Jack not only looked tempted, he looked as if he were about to grin. But he shook his head. “I don’t have the authority.”
“Then who does?” Barbary cried.
He left the room, not even looking back.
“Barbary, please sit down,” Mr. Smith said. “Relax. I can’t understand why you’re so upset. Be reasonable. It isn’t going to hurt you to wait for the next shuttle.”
“Yes it is! I have to —!” She stopped, afraid she had already said too much, afraid she had aroused his suspicions. She was on her feet, clutching her silver coin till its smooth worn edge cut into her palm. She did not even remember standing up. Holding back tears of rage and frustration, she obeyed Mr. Smith’s request. She did not know what she was going to do if she had to wait for another liftoff. She feared she would have to choose between abandoning her chance to emigrate and breaking a promise that meant as much to her as her dreams.
Chapter Two
The seconds display on the clock flicked along as if time were speeding up. Neither of the other two passengers had arrived.
“They can’t leave without me,” Barbary said.
“I’m afraid they can,” Mr. Smith said. “So let’s go home.”
“But I’m right here, and they’re taking off with an empty place.”
“There’s nothing to be done about it, Barbary. These things happen. Come along, now.”
He took her arm. She jumped up and tried to pull away.
“It’s stupid!” she said. “It doesn’t make any sense! It’s — it’s a waste of taxpayers’ money!” Even as she said it she knew how ridiculous it sounded, though it was perfectly true.
“You’re right,” someone behind her said.
Mr. Smith looked up. Startled, Barbary turned. Jeanne Velory stood in the entrance tunnel, leaning out with her hands against its sides.
“You’re right,” she said again to Barbary. “Come on, let’s go.
Mr. Smith was so surprised that his grip on Barbary’s arm loosened. She pulled away. Dr. Velory grinned and disappeared into the tunnel. Barbary grabbed her duffel bag and sprinted after her, without a backward look.
She had to run to keep up. The secret pocket jounced. She bent slightly sideways to try to hold it still.
At the elevator, Dr. Velory stopped and waited, holding the door for her. “Are you okay? Do you have a stitch in your side?”
“No,” Barbary said, then, “well, yeah, I guess.”
Dr. Velory let the doors close. The elevator lifted them past several rows of seats, then stopped. Doors on each side opened. The vice president and one of his bodyguards sat on the left. The vice president read a newspaper and the bodyguard watched for assassins.
Dr. Velory gestured to the right, to the last empty seats. Because the shuttle had to sit on its tail for liftoff, the place that would have been the floor in a regular airplane formed a vertical surface, like a wall leading up between the passenger seats, which lay flat back in the horizontal position necessary for liftoff.
Barbary slid across and into her place. The elevator fell away, then its shaft retracted. It was part of the launch facility, not part of the spacecraft. After delivering the passengers to their places, it withdrew behind the safety of walls of concrete. The doors of the shuttle bay closed, sealing the passengers safely inside.
Barbary looked around. One of the bodyguards watched her from across the aisle.
“That was pretty risky, Dr. Velory.”
“Not nearly as risky as having Reston and Kartoff arguing over one seat,” she said.
Instead of responding to her joke, he frowned. “Just what we need right now on the station — a kid.”
“She’ll be a good deal less out of place,” Dr. Velory said, her voice soft and cool, “than the Secret Service.”
The vice president remained hidden behind his newspaper as the bodyguard started to retort.
The second bodyguard leaned toward them from the next row down. “Why don’t you lighten up, Frank?”
Frank glared at him, too, then snorted in annoyance and lay back in his seat with his arms folded.
Dr. Velory reached over and strapped Barbary in. Barbary had to squirm to keep the secret pocket free of the harness. She could see the bulge, but she hoped all the outside pockets would conceal it from everyone else.
“That’s a terrific jacket,” Dr. Velory said to Barbary.
Barbary felt the blood rising to her cheeks, in embarrassment and fear of being found out. “Thanks,” she said.
“You won’t really need it on the station, but I can see why you like it.”
Barbary was too flustered to say anything.
“What’s your name?”
“Barbary.”
“I’m Jeanne.”
“I know,” Barbary said hesitantly. “Thanks. For getting me on board.”
“It was self-preservation. Reston and Kartoff are always competing, and I’m right next to the ecological niche they both would have wanted.”
The ship vibrated all around them.
“Are we starting?”
“Not quite yet. A few more minutes. It’s easiest if you can relax — I know that sounds hard.”
“How many times have you gone into space?”
“Oh, goodness, I don’t know. I’ve lost track. A couple of dozen, I suppose.”
But on one of her trips into space she commanded the Ares mission, the mission that sent people to Mars. The year Ares launched itself from low earth orbit, Barbary was only six, so she barely remembered it. But she remembered very clearly when it came back three years later. The Ares astronauts returned with samples of Martian life, the organisms that all the robot missions had missed.
“Are you emigrating to one of the O’Neill colonies?”
“No,” Barbary said. She had never before felt in awe of anyone she had actually met. But the scientist sitting beside her had been, with her shipmates, farther from earth than anyone else in the world. She had walked on another planet, not just the moon, but Mars.
“No,” Barbary said again, embarrassed that her voice sounded shaky. “I’m going to the same place you are, to Einstein, to the research station.” But I’m just going there to live, she thought. Not to be in charge of everything.
“Oh,” Jeanne said. “You’ll be a member of our interesting little tour group, then.”
“They’re all going to Einstein? For a tour? If that’s the only reason, why weren’t there any cameras or reporters when they left?”
Jeanne gazed at her for several moments without answering. She was silent for so long that Barbary wondered if she had said something wrong.
“You might as well know now,” Jeanne said. “Everybody off earth already does. We’re a greeting party, I think. I hope. Maybe an archeological expedition. Something entered the solar system about a year ago. At first we thought it was just a comet. But it isn’t. It’s an alien ship.”
“An alien ship!” Barbary thought of three questions all at the same time. “No — where — how come nobody’s told us about them?”
Jeanne smiled. “We don’t know where they’re from, and I agree that it’s dumb for it to be kept a secret. The council thinks everybody will be frightened, and maybe that’s true. But they’re going to have to know sooner or later. I go along with the people who think sooner would be better, so we’d all have time to get used to the idea.”
“What do they look like?”
Jeanne shrugged. “We don’t know. They haven’t responded to any of our radio transmissions. They aren’t transmitting in any mode we know how to detect. Maybe they aren’t ready to talk to us or show themselves to us yet. Maybe they’re waiting to see how we react to their ship. Or maybe there isn’t anybody on board. A lot of people think the ship’s a derelict. I don’t believe it, myself. But it could have been floating around in the universe for millions of years, with nobody left inside. That’s part of the trouble with announcing that it’s there — I’ve just told you about all there is to tell about it. People will want to know more. I sure do.”