* * *
A new wailing jolted me and I cringed as my chest pulled. Perhaps we’d both fallen asleep again, I felt sluggish. Cassie leapt from my arms and lunged across the room towards the circular console, slamming her hand against the screen to deactivate it. The screeching stopped and for a moment she stood with her back to me, steadying herself. She looked dizzy.
“What was that?” I asked, realising now that each of the alarms had been set by Cassie for some purpose. The last one – she told me – had been for her to check my drip and rotate me in the bunk to help my healing ribs.
“Do you fancy a little experiment?”
That didn’t sound like it meant something medical for me…and I wondered what she was planning.
An experiment?
“Always,” I grinned.
“This pod is designed for waste disposal,” she began, helpfully answering one of the major questions I had and hadn’t actually asked yet. “It’s programmed on a rebounding course from the space station that completes after seventy-two hours.”
We had escaped from the space station – completely – on a small waste craft. That was a relief, because part of me had wondered – given the familiarity of our surroundings and the medical equipment – whether Cassie had just found somewhere for us to hide within the SS Hope. We might still have been surrounded by those creatures…did Cassie even know that they weren’t human?
Not the right questions for now, I warned, trying to focus. That wasn’t why Cassie had set an alarm or was telling me we were inside a waste pod… We were travelling through space, having escaped on this pod and it would re-bound back to the station in seventy-two hours, according to its programming.
“How long have we been on here?” I asked, guessing what Cassie needed me to experiment with. We had to override the programming to take control of the pod.
“Just over thirty hours,” she bit into her lip nervously.
“You gave me a long rest,” I realised, understanding once again how far Cassie had come for me, what she might have risked in focusing on me.
“You needed it. I’m sorry if it was too long.”
I shook my head at her. The last thing she should be doing was feeling guilty. “It’ll be fine.” I told her, already preparing myself to get up. “Just help me get to the control panel and I’ll see what we’ve got to work with.”
After everything we had been through to get out of the SS Hope, there was no chance I was going to let a programming issue get in my way. Forty hours…I would make it be enough time.
The Rainbow Maker's Tale Page 54
