We raced back through the corridors. By the time we reached the giant room full of Siitsi and their working displays, I was clutching my chest and heaving for air. Shiro wasn’t even winded.
“What? Where are they going?” He was talking before the panel was fully open.
Corey sat at his station, and Ricky—the other guy I’d met the night before—was standing over his shoulder. Priya wasn’t there, but Tishi was. Her feathers were fluffed with some emotion, though what it was, I couldn’t say. Her eyes looked wild, though.
Ricky nodded to Shiro and me and returned his gaze to the screen in front of Corey. “They’ve made a slight adjustment to their course. They’re not heading straight for Earth anymore, though there isn’t much on their direct line now.”
Shiro pushed past me to stare at the screen. The array of symbols and diagrams meant nothing to me, so I hung back.
“Why did they turn?” Shiro reached over Corey’s shoulder and manipulated the panel. New symbols appeared, scrolling up past the old ones, still incomprehensible.
“We’re not sure,” Corey said. “There are no inhabited worlds that we know of on this trajectory. They’re still basically heading for Earth’s zone, but . . .”
“What’s this?”
I followed Shiro’s finger. More symbols.
Corey peered closer. “It’s a system, for sure. No known habitable planets. Hang on.” He worked the panel for a few tense moments.
Ricky leaned in. “There’s a system. Couple of planets around a red dwarf.”
I knew that was a kind of star. Small and relatively cool, they could burn almost forever, but they were nowhere near as hot as Earth’s sun.
“Could one of them have life on it?” I asked. “Could they be going to take it over?”
Corey shook his head. “There’s only one planet close enough to harbor any kind of life, and it’s tiny. Hang on.”
His fingers flew over the panel, changing the screen image. It pulled up a diagram that I could finally recognize as a star with four planets. There were Siitsi symbols all around the chart, but of course they meant nothing to me. I guess I’ll have to learn their language. One way or another, I guess I’ll be living with them somewhere.
“Look here,” Corey said, gesturing to the screen. “This planet is dead. But it has a moon.” A small, round body came into view, orbiting the second planet out from the red dwarf star. “It’s incredibly cold, but I’m getting readings of an atmosphere. Oxygen-poor, and not fit for humans. Way too cold anyway. But it looks like that’s where they’re going now.”
I turned to Shiro. “Then that’s where we have to go. Whether they’re landing there to set up a new home or just—I don’t know—stopping for whatever reason. It’s our chance to catch them and maybe rescue my brother.”
Shiro nodded, eyes still on the screen. “How cold?” The question was for Corey.
“Minus three hundred, give or take.”
My eyes bulged. Minus three hundred degrees?
“That’s maybe . . .” Shiro thought for a moment. “Would be about minus fifty degrees Celsius. Minus sixty Fahrenheit.”
Did the Botanist ship have heat? Could plants survive that cold?
“Can people live in that temperature?” Surely not.
“For a very short time, yes,” Ricky said. “With proper exposure suits, maybe a couple of hours.”
My people were wearing what they’d had on when the Delta was breached. Light pants, long-sleeved shirts. The kind of shoes made for a people that would never set foot outside in their lives. So far that was true for all of them except me.
I nodded. “And are there ‘proper exposure suits’ on this ship?”
Shiro put a hand on my shoulder. “Look, we’re not going down there . . .”
I cut him off. “You can do what you want. I’m not asking anybody to go with me.” My eyes returned to the image on the screen. It had changed from a line drawing to what looked now like a live video. Were we close enough to see it? How close did a ship like this have to be to get an image like that? The moon was white, covered in clouds. Here and there the clouds cleared to reveal what looked like sheer ice in ripples that might be mountains or deep valleys. What could the Botanists want there?
“Nobody’s going anywhere,” Shiro said, but again I cut him off.
“Yes, they are. My brother is going there, whether he wants to or not. If they land that ship, I’m going down there and getting back on it. One way or another, I’ll find a way to get my people off, or maybe I won’t. But either way, I’m not abandoning my brother to those plants.”
Corey and Ricky stared at me.
“You can’t go down there. You can’t even think you’re getting back on a Botanist ship.” Corey’s mouth hung open.
Ricky’s eyes sparkled. “No, you can’t. But we could get a lot closer. No one has ever seen one up close. We could at least follow them to that ice moon. Get some images of their ship. Just think what we might be able to learn, even just from seeing the thing up close.”
I sensed my ally. “Right,” I said. We could maybe . . . I don’t know, orbit that moon for a little while. Just have a look. We’d be the only ship that ever saw one and came back to tell the tale. You’d be famous.”
Shiro’s hand on my shoulder squeezed tighter. “Right. Just orbit around it. Get some pictures. Just look.”
He sees right through you. Not very hard, really. I hadn’t exactly been secretive with what I wanted since they brought me on board.
But Corey either didn’t hear the sarcasm or ignored it. “If the ship can manipulate the wavelengths it absorbs so it’s invisible, it will probably look white on an ice world. Even just seeing that would go a long way toward finding some way of tracing their ships when they don’t have one of your shuttles inside.”
Your shuttles. Not ours. Yours. He wasn’t born on a Horizon ship. He had no idea what it was like. But for all I knew, he might have been born on this one.
“And maybe,” I continued, “if they land there, we could take a shuttle down and get a sample. Like, cut a piece away to study it. You have shuttles that could do that?”
“Oh, yeah.” Corey was hot on the idea. “We have a couple of tiny ones in bay six they might not even notice. With full exposure suits, we could land somewhere nearby, maybe around one of these mountains.” He pointed to the ripples on the ice world. “There would be time to get around it and maybe—”
Shiro cut him off. “Nobody’s going down there. We can orbit and take a look. Get your images. But nobody is taking a shuttle anywhere.” He glared at all of us. “We do not land; we do not explore; we do not get a sample of anything. Is that understood?”
Corey’s face fell. “Yes, sir.”
Everyone answered in the affirmative, and even Tishi’s chirp sounded dejected.
“I’ve got work to do,” Shiro continued. “Ricky, can you take care of Jonah today? Maybe get him some clothes that fit?”
He nodded. “I’m off here in half an hour. I’ll show him around.”
Shiro gave my shoulder one last squeeze, turned, and stalked out of the room.
I eyed the image of the ice world, spinning around the dead planet somewhere in space.
I’m coming, Shane. I don’t know how, but I’m going to get you back.