HOWARD TURNED OUT TO BE MILDLY BRUISED, AND I HAD A SORE BACKSIDE, but it was my brother who ended up the most injured as a result of his fall. I helped him crawl back to his seat, despite the g-force hindering our movements. He had a nasty-looking gash above one eye, and was dragging his left leg. Of course, we were both dragging. Moving at all was like wading through peanut butter.
Savannah craned her neck to look back at us. “Is anything broken?”
“Is it broken?” Eric asked me.
I felt through his suit, but I had no idea how you could tell. There weren’t any bones or anything sticking through. Thank goodness for small favors.
“I’m not sure.”
“Just once I’d like to get out of here with all my bones intact.”
“Then maybe stay in your seat?” Savannah suggested. “Like you were told?” She turned back, but I heard her muttering under her breath. “Or, you know, not shoot ourselves into outer space. That might have been a good idea.”
“Better get buckled in,” Howard announced. “Looks like Dr. Underberg is accelerating us to a higher orbit.”
“Is that why we aren’t weightless anymore?” Savannah asked. She was already getting her helmet back on.
I turned to Eric, who was struggling to get his arm through his seat belt.
“You okay?”
“I’d better be,” he said through gritted teeth.
“Gillian!” Howard shouted. “Back in your seat.”
Eric snapped his belt closed, wincing a bit. “I’ll be okay. Go get buckled in.”
Slowly and treacherously, I pulled myself over to my seat. Every inch was a marathon, and I felt like I was moving my body through maple syrup. The machinery around us was vibrating again, hinges and drawer handles rattling. I clamped my jaw shut to keep my teeth from chattering as I hauled myself into the foam seat, arranged my legs and arms inside the depressions, and yanked my helmet back on. I grabbed for the seat belt and buckled my body in tight.
“Okay, Gillian?” Howard asked.
I swallowed. No. I’d been flying, and then I crashed. Hard. Eric looked like he might need stitches. I had no idea what was happening outside our little spacecraft, and Dr. Underberg didn’t look like he was in the mood to explain. Above us, the screen showed flashes of undecipherable data.
“What’s going on out there?” I asked instead.
“We’re . . . going fast,” Howard said. “Very fast.”
“Why?” Savannah asked.
“I think so we can catch up with Dr. Underberg. I think.”
Great, so Howard didn’t know, either.
“Doing okay, Eric?” Savannah asked.
“Yeah,” he mumbled. “I mean, blood is kind of dripping into my eye and I can’t wipe it off because of the helmet . . . but I guess that’s my fault for getting out of my seat.”
“I hope you didn’t break anything,” Savannah said. “I remember how much that hurt when I broke my arm in Omega City.”
“Yeah,” said Howard. “But here he’s weightless.”
“What difference does that make?”
“He won’t have to walk on it if it is broken.”
“I didn’t have to walk on my arm.”
I sighed. The shaking and rattling—and bickering—went on for another half an hour, then began to smooth out. I stopped feeling like I was about to turn into a pancake.
“Are we there yet?” Eric asked.
“We’re in a higher orbit,” said Howard.
Dr. Underberg appeared on-screen again. “Hold for correction burn. Please stay seated this time.” The screen switched back to data. I wondered if Dr. Underberg could hear us. If he even cared.
More acceleration, this time in short bursts. No one was talking much anymore. I began to feel tired. What time was it back home? How long had we been in space?
Should I have gone to the bathroom earlier, when I had the chance? I remembered what Howard said about not being able to tell when we had to go because of the weightlessness.
Just when I thought I couldn’t take it anymore, the screen overhead switched again to an external view, and there, outlined by the blackness of the sky and lit by earthshine, was the Rocketship Knowledge. Or what was left of it.
“Where’s the rest?” I cried, horrified.
“Huh?” said Howard. “What do you mean? It’s intact.”
Barely! Even from this distance, I could see the scrapes in its paint across its surface, and there was also a large patch near the bottom that appeared to have been burned almost black. But that wasn’t what concerned me.
“That can’t be Knowledge. I saw it in the silo. It was a hundred feet high.” The ship in front of me was . . . well, it looked like a candle left burning too long. Just a little stub.
“You’re imagining the entire launch apparatus,” Howard said. “We jettison several stages of the rocket during liftoff. Only the top part ends up in space. The rest of it is just for holding fuel to get us there. Think about the space shuttle. It’s just strapped on the side of the big red rocket. We weren’t strapped on the side; we were attached to the top. Be glad we aren’t as small as the Mercury capsules were. They were just a tiny little nose—not even room to stand up.”
“Did that happen to us, too?” I asked. “We’re just a little . . . thing up here?”
“Yes,” he said. “The rest of the rocket fell back to Earth. Probably in the ocean somewhere.”
“Probably,” scoffed Savannah. “Like the oceans don’t have enough pollution without worrying about rocket fuel.”
Knowledge drew slowly and almost imperceptibly closer. Minutes passed, or maybe hours. But nothing seemed to change. Dr. Underberg’s ship moved, achingly slowly, off the screen entirely, leaving nothing but a field of stars. I realized that although we looked like we were just drifting in space, we must be moving at tremendous speeds in order to maintain this weightless feeling, and that Dr. Underberg must be acting with extreme precision to bring our ships into alignment. I held my breath inside the suit.
“You still okay back there, Eric?” Savannah asked, as if I wasn’t sitting next to my brother.
“He’s fine, Sav. Stop freaking out.”
“My leg is actually feeling better,” Eric said. “Thank you for asking, Savannah. It’s nice to know someone cares.” He turned to me and glared.
“I care. I just have other things on my mind. Like how an old man is going to link two spaceships going seventeen thousand miles an hour.”
Just then there was a metallic whirring from the chamber below us, and a few clanks that made my heart leap in my chest.
For a full minute, we didn’t move, waiting for Dr. Underberg to appear on-screen again and tell us when it was okay to get out of our seats. But again, nothing happened.
“Howard?” I asked at last. “Do you see anything? Are we linked up?”
Howard studied the monitors. “It looks like we are. Our systems are still under the control of Knowledge—not just the propulsion system, but life support, communications, even the deployment of our solar arrays . . .” He pressed a button. “And the door is unsealed in the next chamber.”
Savannah sat up. “So we should go?”
“I guess so.”
She yanked off her helmet, unbuckled her belt, and gingerly slid out of her seat, making sure to keep a firm grip on the padding so she didn’t fly away. “Good. Because I think I need to learn how to use that space toilet.”
AFTER THE REST of us had gotten out of our seats and helmets and taken a turn at the lavatory, and I’d found a first-aid kit and cleaned and bandaged the wound above Eric’s eye, we crowded around the hatch linking the two spaceships. It wasn’t any larger than any of the other ports we’d been crawling through, but somehow, this one scared me more. Were the seals to be trusted? Was everything okay over there in Knowledge? Why hadn’t Dr. Underberg contacted us with instructions?
Of course, even back in Omega City, he hadn’t always made a lot of sense, and that was before he spent the better part of the year in outer space. Still, we’d put ourselves in his hands. Underberg was our last, best chance to get to my father and Nate. We had to do this.
Directions for opening the door were printed right there on the side. The locks and levers were even numbered, like you sometimes saw on airplane emergency exits.
Squaring my shoulders, I began the process. I held my breath as I released the latch, steeling myself for the possibility that I’d just opened the door into the vacuum of space, but there was a small, sucking pop, and the door revealed another chamber, just beyond the threshold.
I ducked my head and pushed myself through the portal. The others followed, Eric moving just fine without the stress of having to put weight on his injured leg.
Dr. Underberg’s spaceship was like a mirror image of our own—or, more accurately, a set of before-and-after photos. Where Wisdom was bright and shiny, Knowledge was dented and scratched, its surfaces grimy, its air stale and acrid. It smelled like a dirty locker room. I reminded myself that Wisdom had been recently refurbished by the Shepherds, not to mention that you couldn’t exactly let in fresh air on a spaceship.
“Hello?” I called. “Dr. Underberg?”
There was no answer. I drifted up through the empty, silent chambers toward the command module. Déjà vu. I’d taken this same trip before, back when gravity was an issue and this rocket stood in Omega City. Just like last year, I found him seated in his command chair, slumped and asleep at the controls.
“Dr. Underberg?” I said softly. “We’re here. We’re . . . docked or whatever.”
He shook and looked at me, his eyes bleary. I bit my lip. The man I’d met in Omega City had been old, pale, sickly-looking. The first time I’d seen him, I thought he was dead. But that Dr. Underberg could have run a marathon compared to the person seated before me.
He was a skeleton. A skeleton covered in papery skin. There were sores on the backs of his hands, scabs on his nearly hairless scalp, crust around his ears and eyes and the corners of his mouth. Before I realized what I was doing, I shied away.
“Don’t be afraid, Gillian,” he croaked. “You’ve come all this way to see me.”
I swallowed and looked back at the others, who were smartly keeping their distance near the floor of the chamber.
“Like Dorothy to Oz,” he added dreamily.
Well, he was right that this wasn’t Kansas, but other than that, I didn’t feel much like Dorothy. And I didn’t want to go home, either. Not until everyone was safe.
“Dr. Underberg, we need your help.” Quickly, I explained what was going on with my father and Nate and the Shepherds.
“And from what Dani said, the idea would be to lure you back to Infinity Base to rescue them.”
“Ah.” He gave a creaky nod. “In that goal, they will fail. I cannot return to Infinity Base.” He raised an emaciated hand. “I cannot even leave this chair. These months in microgravity have not been good to my old body. My muscles have degenerated; my bones have broken down. I am a china doll, Gillian Seagret, not a space ranger.”
I shook my head. “But what do we do about Dad and Nate?”
He thought about this for a moment. “Well, you could rescue them.”
“Why would it be any safer for us?”
“It would not be,” said Underberg. “But they are not safe there, either. And if I brought you, I could complete my own mission of destroying the Shepherds’ web of lies, which would also liberate your mother and Dani Alcestis.”
“Your daughter.”
The look he gave me was hard. “Perhaps.”
I blinked in surprise. It was true they’d never met, but they’d been exchanging coded messages for months. If he didn’t think she was his daughter, why did he trust her at all?
“Do you know what’s happening on the base?”
“Yes. I’ve infiltrated their systems to give me regular reports, and that is something the Shepherds are aware of. I am always careful to keep my distance from Infinity Base when they have staff present. This will not be easy. But you are extraordinarily capable children. You have beaten the Shepherds at their own game. Stolen a spaceship out from under their very noses. I know they have been trying for months to take Wisdom from me, to use it to reach me.”
“Dani kept them from doing that.”
“Did she? Did she really? How clever of her.”
He was quiet for a second, and I thought he might fall asleep again. What must it have been like all these months, alone in space? All those years, alone underground? He had no idea how to have a conversation.
His eyes opened again. “It’s good that you have brought me a new ship. As you may have seen, this ship—and I—are both running out of time. I have managed for months to carry on by taking supplies from Infinity Base, but I have reached the end of that road as well.”
Because he couldn’t get up. I gritted my teeth, then dared to reach out to him. His skin felt like crumpled tissue paper beneath my fingers. I was scared to give him more than the briefest, featherlight touch. “Dr. Underberg, it’s time to come home.”
He stared at my hand on his, then lifted his gaze to my face. “So . . . you are Dorothy.”
“No, I’m Gillian!” I didn’t like this at all. He’d grown dreamy, forgetful up here. Or maybe he’d always been like that. It was possible I’d been hoping for too much from Dr. Underberg—I’d expected him to be some sort of wizard who could wave a wand and solve all our problems. But I still needed him to try. We didn’t have magic slippers or good witches that could save us.
“We can go home,” I promised. “But first we have to save my dad and Nate. How do we get to Infinity Base?”
Thankfully, he shook off his reverie and focused again. “It will take fourteen hours.”
“Fourteen!” That was practically an entire day!
“It’s very distant.”
“But I thought when you orbit, you go around the Earth every hour and a half.”
“Yes, but we cannot fly in a straight line to Infinity Base. We must slowly and carefully adjust the speed and trajectory of our orbit so as not to fall out or use too much energy as we match theirs.” Dr. Underberg held up his hands, with two fingers making slightly different sized circles in the air. “Plus, we need to approach during their sleep schedule. Attempting to dock at the station while Shepherds are on board . . .” Dr. Underberg shook his head. “It may be impossible.” He turned to his control panel. “And it may be playing right into their hands.”
I frowned and looked back at the others, who were huddled around the hatch in the floor, watching with worried expressions. “So what do we do?”
“Now?” Dr. Underberg had already started plotting a course for the two ships. “I recommend you sleep. As much as you can. I have a feeling it has not been much the past few days. You will need your rest if you are to infiltrate Infinity Base.” He waved me off.
“Do you need anything?” I asked. “Supplies from Wisdom? A . . . change of clothes?” My nose wrinkled of its own accord.
He cast me a sidelong glance. “I’m glad you have come, Gillian. Better late than never.”
He meant because we didn’t come with him, back when we were all in Omega City. The idea had sounded crazy then. Seeing what had become of him, it still seemed nuts. On the other hand, here I was anyway. Here we all were, and in more danger than ever.
I floated back to the others, who were more than happy to retreat into the cleaner, sweeter-smelling Wisdom. Howard practically hummed with excitement as he showed us how to ready the sleeping quarters, which were essentially thin, silky sleeping bags Velcroed vertically to the wall to keep us from floating away. We all had another snack, took one more trip to the bathroom, then zipped ourselves in. I looked around at the others, hanging up around the outside of the chamber.
“We look like cocoons,” I said.
“Great,” said Eric. “Now I’ll never get to sleep.”
“I don’t know how I’ll be able to sleep, either,” said Savannah. “I’m in outer space.”
“Right?” Howard agreed happily as he pulled his eye mask up on his forehead.
I thought about Dr. Underberg, trapped in his chair in the next room. He looked like he was dying. And if something happened to him, I put our chances at making it out of here at precisely zero.
Now I doubted I’d be able to sleep, either.