“We’re adults,” said Lana. “They could have told us.”
“Look at it from their point of view, Lana,” said Priscilla. “They were trying to make it as easy on you as they could.”
When Jake and three more girls came through the air lock, the reception was subdued. “To be honest,” one of the newcomers said, “I’m glad I didn’t know. I was afraid something like that was happening.”
The new passengers wasted no time removing the Flickinger units and returning them to Jake. “I see you told them,” he said. “Everything okay?”
She nodded. “They’re fine.”
“Good.” He collected the belts and air tanks. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
“Okay.”
“If there’s anything of yours in the lander, Priscilla, you might get it out now.” He went back out through the air lock.
* * *
THE CLOUD-WRAPPED PLANET below him seemed closer than it had been. He stared down at it as he drifted between the ships. Next time somebody takes a bunch of kids on a trip, they should pick a world with a breathable atmosphere.
He found himself thinking about his life back home. His father, who’d been so proud of him when he qualified. And his mother, who’d left them when Jake was only six. Ran off with a banker.
Jake had never married. He’d been swept off his feet a couple of times and proposed once. To Jeri Lockett. The woman he always thought about the moment after the lights went out. They’d been sitting in the Cosmopolitan in Atlanta, and he’d been about to leave on a two-month flight. So he’d taken the plunge. But she had declined. He never saw her again after that night.
He regretted that he’d never had a family. It hadn’t been by design. He’d just been too busy. Or maybe because the right woman had never shown up. Or because, when she had, he hadn’t been able to hang on to her. Now, somehow, it seemed as if those details didn’t really matter very much.
And why, just now, was he entertaining thoughts like these?
* * *
“HOW’D IT GO?” Joshua asked when he reentered the Gremlin.
“Good. Everything’s under control.” He glanced at the four remaining students. “We can only take three on this next run.”
One of them would have to wait. The blonde Priscilla had seen in the photo stepped forward. “I’ll stay,” she said. Her name was Kareema. There was a brief debate while the others also volunteered to wait. But in the end, Kareema got the nod. The others strapped on the belts and pulled the air tanks onto their shoulders.
* * *
FIFTEEN MINUTES LATER, Jake returned to pick up the last of the students. He asked Joshua if he wanted to escort his last student.
“It’s okay,” he said. “You’re doing fine, Jake.”
Jake shrugged. “I thought you might want to say something to them. Just in case.”
“Not a good idea,” he said. “It would scare the devil out of them. Don’t worry. We’re not going down with this thing.”
When it was time to go, Kareema hugged Shahlah. “Good luck,” the student said. Then she turned to Jake. “Don’t let them stay too long.”
“Thank you, Kareema,” said Josh. “We’ll be fine.”
“We’ll join you in a couple of hours,” said Shahlah.
Finally, they activated the force fields, went into the air lock, and crossed to the Copperhead.
* * *
WHEN HE’D RETURNED to the Gremlin, Shahlah informed him that Joshua had gone below to get pictures of the damage. “He’s been transmitting everything back to Union.”
“Well,” he said, “I hope they got the idiot who did this.”
“Let’s also hope we all get home okay.”
“Amen to that.”
“I’ve got a question for you, Jake.”
“Fire away, kid.”
“What exactly are our chances of surviving this?”
“I think we’ll be all right.”
“That sounds fairly tentative.” She took a deep breath. “Josh’s been evasive about it. He says the right things, but his eyes are telling me something else. Be straight with me.”
“We should get through it okay,” he said. “We can’t be sure about anything until we see when and where the Thompson shows up.”
“All right.” She read his eyes. “Thanks. Joshua kept saying there was nothing to worry about. I knew that wasn’t true.”
“What did the girls think of the monument?” Jake asked. “I don’t guess they got a chance to enjoy it.”
“Not really. I’ll tell you what they did get excited about, though. The animals down there.” She pointed at the deck, meaning, of course, the surface of Barton’s World.
“You really think so?”
“Are you serious? They’ve got big furry creatures. The size of mastodons. And whole herds of animals that look like pandas. And giant snaky things that make your skin crawl.” She led the way onto the bridge, looking for something. “He set a countdown running here somewhere. How long we had before we could expect to go down.”
Shahlah touched a pad, and the AI responded: “It would be prudent to stay no longer than forty-five minutes.”
* * *
GREMLIN LOG
Finally, the girls are safe. Now we have to see whether our own luck holds. Let the record show that a quicker response, however that might have been arranged, would have been seriously helpful.
This will probably be our last entry. The log will be recorded on a chip, and the chip will be delivered to the Copperhead and made available to those inquiring into a more effective methodology for responding to emergencies.
—Joshua Miller, November 17, 2195
Chapter 7
THEY TALKED ABOUT their favorite assignments, about the ineptitude of the people who ran Union, about politics, about the silliness that reigned on holovision. About the lunacy of people who planted bombs on interstellars. “They go on about the sanctity of life, then they kill innocent people.”
They did not mention the occasional bumps and nudges as they descended closer to the atmosphere.
Shahlah described her feelings when she was assigned to deliver the good news to the winners of the Jamal Touma Science Award. Joshua recalled a run-in he’d had with police after taking umbrage with his sister’s husband, who had attacked her. “I wound up in jail,” he said. “For doing what someone needed to do.”
“You hit him?” asked Shahlah.
“Of course. He’s the one who should have been arrested.”
“Why wasn’t he?” asked Jake.
“My sister wouldn’t press charges.”
And they talked about the Thompson. Where was it?
They interweaved bouts of silence with comments about what they’d do when they got home. (Nobody said “if.”) Shahlah announced that it would be a long time before she tried something like this again. “I thought these things were safe. Otherwise, we’d never have allowed the girls to come on this flight. My father wanted it to be something special. He’ll be heartbroken when he hears what happened.”
“Nevertheless,” said Josh, “I think everyone will appreciate his generosity.”
“Oh, yes.” She paused. “Jake, speaking of appreciation, I’m glad you were in the area. Don’t know what we’d have done—”