“There it is!” she said. She magnified it even more. “I don’t see Mick, though.”
“Let me look.”
Heather teased the scanner controls.
“Can you see him?”
“Umm… no,” Heather said. “I can’t. But there’s a lot of stuff in there. He’d practically have to sit on top of it for me to find him.”
“He’s probably sitting under it,” Barbary said. “Yowling. Or growling like a wildcat.”
Heather laughed. “I bet you’re right.”
Barbary felt both overjoyed and, terrified. Heather had found Mick — but Barbary would not be able to stop worrying till she saw for herself that he was all right.
“Where is he?” she asked. “Right in front of us?” “No, he’s kind of over to the side.” Heather pointed. “Thea must have planned to circle all the way around the alien ship, then follow it as far as she could. I’m going to have to turn us pretty hard. Are you strapped in?”
“Uh-huh. How long will it take to get there?”
“A couple of hours, maybe. I’m just guessing, though.”
“How do we get him when we get there?”
“We can’t. There’s no safe way to open a raft in space unless everybody inside is in a space suit or a survival ball, and Mick couldn’t get in one by himself. So we’ll stick out our claws and grab his raft and turn us both around, and go back.”
“Oh,” Barbary said. She had been hoping there was some way of getting from one raft to another. But at least she would be able to look inside and see Mick.
“Hang on.”
The raft plunged into free fall as Heather cut the acceleration. Barbary flung her hands out before her, for it really did feel as if she were falling. The steering rocket flared on, the stars swung, and the rocket on the other side counteracted their spin. Now, Barbary knew, they were traveling in the same direction as before, but Heather had turned the raft a few degrees to the left.
Heather applied some thrust to the raft. The new acceleration would add to their previous velocity, changing their direction and speed so they would be heading more nearly toward Mickey.
Getting to the right spot in space took a lot of care and calculation. It would have been much easier if they could have flown the raft like an airplane, or like a spaceship in a movie, banking into turns and swooshing from place to place. But in a vacuum, without any air, ships could not bank into turns or swoosh.
“I don’t want to kill any more velocity than I have to,” Heather said. “It takes too much fuel. So I’ll probably have to correct our course a bunch of times. But for now we’re sort of heading for where Mick ought to be when we get there.”
Barbary tried to figure out how that worked. It sounded suspiciously like a math word problem, which she had never been very good at. She had never seen the point of figuring out when two trains would pass each other when the only trains left were tourist attractions that she had never ridden anyway. But being able to figure out in her head how to meet another raft in space would be useful. She wished she had paid more attention to word problems in school, and she wondered if it was too late for her to learn how to do what Heather could do.
“Hey, Heather — Heather!”
Heather jerked up from the scanner, blinking and confused.
“Huh? What? I’m awake!” She stopped, abashed.
“No, you’re not,” Barbary said. “You fell asleep sitting up! Heather... look... maybe…” With a shock, she realized how much danger she and Mick had put Heather in,
“Oh, no!” Heather said. “Don’t even say it! We’re not turning around and going back like we just came out here to make trouble and then lost our nerve!”
Barbary hunched in her seat. She felt miserable. “I’m afraid you’re going to get sick,” she said.
“I’m okay! I’m just a little tired!” Heather snapped. Her expression softened. “Look,” she said. “I don’t have to do anything for a while. I could take a nap, and you could keep an eye on the scanner. I’ll set it so the image of Mick’s raft will get closer and closer to the center till we intercept it. If it goes past the center of the focus, wake me up to correct the course.” She showed Barbary the faint band of color outlining a square in the center of the scanner. The other raft lay at the left edge of the screen; it moved, almost imperceptibly, centerward.
“That sounds easy enough,” Barbary said.
Heather grinned. “It’s a lot easier than trying to sleep in a raft, that’s for sure.” She squirmed around, trying to get comfortable.
“Lie down crosswise and put your head in my lap,” Barbary said. “I’ll try not to bonk you with the scanner.”
“Okay.”
Barbary took off her jacket and tucked it around Heather’s shoulders. Heather curled up under it, hiding her eyes from the light of the control panel. Her position still did not look very comfortable, but within a few minutes she was fast asleep.
Barbary looked around.
Far behind her, spinning, lit from behind, the station grew smaller. The earth and the moon each showed only a slender crescent of light, for Barbary was on their night sides. The raft’s automatic shield hid the sun and prevented it from blinding her.
Even in the observation bubble of the transport ship, she had never felt so alone and so remote. Beauty surrounded her, a beauty too distant and too enormous for her ever to reach or comprehend. She gazed out at the stars for a very long time, till she realized how long she had been staring. She quickly grabbed the scanner. To her relief, the other raft still lay within the field, halfway to the center of the focus.
Barbary increased the magnification, but that sent the raft all the way off the screen. If she moved the focus, she might not get it back to the place where Heather had aimed it. That also meant she could not use the scanner to find the alien ship, to see if it was doing anything threatening or even simply different.
Heather slept on. The radio receiver’s light never flickered from its brilliant red. Trying to keep her attention on the scanner, Barbary forced herself to remain calm. But worry raced through her mind. She began to wonder if perhaps the aliens, and not the space station, might be trying to call the raft: to tell her they understood, everything was all right; to tell her they did not understand, please try to explain more clearly; or to tell her they understood, but they did not believe her and did not trust her and did not care anyway, and were going to shoot both rafts with death-rays.
She put on the headset and turned on the radio and the transmitter.
“This is the second raft calling, in case you didn’t hear us before.” She whispered, trying not to wake Heather. “We’re coming out to rescue the first raft so it won’t bother you. It’s a mistake that it’s out here, and we’re really sorry. We’re trying to fix things.” She turned off the transmitter, leaving the channel open for just a moment.
“Barbary!” Yoshi said. “Is Heather all right?”
“You two turn around and —”
The vice president’s voice faded as Barbary cut the power to the radio without replying. She would have liked to reassure Yoshi, but she was afraid to get into a fight with any of the adults, especially Yoshi, or Jeanne if she were there, which she probably was. Jeanne or Yoshi could say things that would make her want to turn around and go back, so they would not be so disappointed with her.
She glanced behind the raft. The science station was a bright turning toy, part lit, part shadowed, spinning between the more distant crescents of the earth and the moon.
Before her, space lay beautiful but still. Somehow the stars reminded her of snow early in the morning, before dawn, in a quiet, windless winter. She peered into the scanner to reassure herself that the other raft was still there. She squinted, searching for any sign of Mick. But his raft drifted onward, showing no signs of life.