In the end, Tim was the last up. He waited till the suspended animation chamber was empty and one of the service-bots had delivered him clothes from the fabricator. They were identical copies of the jeans, T-shirt and nylon jacket the medical bots had cut away from him after the explosion.
The door opened automatically as he approached and he found himself in a familiar circular corridor. Even though he’d never actually set foot in the ship before, he knew his way around from watching the others through the walrus mask. To his left was a bathroom and the crew quarters, to his right the recreation room, galley and sick bay. Directly opposite, visible through the open mesh of the ship’s central spine, was the bridge.
Guessing the others were there, he made his way round, being careful to use the hand grips and railing. Although he’d missed full weightlessness, even at a quarter normal gravity each step made him feel like Superman.
He reached the bridge and steadied himself against the console where Albert’s memory bulb was plugged. The place was deserted.
Where is everyone?
There were a pair of gravity slippers pegged to the mesh around the spine and a hand drawn arrow pointing up beside them. He slipped them on, took a jump-block up to the observation deck and touched down lightly, feeling the slippers bind with the deck. The room had a domed ceiling and a circle of reclining seats around the perimeter, but it too was empty.
‘Surprise!’
The others leapt from behind the seats, showering him with confetti, greeting him with cheers, back slaps and hugs. Was he all right? How did he feel? He looked great.
Coral hugged him. Hard.
‘Whoa, mind the ribs!’
‘You had me so worried,’ she said. ‘The state of you when we picked you up! If it hadn’t been for the ship and Albert ...’ Her voice trailed off.
It was Alkemy’s turn next. Another long hug.
‘Thanks for what you did,’ he said. ‘Pushing me over. Putting out the flames. I remember that bit. I thought I was a goner.’
‘I owe you,’ she said. You save me from the Sentinel.’
They hugged again, then Norman slapped his shoulder.
‘Radical haircut, man,’ he said, batting aside a cleany-crawly racing to vacuum up the confetti.
Tim ran a hand over the fuzz where his hair had been burned away. ‘It’ll grow back.’
Ludokrus produced a huge cake and proceeded to cut it into slices.
‘Where are we?’ Tim asked, looking up at the domed ceiling. Norman hit a button and shutters slid back to reveal a distant blue-green planet wreathed in wisps of cloud. For a moment, he thought they were heading back to Earth. Then he noticed sunlight glinting off the ring around it. A ring like the rings around Saturn.
‘Approaching Eltheria,’ Ludokrus said, handing him a paper plate containing a multi-layered slice of chocolate cake. ‘But that is the wrong question.’
‘What’s the right one?’
‘When are we?’
‘Oh. Right. So ...?’
Alkemy answered before her brother could speak. She seized Tim’s free hand, almost making him drop the plate. ‘Eight-and-one-half weeks after we leave home!’
‘After you left home?’ It took a moment to register. ‘So ... it worked then? Albert’s time-injection idea?’
She danced him round the deck in one-quarter gravity amidst the still-falling confetti and the frantic cleany-crawlies. ‘Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes!’
Coral and Norman grinned, relief on both their faces.
‘So that means when we go back––?’
‘We’ll only have been away six weeks!’ Coral finished for him and joined the dance.
‘Woo hoo!’ Norman did a low-gravity back flip.
‘OK for you,’ Ludokrus said, ‘but we are late. Supposed to be away only be six week. Albert make mistake.’
‘A rounding error in the vector tables.’ Albert’s voice came over the ship’s speakers. ‘I’ve already apologised for that.’
‘Don’t be too hard on him,’ Coral told Ludokrus. ‘After all, two-and-a-half weeks late is better than two-and-a-half decades late.’
* * *
Knock Knock Who’s There? approached from an angle slightly above the plane of the solar system, giving them a good view of their home planet, its sun and sister planets. At the centre lay Tetzul, Eltheria’s true sun, surrounded by four inner planets – Elq, Eltheria, Stave and Tolky. A broad gap was followed by an equally broad asteroid field – known colloquially as Smash Circle – then three other planets – Orf, Satis and Nol – the first two were gas giants like Jupiter, the last a barren rock that may once have been a deep-space asteroid captured aeons ago by Tetzul’s gravitational field.
A second sun, known as Tena, lay at an oblique angle to the system, and although it looked almost as big as Tetzul, it burned with a copper-red tinge and had a smudged and indistinct outline. Ludokrus explained it was actually in a nearby system. A red giant – a star that had burned up its core hydrogen supply and was now consuming its shell, causing it to expand massively and increase in brightness ten thousand times.
‘Can you see it from Eltheria?’ Coral asked.
‘Most time, yes. But not so bright as Tetzul.’
‘So you really do have two suns?’
‘And three moon. Makes complicated tides.’
Palas, Polox and Puk lay at a quarter, a third and a half a million kilometres from the planet. They looked inhabited. Their dark sides of each were spangled with lights, but they were no competition for the brightness of the ring around the planet itself.
‘That is Halo,’ Alkemy said. ‘We make ourselves.’
‘You made that?’
‘Many hundred years ago, we start to wreck our planet. Too much destruction. Drilling, mining, factory, pollution. Need more and more resource, but always running out.’
‘Sounds familiar,’ Coral said.
‘There is a big meeting. Once we have countries like you, but if the whole planet die, what use is a country? So they disband. Instead, we form Consensus – a council for the whole planet – and it say all must stop. Must get the resources elsewhere.
‘So we travel to the asteroid – what we call Smash Circle – and launch many at our planet. Careful, so we make a ring around her. Now we have resource nearby.’
‘I thought your nanomachines recycled everything.’
‘They do, but they come after Halo is already make. Now she is not much used, but pretty, no?’
‘Spectacular, I’d say.’
‘Hey everybody,’ Knock Knock said. ‘Sorry to break up the party, but in about ten minutes we’ll be entering controlled space and I may have to do some bouncy manoeuvry things, so I recommend y’all go down to the bridge and buckle up.’
‘Ten minute?’ Ludokrus said. ‘Time to shoot our visitor first.’
* * *
Em, Avril, Frank, Glenn and Glad sat around the kitchen table considering their options.
‘What do we do now?’ Glenn said.
‘First thing I’m going to do is fix that hole in the roof,’ Frank replied. ‘Wait till I see those kids of yours. That thing could’ve hit one of the girls. Or me.’
‘I reckon they aimed it pretty well. The separator took the force of the impact.’
‘I’d forgotten about that dent. You know what those things cost?’
Glenn looked at his brother. Frank was grinning.
‘I actually meant about these.’ Glenn gestured at the letters. ‘What do we tell that lot outside?’
‘That depends whether you want the army here forming a welcoming committee when the kids get back.’
‘Certainly not!’ Avril said.
‘Well then, what did they say in their notes? Three weeks each way? I reckon that’s about the perfect time for a story like this to die down. The army are already talking about hauling that stuff at the reserve away for proper analysis. Once that’s done, I can’t see them hanging round. As far as they’re concerned, the fun’s over.’
Footsteps sounded on the veranda.
‘Good morning, Major,’ Em said loudly.
By the time Major Upshott had wiped his boots on the mat, there was no sign of the letters, or the container they’d come in.
‘Can I get you––?’
‘No, thank you,’ he said curtly, glaring at the others, his hands on his hips. ‘It seems you people haven’t been straight with me after all.’
No one spoke.
‘I specifically asked you to tell me everything you knew about this matter, and you didn’t.’
‘What d’you mean?’ Frank said.
‘You two in particular.’ He glared at Em and Frank.
Avril slipped a hand into the pocket of her dressing gown, covering Tim and Coral’s letters, determined not give them up.
‘So.’ Upshott crossed his arms. ‘I’d like to know everything this time please. Including all about one Alice Jones who appeared on television last night, and who is – I’m now given to believe – your sister, Mrs Townsend.
‘Our records show she left the area late on Monday afternoon, just before all this spaceship business started. Presumably, she’d been staying here. Is that correct?’ Em nodded. ‘And she didn’t happen to mention her little alien encounter, did she?’ Em nodded again. ‘Then why the devil didn’t you tell me about it?’
‘To be fair chief, you did ask us for all relevant information,’ Frank said.
‘So?’
‘Alice has rarely ever been that.’
Upshott saw Glenn’s grin. He bristled. ‘No? Well she is now, Mr Townsend. After her little television performance last night, my colleagues will be interviewing her closely.’ He looked from one to the other. ‘Now, does anyone have anything else they’d like to tell me – relevant or not?’
They all looked back unblinking. No one said a word.
* * *
The gun looked like a lightweight high-tech pistol. It had a tubular frame, a squat gas canister underneath the barrel, a number of controls along one side and a small targeting screen at the back. The barrel narrowed to a point before expanding into what looked like an elliptical suction cup.
‘Sit please.’ Ludokrus gestured to a reclining seat on one side of the medical bay.
Coral sat. It reminded her of a dentist’s chair.
‘Head back.’
‘Why?’
‘So I can place on eye.’ He pointed to the suction cup.
‘What is that thing?’
‘Is call a linguaseed gun.’
‘What’s that when it’s at home?’
‘Linguaseed are like the tiny computer that sit inside of brain. Connect to language centre so you will understand Eltherian. Albert reprogram the ship when he learn English, but outside of it you will not understand what people say. With this, you will.’
‘What about speaking Eltherian?’
‘This does not help. But everyone have these seed. Most are give at birth. They can be reprogram so then they will understand you. Albert already make a database of your language so when you speak to other` it will be download automatic.’
He raised the gun again.
‘But ... in my eye ...?’
‘Does not go in eye, but round the back to brain. Easiest way is to follow the optic nerve.’
‘I hope it’s got a good sense of direction,’ Norman said, ‘because in her case it’s got a pretty small target.’
Coral ignored him. ‘Will it hurt?’ she said to Ludokrus.
‘Small irritation only. Feel like piece of grit.’
Ludokrus placed the cup over Coral’s eye and studied the screen. ‘Open, please. Look to left.’
There was a small pfft of compressed air. Coral said ‘Ow!’ and blinked furiously.
‘Don’t rub. Just dab. OK?’ He handed her a tissue.
Norman cupped a hand to one ear. Behind his back, his free hand held a coin over a metal tray. ‘Wait for it. Any second now.’ He released the coin and there was a metallic clank and clatter. ‘There it goes.’
‘Very amusing,’ Coral said, her eye watering a little.
Norman high-fived Tim, but he did it too hard. The low gravity sent him in a three hundred and sixty-degree spin and he fell against the table holding the metal tray.
‘Hey, I think it’s working,’ Coral said.
‘So quick?’
‘Yeah, is that the ship talking Eltherian in the background? What’s that?’ She held her hand to her ear.
‘The ship is not––’
‘It thinks Norman Smith’s a dork.’