Everyone screamed. My arms shot out to protect the children on either side of me before I realized the shrapnel was the screen’s projective capability lurching into action.
Chamblin’s expression, which had been hovering near vexatious pink, bloomed orange. Jaw tight, he tapped his ear comm, murmuring something I couldn’t hear over the children’s screaming.
I raised my hand. “That’s enough!”
“It’s not over,” Chamblin yelled back. “I can’t—”
“Not you. The students.” The pod tilted and staggered as the projection screen spluttered more shrapnel around us.
Not shrapnel. Stars.
“Be...be quiet, girls and boys,” Lon begged. Or maybe it was Lem.
“Do be quiet,” the other one echoed. They raised their hands too.
The kids simmered down, raising their hands one by one as I’d drilled into them, though I could tell it wouldn’t stick. I’d been an IPSSE teacher for twelve years. I’d developed a seventh sense about these things.
Luckily the pod simulation only lasted ten more minutes. Stars gleamed, dancing above our heads, cycling between red, blue and white. Chamblin returned to his normal shade of muted tan. A strobe flashed in the ceiling and a small chime sounded. We endured some bumping and creaking as the ride slowed.
Chamblin was out of his seat before the simulation came to a complete stop.
“Nobody move,” he ordered. He didn’t appear to be reading that from a holoprompter.
My hands hovered on my buckle. “Is there a problem?”
“Remain seated. All of you.” He knocked on the exit door near his podium three times. It opened with a hiss.
Look, I knew someone had pelted an undigestible food item at the man, but if he was calling a halt to our tour already, the Space Station Freedom Museum and Amusement Park was going to owe us, big time. The school’s airbus wouldn’t be back to pick us up until fourteen hundred hours, and do you know how hard it is to convince parentals the field trip release forms did indeed include permission for the group to use public transportation in the event of an emergency?
I wasn’t about to give up our trip without an argument. I motioned the children, Lem and Lon to stay put and stomped past the podium to Chamblin, who was gesturing through the barely open door at someone outside.
Either that or he was having some kind of fit.
“Is this about the gum?” I asked as politely as possible.
He didn’t acknowledge me, so I poked his khaki-clad arm.
Chamblin whipped around and had his eight-fingered hand at my throat before I could so much as squeak.
The children burst out laughing.
He stared at me, his eyes wide and his irises somewhat orange. I stared back.
“What the froccing froc are you doing?” I mouthed. Hey, the kids couldn’t see me using dirty words with my back to them, and Zhie are excellent lip readers.
Chamblin and his irises both turned the same bright green as the objectionable chewing gum. Not annoyance this time. Embarrassment. He lowered his hand to shake mine awkwardly. His five-fingered hand joined it.
“Miss James. You startled me, Miss James. I was making arrangements for our, ah, crew to debark. Standard procedure.” He raised his voice. “Everything’s standard so far.”
Along with the reestablishment of the IPSSE, other things had been swirling around Ye Olde Earth’s cultural soup for the past twenty years. One of those things was that male Zhie from progressive communes were beginning to seek outside employment. Butcher. Baker. Teacher. Tour guide. But no matter how progressive his background was, it was bizarre for him to have accosted a female.
He seemed as rattled as I was. Kept shaking my hand until I thought he might disjoint my elbow.
“You can stop now.” When he didn’t, I tugged myself free.
“Excuse me.” He shoved one hand inside his padded uniform vest and started rubbing it up and down like he wanted to wipe off any traces of my skin.
“I’m inoculated against contagions, Sergeant, like every employee of the IPSSE. You’ll be fine,” I said a little sourly. While cross-species pollination was, shall we say, for entertainment purposes only, cross-species stomach bugs were a lot less amusing.
Chamblin squared his shoulders, stuck his hands behind his back, and said to the children, “Form a queue behind Miss James, cadets.”
None of the kids budged.
“Do what he says,” I told them. “Let’s get out of the shuttle pod before anything else standard happens.”
I tucked Chamblin’s behavior away for future reference, like when I emailed my satisfaction survey at the end of the tour: Guide was boring, priggish, and attacked me like a mad dog. Recommend demotion to food services.
The kids, with moderate scuffling and shoving, managed a crooked line. Lem and Lon remained in the back.
I exited first, skirting Chamblin, who’d stationed himself on the top platform of the debarkation stairs. I positioned myself on the ground beside the stairs in case anybody got any big ideas about jumping.
“Everyone stick close to your buddy,” Chamblin said. As the kids milled out the doorway and down the stairs, he peered intently at each one.
Memorizing the faces of his assigned group? Possibly. Museum visits were appointment only, tour guide mandatory, because the space station was vast. And kids were kids. Perhaps he knew more about children than his speech-giving abilities suggested.
I was watching Chamblin, trying to decide if his peculiar staring should be added to my end of tour satisfaction survey, when a small hand slipped into my own.
“Miss James, I want to be your buddy.” Clarice jiggled my arm. “Can we go now?”
Geiger popped up behind her. “I’m your buddy,” he pointed out. “You can’t be the teacher’s buddy.”
Clarice cast him a scornful glance. “I can too. Quit following me.”
“I tell you what. I’ll be both your buddies.” Easier to keep an eye on Geiger if Clarice was clinging to me like a tick since he’d be clinging to her like a tick.
“Aw, shiprats.” Geiger kicked the side of the stairs.