A Million Suns atu-2

by Beth Revis

I squat down next to her. “Let it go,” I say, “Come on.” I touch her shoulders to pull her away, but she jerks back — not to hit him, but to bury her face in her arms, sobbing.

  I can’t stand to see her break like this. I can’t stand to know that when the patch wears off, he’ll blame her, he may still try to hurt her, or me.

  I drop to my knees near his face. His eyes still stare straight up, but I can tell by the way they twitch that he knows I’m here.

  “I want you to know something,” I whisper in his ear softly. “I want you to know that I know where I can find a gun. If you don’t know what a gun is, look it up in the Recorder Hall. My father taught me how to hold a gun steady, how to breathe out as I squeeze the trigger, how to group my shots in a target so that even if the first bullet doesn’t stop you, the next will. When I was fourteen, my father took me hunting with him, in Colorado, and I killed an elk. He did this so that I would know what it is to take a life, so that I would not hesitate to do it when I needed to. I am telling you this, now, so that you know I won’t hesitate to kill you.”

  Luthor’s eyes dance back and forth; he’s trying to get the power to turn — away from me or toward me, I don’t know.

  I lean closer to him, so close I can smell his skin, and when I speak, I can see how the little hairs near his ear move with my breath. “I also want you to know that I won’t kill you right away. But that you’ll wish I had.”

  I stand up and offer Victria my hand. She takes it, but as we head to the door, she breaks away from me and delivers one last vicious kick to Luthor’s face.

  We leave him, broken and bleeding, on the floor.

  35 ELDER

  THE NEXT MORNING, I WAKE TO A COM.

  “Are you up yet?” Amy’s voice is excited.

  “I am now,” I say, stretching. “Is anything wrong?”

  “Nope,” she says. “Come down to the cryo level.”

  “Amy, is this about Orion and his frexing clues?” I ask, pulling on pants. “I don’t have time for that. I’ve got to focus on the engine and keeping the ship going — look at what happened yesterday while I was on the cryo level.”

  “Don’t get sassy. Just come down here.”

  “Sassy?”

  “Come on!” she says. “You’re going to want to see this!”

  “Oh, really?”

  “Elder, remember the video last night?”

  “The vid that got cut off? Amy, either Orion was loons or someone else messed with that video. Either way—”

  She cuts me off. “That’s beside the point. There was still enough information for me to figure it out. Remember when Orion said Eldest started to scare him? He said it happened after he got off the ship.”

  “Off the ship?” I say, so surprised that I pause on my way to the grav tube.

  “Whatever he found, he saw it outside the ship.”

  “Which means…” I say, not daring to finish my thought aloud. I start running to the tube entrance.

  “That the next locked door must contain spacesuits.”

  Amy’s pacing in front of the elevator by the time I reach the cryo level. “What took you so long?” she demands. Before I have a chance to answer her, she grabs my arm and starts dragging me to the hall in the back.

  “I read the whole thing last night,” she says, tossing me a slender book.

  “What’s this?” I turn it over, reading the title.

  “Shakespeare’s sonnets. Keep up. Anyway, I read the whole thing — actually, I had to read it twice — but I finally noticed something very interesting.”

  “Interesting how?”

  “Turn to page 87.”

  Balancing the book in one hand, I carefully turn the pages. Amy taps her foot impatiently, but I don’t want to risk damaging this treasure from Sol-Earth. I turn over page 85. And—

  “Where’s page 87?” I ask. I flip page 85 back and forth — but the book jumps straight to page 89.

  “Exactly,” Amy says, a huge grin spreading across her face. “It’s so neatly cut out of the book that you’d never notice that page was gone unless you were looking for it.”

  “This is the clue?” I ask, handing the book back to Amy.

  “I think the clue was on page 87,” Amy says. “Someone altered whatever clue Orion left in the armory, trying to make us give up and quit looking. Whoever did that also cut the page from the book.”

  “How did you find it?” I ask. I’m trying to remember what any of Orion’s videos said that indicated Shakespearean poetry.

  “It was in the fiction room,” Amy says. “Anyway,” she continues when I open my mouth to question her further, “the point is — that missing page. It had a sonnet on it.” She turns back to page 85 and shows me the book. “This page has Sonnet 29 on it.” She turns to page 89. “This page has Sonnet 31. Which means that page 87 must have had Sonnet 30 on it.”

  Amy tosses the book to the ground and my eyes go wide to see a treasure of Sol-Earth treated so casually. Amy doesn’t notice, though, as she spins around to the largest door at the end of the hall. “Codes have to be at least four digits long,” she says. “So try 0030.” She jerks her head to the door on the right of the hatch.

  “This is never going to work,” I say.

  In answer, Amy punches 0030 in the keypad by her door.

  “Told you,” I say when nothing happens after I punch the code in my door too.

  Amy picks the book back up and examines it again. “But… I was so sure.”

  I look over her shoulder. “I don’t know why you think those sonnets are numbered. They have letters beside them, not numbers.”

  “It’s Roman numerals,” Amy says dismissively. Then she lowers the book, meeting my eyes. “It’s Roman numerals. We shouldn’t use 0030 as the code — we should use XXX. And a zero in front, since there needs to be four digits.”

  She rushes to the keypad and tries 0XXX.

  Her door doesn’t unlock. “Why did the Romans use letters instead of numbers?” I ask.

  She ignores my question. “Try that lock,” she says, moving closer to the door I’m at.

  “You’re getting your hopes up for nothing. Orion was loons. This whole clue chase is loons.”

  “Just. Try. It.”

  I roll my eyes and tap out 0XXX on the keypad.

  Beep! Click.

  “Frex,” I say in awed surprise.

  36 AMY

  THE DOOR SWINGS OPEN, AND IT’S NOT UNTIL I TAKE A HUGE gasp of air that I realize I’d been holding my breath. For all my confidence, I can’t believe that worked.

  There are ten cubbyholes built into the wall, one suit in each compartment. Cords and tubes are coiled at the base around heavy boots, and shelves over the suits display helmets that, despite a fine layer of dust, still retain some of their mirror-like shine.

  Elder rushes inside and runs his hands over the nearest suit. It looks like a painted paper bag but drips from his hand like silk. Behind the silk-like body suit, I can see harder pieces that look like plastic armor.

  “Do you know how to use these?” Elder turns, asking me with shining eyes.

  “Why would I?” I say.

  “You’re from Sol-Earth. These were made there.”

  I laugh, a short, bitter bark. “The whole ship was made on Sol-Earth; that doesn’t mean I know anything about it!”

  “But—”

  “There’s a manual,” I say. A thick metal-and-glass screen connected to a coiled cord hangs on the wall. Maybe it once worked as video instructions or an interactive guide, but the cord is frayed and the glass cracked. Under the monitor, though, is a thick black book. Good thing it’s pretty hard to break a book. I pick it up and flip to the first page. Two-thirds of it isn’t even in English. The part that is in English is so complicated it makes my eyes cross. At the end of the book, though, is a step-by-step illustrated guide of what to do to operate the space suits. I guess the builders of the ship made sure the people on the ship could use the suits even if their lang
uage somehow evolved or something else went wrong.

  As I hand the manual to Elder, I notice that it had been resting on another book.

  “What’s that?” Elder asks me, but he’s more interested in the manual than the slender book I found beneath it.

  “The Little Prince,” I say, reading the title aloud. It’s such a small book that the huge manual hid it completely. Could this be another hint from Orion? One page is dog-eared, and I turn to it. The colors are faded, but it’s still possible to decipher the illustration in front of me: a giant king dressed in a robe embroidered with stars sits atop a tiny planet.

  Below the illustration, a line of text is circled and recircled, over and over.

  “I,” replied the little prince, “do not like to condemn anyone to death.”

  “Well, that’s ominous,” I mutter. The text reminds me of the threat I made last night. Clearly the little prince never met someone like Luthor. I glance up at Elder. I should tell him. But… now is not the time.

  I lift up a folded piece of paper that’s been slipped inside the book. My hands shake as I unfold it — I recognize the feel of this paper, thick and glossy.

  Sonnet XXX, the clue that was lost. Or stolen.

  The text on this page is riddled with lines and a note. “Look at this,” I say, turning to Elder.

  Whatever interest Elder had in discovering the next clue is now gone. His entire attention is focused on the space suits. I grin at him; he looks like a kid who’s been told he can get whatever flavor of ice cream he wants from the shop.

  I carefully tuck the ripped page into my pocket and turn to the operating manual. It’s obvious Elder couldn’t care less about old books and hidden clues while we’re looking at space suits.

  “There are two kinds of suits — one for extended exposure and one for moderate exposure. The brown ones are smaller and easier to use, but you’re only supposed to use them for about two hours or less.”

  “That’s fine,” Elder says, going to the cubbyholes. He picks up a body suit, and it’s not so much brown, as in the picture, but bronze. It sparkles in the dim light of the room, and when he shakes it out, dust mingles with glitter.

  “The moderate suits have an underlayer of protection against outside elements and hazardous temperatures,” I continue. “Then you put on the outer suit over that, for insulation and more protection. The outer suit seems to just snap on, then you connect gloves and boots over that. This looks crazy simple,” I say. “I thought a space suit would be really complex.”

  “The other ones, the ones for long exposure, do look more complicated. But if Orion’s right and the problem is obvious, I should only need the short-exposure suit,” Elder says. “A little help?”

  He’s already discarded his own clothes — they lie in a heap on the floor — and he’s zipped himself into the bronze underlayer.

  “Uh — no. No,” I say, striding over to him.

  “What?” he asks.

  “NO. You are not going out there. No way. Not with a flimsy suit you only know how to use because of an illustrated guide. No.”

  “Amy, it—”

  “NO.”

  “But—”

  “Don’t you remember what happened to Harley? Space isn’t a field on the Feeder Level! It. Will. Kill. You. And this?” I pinch the silky underlayer with my finger and let it snap back against his body. “This isn’t good enough. You can’t just throw on a suit and jump off the ship!”

  Elder looks at me doubtfully, like a child frustrated with an overprotective mom. I don’t care. I lean in closer to him. “You’re too important to risk.”

  “The vid,” Elder says, his voice low. “It’s the only way to figure out what Orion meant.”

  “You were the one who said Orion was loons.”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “Besides, that last clue was probably tampered with. Most likely someone didn’t want us finding this room or the suits, and—”

  “But Amy,” Elder says. “Space suits!” Elder can’t keep down his excitement about going out into the stars — but I can’t keep down my fear.

  “The suits don’t change anything!” But I’m wrong. They change everything. “Let me go,” I whisper. “Let anyone else. We can’t risk you.”

  Elder smiles — a huge, carefree grin, and I really do feel like a mother watching her baby totter off into a fire. “I’m touched. You actually do care about me.”

  My mouth drops open. “You idiot. Of course I care about you.”

  He leans forward quickly and pecks me on the forehead. “Then help me get the suit on.”

  I growl — but I can’t stop him. At least I can make sure he’s as safe as possible. I pick up two halves of the breastplate. I feel like a lady dressing her knight in his armor, just like a movie I saw a long time ago on Sol — on Earth. The lady tucked a token — a small scarf — into the knight’s armor to remind him of her love for him. I don’t have a scarf, and I’m not even sure if I love Elder, but I strap him so hard into the breastplate that he grunts in protest.

  I keep checking the manual. It doesn’t seem right that all it takes to go into space is a set of bronze long johns and a plastic shell. I knew space suits had come a long way from the puffy white marshmallow-like suits of the twentieth century, but this thin suit doesn’t seem adequate. Still, when I watched videos of men and women working in the space of Godspeed before it launched, their suits looked exactly like this.

  Elder steps into the boots one at a time. They go halfway up his calves, and when I push a button on them, they shrink against his legs. Elder hobbles to the center of the room, then turns around, letting me inspect him.

  “Looks solid,” I admit.

  “All that’s left is the helmet and the backpack,” Elder says, reaching for the helmet.

  “This first.” I help pull Elder’s arms through the straps of the pack, and it snaps into the hard shell pieces of the suit.

  I plug the wires from the pack into their connectors on the shoulder of the suit. “This is a PLSS, a primary life support subsystem,” I say as I connect a tube to the base of the helmet. “Basically, it has all the stuff you need to live — brings in oxygen, takes out carbon dioxide, regulates pressure, all that.”

  I snap on a metal-enforced cable to a hook at the front of Elder’s suit. “And this,” I say, “is your lifeline back to me — to the ship. I’m attaching the other end to the hatch. The book says there’s a special hook there just for this.”

  Elder nods. He looks pale, and there’s a sheen of sweat on his face.

  I think about kissing him then. Just in case.

  Instead, I cram his helmet onto his suit and lock it into place. The PLSS has only two modes — on and off — so I open the latch door, flip the switch to on, and secure the door back in place.

  “That’s pure oxygen,” I say loudly. “Get used to it now, before you’re in space.”

  Elder nods, but he’s got so much on that his whole top half bends back and forward. I bite my lip, worried.

  Elder follows me, clomp-hobbling, to the hatch. Inside, I latch the end of his lifeline to a hook on the floor.

  “Come back to me,” I whisper to Elder’s helmet, but I don’t know if he can hear me.

  I step back into the hallway. The hatch closes behind me. I look through the bubble window. Elder raises one hand.

  I punch the code into the keypad slowly, hesitating before the last digit. Should I do this? Is it worth it to find Orion’s big secret if it risks Elder?

  The door in front of me seals shut, a grinding metal-on-metal noise as it locks. Through the window, I have one last look at Elder in his bronze suit. I am overcome with an insane urge to rip the controls out of the wall beside me and keep the hatch from opening.

  But it’s too late. It opens.

  And Elder’s gone.

  37 ELDER

  MY ARMS AND LEGS FEEL SLOGGED DOWN AS IF WALKING through muddy water. Everything’s muffled in the suit. Amy shuts the doo
r that leads into the ship; I can see her pensive face through the window, the worry exaggerated by the rounded glass. The lock creates a dull, almost-imperceptible click that nevertheless reverberates.

  Then I’m alone with just the sound of the life-support system strapped to my back, a soft whoo-sh-whoo swirling in my ears.

  The back hatch opens, and the universe explodes around me. I’m launched through the doorway backward, my arms and legs jerking painfully as my body flies out into space. The movement winds me, and I can’t breathe. Just as I start to panic, I feel cool oxygen flowing through my helmet.

  The cord tethering me to the ship pulls taut, and my body bobs against it, my arms and legs no longer stiff in the suit. I look up. And I am surrounded by the universe.

  A million suns stretch out beyond me, their light piercing the darkness. The ship seems to glow. I scan it, looking for whatever massive secret Orion told me I would find.

  The ship itself is mostly egg-shaped, with a horned beak protruding from the bridge. A honeycomb of glittering glass covers the arching protrusion. Beneath that, then, must be the Feeder Level. I stare at the smooth exterior of the ship, marveling how only a few moments ago I was on the other side, running my fingers over dusty rivets. There’s a line of thick, dark metal rimming the bottom of the ship, about where the cryo level starts, and a pointed ridge sticks out from the front, like a smaller version of the bridge’s beak. There’s glass there, too — an observatory must be hidden behind the last locked door on the cryo level.

  There’s nothing here that stands out as unusual, except maybe the as yet unseen observatory. I recline in space, my eyes roving over the hull — there are no strange cracks or marks; the thrusters in the back of the ship aren’t working, but I already knew that. Was that the great secret Orion wanted me to find out? That the ship isn’t moving?

  It would be disappointing to learn that after all this, that was Orion’s great mystery. But how can I be disappointed in space?

  I stretch out my arms and legs, knowing that there are no walls here that can contain them. I look past Godspeed and forget about whatever pointless mission Orion’s video sent me on. I gaze out, to the stars. I remember the first time I saw real stars, through the hatch window. They were beautiful then, but now, seeing them here, all around me, beautiful feels like an inadequate word. I see the stars as a part of the universe, and having spent my life behind walls, suddenly having none fills me with both awe and terror. Emotion courses through my veins, choking me. I feel so insignificant, a tiny speck surrounded by a million stars.