ANTON PEEKED IN THE AIR LOCK AND TURNED TO ME. “WELL, WHATEVER you said to him seems to have worked, Gillian. He’s doing what I asked.”
Oh, no. I felt sick to my stomach. What had I done?
“Care to introduce us?”
I looked at my father. “Dad has to come, too,” I said. I didn’t know what Anton had planned, but I hoped having backup would help.
“Of course,” said Anton. “Sam knows more about this old man than anyone.”
I looked at the others. Eric’s and Savannah’s faces were stricken with fear. Even Howard appeared wide-eyed and worried. Nate was rubbing his sleeve against his arm, clearly hoping to smudge Howard’s writing in case Anton decided to inspect.
I took a deep, shuddering breath. What did play along mean to Dr. Underberg? What was I about to walk into?
The three of us floated back into Underberg’s ship. As the sour, stale smell surrounded us, both Dad and Anton wrinkled their noses.
“I told you this place was falling to pieces,” Anton said with a sniff.
I floated up through the lower chamber and into the command center, with Dad right behind me and Anton at his heels.
Dr. Underberg was staring down at his mess of screens, but his bald, emaciated head creaked upward and turned jerkily in our direction.
“Dr. Underberg, I presume?” Dad said, a smile playing across his lips.
“Dr. Seagret,” Dr. Underberg stated, nodding, He turned his bleary gaze on Anton. “Shepherd.”
“Anton Everett,” Anton said, floating forward with his hand outstretched. “It’s an honor to meet you, sir.”
Dr. Underberg grunted, and didn’t raise his hand. “Are you here to kill me?”
“No, sir. I think there’s been a misunderstanding,”
“I understand everything, young man,” he said. “Especially all the things you were so good as to shout through my door. My ship’s broken. I’m broken. And you weren’t calling me sir then, were you? No, you were far more informal.”
Anton had the decency to look contrite. “What do you want me to call you?”
“I don’t want to speak to you at all.”
“Then why did you open the door?” Anton asked. He looked at me accusingly, but I knew Dr. Underberg couldn’t have gotten our code. Or if he had, he sure had a strange idea about what it meant to play along.
“Because you were attacking a little girl.”
My eyes began to sting again. Elana had been right. Dr. Underberg would risk himself to save us.
“I wasn’t going to hurt her. I don’t want to hurt any of you. I believe you are too valuable to our cause.”
“And what is your cause now, Shepherd?”
“What it’s always been. Take humanity to the stars. We’ve built your space station. We’ve spent years developing species here and on Earth for long-term space habitation and travel.”
“And you keep it all a secret from the very people you claim to be trying to help.”
I looked at Dad, who was staring in silent wonderment, taking it all in.
“People aren’t ready,” Anton insisted. “They weren’t ready for Omega City then, they aren’t ready for Infinity Base now. No one believes in what we do because they don’t want to.” He gestured to my father. “Do you know why it was easy to destroy this man’s reputation? Because people would rather believe that people like us are crackpots than that the very survival of the human race is at risk.”
I gasped. “That’s not true! You never even give them a chance. Something like this space station? People would be in awe of it.”
“And they will be,” Anton said. “When the time is right.”
“When will that be?” my father asked. “When the Shepherds manufacture some crisis that Guidant can profit from?”
Anton let out a bark of laughter. “You have it backward. Everything Guidant does is so that the Shepherds can work on their real goals.”
“Not according to Elana,” I said. “She told me that Shepherd goals are old-fashioned, and that Guidant is all that really matters.”
“Well, Guidant is her pet project,” said Anton, smugly placid. “And it’s been very profitable. I can’t argue with that. Without Guidant, we would never have had the money to build this space station. But Elana knows where the real priority lies. With our plans. With Infinity Base.”
Elana didn’t care about Infinity Base. She’d said so herself. And I was about to tell Anton that when I noticed that Dr. Underberg had passed out again.
I shook my head sadly and gestured to him. “He keeps doing that,” I said. “Is he dying?”
Anton pressed his fingers to the side of Dr. Underberg’s neck, checking his pulse. “He’s old,” he said. “And microgravity is incredibly hard on human bodies in long periods, even if you do exercises to try to keep muscle tone. Radiation, bone density loss—and I have no idea what kind of physical shape he was in before he blasted off into space.”
“You should let him rest,” Dad suggested. “It’s not like he’s going anywhere.”
Anton shrugged. “I suppose so. Elana really wants me to get this wrapped up, though, one way or another.”
One way or another? I must have looked even more terrified, as Dad gave me a reassuring nod.
“He does this a lot,” I said. “Fall asleep. I’m sure he’ll be ready to talk some more in an hour or two.”
Anton sighed. “In an hour or two could I count on getting more support from you? You’re acting like I’m the enemy when what I’m really trying to do is save his life. Save all of you.”
I thought about what Nate had said, how Anton would talk for hours about Infinity Base. Like Howard.
“Well, maybe it’s hard to convince me because I don’t have a sense of what you’re trying to do. Maybe it’s hard to convince the world of all the good you’re doing because all the Shepherds insist on keeping your work a secret. We can hardly support you if we don’t know what you’re doing.”
Anton appeared to consider this, while behind him, Dad gave me a thumbs-up and an impressed smile. I breathed out heavily. I could do this. As long as I wasn’t lying.
“Okay, Gillian,” said Anton. “We’ll let the old man sleep, and I’ll show you some of my favorite parts of this station.”
I looked at Dad, who held up his hands. “I’ve seen it.”
“Can I bring the others?” I asked.
“Of course!” Anton said brightly. “The centrifugal rings are one of a kind. We’re really proud of them.”
But they’d kept them a secret from the whole world. Curious. I couldn’t imagine anyone making something so amazing and then just keeping it a secret. Dr. Underberg had with Omega City, but he hadn’t been given the choice. If people knew what the Shepherds had created up here, they would be admired all over the world. But instead they kept it a secret, and let Guidant distract us with stories of satellites and self-driving cars, just so they could choose what the rest of humanity was ready to see and hear.
It made no sense. I could pretend to be impressed by the Shepherds, but there was no way I’d ever agree with their beliefs.
“I think . . . I’d like that,” I said warily. “Let’s go do it now.”
Together, we eased back through the portals that led out of the ship. As I left Knowledge’s command center, I gave one last look to my father, who floated by Dr. Underberg’s chair. And I may have been wrong, but for a second, I could have sworn the old man’s eyes were open.
ONCE AGAIN, WE were in the long corridor that led underneath the cylindrical stem modules of Infinity Base. Anton led the way, with Howard close behind, peppering him with questions about the workings of the station. He’d clearly taken Nate’s advice to heart. Or maybe he was just being his usual self.
I followed alongside Savannah, trying to find a way to communicate privately to her that Dr. Underberg and my dad were back on the ship, plotting . . . something. Eric and Nate were farther behind us, playing some kind of game on the walls and ceiling that looked like touch football, if everyone on the team were Spider-Man. They almost didn’t look like prisoners.
Anton kept up a steady lecture. He managed to put even Howard’s factoids to shame. “Microgravity is one of the most persistent problems with long-term space travel. It’s our main area of research here on Infinity Base. How to keep people healthy and hearty for long space trips.”
I crossed my arms, which sent me pitching into the wall. “I know. I saw the skeletons of your chimpanzee test subjects.” They’d been picked clean by tanks of beetles.
“Oh, that’s right,” Anton said offhandedly. “You saw everything on Eureka Cove. Of course, that was just the beta testing. We have the next level up on Infinity Base. Here, we’re trying to prepare for the time when humans will live in space, either permanently, or during long-term travel to colonize other planets. Our dream is that, one day, Infinity Base will be the launch point for humanity’s journey to a million stars.”
Howard’s eyes were so wide now, I was surprised they didn’t pop out of his head. I had to admit, it sounded really nice, until you remembered how their space station was built on a pack of lies.
“So, the stuff we saw on the island. The chimps, and the sheep, and those . . . moths? They’re tests?” Savannah asked.
“We breed species to be most efficient for human needs during space living. Sheep provide wool, milk, and even meat, but we need to keep them compact to fit in our habitats. Those moths spin silk in their larval form, then the adult form is an excellent source of protein.”
“Eww,” said Eric.
“And the chimps stand in for human test subjects. We study their bone density loss, the effects of space radiation on their offspring, and of course, the effects of long-term hypothermic torpor on their brain function.”
“Eww,” said Savannah.
Nate stopped playing for a second. “Wait, I have brain damage?”
“Most human studies of hypothermic torpor are done on people who have already experienced brain damage,” Anton explained. “Hospitals use brain cooling to help drowning or suffocation victims minimize the damage that oxygen deprivation has already done to their brains. But there isn’t a lot of data as to what it can do to normal brains.”
“You’re assuming Nate has a normal brain,” said Eric.
“Hey!” said Nate, and shoved him lightly, though it was enough to send Eric tumbling head over heels down the hall.
“The good news is that our research on chimps seems to show that there’s no permanent damage, even if they are kept in torpor for days or even weeks. They might have some temporary motor-skills issues when they first wake up, though. They may be uneasy walking, or a bit clumsier than usual.”
“Ah, I don’t even have that!” Nate proclaimed as Eric barreled into him from behind and the two of them went crashing into another wall.
Savannah clung to the floor. “Guys. Guys! We don’t all have our space legs.”
As soon as we’d all settled down, Anton stopped at a wide hatch some distance from the end of the corridor. “We’ll all have to be quick getting inside here. There’s a twenty-second window during each rotation. Oh, and go feetfirst.”
“Why?” Savannah asked.
“You’ll see in a minute.” He looked at the indicator lights along the wall and pressed a button. The hatch opened wide with its usual pop. “Okay, go!”
We pulled ourselves through the hatch and found ourselves at a funnel-shaped end of a long tunnel about the width of a car. There were rungs set in one side, I assumed to help us pull ourselves along. Anton turned his feet in the direction of the end of the tunnel and started pulling himself down, end over end.
I floated forward a foot or two, watching him curiously. “What are you doing?”
But I guess I’d pushed myself harder than I thought, as I bumped into Anton’s shoulder with my knee. He grabbed me harshly and slid me in the same direction as him.
“I said, feetfirst!”
“Okay!” I grabbed on to the rungs and was shocked to find myself still sliding downward. When I let go again, the rungs started moving up past my hands, like I was slowly sinking to the bottom of a swimming pool. I grabbed on to a rung and hung on.
Gravity had returned.
“This is so cool!” Eric cried as he slid past me on the far wall of the tunnel.
“Grab on to something! It only gets stronger as we go down!” Anton called down to him.
Because all of a sudden I could tell which way was down.
We weren’t at the end of a tunnel. We were at the top of one. We were inside one of the huge spokes connecting the rings to the rest of the station. I stopped descending for a moment and closed my eyes, trying to see if I could feel the rotation, but then Savannah bumped into me from above.
Quickly, we maneuvered down the rungs, and eventually I even had to use my hands and feet and climb down like a ladder. I felt a little dizzy and disoriented as the pressure on my hands and feet grew stronger. I was getting heavier.
At last, we reached the floor. I hopped down the last few rungs and alighted a foot or two farther than I’d intended. So there was gravity, but not as much as normal. We were standing in a small, bare chamber with a door set in one end.
I bent my legs and did a tiny practice hop. At least, it was supposed to be tiny. Instead of a few inches, I moved a foot and a half into the air, then dropped lightly back down. My hands shot out toward the rungs to steady myself. It felt weird and dreamlike, like falling through water or in slow motion.
When we’d all reached the ground, Anton crossed to the door. “This ring is my baby,” he said, with obvious pride. “All my best work is in here.”
His best work? I made a face. We’d already seen the bees. Did I really want to know what lay beyond that door?
With a flourish, he opened the hatch and stepped aside to let us through.