ERIC WAS ALSO THE FIRST TO START PLAYING ALONG. “SURE,” HE MURMURED slowly, in his best fake-happy voice. “I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to, you know, listen to Anton for a few minutes, Gills.”
“And then you can go see your father,” Anton added.
That got my attention. “Did you manage to recruit him, too?”
Anton cleared his throat, then pasted his smile back on. “What I did was try my best to explain things to him. Up here, away from all the distractions on Earth.”
Away from all the escape routes, he meant.
“I will say, he was incredibly impressed to see everything we’ve created up here. Truly stunned.”
I didn’t like the sound of that. “I want to see him now. First. Is he okay?”
Nate made a face. “Well . . .”
I glared at Anton. What had he done to my father?
“He’s fine!” Anton said quickly. I must have looked panicked. “He’s . . . well, let’s just say he doesn’t have a future in aeronautics.”
“He hasn’t stopped throwing up since he woke up,” Nate added.
Howard shook his head. “He would have been kicked out of the space program for that. Not being able to tolerate weightlessness is an automatic cause for grounding.” He turned to me. “Does he have a problem with his inner ear?”
I bristled. I didn’t know. And it wasn’t like Dad had asked to come to space, either. “Where is he?”
“I’ve been weaning him in the centrifuge rings,” Anton explained. “He seems to do a little bit better in there. But actually, last I checked, I think he moved to the observation cupola to watch your approach.”
I couldn’t believe it. When I’d been staring out at Infinity Base, he’d been staring back. I’d spent the last day worrying about what they might do to him up here, and he’d spent it knowing we were walking into a trap.
The world narrowed to a single point. “I’m not doing anything until I see my father.”
“Gillian . . . ,” Nate said, his tone one of warning.
“No problem,” Anton announced. “You’ve come such a long way. Of course you want to see your dad.” He spread his arms wide. “And no one is in any rush here, after all. You aren’t going anywhere.”
His words were even creepier the second time around. I swallowed. We’d see about that once we had my father.
Anton smirked, as if he could read my mind. “I may not be able to open the hatch to Underberg’s ship, but I can prevent him from releasing the docking lock. He’ll be sticking around Infinity Base for the time being.”
I tried to keep the disappointment from showing on my face. We could tackle getting the rocket ships loose later. Dad came first.
Anton motioned us toward the far exit, which stood open. “I think just Eric and Gillian to start. I’m sure Howard and Savannah would like to catch up with Nate. Plus, it’ll be easier to keep my eyes on just the two of you.” His tone was light and friendly, but we all knew debate was not an option. Savannah nodded at me and drifted closer to Nate. I didn’t know what they’d discuss once we were gone. I wasn’t sure they could even talk freely in here. This whole place was probably bugged. With one last look at the three of them, I floated after Eric and Anton in the passageway.
A long corridor connected the cylinders, with view ports at regular intervals showing glimpses of solar arrays and space, and hatches along its length, leading like a series of train cars into each chamber.
As we came closer to the far end of the station, I heard the hum of whatever motor turned the rings.
“Each ring turns at a rate of one and a half rotations per minute, or one point five rpm.” Anton pointed at the smallest ring, turning just beyond the edge of the stem. “As each ring has a larger diameter, the artificial gravity within them is stronger the larger they get. This one is about a sixth of Earth’s gravity, similar to the moon. We call it the bounce house.”
I didn’t want the tour. I just wanted Dad. I rushed through the corridor until we reached the final hatch.
“This is the observation cupola,” Anton said, still acting like our official tour guide. I couldn’t tell how much of his attitude was fake, and it creeped me out. “It’s a bit of a boondoggle. There’s really no practical purpose for so much wasted space. Not to mention the astronomical cost and trouble of installing wide-set glass portals. It wasn’t in Underberg’s original design. I’m sure he would agree with me that it’s a weak spot on the station. But Elana wouldn’t hear of it any other way. She didn’t want a space station without a view, as she said. . . .”
I stopped listening and pulled the lever. The door opened with its usual pop and whoosh, and I floated through without another word.
I was surrounded by the universe. Stars—hundreds of thousands of stars, as far as the eye could see. More than I’d ever seen at night, even far out in the country. More than any planetarium. And unlike on Earth, the stars didn’t twinkle. They were just sharp points of light. I could detect the bright, crowded curve of the Milky Way, the faint glow of reddish purple near the horizon of the hazy blue Earth, and brilliant white and pale-colored stars shining through it all. Huge glass panels arced over my head, the banded metal frames hardly breaking the view. At the very edges lay the rotating grayish curves of the centrifuge rings, and the occasional reception dish, but most of the room was filled with the vastness of space itself.
But I only spared a moment for the view Elana Mero had considered so very important. I didn’t even care about the stars. Because in the middle of it all sat my father, on a soft sort of platform jutting out from the wall. His back was straight and he, too, was staring out into the blackness beyond. He was wearing the same soft, dark pajamas as Nate and Anton.
“Dad!” I shouted.
He turned, slowly, and looked back at me. “Gillian!”
I shoved off the threshold and went flying toward him. He seemed to be belted in but he caught me as I came whooshing past, folding me into his lap like I was no bigger than a baby. I threw my arms around him and buried my face in his chest.
“Dad. Dad. Dad.” My eyes got blurry with tears that didn’t fall in microgravity, no matter how hard I blinked. His hand was in my hair, and he was holding me so tight I couldn’t breathe and didn’t care. “We got you. We got you.”
“Shhhh,” he said. “Shhhh, it’s okay.”
And, for a single second, it was.
I lifted my head to look at my father, and realized my tears were still clouding my vision. Crying didn’t work in space. I reached up to wipe the bubble of water from my lashes.
Distantly, I saw Eric floating through the hatch to join us. He piled into the hug, and I was grateful for the weightlessness, as we all held on tight, three bodies with our own special gravity, pulling us into one great mass.
“You’re here. You’re both here? And you’re all right?”
“We’re great, Dad,” said Eric, his voice muffled from being pressed up against us. “We’re great.”
“We found you.”
“What happened here, Eric?” Dad touched the cut on his eyebrow.
“What do you think?” I asked. “Wild times in zero g.”
Dad chuckled, stroked my brother’s hair, squeezed me tighter, rubbed my back, and squeezed us all again. Then he held us both at arm’s length, bobbing before him like a pair of twin satellites, and studied us. “I can’t believe you came to outer space for me.”
I came in again for another hug. “Believe it, Dad. I love you. To the moon and back.”
It was the back part I was worried about.
But there was plenty of time for that. After all, Anton was right; there was no rush. I’d come half a million miles for this moment, and even if we were caught in another trap, this time we were here together.
Dad and Eric and I just sat there for a several minutes, holding each other and looking out over the cosmos. I wondered if these windows were bad for those cosmic rays Anton and Savannah had been talking about.
I turned my head to see if Anton was watching us from the door, but he seemed to have gone. Probably back to the others, to continue with his recruitment efforts. Or maybe to figure out how to get to Dr. Underberg.
I sat up. “Dad, what are we going to do?”
Dad sighed and stared beyond me into the blackness. “I’m not sure yet. Anton—well, you know what Anton thinks, right? He’s determined to give us another chance.” Dad’s mouth twisted on the words, as if they were sour.
I could only imagine what my father thought about joining a massive conspiracy. They clearly didn’t know him at all, if they thought he might.
“Can he hear us?” I asked.
Dad kept his voice low. “I don’t know. His equipment would have to be very good, with all the sounds of the machinery and life-support systems. But I think if he wanted to listen, he could have just stayed here. It’s not like we could have kicked him out.”
No. We didn’t have a choice about anything on Infinity Base, and Anton knew it.
“And I’ve advised Nate to play along.” At the look on my face, he added, “We have to learn more about what we’re up against, and what the Shepherds really want. From us, from Underberg, all of it.”
“Nate’s been doing a great job,” Eric said. “He really scared me for a while.”
I nodded. “I thought he’d been brainwashed at first.”
Dad shook his head. “You shouldn’t have come, Gillian. This isn’t like Omega City—”
“But Dad—” I broke in. “We couldn’t leave you here.”
“And it wasn’t like we were safe back on Earth,” Eric pointed out under his breath. “The Shepherds would have found us. They already had Mom and Dani.”
“Right,” Dad said slowly. “Where is your mother?”
I looked down at my knees, folded up under the stretchy straps holding us to the platform.
“She was taken,” Eric said. “When we were trying to launch the rocket ship. We hid, like she asked us to.”
I toyed with the flaps on my utility suit. Yeah, and then, instead of going after her, we’d blasted off to save Dad and Nate. “But Dani said they’d be okay . . . sort of. When they were captured.”
“So the Shepherds took both your mom and Dani Alcestis?” Dad asked. “Explain to me about Dani? Anton says she thinks she’s Dr. Underberg’s daughter, and has turned against the Shepherds to align herself with Underberg.”
“He told you all that?”
“He doesn’t have much of a filter. He’s a purist. A bit like Howard, actually.”
I wrinkled my nose. “He’s nothing like Howard.”
“I meant that he thinks what he thinks and is baffled by the idea that anyone could hear his arguments and not agree. He’s not afraid to lay all his cards on the table. What he wants from us, what he wants for the world, even how he disagrees with his boss, Elana. If both he and Dani are having doubts about the Shepherds’ goals, that might work in our favor.”
“I don’t know if Dani really has turned against the Shepherds,” I said. “She seems to agree with everything they do, except she doesn’t want them to kill her father. Or us. She was the one who helped us escape.”
“What makes her think she’s Underberg’s daughter?” Dad asked. “I never ran across any mention of a family in all my Underberg research.”
“But you didn’t ask the Shepherds,” I said. “To be fair.” Dad hadn’t even figured out that Underberg had been a Shepherd.
Dad chuckled at that. “You’re going to end up a better researcher than I am.”
“Believe it, Dad,” said Eric. “They’ve been communicating through radio codes for months. We saw all these old photo albums in her house with pictures of Underberg and her mother. Dr. Underberg even made the key to his spaceship based on a geometrical puzzle he and her mom used to write love letters to each other.”
“Now that I have to see.” His eyes shone as he looked down at me. I could almost picture a follow-up to his infamous biography. Underberg: The Shepherd Years.
That was, if we ever saw home again.
“Anton scares me,” I said.
“Me too, kiddo. He’s a true believer in the Shepherd cause. But we can use that to our benefit.”
“How?”
“True believers want nothing more than for other people to believe what they do.”
“Sound familiar, Gills?” Eric drawled.
“Shut up,” I said. “This is different. This isn’t about helping people see hidden facts. It’s about the way he wants the world to be.” It was what the Shepherds had been raised to believe—there was no right except what got them what they wanted, no wrong but what wrecked their plans. It was hard to fight against something like that, or trust that even the seemingly good things they wanted—like this beautiful space station—were for the right reasons.
After all, hadn’t Elana said she’d destroy Infinity Base if it would protect her interests at Guidant?
“Gillian’s right.” Dad nodded solemnly. “And we’re lucky that Anton not only believes what he does, but that he also thinks we’re valuable to that system. In his opinion, he’s giving us one last chance to make the right choice. To become Shepherds.”
I looked through the glass. There, at the very edges, I could see a sliver of Earth.
Back on the surface, I’d aligned myself with Dani, because as weird and prickly as she was, she was also better than being captured by the Shepherds. Here, Dad wanted me to play along with Anton Everett, who might be verifiably insane, because the alternative was . . . what? Getting frozen? Getting killed? Getting shot out of an air lock into the vacuum of space?
“But where does it end?” Eric asked. “If we say we’re on his side, if we make him believe it, will he take us back to Earth? Will they let Mom go?”
“I don’t know the answer to that,” Dad said. “But I’ve been racking my brain ever since I woke up here, and I can’t think of any other option. Up here, we’re at his mercy. If we can get back to Earth, we might stand a better chance.”
Eric made a face. “Join us or die,” he said in a scary movie voice.
Except this wasn’t a movie. We weren’t Luke Skywalker facing off against Darth Vader. We didn’t have glowing laser swords or magical powers. I wasn’t even a particularly good liar.
“Do you think you can do it, Gillian?” Dad asked. “Play along? At least until we get home?”
Where did that leave Dr. Underberg? “I don’t know. The Shepherds have hurt us so much, for so long . . . are we supposed to say we’ve forgotten all of that?”
“If our lives depend on it?” Eric asked. “Yes. Look at it this way, Gills. You always want to know the truth about everything. Well, the Shepherds are the ones who have it.”
He had a point there. “So we’d say we want to join the Shepherds . . . to finally have all the secrets?”
“Something like that,” Dad said. “It’s not like I’m a scientist.”
“But what about the others?” I asked. “Sav can probably figure out how to lie, but what about Howard?”
“I thought of that,” Dad admitted. “But Nate has a plan there. He believes focusing on the benefits of this space station will be enough to make Howard seem enthusiastic.”
That was for sure.
“And this space station is quite incredible. That’s an objective fact. Anton is dying to show it off to you.”
I could believe that. “You should have seen all his crazy experiments back at Eureka Cove, Dad.”
Eric nodded. “Chimps and bugs and bees . . . I fell into a tank full of flesh-eating beetles!”
“Dead flesh,” I clarified. “He didn’t even get bit.”
“That doesn’t make it okay!” he shot back.
Dad squeezed us both. “I believe it.”
It was so nice to have Dad back. Real Dad, who believed the wild stories and understood when we did the right thing, even if it wasn’t the safest thing in the world. “You don’t know what we’ve been through. What the Shepherds are doing.”
“I’m beginning to get a sense,” he replied. “I just . . . I don’t think I’ve ever dealt with a conspiracy quite this large before. A whole secret space station?” He shook his head. “I can’t imagine the lengths one has to go to, to hide a creation of this magnitude from every government on Earth.”
“From every astronomer, too,” I said. “Dani told us that any time someone uses a Guidant program for their data or their photos—”
“Did you have a nice reunion?” said a voice at our back. We turned to watch Anton floating toward us, his calm smile making me want to adjust the settings on my utility suit to control my chills.
“Very nice,” my father said. “I appreciate the chance to show my children this extraordinary sight.”
Anton’s gaze rose to the stars surrounding us. “It is quite beautiful. I never spend much time here myself. I’m much more interested in the technical side of the base. I can’t wait to show you my experiments up here. I gather from the others you got quite an in-depth view of my work back in Eureka Cove?”
I looked at Eric. He looked at me. Neither of us said anything. We were never going to be able to pull this off.
“Don’t worry, you won’t offend me,” Anton added jovially. “Your friend Savannah has already shared her . . . intense criticism regarding the unfortunate incident with the bees.”
“She—she has?” Oh, no. Were we sunk before we even got started?
“Yes. And she’s not the first. I made a terrible error in judgment there. I’m not afraid to admit when I’m wrong. I just wish I’d realized it sooner.”
“Before you killed all those bees?”
“Before we devoted so many resources to a futile effort,” he said. “It turns out people don’t really care about honeybees. It’s too small. Too subtle. Like global warming. I promise, the next time we make people think the world is ending, it’ll be something big and fiery. Something they can’t possibly ignore.”
Yeah, I definitely needed to turn up the heat on my suit.