As much as Emma loved the new cabin, she was far more interested in the goings-on above deck. They had only been on the water for one morning, and already they’d seen two mermaids, a school of marletts, and a burping dog whale. After turning off the Strand to Cepheus, the Markab was now more than halfway down a much shorter Strand that would lead to the Lacerta system. They had also seen two ships, but those had kept their distance. Every sailor on the Strands knew better than to approach a dragon-of-war, no matter how small it was.

A stiff, warm wind spanked the Markab’s backside, and she was making good time. According to Santher’s Navy Manual, it would take three more days to reach Lacerta’s main star, Alpha Lacertae. Two planets were there, and they would be able to dock on either one—and, hopefully, get information about Emma’s parents. Everyone was worried that the navy would have ships posted at the vostok zones on Alpha Lacertae, just like it had on the other systems. The Markabs had no choice but to wait and see.

Herbie and Laika had spent most of the morning at the wheel, reading the Almagest and untangling the fishing net that Laika had brought in her backpack. Santher puttered about below, fixing odd things, while Emma sat at the bow, enjoying the warm air and the sight of the great Strand spread out before her. Herbie and Laika were prattling on, but when they got to the subject of Emma’s parents, her ears perked up.

“…and their yacht was the Markab, of course,” Herbie was saying. “It’s funny, I always thought Emma’s dad was suspicious. It doesn’t surprise me that he was a pirate. I probably should have figured it out a long time ago. But I never thought Emma’s mom was the dangerous type.”

“She was supposedly more dangerous than Mad Jack!” Laika said.

“I know,” Herbie exclaimed. “Crazy, huh? It’s just, she always seemed so nice. She did yoga and she baked these really awesome granola cookies. I hate granola, but these were amazing. You have to spend time on them to get them that good. The craziest part, though? She hated sailing.”

“What?”

“Seriously. She was totally afraid of the water. She never went sailing. She could barely manage to walk down the pier at the marina. Emma said she had all kinds of phobias—” They glanced at Emma in case she wanted to contribute, but she was pointedly ignoring them. “She was especially afraid of the water,” Herbie went on. “Although of course she showered…. ”

Emma realized that all this talk about her mom was making her worry even more, so she decided to join Santher below.

Climbing down the stairs, she found him standing in front of the faux porthole—a strange object that Dad had always kept hanging on the wall above the captain’s desk. The foot-wide circular mirror was set in a golden frame. Yet the mirror reflected nothing of the room around it. Emma used to like touching it as a kid; it was soft and squishy, like there was some kind of goo inside. It was one of the objects that hadn’t broken when the Markab had crashed onto the floor of the Argh’s cargo hold.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

Santher looked surprised. “Oh, I was just wondering why you had an empty mesmer.”

“That’s a mesmer?” She came closer.

“Yeah,” he said. “I guess your parents didn’t tell you about this either.”

“No,” she said. “It’s one of those communication devices, right? Laika told us about them.”

“It sure looks like it,” Santher said. “I’ve been watching it for weeks now, ever since I first saw it. I kept meaning to ask you why there was no mesmer guard in it, but I figured he’d been scared away when the boat was damaged.”

“What’s a mesmer guard?” she asked.

“A guard occupies every mesmer. It’s usually an animal, sometimes a person. They live on the other side.” He touched the surface and the liquid in it rippled mysteriously. “You’ve really never seen anything in here?”

“No.”

Santher looked disappointed. “I was hoping we’d find a guard. It’s our only way to communicate with the outside world.”

Laika popped her head through the window. “Could you guys help us? We’re ready to catch some fish.”

They went above to find that the net was fully untangled. Emma took the wheel, Santher reefed the sails, and the Markab gently slowed. Together, Laika and Herbie tossed out the net. Everyone watched it sink.

It only took a few minutes before the net line gave a tug. Laika leaned over and began hauling it in, while Herbie and Santher scrambled to assist. The net rose out of the water, flopping with long, skinny bright-blue fish and weighted by barnacles. They dumped the catch on the deck and began peeling the fish from the net.

“Look,” Laika exclaimed, seizing a barnacle. “Vostok!”

“That’s vostok?” Herbie asked. “It looks nothing like what we’ve been eating. On Earth we call those barnacles.”

“Don’t eat it,” Santher said. “It’s dangerous raw.”

“So, not sushi,” Herbie said.

They watched as Laika struck the barnacle against the deck, cracking it easily in half. A blue blob of jelly spilled out like an egg from its shell.

Herbie recoiled. “Okay, not eating it.”

Laika was grinning. “Hand me that line,” she said. Puzzled, Herbie handed her the rope and watched as she tied one end to her leg, the other to the railing.

Santher moved closer. “Laika, this is a bad idea…. ”

She laughed and popped the vostok into her mouth. Judging from her face, it wasn’t as tasty as regular vostok—in fact, it smelled like brine—but immediately the jelly skin began spreading over her body. This one had a faintly iridescent sheen.

“I don’t see how it’s diff—” Herbie’s comment was cut off when Laika began floating. She lifted up off the deck, still seated with her legs crossed. She was grinning happily as she floated up and up until the line went taut. Herbie got to his feet and grabbed the line, apparently afraid that it might come loose, in which case Laika would float up into the sky. Santher was shaking his head.

“How is that happening?” Emma asked.

“It’s just what happens when you eat raw vostok.”

“So the stuff we ate was cooked?”

“Sort of,” he said. “I’m not sure what they do to it.”

Emma remembered eating vostok and feeling a strange lightness, as if she could float. It made a kind of sense that Laika was floating now, bobbing above them like a helium balloon. Herbie was staring up at her with a mixture of worry and amazement.

“Come on, Herbie. Try it!” she called.

“Not into the raw stuff,” he said.

Laika spent another few minutes dangling above them before the effect wore off. The floating didn’t last long, but the shimmering jelly coat remained for the rest of the afternoon.

That night, Laika and Herbie came topside, carrying plates and silverware and a giant bowl of stew. “We’re going to eat out here,” Laika announced. “I promised Herbie I’d show him the Lacerta conjunction. That’s when you can see the stars of Lacerta with Cepheus in the background. It looks like a giant river. Anyway, I saw it when we came down here on the Argh last year…. ”

She carried on happily while Herbie laid down a blanket and everyone sat on the deck. The others must have been hungry, judging by the way they tackled the stew, and Emma, who hadn’t had much of an appetite for days, found that she was starving. She finished off one bowl and started on another.

“So,” Herbie said excitedly to Emma, “I finally figured out why we can understand each other.”

“Oh. How?”

“Laika explained it. It’s because of the vostok. Apparently, it affects the parts of your brain that understand communication. I mean, I don’t think anyone understands it entirely, but it kind of downloads a universal translator into your head or something. That’s how I think of it, anyway. It works on everyone.”

Emma slowed down her eating long enough to say, “Wow.”

“But it only lasts for a couple of months,” Herbie said. “After that, you have to eat more vostok.”

“Do we have more vostok?” Emma asked.

“We have a whole box of it,” Herbie said, looking pleased by this. “The cooked stuff,” he added. Since they needed vostok to communicate with Laika and Santher, Emma figured it was a good thing they had such a big supply.

The conversation carried on, and Emma ate another whole bowl of stew before Santher spoke up.

“I’m curious how you got away from the navy,” he said. “You told me they chased you all the way from Monkey. I noticed the bullet holes in your mast when I was repairing the ship.”

Herbie leaned backward to grab his backpack and take out the scuppers in the old bait jar. He showed them to Santher, who whistled through his teeth.

“They look like bullets to me,” Herbie says. “Only I got hit by one and—”

“You did?” Santher was amazed.

“Yeah.” He shuddered, not wanting to explain. “Another one hit me, and I got changed back right away. But it’s nothing like a real bullet or it would have gone through me. I mean, what is it?”

Santher shook his head. “Scuppers are bullets dipped in memory water. If they hit something inanimate, like a mast, then they just act like regular bullets. But the minute they hit a living thing, they transform it into something else.”

“How?” Emma asked.

“Memory water can do that if it’s really concentrated,” he said. “The navy does something to the water before they put it on the bullets.”

“It’s horrible when someone gets hit by a scupper,” Laika said. “The worst is when they turn into a fish. They flop around on the ground and you have to put them in water or they’ll die. Usually the closest water is a Strand, but if they get in a Strand, then they swim away and they’re gone forever.”

“So when you’re a fish,” Emma said, “you’re really a fish. You don’t remember your human self?”

“That’s right,” Santher said.

Herbie shook his head. “I was only a dragon for a few seconds, but I had no idea what was going on…. ”

Emma looked at the others. “He was an iguana.”

Santher laughed. “We are on the lizard system. You should feel right at home.”

“Very funny,” Herbie replied. “So I take it not everyone turns into an iguana?”

“No,” Laika said. “You never know what you’ll turn into. One time, this boy on the Argh got turned into a hammer!”

“It does seem completely random,” Santher added.

“So…,” Emma said, looking down at the remains of their meal, “one of these fish we just ate could have been human?”

Laika put a hand to her mouth.

“Probably not,” Santher said, but he didn’t seem convinced.

“I still don’t understand how a memory can be trapped in water,” Herbie said.

“No one understands it,” Santher replied. “Touching it with your finger can mess up your mind. Imagine what would happen if your whole body fell in.”

“What would happen?” Emma asked.

“When you touch it,” Santher said, “the memories trapped inside the water become yours. They become like your own memories—you can’t really get rid of them again. But in the memory seas, you would get millions of memories all at once…. ” He trailed off, uncertain how to explain.

“So your brain would explode,” Herbie said.

“Kind of,” Laika said. “No one but your mom has ever survived being thrown in the memory seas.”

Emma felt a horrified awe imagining her mom drowning in memory water. When she had touched the memory water on Delphinus, she had been drawn into a song that felt as real as if Herbie had been singing it beside her. And that was only one small memory. She couldn’t fathom what it would feel like to submerge her whole body, and to have to absorb millions of memories at once. This might explain why her mother was so afraid of the ocean and of sailing. For a sharp, sad moment, Emma regretted not knowing this before. In all the years she’d grown up, she’d only seen her mother as a coward.

Suddenly, an idea popped into her head. It was so simple and obvious that she smacked her forehead.

“I’ve got it!” she said. “I know a way to find out where my mom is right now!”

“What?” Herbie said.

Emma snatched up the jar of memory water. “I can use this!”

“What—you’re going to touch the scupper water?” Herbie yelped. “What if it turns you into an iguana?”

“He’s right,” Laika said. “That’s an extremely bad idea. I mean, eating raw vostok is one thing, but memory water…”

“When I touched the water on Delphinus,” Emma said, “I got a memory about my mom. And then afterward, I could hear all the animals at the tables around me, but I could only hear them when they were talking about my mom. It’s almost like the memory water knew what I needed to hear. Maybe if I touch it again, it will know now too.”

Herbie gave a sputter of protest, and Laika said, “You can’t just touch it and get what you want. I don’t think that’s how it works.”

“And didn’t you say that scuppers were dipped in concentrated memory water?” Herbie asked Santher.

“Yes,” Santher replied uncomfortably.

“So this would be stronger than normal memory water?” he asked.

“Maybe.”

“Besides,” Herbie said, turning back to Emma, “you’re looking for information about what’s happening right now. But memory water is, by definition, going to give you, uh…memories?”

“Okay,” Emma said, “but a memory can be a few seconds old. It doesn’t have to be ancient.”

“But if it’s a few seconds old,” Herbie said, “then your mom would have had to touch some kind of memory water recently, right?”

“Actually, I don’t think that’s true,” Santher said. “Once you travel down Eridanus, the water makes some kind of connection with you, so it’s not just the few memories from your journey that get left in the water, it’s everything about you. All your memories get put in the water, even ones from childhood. It seems possible that it would keep that connection to you, and it would keep storing your memories even after you’ve left the system.”

Herbie shook his head. “All I’m going to say is: What if she turns into an iguana? ”

“That’s not going to happen,” Emma said. “Berenice touched the water in the tavern on Delphinus, remember? A drop landed on her wrist, and nothing happened to her.”

No one replied.

“Look, I have a feeling this could work,” Emma said. “And I really need to know where my mom is. I mean, what if we’re going in the completely wrong direction right now? She could be in the Queen’s hands already. And what if the Queen executes her?” She stopped talking, feeling her throat grow tight again. She wanted to say: I can’t believe I didn’t think of this before.

“I think you’re right,” Santher said. “You should try it.”

Everyone was staring at her. She took a deep breath and gently unscrewed the lid of the jar. Herbie’s lips were set tight, and he was frowning.

“At least this water’s cleaner than the stuff we touched on Delphinus,” Emma said, setting the jar lid on the deck beside her. Her comment did not seem to soothe him. “And if I do turn into an iguana, just get a pair of tweezers and drop one of the scuppers on me right away so I can turn back.”

“Sure thing,” he said coolly. “Once I’m finished having a heart attack, I’ll get right on that.”

“Just touch it with the tip of your finger,” Laika said, looking anxious. “It will be stronger than normal.”

“And before you touch it,” Santher said, “I think you’d better concentrate on what you want to know.”

Emma followed their instructions, shutting her eyes and thinking about Mom. I need to find out where she is right now. She reached into the jar and carefully touched the water with the very tip of her finger. She retracted it immediately and set the jar on the ground, quickly screwing the lid back on.

At first, nothing happened. She looked at her friends. Each was staring at her with anticipation and fear.

“Anything?” Santher asked.

Emma shook her head. She was about to open the jar again, but when she looked down, she was struck by an awesome sight: at the edge of the dinner blanket was a five-hundred-foot drop to a chasm below. She gasped and startled, and the blanket tipped, dropping her over the side.

She fell as dead weight, too terrified to scream. With a sudden jolt, she stopped and opened her eyes. It was like waking from a nightmare. Her heart was still racing and she was covered in sweat, only now she was in an unfamiliar world. She looked around, trying to comprehend the scene.

She was on a ship—she could tell by the rocking, the way the wood squeaked and groaned, and a distant splash of water against the hull. She was walking down a narrow corridor behind three people: two guards in navy uniforms who were escorting a prisoner between them. The prisoner had a bag over his or her head, but when Emma caught a glimpse of the hands, which were tied behind the prisoner’s back, she recognized Mom’s wedding ring.

“Mom!” she cried. No one seemed able to hear her. She tried touching one of the guards, but he didn’t respond.

The guards brought Mom to a fo’c’sle. It was a dark, narrow space with hardly enough room to stand up straight. The floor was covered in damp straw, and the whole place smelled of mildew and bilgewater. Emma watched as the guards untied her ropes and locked her in prison cuffs. The cuffs were heavier, and with the weight on her arms, Mom nearly fell over. She looked around with an air of utter confusion, shuffled to the wall, slid down weakly, and drew her knees to her chest.

Emma tried sneaking into the cell before the guards locked the door, but there wasn’t enough room between the two burly men, and she was left outside staring through the bars at Mom’s crumpled form.

“Mom,” Emma croaked, tears burning in her eyes, “I’m so sorry. I’m going to get you out of here.” She knew this was a memory, and she suddenly felt an urge to find out how long ago it had happened. She forced herself to think. Mom was wearing her wedding ring, and Emma had seen pictures of their wedding at San Francisco’s city hall. Had she gone back to space since then? Probably not. The navy hadn’t captured her until recently, or they would have known she wasn’t dead. The memory Emma was seeing must be recent.

But what if it was already a week old? Or more? That still left plenty of time for the Queen to have executed her. Emma rushed back down the corridor, hoping to find some way to tell what day it was or what ship they were on, but at the end of the hallway the door was locked.

From above she heard voices. People were coming down the stairs. She waited for them to unlock the door, and she stepped back as they came through.

First came the doctor, Bezerbee Vermek. Although Emma had never seen him before, she knew his name in an instant, and she knew that he was a doctor. She figured this was because she was inside a memory, and that whoever it belonged to must know him too. A limp swag of hair hung over the doctor’s ghastly white face. His suit had undoubtedly once been fine, but it looked to have been worn daily for the better part of a decade, and now it was decorated with loose-hanging threads. Behind him came a scrawny young man with greasy blond hair. He was carrying the doctor’s black leather bag, so she figured he must be the loblolly boy, an assistant.

She followed them down the dank corridor to Mom’s cell. They stopped there and peered through the bars at her.

“She’s sleeping,” the loblolly boy whispered.

Dr. Vermek snorted and fumbled in his pocket. He drew out a key and unlocked the cell door. “Have you brought the correct instruments?”

“Yes. But I don’t understand why—”

“Wake her up,” he said.

“Yes, sir, but—”

“Wake her up.” Vermek slid a vial from his pocket and held it to the light for inspection.

The loblolly boy stared in stupefaction. “Is that a grisslin?”

“Yes,” Vermek said, grinning fiendishly. “This is a particularly rare and deadly grisslin that is prized among seers for its ability to absorb memories from the human mind.”

The two men squeezed into the fo’c’sle, and the loblolly boy knelt beside Mom. She might have been dead but for the gentle pulsing of a vein in her neck.

“Is this really necessary?” the loblolly boy asked, regarding the grisslin as if it were intended for him.

“All the information the captain needs is right down there.” Vermek pointed at Brightstoke’s head. “We simply have to retrieve it.”

“But isn’t it going to kill her?”

Vermek simply smirked. “Wake her up.”

The boy knelt beside Mom and shook her arm. She didn’t respond, so he touched her cheek. She sprang to like a wildcat, leaping to her feet with enough fierce energy to throw him backward. Vermek whipped out his pistol, but Mom was still shackled. She looked at the boy, then at Vermek. She stepped back until she touched the wall.

“Welcome back,” Vermek said. He moved closer, inspecting her tattered clothes and mangled hair.

Mom scrutinized him.

“Do you remember me?” He brought his face closer. “I was there when we captured you on Rigel. I was there when Captain Gent put you in the bag. Do you remember the lynx?”

Mom caught sight of the grisslin in the vial. She seemed to realize what was going on, and a look of fear crossed her face.

“We know all about the Pyxis transmission,” Vermek said. “We’re taking you to the Queen for execution. We’re very close by—only a few more days to Fairfoot. Enough time, I think, to strike a deal. If you tell us how to start the Pyxis, then we won’t have to do this.” He wiggled the vial. “We might even consider releasing you before then.”

Mom narrowed her eyes. “Who is the captain of this ship?”

“Why, funny you should ask,” Vermek sneered. “None other than your old friend Tema Gent. Would you like to see her? I’m sure she’d be glad to extend the offer herself.”

Mom’s face grew stubborn. “You’ll never let me go.”

Vermek began to unscrew the vial. Inside, the grisslin scrabbled against the glass, its legs working furiously. Mom tried to pull back, but Vermek motioned to the loblolly boy to step closer, and he did, reluctantly. “Hold her head,” Vermek commanded.

“You’re going to regret this,” Mom said.

“Oh, so you remember the grisslin? You collected them—or should I say you stole them? Are you wondering where I got this one?” He held up the vial. “I had to search far and wide to find it. Quite painful, these smaller ones. They can really do some damage.” He held the vial to Mom’s temple. She resisted, but the boy held her firm. “So what are you going to tell us?” Vermek asked, lifting the lid.

Mom pressed her lips together in an attempt at defiance, but Emma saw that her shoulders were trembling.

“Nothing,” she spat.

Vermek pulled back the lid, and the grisslin sprung out, its greedy legs finding purchase on Mom’s skin. It scurried into her hair and came straight back out, its blind body furiously seeking an entrance to the brain inside, for there was a brain inside, and a million memories calling to the creature. It was only a matter of getting in there. The grisslin ran a manic figure eight on her forehead, and raced down her nose. Mom thrashed, and it took Vermek’s help to hold her in place. The grisslin stopped at her nostril and sent one of its antennae delicately inside, savoring the moment as a drunkard would savor his first drop of crocky after a long drought. Then, with such speed as seemed impossible, the grisslin darted into her nose.

Emma clapped a hand to her mouth.

Mom screamed, but it was cut in half by a sudden jerk of her body. She fell to her knees, looking surprised, then slumped forward, unconscious.

The loblolly boy knelt beside her and opened the doctor’s bag. He took out a stethoscope and pressed its diaphragm to her head, listening intently.

“I think it’s penetrated the cortex,” he said grimly.

Vermek handed him the empty vial. “Good. When it’s done, collect the grisslin.”