“Oh boy,” Rosa said. “Couldn’t you jump into Reg’s craft? He can hold his egg steadier.” She already knew what he was going to say. Rosa was smart. She just needed to hear him say it.
“No. Because it should be his ship we land in when you jump, too.”
“Oh boy.”
“Yeah,” Reg said. “We have to scuttle two of these. Then we can bail together when we send the last one off.”
“Trevor will have cellmates,” Eddie said, then caught Rosa’s expression. “What? I’m looking on the bright side.” He inspected the ground for a moment. “Should I make the jump over a cornfield? The rows will give Rosa a visual for a steady course.”
“Some people use the instrument panel for that,” Reg said.
“Those are people who know how to fly,” Rosa said.
“Gulp,” Eddie said.
“Oh. Sorry.”
“Reg,” he said, “I checked the glove compartment, but there’s no owner’s manual, just a bunch of leftover napkins and straws. You got any idea how to unlock that hatch?”
“You can just unlatch it,” he said. “There’s nothing fancy about it.”
“If you’re really doing this, we need two things,” Rosa said. “First, we need to be lined up with the field, going low and slow.”
“What’s the second thing?”
“You’ve got to program the craft to get it out of here. Reg, can we put the navigational instructions on time delay?”
“How should I know?” Reg said. “Don’t count on it. But, Eddie, you need it to dump its fuel once it gets into extradimensional space. Otherwise they could just recall it on autopilot.”
“Holy crap,” he said, because he had not thought of that. “How do I do that?”
Reg talked him through it. “The fuel dump will engage with your new course, when you hit enter.”
“Okay,” he said. “I’m going.”
Eddie banked, pinging off Reg’s side until he got the idea and curved with him. They made a big sweep around so that all three of them were lined up, the furrows stretching before them. God bless some farmer who could plow straight. Rosa dropped down low and decreased her speed. Eddie stayed alongside her.
“You’re gonna get sucked by the air,” Reg shouted. “It’s gonna smack you hard.”
“It’s as though you think I’ve never stood on a pickup,” Eddie said, unstrapping. He climbed out of the seat, took a deep breath, and unlocked the door. “I only regret that I have but one life to lose doing stupid stunts.” He was getting better at last words.
He opened the door. The air whipped at his face.
“Taking off my headset,” he shouted into the mouthpiece.
“Roger that,” Rosa said.
“Hey, Eddie,” Reg said. “When you change the destination, it’s going to shoot into space. You know that, right?”
“Yeah,” he said.
“Don’t get caught half out the door,” he said.
Crap. He didn’t really need the reminder.
Eddie flipped his headset onto the seat. He was probably about to die. He wondered if somewhere, some Eddie was about to feel inexplicably lonely.
He entered their Earth as the new destination and requested autopilot. Then he pressed enter, ran a step to the door, and dove headfirst into space.
The wind smacked the side of his face. Rosa had her ship ten feet away and a little lower and a little behind his, and for a moment he was flying and saw a sliver of cornstalks pointed at him, pike-like, on the ground below. Then he fell into Rosa’s ship, landing hard on all sorts of unyielding surfaces. He grabbed hold of a seat but his legs hung out. The air dragged on them, wanting to pull him into the sky, luring him with the promise of flight but the certainty of a fall.
“Oh god,” Rosa said. “Get in, Eddie. Get in, get in.”
He pulled himself forward, biceps straining. When he was in he kicked the door shut, then stood and latched it.
“The Hoosier has landed,” Rosa said, and Eddie could hear her smile.
“He’s in?” Reg said, faint through her headset.
“Affirmative,” Rosa said.
“I can’t believe that worked,” Reg said.
“That was awesome, Eddie!” Eddie shouted. “You are such a stud, Eddie!” He climbed over to sit next to Rosa. He slipped the headset on and grinned at her. She beamed back at him.
“You want me to call you a stud?” Reg said.
“Okay, now it seems creepy.”
He spent a minute just looking at Rosa, watching her pilot the ship. She glanced sideways at him, but he didn’t look away.
“You had the ship positioned just right,” he finally said.
“That was the idea.”
And then she leaned over and kissed him. He put a hand on her back, felt her spine curve under his palm, and returned her kiss. In the corner of his eye he could see his craft shooting off into the upper atmosphere.
“You ready to jump?” Reg said in their headsets.
They didn’t answer. Their lips were busy.
“Hey,” he said. “You two okay in there?”
“Mm-hmm,” Rosa said.
“What am I hearing?” Reg demanded. “Are you kissing? Damn it, we have two more ships to scuttle.”
“In the movies, romantic scenes have a better sound track,” Eddie said. It came out a little muffled, because she was still attached to his lower lip.
“Yeah,” she said. “Hey, Reg, you got a violin on board?” Her eyes sparkled.
“Damn it,” Reg said, and then he was reduced to sputtering.
“You want to jump?” Eddie said.
“No,” she said. He reached over and unsnapped her harness, and she unsnapped his.
“Eddie, would you go first?”
He shook his head. “No.”
She looked surprised. “I thought maybe you could help pull me into the craft.”
“That’s not our best option,” he said, pointing toward the ground. Security forces were scrambling on the tarmac. They seemed to have figured out that the three were systematically removing the spacecraft from their control. And they were brandishing some sort of weaponry.
“They won’t fire at the first one to jump. Their reactions won’t be fast enough. They’ll shoot at the second one out.”
“Oh,” she said. “Going first sounds okay.” She smiled at him. One thing he knew was that Rosa Hayashi had a great smile, and that was a fact.
“Rosa’s going first,” he said into the headset. “Remember there will be two of us.”
“Rosa, don’t hesitate or Eddie will lose his chance,” Reg said. “There’s two of you jumping, but there won’t be more time to make the jump. You understand?”
She nodded seriously, even though he couldn’t see her, and angled her purse strap across her chest.
“You’re bringing your purse?” Eddie said. “We’re jumping out of spacecraft here.” She shrugged. “That’s crazy, Rosa. Just leave it. You can replace your library card later.”
“I’m still having my period, you knucklehead. If I survive, I’ll need my accessories.”
“Audio’s on,” Reg barked.
“Oh. That … process … doesn’t have, like, an emergency off button?” She stared at him. “I mean, even escalators have those.” Eddie shrugged. “Seems like a design flaw.”
Rosa swooped the craft back around and lined up with a cornfield.
“Taking headsets off,” she said.
“Thank God,” Reg said. “As soon as we’re over that pig farm, we’re good to go.”
Rosa tapped in the new destination, but didn’t press enter. She got into position by the door and gave Eddie a long look. He knew she didn’t want to jump. He figured her odds of landing safely at fifty-fifty; she probably calculated them lower. And the longer she thought about it, the worse it would get. His odds of even getting a chance to jump were slim.
And Eddie figured that calculation showed him for a fool, because this was Rosa Hayashi. She slid the hatch door open, steadied herself against the wind, then flung herself out of the craft.
She did it within a second—she wasn’t going to hurt Eddie’s chances. If he didn’t make it, it would be his own fault.
Eddie pressed enter on the control panel and flung himself out after her. He didn’t get a good visual until he was already airborne—Rosa hadn’t jumped far enough to stick her landing. She was hanging out the side, holding on to the rubber door seal with her fingers, her body flying alongside the craft, buffeted by the wind, her bag bouncing off her hip. She had no hope of pulling herself in, and that was if nothing disturbed her grip.
He was going to hit her as he flew into the open hatch. He was going to break her grip, and there was nothing he could do about it.
Something whistled past him, bouncing off the egg’s side without leaving a mark. The security forces on the ground were shooting at them, but he didn’t care, because he was focused on the inside of Reg’s craft, and what he could grab onto.
He missed Rosa’s body because the slipstream pulled her to the side but hit her arms with his thighs and broke her grip. He grabbed hold of the bottom of the pilot’s seat with his right hand and held on like the world depended on it, because it did.
As Rosa flew loose her purse strap caught on his foot and he jacked his toe up to keep hold of it. She reached up, desperate, and clawed at his jeans hem, and pulled herself up until his legs grabbed her like tongs. They hung out the side of the hatch, his legs around her.
Her fingers scrabbled up his pants, caught the front pocket of his jeans, and then she crawled slowly up him until she could reach the hatch.
Reg finally figured out that they weren’t inside. He tipped slowly up so that they were on top of the craft and flew the egg on its side, letting them ride on top. Eddie couldn’t figure how he’d ever crashed—the guy was a good pilot.
Rosa pulled herself inside and then grabbed Eddie’s wrist and hauled him in. She grabbed the door and began to heave it shut, and Eddie put his hand over hers so they would do it together.
Then Reg tipped the egg back upright, and they nearly tumbled out.
“Jeez, Reg!” Eddie shouted. “What even the heck?”
They slammed the hatch shut and locked it down hard.
“Here comes the hard part,” Reg said.
“Yeah?” Eddie said, his hands on Rosa’s waist, lifting her over the back of the pilot’s seat so she could sit beside Reg. “Says the man who didn’t just jump—twice.”
“Nope,” Reg acknowledged. “We need to eject someplace soft when we scuttle the last egg. I’ve been thinking about it—the softest thing around is the mud at that pig farm.”
“No,” Rosa said.
“We’ll …”
“No,” she repeated. “I am not exiting a spacecraft in flight again, ever. And no way am I going to jump out of a moving craft into pig slop.”
“It’s not slop,” Eddie said. “Slop is food.”
“Can it, farm boy,” Rosa said. “I’m saying, why scuttle the last egg? If we can figure out how to refuel it and pick up Trev, we could just go home.”
They stared at her and then at each other. Because that was a good idea.