How long did she have? How long did it take for a blue dot launched in Russia to get within firing range of a green dot launched in Pennsylvania? When both “pilots” had to learn how to steer their ships?
Nonetheless, she took the time to practice-fire a dart. She was startled by the force with which the syringe left the pipe and buried itself in Wolski’s dead arm.
Bile rose in her throat.
No time, no time.
She reloaded and ran from the lab through the storage bay. Carefully she cracked the door to the main cabin and peered out. Empty.
On the wall screen, the blue and green dots closed in on each other.
Grandma walked past real fast, without seeing Colin peeking out from behind the pile of boxes. All the air went out of him. Grandma was okay! He didn’t have to rescue her, and she was okay!
He waited to see what would happen next. But all that happened was Grandma went out of the storage place back to the big cabin, holding something that Colin couldn’t see very well.
When everything was quiet again, Colin crept out from behind the boxes. Behind the other door, mice squeaked and moved. He wished he knew what they were saying to each other. Something had happened in the mouse room, and curiosity took him. He tiptoed to the door and opened it.
A weird smell, not mousy. He inched into the room.
A man lay on the floor. Blood ran out of his head in little rivers. So much blood! It was the same man Colin had seen before in the big cabin. Somebody had killed him. It must have been Grandma, because nobody else had been in here.
If Grandma had killed the man, then he must be very bad. Maybe he was going to hurt the mice.
Colin crept closer. He’d never seen a dead person before. But it wasn’t really gross because this had been a bad man. Colin squatted on his heels, looking carefully, so he could tell Jason and Luke exactly what a dead bad person looked like. He had a thing sticking up out of him; it looked like the little blue things that popped up on a turkey when it was all roasted and ready to come out of the oven. Did everybody have those things in them, to pop up when they died? Maybe Jason would know.
But what had the man been going to do to the mice that made Grandma kill him? It must have been really bad. Colin left the corpse and went over to the mouse cages. The mice weren’t Mus, they were like the other one that Jason and Colin and Luke and Ava had seen in the woods: grayish-brownish-reddish with long black stripes down their back. Their cute little ears twitched.
What if the bad man had other bad people to help him hurt the mice? Pretty soon, probably, the Venture would go back to Earth. More of Mr. Stubbins’s people would come aboard. Some of them might also be mouse-hurters. And there weren’t enough mice left on Earth—everybody said so!
Colin stood on one foot, chewed on his bottom lip, and thought hard. He hadn’t had to rescue Grandma. But he needed to recue something. Mice shouldn’t be hurt just because they were little. And probably they didn’t like the smell of the bad man’s blood any more than Colin did.
One by one, Colin opened the mouse cages. Some mice stayed inside but some, especially those in the cages closest to the floor, scampered right out. Then, because they were so cute, Colin scooped up two mice and put them in his pocket. They just fit.
He opened the door and made it stay open with a stool he dragged across the floor. A few mice ran out the lab door, toward the smells of food farther into the ship.
Softly Marianne tried the bridge door: locked from the inside. She would have to get Judy to open it. But how? Over the wall screen Marianne could hear what was said on the bridge, but Judy had told her that was one-way communication. And of course, Judy had no idea what Marianne was going to do. Judy just hoped Marianne would do something.
Beyond the door, Stubbins said, “Time until we’re in range?”
Wilshire said, “Another half hour, if everybody holds speed and direction.”
“Judy—any indication that this boat is gonna jump into hyperspace or anything like that?”
“I told you, Jonah, we have no fucking idea. I’m still trying to figure out what the drive is already doing, let alone what it will do.”
“Well, keep trying,” Stubbins said, and Marianne heard the dangerous edge in his voice. “Eric, NASA still jabbering at us?”
“Yeah, but we can arrange it so we have credible deniability.”
Stubbins grunted. Marianne thought: He’s actually going to do it.
This man was going to shoot down a Russian spaceship, despite what had to be a barrage of data coming at him from NASA, from the military, from the White House, from the UN. Maybe even from the Russian ship itself. How did Stubbins think he would get away with this? Would “credible deniability” be enough? Or was his massive narcissism so out of control that he thought nothing on Earth could stop him?
Nothing was.
Or maybe he planned on not going back to Earth afterward. If Wilshire and Judy could fly the Venture from here to World, there would be no human rivals to challenge Stubbins’s trade plans. Stubbins would arrive with only a fraction of the specialists he’d planned, but maybe he thought he could still negotiate—or wrest through terrorism—whatever he was after. The energy shield that had protected the Embassy so completely? With that, he might well be nearly invincible.
Judy said, “Jonah—I need the bathroom. Now. I really cannot wait.”
“Stay where you are!”
“All right,” she said, “but in about twenty seconds this bridge is going to stink of diarrhea and you’re going to choke on the stench. I’ll be gone maybe a minute. Nothing is going to happen in the next minute.”
Wilshire said, “Christ, Judy, we don’t even have a working bathroom.”
“There is,” she said with great and patently fraudulent patience, “a commode. Better than a pile on the bridge deck. A very loose and runny pile.”
“Oh, go!” Stubbins said. “Women!”
Marianne moved quickly from the line of sight from the bridge. She raised her loaded dart gun. If Stone accompanied Judy…
He didn’t. Judy slipped out alone and closed the bridge door behind her.
“I’m here,” Marianne said, gun raised. A sudden panic took her. What if she was wrong, if Judy hadn’t opened that one-way communications channel in order to gain Marianne’s help, if Judy was actually aiding Stubbins….
“Oh, thank God—what is that?” Judy said.
“Tranq gun.”
“You couldn’t get real firearms?”
“No!”
“Okay,” Judy said. “What’s in the gun? How long does it take to work?”
“Ketamine. About two minutes.”
“Two minutes? That’s your plan? Those fuckers can pull out a dart in two minutes!”
“Plan? You think I’ve had time to put together a plan? Judy!”
“Okay, sorry.” She wrinkled her face into a fantastic topography of determination and fear. “We can make it work. Give me the gun. I’ll bet you’ve never fired a pistol in your life.”
True. Marianne said, “If you can hit the neck, that’s best. If—”
“No, wait,” Judy said. She darted to the bathroom and picked up a heavy wrench left by the workmen. “I’m going in first, and you fire. I’m going to hit Stone in the knees, break his kneecaps if I can. Hold the door open a tiny bit until you hear that, then rush in and fire at him first, then at Stubbins. Keep firing—do you have to reload?”