Infinity Base

by Diana Peterfreund

  I glanced back through the air-lock door, where the others were gathered, peering in. Behind them, I saw my father, clinging awkwardly to the walls. I was pretty sure Anton’s voice was carrying just fine.

  Gingerly, I eased myself back into the room. I don’t think Anton even noticed, because he was still shouting uselessly at Dr. Underberg’s spaceship.

  “You think I don’t know exactly what’s going on in there? I’ve seen the analyses you’ve done on your ship every time you pop in here to make repairs and steal supplies.”

  “Dad?” I squeaked. I gestured to the door on our end. Anton wasn’t paying any attention to us. We could close the door right now. We could lock Anton in the air lock. Make him our prisoner.

  “Your heat shields are damaged, your propulsion rockets are running at seventeen percent of normal, your air filtering is completely out of whack, and . . . come on, Aloysius. Let’s be honest here. Not even your batteries have enough juice to get you back to Earth at this point. What choice do you have?”

  Dad awkwardly clawed his way toward us. “Don’t,” he said softly, shaking his head.

  “But this is our chance.” I clasped my hands in front of me. “We could trap him.”

  “And then what?” Dad said. “We still can’t get home if he’s in between us and Underberg’s ship. And even if we could, you heard him—Underberg doesn’t have the power to get us back to Earth.”

  “But Shepherds lie!” I protested.

  Anton had now resorted to cursing and kicking at the door with his soft slippers. I didn’t think that would accomplish anything but bruising his feet.

  “Do you think what Anton is saying about Underberg’s ship is a lie?” Dad asked.

  I hung my head. “Honestly?”

  “No,” said Howard. “It’s a real wreck in there. Wisdom, though, maybe. The Shepherds fixed it all up.”

  And he wasn’t the only one thinking of Wisdom. Anton had moved on to shouting about that, too. “You know I’m right, Aloysius! I personally overhauled your second ship from top to bottom for the past six months. I know exactly what kind of junk you’ve been flying around on here. You’re lucky you haven’t dropped out of the sky!”

  Yikes.

  “Okay,” I said. “What about the shuttle you guys came up on?”

  “Who would fly it?” Nate asked. “Howard?”

  “Yes!” cried Howard.

  “Shh!” we all warned him.

  Howard clapped his mouth shut. “It doesn’t matter, anyway. The real problem is the landing. You can’t just land a spaceship like it’s an airplane.”

  “You can’t land an airplane, either, Howard,” Nate pointed out.

  “I don’t know how the Guidant spacecraft lands,” Howard said. “Does it parachute into some field like the Russian Soyuz capsule? Does it fall into the sea? You can’t just land. You need a team on the ground to come get you.”

  The Shepherds. I sighed. Even if we got back to Earth, we still needed to play nice.

  “Listen, while he’s distracted,” Dad said. “Are we all on the same page here? Nod and smile. Do your best to seem as if you’re considering all his points. Don’t overplay your hand—he’s a genius—but don’t argue with him too much.”

  “You should have seen Sav here go after him before about bees or whatever,” Nate said. “I thought we were all dead meat.”

  “That’s good, though,” Dad said. “If we all just immediately converted it would look suspicious. A little hesitation and uncertainty on our parts is realistic. Remember, the point is to get back home. Just keep your head down and pay attention.”

  “There is no down,” Howard said. “We’re in microgravity.”

  Savannah groaned.

  “If you don’t know what to say,” Nate suggested, “ask him about the base. He can talk about it for hours.”

  I pursed my lips and gazed longingly at the air-lock door. Or we could skip all this pretense and just lock Anton in until he promised to send us home. My fingers itched to slam the door on him. I pictured laughing in triumph as he rushed back to us, his face pressed against the portal window.

  But Dad was right. Then what? What if he refused to help us? We weren’t about to leave him there to die. And whenever we did open the door again, we’d have lost any chance of getting him to trust us, to believe we were on the Shepherd side.

  I pulled my hand back, balling it against the thigh of my utility suit. Maybe I was becoming more like a Shepherd than I thought.

  ANTON YELLED AT the hatch of Knowledge for another five minutes, while we all stood there wondering what to do.

  I shook my head. If only there were a way to get a message—a real message—to Dr. Underberg. But I didn’t know if he could see us or just hear us, and we couldn’t risk letting our guard down with Anton watching our every move.

  I looked at Howard. “Do you remember how to make the ciphers? The number ciphers like Dani was using at Eureka Cove?”

  “Yeah,” he said, looking affronted that I would doubt him. “It’s just an alphabet.”

  “Can you make one?” I asked.

  “With what keyword?”

  “Omega,” I said quickly. That was the one Dr. Underberg used on the code book he’d given Howard.

  Inside the air lock, Anton’s tone had turned cajoling. “Don’t you want to see the base without sneaking around?” he was asking Underberg. “I’m sure you haven’t gotten a chance to really enjoy all the features.”

  Howard opened one of the pockets on his thigh and pulled out the space pen we’d gotten him for his birthday. Nate rolled up his shirtsleeve for Howard to write on his arm.

  “What do you know?” Howard said. “It really does write in microgravity.”

  “Hurry,” I said.

  “What do you want it to say?”

  I bit my lip. I didn’t know. And I wasn’t sure how we’d communicate it to him anyway. Tap it out, like Morse code?

  “Make it say ‘play along,’” Dad suggested. He looked at me and shrugged. “More allies couldn’t hurt.”

  “Especially one who could actually land a spaceship,” Eric added.

  “Yeah, that’s good.” I toyed with the zipper pull on my suit. I was getting as bad as Howard. He painstakingly inked the code on his brother’s wrist as I tried to think of ways to get a message to Dr. Underberg.

  “Fine!” Anton snapped, then came shooting out of the air lock. I nearly gasped in surprise and quickly looked at Howard and Nate. Howard was still holding his pen, but Nate had pulled his sleeve back down.

  “I’m not in any rush. He’s only hurting himself in there. I can’t imagine all the medical problems he’s experiencing. I could help him, you know. We could wean him back onto gravity. We could put him in torpor and ship him back to Earth.”

  “You could lure him out in the open and then kill him, like the Shepherds have been trying to do for decades,” I blurted, then clapped a hand over my mouth. I was going to suck at this lying thing.

  But Anton merely sighed. “You’re not wrong, Gillian. We really haven’t given Underberg any reason to trust us, have we?”

  Nate floated up behind me and bumped his arm against mine. I looked down.

  Oh my goodness. That was a lot of numbers.

  Anton was still talking. “It’s amazing he’s even been communicating with Dani.”

  I was breathing heavy. Nine numbers. Big numbers.

  “Yes,” I said, raising my voice. Could Dr. Underberg hear us all the way in here? He had to be listening, especially after Anton’s outburst. “They were communicating. In code. They had a code they used to send messages back and forth.”

  “Figures. Dani was always obsessed with codes. She and her mother used to do the same thing.”

  “Did she ever teach them to you?” I asked.

  “Gillian,” Dad warned.

  “You were friends when you were kids, right?” I asked. “How old are you now? Forty-one?”

  “Good guess.”
/>   I swallowed thickly. “And Dani has to be thirty-four, right?”

  Nate stiffened beside me. I checked his arm again.

  “She’d find that flattering. She’s closer to—”

  “She told us you dated.” I barreled ahead. “How long? Fifteen years?”

  Anton’s expression turned grim. “We were together for a while, yes. But that doesn’t make her betrayal okay. The Shepherds raised her, and look how she turned on us.”

  My voice was shaking. “She did it to save her father.”

  “She never even met him.”

  Focus, Gillian, focus. Nate put his arm around me, as if to steady me. I checked out the numbers again. “Well, he must have been fifty-five when she was born.”

  “He wasn’t even around when she was born.”

  Five more. Just five more. “And she was fifteen when her mom died, right?”

  Anton’s eyes narrowed. “What are you doing?”

  “Gillian!” Dad barked.

  But I was too far gone. “I can’t imagine what it’s like for her. Down there. Alone. Thirty-four . . .”

  Anton floated my way. “What are you—” He caught me by my clenched hands and pulled me away from Nate.

  I saw Nate shoving his sleeve back into place as Anton wrenched open my fists as if they contained clues.

  “What are these numbers?”

  “Let go of her!” Dad cried.

  “Eleven!” Howard shouted. “Thirty-five! Fourteen!”

  Silence. Nothing but the sound of the machines whirring.

  Anton regarded me carefully. “What did you say to him?”

  “Nothing.” I was still a terrible liar.

  “What did you say?” he pressed.

  My mouth was so dry I didn’t know how I found my voice. “‘Run away.’”

  Anton dropped my hands in disgust. “That’s the wrong number of letters, little Seagret. But you’re getting better at deception. We’ll make a Shepherd out of you yet.”

  No, They would not!

  Dad rushed to my side. “Leave my children alone.”

  Anton laughed mirthlessly. “I’ve been nothing but good to your children, Sam. They’re the ones who won’t help me.”

  Just then, from inside the air lock, we heard a mechanical whir. The door to Knowledge was opening.

  18

  ARTIFICIAL GRAVITY

  ANTON PEEKED IN THE AIR LOCK AND TURNED TO ME. “WELL, WHATEVER you said to him seems to have worked, Gillian. He’s doing what I asked.”

  Oh, no. I felt sick to my stomach. What had I done?

  “Care to introduce us?”

  I looked at my father. “Dad has to come, too,” I said. I didn’t know what Anton had planned, but I hoped having backup would help.

  “Of course,” said Anton. “Sam knows more about this old man than anyone.”

  I looked at the others. Eric’s and Savannah’s faces were stricken with fear. Even Howard appeared wide-eyed and worried. Nate was rubbing his sleeve against his arm, clearly hoping to smudge Howard’s writing in case Anton decided to inspect.

  I took a deep, shuddering breath. What did play along mean to Dr. Underberg? What was I about to walk into?

  The three of us floated back into Underberg’s ship. As the sour, stale smell surrounded us, both Dad and Anton wrinkled their noses.

  “I told you this place was falling to pieces,” Anton said with a sniff.

  I floated up through the lower chamber and into the command center, with Dad right behind me and Anton at his heels.

  Dr. Underberg was staring down at his mess of screens, but his bald, emaciated head creaked upward and turned jerkily in our direction.

  “Dr. Underberg, I presume?” Dad said, a smile playing across his lips.

  “Dr. Seagret,” Dr. Underberg stated, nodding, He turned his bleary gaze on Anton. “Shepherd.”

  “Anton Everett,” Anton said, floating forward with his hand outstretched. “It’s an honor to meet you, sir.”

  Dr. Underberg grunted, and didn’t raise his hand. “Are you here to kill me?”

  “No, sir. I think there’s been a misunderstanding,”

  “I understand everything, young man,” he said. “Especially all the things you were so good as to shout through my door. My ship’s broken. I’m broken. And you weren’t calling me sir then, were you? No, you were far more informal.”

  Anton had the decency to look contrite. “What do you want me to call you?”

  “I don’t want to speak to you at all.”

  “Then why did you open the door?” Anton asked. He looked at me accusingly, but I knew Dr. Underberg couldn’t have gotten our code. Or if he had, he sure had a strange idea about what it meant to play along.

  “Because you were attacking a little girl.”

  My eyes began to sting again. Elana had been right. Dr. Underberg would risk himself to save us.

  “I wasn’t going to hurt her. I don’t want to hurt any of you. I believe you are too valuable to our cause.”

  “And what is your cause now, Shepherd?”

  “What it’s always been. Take humanity to the stars. We’ve built your space station. We’ve spent years developing species here and on Earth for long-term space habitation and travel.”

  “And you keep it all a secret from the very people you claim to be trying to help.”

  I looked at Dad, who was staring in silent wonderment, taking it all in.

  “People aren’t ready,” Anton insisted. “They weren’t ready for Omega City then, they aren’t ready for Infinity Base now. No one believes in what we do because they don’t want to.” He gestured to my father. “Do you know why it was easy to destroy this man’s reputation? Because people would rather believe that people like us are crackpots than that the very survival of the human race is at risk.”

  I gasped. “That’s not true! You never even give them a chance. Something like this space station? People would be in awe of it.”

  “And they will be,” Anton said. “When the time is right.”

  “When will that be?” my father asked. “When the Shepherds manufacture some crisis that Guidant can profit from?”

  Anton let out a bark of laughter. “You have it backward. Everything Guidant does is so that the Shepherds can work on their real goals.”

  “Not according to Elana,” I said. “She told me that Shepherd goals are old-fashioned, and that Guidant is all that really matters.”

  “Well, Guidant is her pet project,” said Anton, smugly placid. “And it’s been very profitable. I can’t argue with that. Without Guidant, we would never have had the money to build this space station. But Elana knows where the real priority lies. With our plans. With Infinity Base.”

  Elana didn’t care about Infinity Base. She’d said so herself. And I was about to tell Anton that when I noticed that Dr. Underberg had passed out again.

  I shook my head sadly and gestured to him. “He keeps doing that,” I said. “Is he dying?”

  Anton pressed his fingers to the side of Dr. Underberg’s neck, checking his pulse. “He’s old,” he said. “And microgravity is incredibly hard on human bodies in long periods, even if you do exercises to try to keep muscle tone. Radiation, bone density loss—and I have no idea what kind of physical shape he was in before he blasted off into space.”

  “You should let him rest,” Dad suggested. “It’s not like he’s going anywhere.”

  Anton shrugged. “I suppose so. Elana really wants me to get this wrapped up, though, one way or another.”

  One way or another? I must have looked even more terrified, as Dad gave me a reassuring nod.

  “He does this a lot,” I said. “Fall asleep. I’m sure he’ll be ready to talk some more in an hour or two.”

  Anton sighed. “In an hour or two could I count on getting more support from you? You’re acting like I’m the enemy when what I’m really trying to do is save his life. Save all of you.”

  I thought about what Nate had said, h
ow Anton would talk for hours about Infinity Base. Like Howard.

  “Well, maybe it’s hard to convince me because I don’t have a sense of what you’re trying to do. Maybe it’s hard to convince the world of all the good you’re doing because all the Shepherds insist on keeping your work a secret. We can hardly support you if we don’t know what you’re doing.”

  Anton appeared to consider this, while behind him, Dad gave me a thumbs-up and an impressed smile. I breathed out heavily. I could do this. As long as I wasn’t lying.

  “Okay, Gillian,” said Anton. “We’ll let the old man sleep, and I’ll show you some of my favorite parts of this station.”

  I looked at Dad, who held up his hands. “I’ve seen it.”

  “Can I bring the others?” I asked.

  “Of course!” Anton said brightly. “The centrifugal rings are one of a kind. We’re really proud of them.”

  But they’d kept them a secret from the whole world. Curious. I couldn’t imagine anyone making something so amazing and then just keeping it a secret. Dr. Underberg had with Omega City, but he hadn’t been given the choice. If people knew what the Shepherds had created up here, they would be admired all over the world. But instead they kept it a secret, and let Guidant distract us with stories of satellites and self-driving cars, just so they could choose what the rest of humanity was ready to see and hear.

  It made no sense. I could pretend to be impressed by the Shepherds, but there was no way I’d ever agree with their beliefs.

  “I think . . . I’d like that,” I said warily. “Let’s go do it now.”

  Together, we eased back through the portals that led out of the ship. As I left Knowledge’s command center, I gave one last look to my father, who floated by Dr. Underberg’s chair. And I may have been wrong, but for a second, I could have sworn the old man’s eyes were open.

  ONCE AGAIN, WE were in the long corridor that led underneath the cylindrical stem modules of Infinity Base. Anton led the way, with Howard close behind, peppering him with questions about the workings of the station. He’d clearly taken Nate’s advice to heart. Or maybe he was just being his usual self.

  I followed alongside Savannah, trying to find a way to communicate privately to her that Dr. Underberg and my dad were back on the ship, plotting . . . something. Eric and Nate were farther behind us, playing some kind of game on the walls and ceiling that looked like touch football, if everyone on the team were Spider-Man. They almost didn’t look like prisoners.