‘Then why are we going there?’
‘We need a decoy. Something to throw them off our real destination. And once we get beyond the asteroid belt, our portal signature will be harder to trace.’
We were approaching the cargo ship now. Its colossal bulk almost entirely filled the window in front of us.
‘Coordinates are set,’ said Ryan. ‘The portal should be ready in sixty seconds. I’m going to transfer the controller back to me now.’
The cargo ship was completely inside the airlock. I held my breath as its shadow passed over us and the doors to the outside came into view. They were closing, but slowly. Ryan accelerated the ship and swore. ‘Come on, come on,’ he muttered. ‘The acceleration on this ship is a piece of shit.’
Frowning, he bit his lip and moved the controller abruptly to the right, turning the ship on to its side. I could see the doors to the hatch closing faster. We would make it. But only just. Then there was a ping on the side of the ship, followed by another.
‘They’re firing on us!’ shouted Ryan. ‘We’re not even through the freakin’ hatch and they’re already on us.’
Something hit the side of the ship hard. We jolted sideways.
‘Oh God,’ I said.
‘It’s a Guardian Class ship,’ said Ryan. ‘Reinforced hull. It can take a little damage.’
Another blast of something jolted our ship once again.
‘They’re targeting our portal drive,’ said Ryan. ‘We still need ten seconds for our portal to stabilise. Hold on.’
Ryan began tapping rapidly on the screen. A third jolt flung our ship sideways.
‘Amber alert,’ said the computer. ‘Danger of hull breach.’
‘Hold on,’ said Ryan.
He spun the ship in a three hundred and sixty degrees roll. My stomach leapt into my throat and a shiver of nausea rippled through me.
‘Portal stabilised,’ said the computer.
That now-familiar sense of moving backwards gripped my stomach. I held my breath until the blackness outside the window formed a tunnel shape with a bright yellowish hue at the far end. We began to race through the tunnel.
‘We’re going to Titan first,’ said Ryan. ‘Let them think that’s where we’re headed. Just before we arrive, I’m going to set new coordinates.’
‘You’re going to create a portal from within a portal?’ I asked.
‘It’s going to be OK. Trust me. We’re going somewhere no one goes. Somewhere no one knows about. The portal will hold.’
Ryan started tapping in a new set of coordinates. The yellow moon curved off to one side.
‘I’ve set up the new portal,’ said Ryan. ‘We’d better release our passenger. It will look like we had to do an emergency eject.’
The ship jolted forwards as the escape pod was released.
‘Get ready for portal number two,’ said Ryan.
Another narrower, blacker tunnel emerged within the first one. A faint blue glow shone through it. Ryan flew straight towards its narrow entrance. Curved around the outside of the larger tunnel, I could still see the spaceport, the yellow hue of Titan, and the frisbee-shaped rings of Saturn. Ahead, growing rapidly brighter, our destination glowed blue.
‘They’ll probably think our portal collapsed,’ said Ryan. His eyes were glued to the screen in front of him. ‘All they’ll be able to find is one of the escape pods. With a bit of luck they’ll assume we were in the other one and didn’t make it.’ He almost laughed. ‘No one is crazy enough to portal into the unknown.’
We entered the smaller tunnel. The Inter-Planetary spaceport had now disappeared. Titan and Saturn were still within view, but elongated and distorted into thin sausage shapes. Other moons were alongside them, but I had no names for them.
‘Ten seconds,’ said Ryan.
Titan disappeared. Then Saturn.
‘Three,’ said Ryan. ‘Two. One.’
The tunnel vanished. In our window were two moons, one larger than the other, but both white and pockmarked just like Earth’s moon. Ryan eased the controller to the right until a planet, a blue-green and white, Earth-like planet, floated in the velvet darkness in front of us.
‘Welcome to Eden,’ he said.
Twilight was rapid. First, the halo of light over the planet turned copper, then it deepened to scarlet. Seconds later it had gone and we were plunged into darkness. There were no artificial lights on the planet’s surface to show the shape of the continents. It was as though there was nothing but this ship and the eternal blackness of space.
Ryan had put us in a stable orbit above Eden, from where we saw the three suns rise and set every ninety minutes. He explained that trace signatures of our portal could be discovered for up to an hour after we’d closed it. Five hours later he was still scanning the space around us for incoming ships.
‘No one knows we’re here,’ I said, unstrapping my seatbelt. The cockpit was cramped and my muscles felt tight. ‘It’s been hours. You said yourself they probably think our portal collapsed.’
‘But what if they did catch a trace of our destination? I’d have risked everything just to save myself.’
‘But they didn’t.’
‘I shouldn’t have brought us here. I panicked.’
‘Of course you panicked. You were under fire,’ I said, standing up. ‘But no one has followed you. And no one will because no one else knows this place exists. No one except Cassie, Ben and your dad. But they’re not going to risk telling anyone about this planet. They know the consequences.’
‘Let me run one last scan,’ he said, dragging an icon across the control panel.
‘Fine. I’ll give you ten minutes. And then I want you to come out into the lounge area with me.’
I left him frowning at the control panel and went to explore the rest of the ship. There were a couple of rows of airline-style seating just behind the cockpit, and then the body of the ship opened out into a lounge area with white leather couches, a bar and a massive window. Right at the back of the ship was a small galley with a fridge and an oven. I opened the fridge and squatted down to look inside. There were a number of pre-packed meals that had probably been brought on board to feed the admiral and the journalists on the trip to the moon. I counted them. Forty-four. I opened cupboards and pulled open drawers, locating plates and utensils, condiments and napkins. We wouldn’t go hungry for a few days.
Next I located the bathroom – an airline-style toilet and sink – and unzipped my bulky orange flight suit. I assumed that we were safe now we were in orbit. In any case, Ryan wasn’t wearing one so if anything happened to the ship, there would be no one left to rescue me. I’d prefer to die quickly if death was inevitable. I dressed in my green cotton kitchen tunic and adjusted my hair in the mirror.
When I got back into the main cabin, Ryan was standing at the bar, untwisting the wire top of a bottle of champagne. He smiled, but his eyes looked tired and the prison clothes he wore were hanging off him.
‘Nice outfit,’ I said.
‘You too.’
I looked down at the frumpy tunic I was wearing and laughed.
‘I never thought I’d see Eden again,’ he said, his thumbs pushing out the cork. ‘Not the planet and not you. I can’t quite believe we’re here.’
‘Nor me.’
He poured the champagne into two crystal glasses. The bubbles caught the light and twinkled like stars.
‘A toast,’ he said, passing one of the glasses to me. ‘To Eden.’
I wasn’t sure whether he was referring to me or the planet, but I tipped the glass against my lips and bubbles shot up my nose.
‘If it wasn’t for this planet, we wouldn’t be here,’ I said. ‘You’d never have travelled back to 2012 to stop it being discovered. I’d never have met you.’