by Wendy Lambert
Wendy Lambert grew up watching classic science fiction shows with her dad. Disappointed that her rocket scientist dad never built a starship to take her to distant alien worlds, she imagines them instead. Her stories have appeared in the anthologies In the Shimmering and the 2015 and 2016 Young Explorer’s Adventure Guides. Wendy lives in Utah with her family, where she cofounded North Star Academy, a top-ranked school that inspires students to reach for their dreams.
The Martian girl was technically human, but everything about her appearance looked alien. Her head looked too big atop her rail-thin body. Even with the gleaming metal braces encasing them, her twiggy legs looked like they’d snap in half if she took a single step. It was the effect of growing up on Mars under a third less gravity than Earth.
“Kara, did you hear me?” Miss Bird, my sixth-grade teacher, asked. “Briel’s hoverchair can’t go up these steep stairs.”
I realized I’d been staring at her and shifted my gaze away from Briel only to feel the weighty eyes of my classmates, the tour guide, and Miss Bird as they awaited a response.
“Go with Briel to the elevator?” I asked.
Miss Bird nodded.
The rest of the class clomped noisily up the stairs. The strong smell of rusted metal from the old building tickled my nose, and I sneezed.
“Bless you,” Briel said. She regarded me with her huge eyes made bigger through her sparkly blue cat-eye glasses that matched the streak of bright blue in her hair. “That is what you say, right?”
“Yes.” I pointed to a long hallway. “The tour guide said the elevator was somewhere back here?”
“Yep.” Briel pressed the controls, turning her chair back around.
I hesitated. Should I walk ahead of her and lead the way? Or behind? The hallway was wide here, and I decided to walk beside her.
“You’re staring again. Do I have something on my face?”
I looked away from her and up at the odd, scalloped-shaped lights running along the ceiling. Our class had come to tour the North Star Space Facility during its annual Take Flight Fundraising Festival. The decaying structure of steel was now a museum, displaying a variety of experimental space balloons, rockets, and ships. In its day it had been a cutting-edge lab and space tourist facility.
After seeing Briel and what living on Mars or in space did to you, I wasn’t sure I ever wanted to go up. Earth gravity didn’t care whether you were an Earthling or a Martian, it pulled all of us down. My body was used to the gravity. Briel’s wasn’t. Her frail bones and weak muscles made life difficult and different for her. She was stuck in that hoverchair, for one thing. It hummed along, inches from the ground. The chair’s back bumper was bedazzled in tiny rhinestones save for a sticker that read Mars Rocks.
“I don’t bite,” Briel said in a completely flat voice.
“I, I don’t—” I knew she didn’t bite.
“At least not too hard.” She grinned. “I wish I’d brought a mirror to show you your face.”
“My face?” I touched my cheek, feeling the warmth of the blush.
She laughed; her whole body shook beneath the straps holding her upright in the chair. “I just meant that you seem a little, well, afraid of me.”
“I’m not.” I wasn’t afraid. Just shy. Especially around people I didn’t know. And especially around a Martian who might break in half if I touched her.
“Even though I’m a Martian and stuck in this chair, I can still talk. We do both speak English—at least I think you do.” She paused expectantly while I struggled for something to say in return.
“Which way was the elevator?” I focused on our task.
“I think the tour guide said it’s on the right.”
A rope cordoned off the hallway with a posted sign reading Authorized Personnel Only.
Briel raised the rope and moved her chair under it. “Are you sure this is the right way?” I asked.
“Nope, but I think it is. That looks like an elevator.” Briel gestured to the double set of metal doors at the end of the hallway.
I raced ahead to press the elevator call button. I could actually be helpful. The doors opened into a large elevator with a second set of doors at its back.
Briel moved her hoverchair forward then swiveled around. “Are you coming? Remember, I don’t bite hard.”
Why does she keep saying that? I forced a smile. “I don’t think you bite,” I said and stepped into the elevator. I’m just shy. I didn’t know how to tell her this. I didn’t know how to tell her I wasn’t good with anybody, especially a Martian.
I pushed the second level button. The doors closed, and the elevator moved upward. I exhaled in relief. We’d be back with our class in a couple of minutes, and the awkwardness would end. The elevator slowed to a stop. The back doors opened into a short hallway.
Briel maneuvered her chair into the hallway. “This is weird,” she called. Bright block lettering on the walls read Odyssey Thirteen. The hall emptied into a small, dark room with large round windows all around and above. Seats ringed its entirety, facing the windows, save for a door marked as a restroom and some sort of food stand. Briel moved straight to a large console in the center.
“Where’s the class?” I said.
“I’m so speedy in my chair, they haven’t caught up yet.”
The door behind us whooshed closed. The lights from the hall flickered and died, plunging us into near darkness except for the faint glow coming from the bottom of Briel’s chair. I bit my lip, refusing to let out my squealed surprise. I ran my hand up and down along the sides of the closed door feeling for the open button.
“Oops,” Briel said. “That may have been me.” She jerked her hand away from the console.
“What button did you push?”
“A lot of them,” Briel said. “I’m not sure which one closed the—”
“Quiet,” I said. “Hear that?” A faint hiss sounded overhead. It was pitch black above the windowed ceiling, making it impossible to see what made the noise. I ran my hands over the buttons. The door didn’t open, but something I’d pushed turned on a dark screen.
“What is this place?” I asked.
“Don’t know.”
“Maybe we shouldn’t push any more buttons,” I said.
“Wait. I have my phone with me.” Briel rummaged inside a bag on the side of her chair. She held it up. “No signal.” She maneuvered her hoverchair around the room, holding her phone up.
“Well, Miss Bird has got to realize we got lost or something. She’ll come looking for us, don’t you think?” I offered.
She nodded.
The low hissing sound grew louder and louder. Briel clutched the arms of her chair, and her big eyes widened. She was scared, just like me.
“The building is really old, it’s no wonder the door’s stuck,” I said.
The floor rocked back and forth. We floated up a few feet and bounced to a stop. I scrambled back to the door and pounded on it.
Briel pushed buttons on the console again. The hissing stopped. “That’s good, right?” Briel said.
We looked at each other. One button blinked green.
“I don’t think—” I said.
Briel pushed the button. The room shook as a metallic scraping sound rumbled overhead. Bright daylight flooded overhead revealing what we hadn’t seen before—a massive silvery balloon attached to what I now knew was no room at all, but a pod. The balloon floated slowly and silently out of the hangar into the sky.
“There’s this lever with the words balloon detachment,” I said.
Briel gave a snort of disagreement. “Sure, pull it if you want the balloon to keep floating up and us to fall to our deaths. We’re too high already.”
“Your phone,” I said.
We looked at her phone and it had a signal. She called her mom. It went straight to voicemail. “So Mom, I’m in trouble. We accidentally took off in a balloon. We need help.” Briel hung up. “She didn’t answer.”
“This definitely counts as an emergency, call 911,” I urged.
She dialed. And each second seemed like forever as the balloon rose steadily into the sky.
“911, what’s your emergency?”
Below us the world shrank. Our yellow school bus was a tiny rectangle of orange-yellow surrounded by asphalt and glints of sunlight off rearview mirrors and the chrome trim of parked cars. In the fields surrounding the gray building, scattered booths for the festival were tiny pops of color. Another hiss of helium fed the balloon, carrying us higher and higher away from the open roof of the facility.
It’d taken a ridiculously long time for emergency personnel to find the right person to help us. The voice was faint and crackled back. “This is Captain Stevens. Everything’s going to be okay. We’re going to bring you home safely. How’s that sound?”
“Fantastic!” Briel shouted.
And it was fantastic, except for the part about having to wait until we were nearly into space before we could begin our descent. Captain Stevens explained how to turn on the space balloon’s communication system. I put on the headset and learned that while the balloon and pod were very old, they were flightworthy, having been readied for a flight that was supposed to happen tomorrow as part of the festival.
I guess they’d decided the easiest way to get us back on the ground was to let the space balloon take its normal preprogrammed flight all the way up to space and then gently float back to Earth on a parasail. All we had to do was wait and pull a lever to detach the balloon on the given signal. It was a lot of waiting. Floating up one hundred miles seemed to take forever.
“You think we’ll make it back?” I asked, nervous despite Captain Stevens’ assurances.
“Of course. We should just relax and enjoy the ride,” Briel said.
“Easy for you to say. I bet you’re used to flying.”
“Not like this.”
I flopped into one of the chairs. We’d risen very high in the sky. I pressed my face against the cold window, the warmth of my breath fogging it up. We were floating towards space. Cold, dark, airless space.
“What’s your favorite color?” Briel asked cheerfully. She’d moved beside me.
“What? What kind of question is that?”
“Look, there’s nothing we can do but sit here, enjoy the ride and view. I might as well find out if you’re worth knowing.”
I opened and closed my mouth in stunned silence. Worth knowing? Who even says that? Was she joking? I couldn’t ever tell with her. But she was right about one thing. There was nothing more we could do. “Blue,” I said.
“Mine, too,” Briel said.
I snorted. “I thought it’d be red.”
Briel winced. “Yeah, I get that a lot . . . Mars being the red planet and all.” She studied me long and hard. “What do you like to do for fun?”
“I play soccer and—”
“Me, too!” Briel cut me off. “Don’t look so shocked. Of course I don’t play it anymore—at least on Earth. But I used to play forward in the top club team. I even played a year up.”
“I have a hard time picturing soccer on Mars.” I imagined an enormous field, with players wearing bright orange spacesuits kicking the ball to the opposing team in bright green spacesuits. One kick would send the ball halfway around Mars.
“It’s pretty much the same except for more protective gear, a softer ball, and indoor fields.”
“I just play rec soccer,” I confessed. I couldn’t let her think we were even close to the same league. “I like to swim, too. My parents put in a pool last summer. I pretty much got out only to sleep.”
“Really? That’s my favorite thing to do now. Except I don’t get out to sleep.”
“You sleep in the water?”
“In a special water bed. It’s the only time I don’t feel like Earth is trying to crush me.”
“Oh.” I felt my face grow warm.
“It’s okay,” Briel said, sensing my embarrassment.
We sat in silence for a while, watching the Earth and clouds. A gust of wind rocketed the pod back and forth. Instinctively, I grabbed onto the edge of my seat and didn’t let go. My heart pounded so loud I was sure Briel could hear it, exposing my fear and awkward shyness. I took in a deep breath and then exhaled. “Why’d you leave Mars?”
With her big eyes, Briel gaped at me like she didn’t understand my question.
“I mean,” I stuttered, “why would you leave Mars and come to Earth? It’s got to be so hard to be in that chair.”
“My parents were born on Earth and remembered it from when they were little, before their families moved to Mars. It’s a tough life on Mars.”
“But…” But how could they do this to you? Life on Earth is hard for you, I wanted to say, but I didn’t. Her parents would have known of Earth’s crushing gravity and that she’d be stuck in braces and a hoverchair, perhaps for the rest of her life.
Briel watched the clouds. “They told me about the braces and the chair and all the therapies. I agreed. I wanted to see Earth.” Her voice was sullen. Her eyes brimmed with tears. “It’s harder than I thought.”
“I’m sorry.” I wanted to say more. To tell her that I wanted to be her friend. That I loved the blue streak in her hair. That her big blue eyes were beautiful. That despite the chair and braces and leaving school early every day for therapy, she always had a courageous smile on her face. That I loved that she could talk to anyone—an adult or a shy girl like me. But all I could get out was, “I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t be. I’m not. Hard things are worth doing.” She winked at me and brushed away the tears. “Besides, I’d have missed this whole space balloon adventure if I’d stayed on Mars.”
We both giggled.
“I spy something grayish white,” Briel said.
“Could it be a cloud? Again?”
Briel grinned mischievously. “But which cloud?”
“Enough with the clouds!” I said in mock exasperation. There were only so many times one could spy the Pacific Ocean, clouds, and blue sky. “Maybe we should do something different.”
“Like what?”
I shrugged my shoulders. She’d already told me all about life on Mars including stories about her annoying little brother. I told her all about my annoying little brother, too. Together we dreamed up a colony on Pluto where sisters could send their brothers. It was more talking than I could ever remember doing before. She liked math. I didn’t. She liked to read. I did, too.
We both leaned our heads against the cold window, peering down at the Earth, a swirl of bright blues, white and gray clouds, and patches of browns. Our balloon floated high enough that we could see the curve of the Earth with the distant moon gleaming enormous.
“It reminds me of when our ship approached. It was amazing,” Briel said. “It’s beautiful.”
I agreed.
Briel struggled to sit back. She pulled her head away from the window, only to lean it back against the glass.
“You okay? Need some help?”
“Yes,” she whispered. “I’m tired. I’ve never been in this chair for so long. I’m usually in the water by now.”
I hesitated to touch her. I knew her bones were fragile. I gently lifted her head and shoulders and pressed them back into the straps holding her up. “Is that better?”
“Yes.”
The radio squelched and crackled.
“I think it’s almost time,” I said. I rushed over to the console and held the headset up to my ear and mouth. The Captain had been checking in with us every half hour to make sure we were okay. All we had to do was pull a lever and disengage the balloon when an indicator light flashed green.
“The light will…” His voice cut out. He’d warned that the com might cut out at the height we were at. “… signal … don’t—”
“Don’t what?” I said into the headset. “Captain Stevens, I can’t hear you. Captain Stevens?” The com crackled.
Briel and I regarded each other for a moment. The light blinked green.
“Captain Stevens, do I pull the lever now? It’s blinking.”
Static roared over the com. I bit my lip and glanced at Briel.
“Pull it, Kara.”
I gripped the lever, closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and pulled.
The massive balloon sailed towards space while our pod dropped free. Long thin drogue chutes shot up from the top of the pod to slow our descent so that the parasail could be deployed. I clung to my seat, looking in turn at the console, then at Briel and up at the drogue chutes flapping in the wind.
Strands of Briel’s hair floated up, then whole clumps of her hair. I touched my black hair and knew it floated up, too. I lowered my arm; the movement tipped my body to the left.
Briel beamed. She slipped free of her shoulder and chest straps and pushed off her chair, sailing up. She kicked off the ceiling, curling her body up into a tight ball, doing somersault after somersault, laughing all the while.
I copied her movement, kicking off my chair. I thumped against the ceiling and pushed off it, curling into a ball like she had. The first couple of spins were clumsy but exhilarating. It was just like floating in a pool but without the water.
I couldn’t stop spinning. I pawed uselessly at the ceiling. My stomach reeled, protesting the spin. I was going to be sick. I choked back vomit. Briel grabbed my waist, wrapped her arms around my belly, and matched my spin. She tapped her legs against the ceiling, slowing my spin.
“You, okay?” she asked, guiding me to one of the handles spaced evenly along the ceiling, where she wrapped my fingers around it.
I cupped my free hand over my mouth, hoping my stomach would settle, and I wouldn’t need one of those barf bags tucked in the pockets on the side of each seat.
“We’ll only be weightless for another few seconds,” Briel said with regret in her voice.
All sorts of buttons flared red across the console, and an alarm started beeping. I glanced up a split second before a black boomerang-shaped aircraft soared overhead, narrowly missing our pod but catching on the drogue chutes. The pod pitched hard to the right as the chutes tangled in the aircraft, pulling us along with it. As I held on for dear life, Briel dropped to the floor and slid across, crashing into the far wall.
“Briel,” I screamed. She lay in a crumpled heap. I worked my way across the pod, gripping each handhold, afraid at any moment the pod would plummet and I’d become weightless again.
“Briel? Briel?”
She stirred. I exhaled in relief.
“I’m okay,” she said. “I don’t think anything’s broken.” She sat up and extended her arms and legs, studying each limb in turn. “I’m probably going to have some nasty bruises, but these braces did the trick.” She ran her hand from her wrist to her shoulder over the gleaming braces embedded in her skintight suit. “Help me back into my chair?”
I helped her back into her chair and gently tightened the straps holding her in. Now that she was safely back into her chair, we assessed our situation. The drogue chutes were still caught on what appeared to be an unmanned internet plane. The weight of our pod had shifted the plane’s angle downward. If we stayed tangled with the plane, we’d crash.
“What are the chances of that happening?” Briel pointed at the plane.
“One in a million?” I guessed.
“Sure. Why not? One in a million. We just happen to be so lucky.”
I studied the console lit up with flashing red lights. This was not supposed to have happened. I now understood the garbled message from Captain Stevens. They’d probably seen the plane on the radar and had wanted us to wait to pull the lever. That understanding came too late now.
“Captain Stevens? Can you hear me?”
The com was silent. “Captain Stevens?”
A voice emerged through the static. “Kara, thank heavens. Are you two all right?”
“Yes.” Relief flooded through me.
“Let’s bring you home.”
“Sounds great!”
“All you need to do is pull the lever again to release the drogue chutes and at my signal, press the button to the right of the lever. That’ll deploy the parasail. Did you copy that?”
Briel gave me a thumbs-up.
“Copy that.” I pulled the lever. The pod’s ceiling groaned and the cables released. The plane and tangled drogue chutes kept heading westward while we dropped away.
“Very good, Kara. Wait a few more seconds.”
Each second seemed like an hour. The pod rocked back and forth, buffeted by the wind.
“Press the button now,” Captain Stevens said.
I pressed it and watched above me as the parasail shot out from the pod’s roof.
I gripped the edge of my seat at the momentary jolt as the rainbow-colored parasail caught on the wind.
“Well done, ladies. Buckle up for the landing. The computer will take care of the rest,” Captain Stevens said.
Briel sighed. “I guess it’s almost over.”
“You sound disappointed. Did you honestly enjoy this?”
“Of course. Didn’t you?”
“Aside from the weightlessness, almost barfing, and, oh, facing near-certain death, I had a blast!”
Briel laughed. “That was almost my favorite part, not you getting sick, but the weightlessness.”
“Almost?”
“Yes. My favorite part was talking to you.”
I grinned. “Mine, too.”
The parasail carried us gently back towards Earth. The blue of the Pacific slowly winked out of sight as the green and brown land between patches of clouds grew bigger and bigger. We gripped each other’s hands and smiled.