult found Flopsy before he did, Joseph's pet would end up in these cages, and on the dinner plates of the workers.

  He had to find the animal, but first he wanted his bag back, so he kept going.

  The corridor ended and Cory came to a huge hall.

  The sleek white form of a ship towered towards the ceiling. Harsh light from the fluorescent tubes reflected in the gold butterfly painted on the ship's side. A lot bigger than the Venture, the nose of the ship almost touched the wall above him and the wing tips just fitted under the balcony. Cory recognised it from his books about space travel: the exploration starship Aurelian, from the New Taurus mission.

  Wow.

  In one blow, Cory forgot all about his bag, or the rabbittooh, or Sullivan, and about how much he wasn't supposed to be here.

  Laughter drifted from the ship's loading dock, where a group of workers loaded crates onto a conveyor belt. Maintenance engineers crawled in and out of the huge engine compartment. The ship's crew mingled with those from Midway, a mixture of orange and blue overalls. Vibrating hoses snaked inside, electric tools whined, technicians called and whistled to each other.

  High above him, the gangplank extended to the platform where his father would have welcomed the leaders of the mission.

  Wow. This was the sort of life he wanted: to travel to Taurus and New Taurus and other worlds beyond. New worlds, new horizons.

  'Hey, what are you doing here?'

  Cory gasped and turned. Behind him stood a man in blue overalls with the most enormous beard Cory had ever seen. Black and bushy, it spread over the top of his chest and his rounded belly and made up for the hair the man lacked on his head. Grey eyes met Cory's. He winked.

  'A beauty, isn't she?'

  'Yes,' Cory managed to say. His heart beat furiously.

  The man ambled closer. He wore yellow gloves. 'What's your name?'

  'Cory, Sir.'

  'Not “Sir”. The name's Rocky, Cory.'

  'OK—Rocky. That's a strange name.'

  'I was born Arnold Sylvester, but everyone calls me Rocky. I wonder why.' He chuckled.

  Cory shrugged; he hadn't the faintest idea.

  'Now, Cory, how did you get in here?'

  'I . . . took the wrong lift.' Blood rushed to his cheeks. Rocky would know it was a lie. Without a pass, there was no way he could have come here. Doubt hovered in Rocky's face, but before he could say anything, Cory decided to plunge in. 'S—er—Rocky, could I borrow a rope?'

  A look of understanding came over Rocky's face. 'A rope? I see. You youngsters haven't been doing anything in the hub, have you?'

  Cory stared at the floor. He shrugged. 'It was an accident.'

  Rocky snorted. 'What have you lost?'

  'My school bag with my reader.'

  'It's floating somewhere in the hub hall?'

  Cory nodded. 'But I didn't do it on purpose. I was looking for—'

  'Don't tell me. I don't want to know how it got there, or I'll have to repeat it in a security report. I'll get the bag out for you.'

  'Thanks.' Cory swallowed hard. 'You're not going to tell Sullivan, are you?'

  Rocky's grey eyes met his. 'Sorry, Cory, but I have to. Security will already have been informed. There is no way around it. Come to my office.'

  What Rocky called his office was a small room under the overhanging balcony. It held a desk full of pieces of electrical equipment and circuit boards. The room smelled of a combination of oil and plastic. Shelves lining the walls sagged with boxes. Neat writing indicated the contents: screws and bolts, plugs, connectors, many-legged chips and circuit boards. Rolls of wire in many colours hung on a rack behind the door.

  Rocky gestured at a chair. 'Sit down.'

  While Cory did so, Rocky slid his hand out of his glove and touched the screen of his computer. He spoke into his headset. 'Security?'

  Cory clamped his hands between his knees while Rocky spoke of clearance, system shutdown and retrieval. He never guessed that one school bag could cause so much trouble. Still, Rocky talked, while walking around the room and collecting things from various drawers and boxes and putting them in a tray. This he set down next to the computer and he picked up a circuit board. At one touch of the screen, the computer displayed a diagram of the Aurelian showing all electrical leads in different colours. From his books about space travel, Cory remembered the three sections of a spaceship: the passenger compartment, the small control compartment and by far the biggest: the engine compartment. That part of the ship was only accessible in the docks. It was that section, in the back and bottom of the ship, where now all panels yawned open.

  Rocky pushed the circuit board into a slot in the computer. The screen darkened and an image of the circuit board came up. Rocky pressed a few of the plastic-covered keys. Little globs of light moved along the lines on the image, representing connections and chips on the circuit board. He finished his telephone conversation. 'All right, I'll do that. Thanks. Bye.'

  Cory became nervous again as Rocky pushed his headset off his bald head. 'Did you get my bag?'

  'Someone's going to get it. It's not as simple as you might think. We have to turn off the ventilation systems.'

  'Sorry.' Cory felt very small and then he hated how tears pricked in his eyes. He shifted in his seat. On the screen, the globs of light still moved over the image of the circuit board. 'What's the computer doing?'

  Rocky smiled. 'You like that, eh?'

  Cory nodded.

  'It's testing the currents that go through it, to see if everything's working OK.'

  'Is that from the Aurelian?'

  'Yes, we're servicing the engines. This is a very important piece of equipment. It controls power flow to the main booster rockets.'

  Cory had to think about that for a while. The booster rockets - the nuclear-powered rockets which only came on about an hour after take-off. 'How does it work?'

  'The boosters can't be started cold, so they need a long warm-up. That's what this piece of equipment controls.'

  'What would happen if it didn't work?'

  Rocky shook his head. 'Nothing good.' The screen flashed. He took the circuit board out of the slot and put it on the desk. 'Now, Cory, let me take you back to the lift—'

  He stared out the door; his face twisted in a horrified expression. 'Quick, Cory, get behind the door.'

  Sullivan. The thought speared through Cory's mind. He launched himself at the pile of boxes and squished in the narrow space between them, his knees pulled up to his nose.

  Chapter 10

  The door bashed in its frame as someone slid it back hard. On purpose, Cory thought, because it had already been open. He clamped his arms around his knees to make himself as small as possible.

  Three men strode into the room, dressed not in military green, but in blue overalls. They had broad shoulders, and one of them sported a long black ponytail that swished over his back. Rocky had re-inserted the circuit board into the computer, and turned around, raising his eyebrows.

  The man with the ponytail spoke. 'Cut the bullshit, Sylvester. Don't pretend you didn't see us coming. You know why we're here.' He spoke in a distinct English voice. Not spacefarer's, not American, but British.

  Rocky said nothing, but met the man's eyes defiantly, even though he had to look up to do so; the pony-tailed man was much taller than him. The other two men slouched across the office. One of them, with short blond hair, sat down on the desk, the other, grey-haired, leaned against the window. Both of them were taller than Rocky, too. Amongst them, Rocky looked like a garden gnome without its pointy hat.

  The pony-tailed man slapped something on Ro
cky's desk—a parcel the size of a book—and he crossed to the computer screen where the globs of light were again travelling along the image of the circuit board. With one flick of his hand, the screen displayed an image of the Aurelian. He zoomed in on what Cory thought were the engines and pointed a tattooed hand at a junction of lines. 'There. That's where I want it. Five thousand grand—when it's done. I know plenty of people who would kill for that. Why the dithering, Sylvester?'

  Rocky scratched his overalls where the fabric stretched over his belly. 'I don't like this. Someone could be killed.'

  'Look, Sylvester, we've been over this many times. You agreed to do it. That was a promise to the League that should be honoured.'

  Rocky shook his head, breathing out in a long hiss. 'You never said what you wanted me to do. Some technical matter, yes, but this . . .'

  'You're going back on your promise?'

  In his little alcove that smelled of cardboard, Cory hardly dared breathe. His bum was getting sore from sitting on that hard metal floor, and pins and needles pricked his right foot.

  'Sylvester, we have a deal. Let me remind you: with one push of a button, I can send Wilson all the details about you, together with all the station rules you're violating: gambling, illegal alcohol.' He chuckled. 'You'll be back in Arcadia in no time, and I bet Johnny Dickson won't have forgotten you still owe him twenty grand.'

  Rocky crossed his arms over his chest, although his face was pale. 'If we're talking money, I'd like to see it first. An advance, as a sign of your goodwill—'

  In two steps, the man with the ponytail was looming over him, pulling Rocky up by the front of his overalls. 'No money. Proof first. I don't trust you. Understand?' He slammed Rocky back-first into the shelves. 'Understand?' A box crashed from the top shelf, spilling an avalanche of tiny light bulbs which bounced and clattered and broke where they fell, or rolled across the floor like marbles.

  One light bulb described a wide arc over the floor, hit the leg of a chair and tumbled and jumped across the room, coming to rest at Cory's feet. The blond man had been watching it and his gaze now met Cory's. 'Boss . . .'