Infinity Base

by Diana Peterfreund

  But before any of us had a chance to move, the lights and screens all flickered off. For a moment, we were in complete darkness. And when they came back on, every indicator light in the place was blinking orange. The screens above our heads lit up all at once, and I thought for a moment they were showing our own flight deck, with its rows of chairs and walls of machinery. But instead of four scared kids in utility suits, there was a lone figure—pale, emaciated, and seated in a central chair.

  “Hail, Wisdom,” said Dr. Underberg. “Please identify yourself.”

  12

  BREAKAWAY

  “DR. UNDERBERG!” I CRIED, STRUGGLING WITH THE FASTENERS ON MY helmet. “It’s us.”

  “It’s us!” added Howard. “Howard Noland.”

  “And Gillian Seagret!” I yanked the helmet up, where it wedged into the molded foam headrest around my chair. “And Eric and Savannah.” I pointed out the others, who waved at the screen, though we weren’t entirely sure where the cameras were. Or if they were on. Or if he could even hear us—as he said nothing in response, just sat there.

  “Dr. Underberg?” I asked, confused. “Howard. Can he hear us?”

  “I have no idea,” said Howard. He pressed a button on the array in front of his seat, but nothing happened to the screens. “I don’t know what’s going on. Nothing’s working anymore.”

  “All functions of the Rocketship Wisdom are now under the control of the Rocketship Knowledge,” Dr. Underberg said firmly. “And they will remain that way.”

  “Dr. Underberg?” I waved my hands in the air. “Can you hear us?” I figured he’d be happy to see us. Or something. But his expression was impossible to read.

  “What’s happening?” Savannah asked. “Is his ship coming for us? Are we going to him?”

  “Dr. Underberg! We’ve come because the Shepherds have kidnapped my father—”

  “Please refrain from broadcasting sensitive information during this transmission,” Underberg stated. On-screen, his hands never stopped moving, traveling over the dials and keys and other controls in front of him. But he wasn’t even looking while he worked, just staring straight into the camera. Straight at us. “Remain seated. Linkup will occur within the next one hundred minutes.”

  The large display switched back to the view of the outside.

  I slumped—well, the little bit I could still manage to slump within the foam confines of my molded seat. I longed to be able to get up and stretch—or even shift position. My helmet, still partially stuck in the foam shape around my head, poked me in the back of my braid. I struggled to get enough leverage while still fastened in my seat to yank it out of the helmet-shaped cavity in the foam. I settled back into my seat and tried to put the helmet in my lap, but the second I let go, it began to float upward. Alarmed, I snatched it out of the air and hugged it to my stomach.

  “Well, at least he knows we’re here,” said Savannah. “And he’s coming for us.”

  I nodded, staring down at the helmet in my lap, but it was little comfort. In my mind, I’d figured that as soon as we got in touch with Dr. Underberg, he’d be able to help us. Everything we’d done since escaping Eureka Cove was to get to Underberg—the helicopter, Omega City, hiding from the Shepherds, blasting off into space . . . But he didn’t even seem pleased to see us.

  Then I lifted my eyes to the screen again, where the Earth lay spread out beneath us, white and blue and perfect, and everything else fell away. We were here. Dr. Underberg was coming for us. It would be all right.

  After a few more minutes of just staring, Howard spoke up. “You know, everyone said we were supposed to feel sick. Do you feel sick?”

  “No,” said Savannah. “Why are we supposed to feel sick?”

  “Because of the falling sensation. Because we don’t know up from down. They call the plane astronauts use to train for weightlessness ‘the Vomit Comet’ because they get sick so much.”

  “Ew,” said Savannah. But then she seemed to think it over. “Maybe we don’t feel sick because we’re strapped in. If we were floating around, maybe we’d feel it.”

  “That’s probably why Dr. Underberg told us to stay seated,” I said.

  “I don’t feel sick,” Eric piped in. “And I don’t have to go to the bathroom anymore, either.”

  “Eww! Eric!” Savannah pressed her hands against the side of her helmet, as if trying to cover her ears. “And you’re sitting in it?”

  “That’s not what I meant!” Eric cried, embarrassed. “I just mean that it doesn’t feel like I have to go anymore.”

  “Oh, that’s because of the weightlessness, too,” said Howard. “The sensation we’re used to of needing to relieve yourself is because of the weight and pressure of urine in your bladder. Since we’re weightless, our urine is, too. It will continue to fill your bladder until it explodes.”

  “What?”

  “I told you to go before we left.”

  Eric turned to me. “There’s got to be a bathroom on here, right? I don’t want to explode.”

  “You’re not going to explode,” I said. Not in an hour or so, right? “Dr. Underberg told us to stay strapped in.”

  “Gills . . .”

  “This is why astronauts wear diapers during takeoff and landing and any spacewalks,” said Howard.

  “I don’t think I could do that,” said Savannah. “Pee in a diaper? No way.”

  “You used to do it all the time when you were a baby,” Howard pointed out.

  “I’m not a baby,” she snapped.

  “But we’re done with takeoff,” said Eric, trying to steer us back to his own problem. “We’re in orbit. We have to find a bathroom. Gills, there’s got to be one . . .”

  I sighed. “Howard, look at the diagram of the ship. Find the restrooms.” I started to undo the clasps on my seat belt. Even after I was unbuckled from the straps, the molded foam of the seat kept me in place.

  “The lavatory is in the next chamber down,” Howard said. “It looks vacuum-based. Do you need instructions?”

  “To go to the bathroom?” Savannah asked.

  “To use the space toilet, yes.”

  Eric was busy untangling himself from his restraints. As I watched, he floated up out of his seat. I stared at him with my mouth open. Even though I was expecting it, it still looked like magic.

  Except he kept floating up. And up. He tried to swim back down to the seat, but nothing happened. He started paddling furiously, and only turned upside down. “Hey!”

  Savannah cracked up. “It’s not water. You have to push off.”

  He rotated a little further around. “Push off . . . what?”

  I chuckled. “I thought you were good at swimming, Eric.”

  He flailed even more. I shook my head. He was now . . . dangling? Was that what you called it in space? . . . about four feet above our heads, upside down and at a weird angle.

  “Gills!”

  “Okay.” I pushed down, popping my legs and backside out of the foam molding, but grabbed on to the seat before I, too, floated away. Slowly, deliberately, I allowed my legs to float above my head. This was a bit like scuba diving, when you had your buoyancy adjusted just right. Except unlike scuba diving, there was no way to swim through the air.

  I kept my eyes on the seat, afraid of getting disoriented if I looked over at Savannah from upside down. That could happen when diving, too, especially if you were in the dark or in deep, deep water, where you lost track of which way was the surface. Except underwater, you could always follow the bubbles, which float up to the surface.

  Here, there was no real up. And no real down, either.

  “Grab my foot and come down here,” I said. His hand locked around my ankle and I felt him climbing, hand over hand, over my utility suit. When he, too, had grabbed on to my seat with both hands, I risked looking over at him and rolled my eyes.

  “Hey, remember when Dr. Underberg said we should stay seated?”

  “Remember when I said you should go to the bathroom befo
re we left?” Howard added.

  “Remember when I said none of us should go to outer space?” Eric finished. “This isn’t my fault. Now push me toward the bathroom.”

  “No more floating,” I said. “We can climb.”

  And I did just that, grabbing on to the handholds in the side of the seat and on the floor. Angled as I was, it felt a bit more like walking my hands on an underwater pool ladder, or perhaps dangling from monkey bars. Hand over hand I went, toward the hatch in the floor.

  “You look like you’re both doing handstands,” said Savannah. I turned to look behind me. Savannah had also removed her helmet, and the ends of her blond ponytail were fanning up around the back of her head like a peacock’s tail.

  We arrived at the hatch and I pressed the lever to open it. A loud pop and a whoosh of air startled me and I scooted back, afraid for a second that something was wrong with the air locks and we were about to be sucked out into space, but everything on the other side looked just fine.

  “Um, Howard? It’s all . . . life supporty in here, right?” I asked him.

  “Yes,” he replied. “That pop was just a slight pressure differential. It should have evened out now.

  “Hurry, Gills, before I explode,” said Eric.

  I pulled myself through the hatch and started making my way along the wall to the lavatory, but when I checked to see if Eric had followed, I saw him plant both hands on the wall on either side of him and shoot himself through the hatch and straight out into the middle of the room.

  “Whoo!” he shouted, and rolled himself into a ball. As I watched, he somersaulted in midair and kept on going toward the other end of the chamber.

  I hooked my foot around a railing and crossed my arms. Slowly, I floated around in a circle until I was upright. Or at least, until my head was toward the front of the rocket. “Oh yeah. Your bladder is so about to explode.”

  “Come on up here!” Eric said, kicking off the far wall and doing a loop-the-loop across the room. “Or down here. Or over here. Whatever.”

  “Tell me. Is this whole bathroom thing just an excuse to do weightless acrobatics?” I watched him land and push off again.

  “Whee!” He cartwheeled past me. “No. I really do have to pee. Probably. But come on, Gills. When am I ever going to get another chance to do this?” He shrugged at me, upside down, then crashed into the far wall. “Ouch.”

  I slid my foot off the rail and kicked off the wall like it was the edge of a pool, gliding toward him. It didn’t feel like swimming at all. There was zero control—I couldn’t paddle or kick or change direction to stop myself, and though I put out my hands to catch myself on the wall, I came in faster than I liked, jamming both wrists as my body collided with the surface.

  Howard poked his head through the hatch. “Getting your space legs?” He pushed out, too, floating into the middle of the chamber.

  I rubbed my wrists, wincing. Maybe I should go back to wall crawling. It was growing a little crowded in here. Not only were there walls to crash into, now there was Howard’s bicycling legs.

  “Look, no hands!” Eric wafted by my head, his legs folded up on each other in lotus position, his hands upturned on his knees, thumbs and forefingers making twin Os. “I’m a master yogi.”

  “You’re a loon.” He smashed into the floor, headfirst. “Come on, let’s get you to the bathroom.”

  Eric finally started working his way to the lavatory, while Howard tested out his newfound wings. I tried letting go of the handles set into the wall to see how fast I’d float. This was going to take some practice.

  “Where’s Savannah?” I asked Howard the next time he shot past me.

  She called in from the other room. “We’re passing through the nighttime now. It’s amazing.”

  I abandoned my post at the wall and floated back toward the hatch. I wasn’t halfway through the floor portal when I caught sight of the giant screen stretching from wall to wall above the command chairs and lost my grip. My body flowed through the portal and I rose up, past Savannah and above the chairs, until I was floating directly in front of the screen. It filled my entire field of vision, close enough to touch.

  It was beautiful. Earth by night was a dark jewel, a deep, sapphire blue speckled and crisscrossed with spots and lines of sparkling gold that must be the lights of civilization. A halo of luminescent green surrounded the planet, like an iridescent bubble. I drifted, spellbound, as continents and oceans passed silently beneath my gaze, gilded coastlines and obsidian depths.

  After some time, I became aware that Howard was beside me.

  “It’s spectacular,” I whispered. “I can’t stop staring at it. I feel like . . . I don’t know, like it’s mine, somehow.”

  “It is yours. It’s all of ours.”

  “No. I mean . . .” But words failed me. Like it was mine. “Everything that I know has ever happened ever is down there. Hundreds of thousands of years of human history. Every second of all our lives. And it’s all so small right now.”

  “Oh, yes,” he said matter-of-factly. “That’s called the breakaway effect. A feeling of euphoria, as if you are alone above the world. Very common in astronauts.”

  I frowned. This couldn’t be common. No way. “You don’t feel it?”

  He considered this. “I think I always feel it. That’s why I prefer outer space.”

  The world moved beneath us, at once utterly massive and impossibly small against the blackness beyond. Suddenly, the screen lit up with an arc of silver, a lovely crystalline cloud like the tail of a comet. It glittered across the screen for a moment and then was gone.

  I gasped. “What was that? A meteor?”

  Howard grinned. “Not exactly.”

  Far below us, Eric came back through the hatch. “That was even weirder than the toilets at Eureka Cove,” he said. “It’s kind of like peeing into a vacuum cleaner.”

  Horrified, I looked out at the view again, where I could just see the gross and gorgeous crystals floating away. “Oh, no. Don’t tell me . . .”

  “The Apollo astronauts said there was nothing more beautiful in space than the sight of a urine dump,” said Howard.

  So that fantastic sight . . . was my brother’s pee. Gross. So much for the breakaway effect. Next he was probably going to tell me that green bubble surrounding the Earth was air pollution. I didn’t want to hear it. It was all beautiful—the Earth and everything on it. Every last dirty, disgusting drop.

  I stared down at our planet, our single precious planet, and thought about the lies that Guidant had been telling. How many astronomers were staring up at us right now and thinking they saw something else, because Guidant programs and computers were falsifying the records on their telescopes? And no one knew. Somewhere down there, Elana was probably staring up at us and planning her next move. If we could get to Dr. Underberg, we could help Dad and Nate, but what then? Elana still had Mom and Dani, and the Shepherds were lying to the world.

  Eric floated up beside me. “At the risk of starting this entire process over again, did anyone think to pack anything to drink around here? I feel like I just ran a race.”

  “There should be provisions, yes.” Howard floated back to the control panel to consult the diagram. “Ooh, there are actually snack packs built into each of our seats.”

  “Score!” Eric flipped over and started pulling himself back down to his seat.

  Savannah craned her neck to look at us all. She alone remained strapped in, and her face seemed a little pale, the roots of her hair damp.

  “Are you okay, Sav?” I asked, pulling myself down to her level. Upside down, I couldn’t quite make out her expression, but it was proving harder to flip back around than I’d hoped.

  “No,” she grumbled, “and you guys acting like this place is your own personal circus tent isn’t helping matters.”

  “Are you getting sick?” Howard volunteered. “Do you want me to find you some seasickness medicine?”

  “Spacesickness,” Eric corrected. He�
��d found an insulated packet Velcroed to the side of his seat marked Food and Water, and yanked it free.

  “No!” Savannah turned away. “Just . . . stop talking about crystallized urine and . . . come sit down, okay? You’re making me dizzy. Besides, Dr. Underberg said to stay seated.”

  There was the sound of crinkling and plastic packets being opened, and we turned to watch Eric scramble as handfuls of peanuts, chocolate candies, and raisins floated up into the air.

  “Trail mix, on the loose!” he called, and started chasing them down, mouth open to catch all the flying food.

  Despite herself, Savannah giggled. “He’s impossible.”

  “Tell me about it.” I crossed my arms and watched him Pac-Man around the cabin.

  Savannah plucked a flying almond out of the air. “Over here, E.” He wafted toward her and she flicked the nut into his mouth. “Score!”

  I headed back to my seat. Ahead of me, Howard was sorting through his own food provisions. The water was contained in a soft-sided foil container, a bit like a juice box. The labels were all stamped with Shepherd markings, which, oddly enough, made me feel better about trying them. At least they weren’t as old as Omega City. I reached down to detach my own package. I was a little thirsty, after all.

  “Do you have to do anything special to the water?” I asked. “Could it float up and go up my nose?”

  “There’s a straw.” Howard waved his own water container in the air. “Just drink regularly. But you could also do this.”

  He squeezed the container, and a big, bubbly ball of water appeared on the end of his straw. He gently shook it and it came loose, floating in the air. I looked closer. It wasn’t a bubble at all, but a strange, clear, gelatinous ball of water. Howard leaned forward and ate it. Then coughed and sputtered.

  “Okay, that was a bit harder than the astronauts make it look. Guess it takes practice.”

  I sucked on my straw for a minute. The water flowed up as usual, and into my mouth and down my throat, same as always. I took the straw away from my mouth and tried to squeeze out a bubble of water. The first one I tried was tiny, barely more than a droplet. When I clamped my lips down around it, it felt like nothing at all.