Wolski, cowering, moved behind the crate, as if Marianne might attack him. Every organ in her body turned to mush. She’d been right, then—Stubbins had weaponized mice and was prepared to deliberately cause a plague on World if he thought it might help him get what he wanted. And now the Venture had lifted and was on its way to… oh, God, was the ship steerable? Or was its alien technology preset on one route, a sort of interstellar trolley on fixed and unalterable tracks?
Judy exploded, “Infected mice? Here?”
“Judy,” Marianne managed to get out, “is the Venture—”
But Judy had turned away. She had heard, as Marianne had not, the shouting on the bridge, even through the thick metal door. Judy flung it open and bolted back to the bridge.
Marianne hesitated, then grabbed Colin and dragged him with her. She wouldn’t leave him with Wolski. And if the Venture was about to self-destruct, or vanish into some other dimension, or plummet to Earth, she wanted to be holding Colin when it happened.
The Venture did none of these things. The bridge had the focused air of a high-stakes poker game, the shouting suddenly over. Stubbins sat in the captain’s chair, facing a screen showing a room full of people in uniform. Wilshire occupied the second chair, Judy the third.
“No,” Stubbins said, quietly. Yet the word had the force of an avalanche. He touched something and the room full of uniformed men and women, suddenly moving very fast and with faces rigid with anger, all disappeared. Stubbins’s ground officer reappeared.
“Confirmed, Jonah. I’ll put it on tracking.”
The central screen in front of the captain’s chair split into two, with the officer on one side and a graphic on the other. An arc of the Earth, looking like a blue marble—had the Venture resumed flight? Marianne had felt nothing. Beside the arc were two dots, one blue and one green, moving toward each other.
Judy made a low sound that Marianne had never heard anyone make.
Marianne’s mind raced. Human communications systems on the Venture—and what else? As long as the drive machinery and life support and other technical aspects of the Deneb plans weren’t altered, anything could be added to the ship. Military tracking systems? Military weapons? Yes, of course. If homegrown terrorist groups could obtain Russian Scuds, what couldn’t Jonah Stubbins obtain on the international black market?
Or was it the black market? Had the US Army… No. That room full of angry soldiers had not approved of whatever Stubbins was up to now.
“Judy,” Marianne said, because it was clear that no one else would answer her, “what are those blue and green dots?”
Judy didn’t reply. She was rapidly typing on a keyboard and examining data brought up on her screen. But Stubbins heard Marianne and he said, still in that deadly voice, “Get off the bridge. Now.”
Marianne stayed where she was. But she said to Colin, “Go back to your seat and stay there. Do you hear me?”
At her tone, he stuck out his lip, but he went. No time now to worry about Wolski.
“You, too,” Stubbins said, without turning around. Marianne didn’t move. Judy suddenly sank into her chair and her head snapped back as if she’d taken a blow, but a moment later she was back keying in commands.
“Stone!” Stubbins bellowed.
The bodyguard moved toward Marianne. Effortlessly, as if she were Colin, he picked her up and carried her, flailing pointlessly, to the door. He shoved her through and slammed the door to the bridge. A second later she heard the lock click.
Colin cringed in his seat, looking very small. Marianne, scarcely knowing what she was doing, went to him and he crawled onto her lap. Wolski had disappeared. Colin began to talk, but she didn’t hear him.
She had caught a snatch of Wilshire’s conversation with the tracking station on the ground. She knew what the two moving dots on the screen, so small beside Earth, were. One was the Venture. The other was the Russian ship Mest’.
The Revenge.
Colin was scared. Nobody was acting right. It should have been thrilling to be up on the ship out in space—especially since Jason and Luke and Ava didn’t get to go, only him—but it wasn’t. Grandma was holding him too tight and that big man who was always with Mr. Stubbins had locked them out of the bridge and Colin had peed in a toilet with no pipes so that he couldn’t even flush his pee away. It was just sitting in there for anybody to see because there was no door on the bathroom.
And the big wall screen had nothing on it to look at.
But at least that changed. Somebody on the bridge must have done something because all at once a picture of Earth—Colin was proud that he knew what it was—came onto the screen, with two dots moving near it.
“Grandma, is that a video game? Can I play? Where’s the controller?”
Grandma didn’t answer. A second later sound got added to the picture, but it was just Aunt Judy and Mr. Stubbins and that other guy on the bridge. Aunt Judy whispered, “Marianne, one-way comm,” and then there was only the other two grown-ups, saying things Colin didn’t understand.
But maybe Grandma did, because she got even weirder. She went all stiff, like the mice that had died, and for a horrible minute Colin was afraid that Grandma was dying, too. But she wasn’t, so he said again, “Where’s the controller? Can I—”
“Be quiet,” she said, so mean that Colin was shocked. Grandma was never mean to him! Nothing was right!
He jumped off her lap. She said to him, “Sit down and don’t say anything.” It was her obey-me-or-else voice, so he did. But he picked a seat behind her so that when she wasn’t looking he could leave the room and go hide again. That would show her!
Tears prickled his eyes. He hated everything.
After a moment he got up and moved—carefully, soundlessly—toward the storage bay. He could hear the mice someplace in there. Right now, mice were nicer than Grandma. Quietly, Colin opened the door, slipped through, and closed it behind him.
Judy had routed audio-visuals to the screen in the main cabin. Marianne listened, and looked, and found she could barely breathe.
The Mest’ had lifted because the Venture did. To the Russians, it must look as if the Venture was going to beat them to World. Or were they afraid of some other kind of attack that these ships were capable of but ordinary weapons were not?
She knew nothing about weapons, ordinary or alien. But Noah and Ambassador Smith had both told her that the Denebs were peaceful, did not engage in warfare. Had Noah been deceived and Smith lying? Or had Stubbins’s engineers, as well as those on the Mest’, discovered ways to use the drive machinery as a weapon? Dark energy, Judy had told her. Quantum entanglement.
No. There was no reason for this much paranoia. The Venture had lifted because of the Scud, and the Mest’ lifted because the Venture had. In a moment the Venture would set back down in Pennsylvania, and the Mest’ would set back down at Vostochny because even if vengeance was the Russians’ motive for building their ship, they weren’t any more ready for an interstellar voyage than Stubbins was. The UN would be working on this mess right now. Vihaan Desai was no longer Secretary-General, but the newly chosen Lucas Rasmussen of Denmark was a man of peace. In just a moment the Venture would return to Earth… dear Lord please let Wilshire know how to actually control this thing….