The control panel beside the door was burned out, and the door was slightly open, askew in its track. The edge of the door and the wall beside it were strafed with black streaks, like an explosion had blown out from the inside. Liam gripped the edge and strained to pull it open, but it wouldn’t budge. Phoebe slid into the narrow gap and pressed her back against the door, using her legs. It groaned farther open, enough for Liam to step around her. The inner airlock door was in the same state, blown slightly ajar. They dragged it open and entered a dark hallway. The once-white walls were striped with black burn marks here, too, and frosted over with a layer of ice that sparkled in their headlamps. The ice was tinged purple, thick here and thin there, whipped into points and curves like frosting, but also like gnarled fingers, reaching for them.
They moved down the hall in loping steps, trying to keep from hitting their heads on the ceiling. Their boots crunched through the ice coating like breaking glass and clomped on the metal floors. If the power had been on, there would have been a gravity field in here like back in the colony. As it was, it took them only a handful of long, half-floating strides to reach the hall’s end.
They entered a large square room with a balcony around the upper level that had collapsed in multiple places. Wind howled through a huge, circular hole in the roof, the metal melted and twisted around its perimeter. A light snow of ice drifted through. The circular hole also extended into the lower levels, the remaining floor warped and sloping toward it.
Liam leaned back against the wall and moved his headlamp slowly around the room, over the frosted piles of computer banks, broken beams, and fallen chunks of ceiling. There was an odd pile in the far corner, and before his mind had even registered what he was seeing, his heart jumped and adrenaline surged through him.
A body. Legs sticking out from the twisted metal of a collapsed staircase. The head and most of the torso hidden, wearing the maroon fatigues of colonial personnel. Liam held his breath, trying to control it, the sound loud in his helmet. The body was so still, like another piece of the wreckage. . . . Phoebe saw it too. Liam switched over to the local link with shaking fingers, afraid to use the intercom, afraid to make a sound.
“Should we check it?” He took a tentative step toward the body.
Phoebe held her arm out across his chest. Her eyes were wide, and Liam could hear her fast breaths over the link. “Let’s do what we came to do first. I don’t think we can help her.”
Liam felt a sickening pull inside him to look more closely, but he forced his gaze away. “Where is everybody else?”
Phoebe shrugged. “I guess there wouldn’t have been many people here before the starliner arrived, just a small maintenance crew.” She checked her link and pointed past him. “Stairs are that way.”
They left the central room and moved in arcing strides down a long hallway, picking their way around rubble, fallen beams, tangled guts of wires and ducts that spilled out of walls. Liam tried to only look straight ahead. Every shadow, every dark doorway, might hold another victim. The slightest sound made him tense up—a shriek of wind, the groaning of wrecked structures. They couldn’t be sure there weren’t still enemies here, somewhere.
The hallway opened into a vast room, the central space beneath the main dome of the station: the Silver Pearl casino, sister to the Rings of Gold back on Saturn. Most of the roof had been blasted off and the wind howled through it. The floor was scattered with rubble, half covering the frosted hulks of slot machines and gaming tables. Glints of the polished silver surfaces reflected their headlamps. To either side, archways led to smaller gaming rooms. Here and there were the twisted forms of bots lying on the ground, as well as various animal shapes, and though Liam tried to ignore them, he also noticed limbs that looked much more human, all coated in frost.
“It’s on the other side.” Phoebe led the way, threading through the wreckage, their boots leaving footprints on the frosted carpet.
They reached another large set of airlock doors, half open, and stepped through to a wide walkway that was surprisingly intact. On either side, full-length flex-glass walls curved in toward them: a series of oblong bubble shapes, like they were walking between clear balloons. These walls, cracked here and there but not smashed, were the sides of enormous oval capsules, like giant frozen water drops, held in place by thin silvery scaffolding. The great containers were lined up on either side of the hallway, one after another, and when Liam looked down through the floor, which was also glass, he saw that there were five or six more walkways and rows of bubbles below these, and all of them were connected by rounded openings, so that the entire complex resembled a hamster habitat.
“What are these?” Phoebe wondered.
“The baths.” Liam remembered them from the orientation guide. “The minerals in the Delphi oceans makes this really dense steam that’s almost like a gel. Then with the low gravity, being in these things is sort of like floating underwater, except you can still breathe. People think it’s good for your muscles and lungs after stasis. You had to sign up months in advance of leaving Mars to get an appointment down here, and they were super expensive.”
They passed between ten sets of the giant bubbles. Liam imagined them full of laughing humans, the way he’d seen in the guide, darting and bobbing around in their bathing suits, or just relaxing along the railing that spanned the midsection of each container, wearing their virtual glasses as they soaked. Now twisting, purple-tinged icicles hung from the tops of the capsules, and feathered ice patterns were smeared across the sides.
They stepped through the airlock at the far end of the walkway and entered a smaller corridor where sets of elevator doors hung crooked.
Something crunched beneath Liam’s boot. He lifted it to find the smashed exoskeleton of a cockroach, brittle and dead. “Hey, look,” he said, pointing it out to Phoebe.
“So much for leaving them behind.” She turned to keep going but paused and pointed her headlamp into a crevice near an elevator door. “There’s another one.”
Liam couldn’t help smiling for a second. How many times had he heard the warnings to check all personal items for roaches, and been reminded of the strict protocols for keeping them out of the space elevators and cruisers? But the creatures had found a way. At least this far.
“Stairs are over here.” Phoebe vaulted ahead.
Liam pushed off into his next long stride—
Everything slipped again. A blur, and he felt a yawning emptiness and found himself once more staring at the enormous sun, boiling, moments from exploding, and still he was flying toward it in the skim drone, only now there seemed to be lights dancing in the nearby dark to either side of the cockpit. Flashes, like explosions. And Liam was counting to himself, pushing the skim drone toward its maximum speed, and yet worried it wouldn’t be fast enough, while also watching his rear camera, something about the starliner. He heard himself saying, I got you—
“Liam, hey.” Phoebe was tugging his arm. Liam was almost surprised to find himself in the elevator hall and not in the skim drone. “What’s up?”
He shook his head. When he blinked, it almost seemed like there were green echoes of the sun behind his eyelids. “Sorry. I’m having these weird flashes, almost like dreams. I think it’s stasis sickness or something.”
“Well, shake it off,” said Phoebe. “We gotta hurry.”
“Yeah, sorry,” said Liam, but his head still felt foggy, his insides weirdly hollow. What was with these visions? Such a weird thing, to be back at the sun, and yet it felt less like a dream and more like something he knew, almost like a memory.
Phoebe pushed open a door just past the bank of elevators. “JEFF,” she said. “We’ve reached the stairs.”
“Acknowledged.” His voice clipped in and out. “I am fix—thermal tiles. All is go—well so far.”
Liam stepped through the door and peered down the switchbacking flights, his headlamp making the ice-coated railings sparkle. “How far down?”
“Six level
s,” said Phoebe, moving her finger over the map on her link. She jumped lightly and sailed down the first flight to the metal landing below.
Liam followed, and they dropped through the dark. As they descended, the sound of the wind and that constant flicking of ice faded. Liam’s breathing grew louder in the silence, punctuated only by the clanging of his boots on the landings. With each level, he felt the weight of the blackness beyond his headlamp. He tried to keep his gaze straight, didn’t want to check any corners but kept checking them anyway.
At the bottom of the stairs, they reached a thick metal door with a security panel, which, like everything else, was dark. Phoebe pressed the magnet drill against the door frame, beside the panel. The wall rumbled and vibrated. Liam felt it in his feet and teeth.
There was a thud from inside the door. “Got it.” Phoebe dragged the drill sideways, straining, and the door slid open with it. Then she turned off the drill and slung it over her shoulder.
They slipped through the half-open door into a narrow, low-ceilinged corridor with black metal walls and a carpeted floor.
Phoebe checked her link and turned down a side corridor. “Backup power for the station should be this way.” The short hall ended at a computer panel covered by a shallow bubble of clear plastic. Phoebe slid open a compartment on the wall beside the panel and lifted a red handle. The plastic unlatched. She swung it up and pressed a large green button on the panel. “I hope this works,” she muttered. A second passed . . . Something rumbled through the walls. There was a hum and a series of rhythmic clicks and the panel in front of them blinked to life.
“We found the power,” Phoebe reported to JEFF.
“Acknowledg—ly partial lighting up here. Some of the circuit—must have been destroyed.”
They returned to the main corridor. The door through which they’d entered had slid closed. Amber lights had illuminated in the ceiling, and warm air hissed from vents. Liam checked the readings on his link and unzipped his helmet. “Still a little chilly,” he said, “but the air is normal.” Phoebe reemoved her helmet, too.
They headed to the next intersection, passing sealed compartments that contained various control systems for the station. Many lights were flashing red, likely due to the damage. They stopped where the corridor split left and right.
Phoebe zoomed in on the map. “The backup scanner is that way,” she said, pointing in one direction, “and the data recorder is this way. They’re in separate compartments for fire safety. Why don’t you turn on the scanner and I’ll get the recorder.”
“Shouldn’t we stay together?” said Liam.
“Well . . . I think we get this done as fast as possible so that we can find the Scorpius.”
“Yeah, or before someone finds us.”
Phoebe started down the passage. “Let’s just meet back here.”
“Okay.” Liam headed in the other direction—
But after a couple steps, he paused. He turned and watched Phoebe walking the other way. A strange feeling, like he needed to be there with her . . . but of course she’d be fine. Except that wasn’t exactly what he’d been thinking. Instead, JEFF’s words ran through his mind: Unless you have some information that suggests otherwise? And Liam was surprised to find himself wondering: Can I trust her? He thought again about Phoebe’s parents, the way he’d suspected them on Mars.
Except JEFF’s strange behavior might be due to him malfunctioning. Still, for the moment, maybe he should go along with Phoebe to the recorder, just to be sure—
Stop it! he thought. Because Phoebe was right, they needed to hurry, and here he was standing around wasting time questioning his only teammate. Best in the galaxy, she’d said.
He turned back and continued down the passage, tapping his link as he went. He zoomed in on the backup scanner and brought up a detailed guide to its operation.
The hall ended at a thick door with a clear central panel. Liam pressed the button beside the door and it slid open. Inside, he found a cone-shaped structure in the center of a tiny room with smooth black walls. A cluster of wires led from the cone’s top into the ceiling. He checked the scanner instructions again and knelt beside it, opening an access panel. He threw the main power switch and the device hummed to life. Then he used a small screen to calibrate the scanner’s signal. He boosted it to maximum, and it whirred to a higher pitch.
“JEFF,” said Liam, “I think I’ve activated the scanner.”
“Acknowledged, I see it,” said JEFF. “Good work—should ha—results in a few minutes.”
“Phoebe, how’s the recorder coming?” Liam asked.
“I’ve almost got it,” said Phoebe. “I’ll meet you in the hall in just a second.”
“I’ll come to you.” Liam stepped around the scanner and back to the door. “I’ll be there in a—” Liam froze. He held his breath, listening—
There it was again. An echo from down the hall.
Voices. Liam checked his wrist. The circular band around the face of the alien watch had begun to blink—only this time it was red instead of blue. He’d never seen it blink red before, had no idea what it meant, but the watch never activated when anything good was about to happen.
More voices. Louder this time.
Liam’s heart pounded. “I don’t think we’re alone down here.”
6
TIME TO DELPHI ARRIVAL: 0H:00M
DISTANCE TO STARLINER SCORPIUS: UNKNOWN
Liam edged to the door and peered into the corridor. No signs of movement.
But there were definitely voices.
“Do you hear that?” Liam whispered to Phoebe.
“Hear what?”
“The voices!” It sounded like two people arguing. He stepped into the corridor and started cautiously back the way he’d come. The voices were muffled, but he could now hear that they sounded young. Almost like they were his age. The watch blinked faster.
“—can’t believe it!”
“It’s not what you think!”
A boy’s voice, and a girl’s.
“Phoebe, they’re coming from your direction,” Liam whispered. He moved as quietly as he could, nearing the intersection.
“Hold on,” said Phoebe. “I don’t hear a thing.”
“I’m not going to let you hurt anyone else!”
That was the boy. Clearer now, but still somewhat muffled, as if Liam was hearing it through a wall.
“Don’t!” the girl shouted. It sounded like Phoebe.
“Don’t what?” whispered Liam.
“Huh?” Phoebe replied, right there in his helmet, different from that other voice, which seemed to be in the corridor somewhere.
“What’s going on over there?” Liam asked, peering down the hall.
“Nothing!” Phoebe hissed. “I told you! I’m almost done.”
But Liam had reached the intersection, and the sounds were definitely coming from straight ahead, from the compartment at the far end of the hall where Phoebe was. How could she not hear them? There were lights flashing around in there, too. Like her headlamp, but more than one.
“Phoebe—”
A light burst out of the doorway, and Liam froze. At first he thought it was Phoebe, but this was some kind of glowing figure. A person Liam’s size who was shimmering from head to toe in a strange amber light, but he was also translucent, almost like a hologram, or the way things looked when you first entered the VirtCom, before you settled into the illusion; Liam could see the outlines of the walls through him. The figure was bounding right at Liam while frantically zipping up what appeared to be a pressure suit.
Another figure appeared at the doorway, also suiting up. “Wait!” the girl yelled, sticking out her hand. And Liam saw for certain that it was Phoebe standing there, but also glowing strangely. Was she shouting to him? Or to this figure who was coming right at him?
Now Liam saw the flashing on the suited boy’s wrist. A watch blinking blue. And the boy turned back around—but it made no sense. The glowing boy looke
d like Liam. It was Liam. Had his alien watch and everything. But how could he be seeing himself running right toward him?
Suddenly light bloomed from behind the glowing version of Phoebe and there was a terrible crash of sound and air.
“Phoebe!” Liam yelled.
She was erased by a fireball exploding out of the doorway. It rolled down the hall, right at him. There wasn’t time to move—the blast hit the flickering version of him and sent him flying through the air and right through Liam. But Liam barely felt it because here came the fireball and what had happened oh no he needed to run—
Liam shut his eyes. A deafening roar, the rumbling and tearing of the blast enveloping him—
Except he could still hear himself breathing.
“Liam? What’s up?” Phoebe asked over the link, as if she had not just blown up.
And he realized that he didn’t actually feel any heat or wind, no scalding pain. Liam opened his eyes. Blinding light all around him. He was in the center of a firestorm, an exploding star, flames and melting steel and wind and coils of black sooty ash and smoke. Was this part of that vision he’d been having? But no, that had been in a skim drone. . . .
Chunks of ceiling toppled onto him—no, through him. He looked down and saw himself standing there as if nothing was happening, his pressure suit intact. The watch was blinking, but still red, and not nearly as fast as it had at other times when he’d been in danger. Definitely not as fast as it should have been given that he was standing in the middle of an explosion.
Okay. . . .
This wasn’t really happening. So what was it? He turned and saw the other Liam lying on the floor behind him, still glowing and translucent like he was made of light. His pressure suit was singed and smoldering, his version of the watch pulsing blue. The visor on his helmet had melted, and he was moaning and clawing at his scalded face.
Liam’s fingers jumped to his own visor, and for a moment he was sure he felt a stinging sensation on his cheeks, but no, his visor was perfectly intact. He was unharmed, and the explosion-that-wasn’t had begun to die down around him, its flames giving way to the lights on the ceiling, and Liam could see that the walls and the floor were still there, undamaged, as was the far doorway. There was still so much smoke and ash, but it was fading away, too, dissolving as if he’d been watching it in the VirtCom and was now lifting the virtual glasses from his eyes.
The Oceans between Stars Page 9
