Eddie had expected to experience the crash at least for a moment before he died—to hear the crumple of metal, maybe an explosion, to feel glass slice through his skin and tendons and trachea. Even at that speed, a moment of agony. He wanted that moment—to know all of life, even the end. Instead it was a sense of spinning, and everything went hazy gray. The only sound was the hum of the engine and the hammer of his heart.
His heart. Beating.
He blinked himself into full consciousness, trying furiously to focus. Had Rosa pulled away at the last moment? He’d been watching her eyes, brown and calm. She hadn’t looked afraid. He glanced down—his torso was still strapped in, still had a limb attached at each corner. Nothing severed.
“Near collision,” a woman’s calm voice said through his earphones. It wasn’t Rosa. “Are you ready to resume command?”
The freaking control panel? What was this, like a car that won’t let you hit the one behind it? He looked frantically out the window, but Rosa was behind him and the controls wouldn’t respond.
“Yes! Yes, I’m resuming command.”
“Proceed with caution,” the voice said pleasantly. “There are two other vehicles in the area.”
He banked hard and saw Rosa’s egg ahead of him, where it had angled off. He chased it, and on the way saw Reg rise to his side. Reg’s eyes were comically huge, and he took one hand off the controls to make an exaggerated shrug. His craft was in perfect shape—no catastrophic damage. The bottom didn’t even look dented.
The spacecraft refused to die.
Rosa’s craft had slowed to a cruising speed, and Eddie pulled alongside, maybe thirty yards away. It was closer than he’d get in any other circumstance—but since they were trying to crash, and it was apparently impossible, there didn’t seem to be a downside. She was sitting slumped in the chair, her head bobbing slightly, and even from here he could see the way her hair fell over her cheekbone. He wished he could tuck it behind her ear for her.
She was coming back to consciousness. When their crafts swerved to avoid each other, she must have gotten whipped around harder. Or maybe it was just because she didn’t have a whole lot in the way of neck muscles to stabilize her head. Eddie always paid attention to his neck when he lifted weights. He figured he needed to—people wanted to rip his head off with some frequency.
“Houston,” Reg said, “we haven’t had a problem.”
“I don’t know,” Eddie said into his headset mouthpiece, “I’m not sure my pants are still clean.”
“Eww,” Rosa said.
Seriously?—that’s when she regains consciousness? Eddie looked over at her, flying beside him.
“Hey,” he said.
“Hey.”
“I’m glad you’re alive.”
“I’m glad you’re alive, too, Eddie.” For some reason that made his eyes prickle. His craft rocked, and he turned his attention back to the controls.
“Nobody’s glad I’m alive?” Reg said, zooming up on his other side and waving—honest to god waving—at them.
“We knew you’d survive,” Eddie said. “The Earth wouldn’t accept you. It’s like a blessed river spitting a witch back up.”
“Sounds about right,” Reg said. He pulled in a little closer and said something, but Eddie didn’t catch it because he was shouting.
“Hey, give me some space! I don’t know how to fly this thing.”
“Yeah,” Rosa said. “I just knew enough to crash it.”
“Stay calm,” Reg said. “You both know how to go up and down, right and left. How to adjust for a steady course.”
“How to run out of gas,” Eddie said.
“Apparently it won’t let you crash it, at least,” Reg said.
“But now we have to fly them, and that’s kind of nerve-racking,” Rosa said.
Eddie nodded. “Dang, Reg. There’s a lot of switches on this thing.”
“We need a new strategy,” Reg said. “There’s a whole lot of faces pressed to the Flight Control Room glass, just watching us. See that?”
They did. It wasn’t comforting.
“They knew we couldn’t scramble their eggs.”
“So they’re waiting for us to land and get arrested?” Rosa said.
“That appears to be an affirmative,” Reg said. “Guess that’s why they didn’t go for a shoot-out at the hangar. Probably assumed we were armed, and they could just wait.”
“Can we hit other things?” Eddie said. “I mean, could we crash into Flight Control?”
“I took a door off a car,” Rosa said. “Just ’cause I’m a hellion.”
“I love it when you talk like that,” Eddie said.
“So maybe the door was small enough that it didn’t register,” Reg said.
“I was still on the ground, too,” Rosa said. “Maybe that makes a difference?”
“We’re overlooking something,” Eddie said. “If we just bounce off each other, these are the world’s best bumper cars. If arrest and execution are inevitable, I’m getting in a game first.”
“Never known you to give up,” Reg said. That stung a little, but Eddie wasn’t letting him know.
“I’m not giving up,” he said. “It’s just that the lure of bumper cars is irresistible.”
“I could try to fly into Flight Control and see if I bounce off,” Reg said. “It may be that the no-crash protection is only with other vehicles—that it requires a sensor on both crafts. If I make it”—meaning if he died in an inferno of twisted metal—“you just follow me in.”
“We could be in there,” Rosa said. “What if our alien selves doubled back and are in the Flight Control Room?”
“If we’re here, our asses should be out on the tarmac thinking something up,” Eddie groused. They’d flown several miles past the IA compound, past the town where Eddie got his vodka. Reg banked left and they followed, moving back toward the IA base. “Hey, what if we just flew them into the ocean?”
“They could recover them,” Reg said. “Even if the craft let us go down.” He blew air out sharply, and it amplified in the headset. Eddie jerked his head back from the sound, then made a quick correction. “We need some way to keep Sensenbrenner from getting back to our world, at least for a while. At least till we’re ready.”
“Rosa, okay if I sideswipe you?” Eddie asked.
“Sure thing,” she said.
He was afraid to. Maybe the craft’s protection was only for head-ons. And maybe he was about to knock her out of control and send her spiraling to her death. He didn’t think so, but he did wait till they’d cleared the town, to protect the innocent civilians and vodka bottles below. Then he bashed into her side.
Her craft repelled him. It was like two magnets with the same pole—you can push them toward each other, but there’s a force pushing them apart. He bounced back without touching her, didn’t correct in time, and bounced off Reg on the other side. He grinned and did it again.
“Damn, boy!” Reg said. He could grumble all he wanted. Eddie knew he was just pissed that he wasn’t the one flying in the middle. “So, about flying into the command building …”
“No,” Eddie said. “I’m not doing it. I’m not killing anybody.” He was not his father.
“Yeah,” Reg said. “I was thinking a pass-by first, to signal our intentions. So people could run away.”
“Not good enough,” Eddie said. “Look, I tried to kill Rosa, and it was less enjoyable than you’d imagine.”
“Wow,” Rosa said. “You are such a flatterer.”
“I won’t risk killing anybody else.” Eddie spread his hands gently over the switches in front of him, careful not to reposition any of them. He had no idea how to fly this thing. Rosa was flying more smoothly than he was. She was a better driver, too, if you liked smooth deceleration. A small difference, but small differences can be decisive.
Especially when your idea is particularly dumbass. “Anybody up for a plan that offers a slim chance of survival?”
“Oh god, yes,” Rosa said. “Please, yes.”
They had shot over the IA compound and were heading past it.
“Reg, do we have enough fuel in these to break free of Earth’s gravity?”
“To get into space?” He was silent for a moment. “Yeah, I think so, but I don’t think we could make it home.”
“Could we get into extradimensional space?”
“I dunno. But there’s no point …”
“We don’t have to crash these things,” Eddie said. “We just have to get them out of their hands, right?”
“Right,” Reg said. Then he understood. “You’re thinking we just fly into the extra dimensions and run out of fuel there? Just sit and watch each other die?” He massaged the top of his head over his headset, making the skin ripple. “I say we try to crash one more time first. Starvation, freezing, asphyxiation—it would be a gruesome death, Eddie.”
“Nah,” he said. “We just send the craft off where they can’t reclaim them. We get a chance to plead our case—expose Sensenbrenner as a murderous asswipe, which may help this world as well as ours. Maybe we go to jail, but maybe we don’t.”
“I like this,” Rosa said. “I like this a lot.”
“Yeah,” Reg said, and they could hear the disappointment in his voice. “Problem is, these won’t take off on autopilot. We’d have to send them from the air, and there’s no way to do that without stranding the pilot.”
“Sure there is,” Eddie said. “I just open the door and jump.”
They were silent. Reg stared at him through the curved side of his windshield.
“It’s just the way you’d do it on a highway,” Eddie said, “jumping from one car to another with your friends.”
“There is so much wrong with what you just said,” Reg said.
“Who would be the pilot?” Rosa said. “And who would be the jumper?”
“Rosa, you drive better than me, right?”
“Oh, definitely.” She flashed her white grin at him and gave a little finger wave.
“Yeah, you get cheeky when you’re in an indestructible spacecraft,” he said.
She nodded.
“You fly the egg,” Eddie said. “And I’ll just open the door and hop in.”