I hung back from Corey’s station. He and Ricky huddled together, whispering over the image. I pretended to be absorbed in my own thoughts, but my gaze never left the spinning moon below.
Finally, Ricky straightened up and turned to me. “Are you ready for some lunch? Then we can take a tour if you want.” He glanced back at Corey’s workstation and shook his head. “Botanist ship. Can’t believe we’re so close.”
“Sure,” I answered. “Lunch sounds great.”
We left Corey still huddled over his screen and padded down the long hallway. I was trying to put together a mental picture of the ship as we walked, and asked what I hoped were innocent-sounding questions.
“So how many levels on this ship?”
“Thirty-two,” Ricky said. “Most of it is either science labs of one kind or another or crew housing or engineering. The Siitsi home world is super crowded and apparently kind of a mess, environmentally. Most of them left it hundreds of years ago. They tried to spread out all over their side of the galaxy.” He waved a hand to the left, apparently the direction “their side” was on. “But most of the worlds they found weren’t hospitable. A lot of their population lives on ships like this now. Some of them live on the dinosaur planet where my mom and dad live.”
Even in my plotting, that sounded intriguing.
“It’s really dinosaurs?”
He grinned. “Sure is. Well, sort of. They’re not really the same as Earth dinosaurs, but some of them look pretty dead-on. I was born there, but as soon as I turned fifteen, I was history. Joined the Siitsi crew to train in biophysics. I study stress in biological systems.”
I snorted. “Stress? I guess I’m a perfect research subject, then.”
He laughed. “Well, not really that kind of stress, but yeah, for sure.” His face got serious. “I really am sorry about your family, by the way.”
“Thanks.”
We entered another elevator. I was starting to recognize some of the symbols labeling the corridors and elevators. This one was two vertical slashes with a single diagonal line connecting them. Kind of like a very shaky letter “N.” I had no idea what the symbols meant, but at least they were looking familiar. I could pick a few of them out now.
“How is that possible, though?” I asked as the elevator moved silently. “How are there dinosaurs on different worlds? And people that look like birds?”
“Panspermia,” he said. To my confused look, he added, “It’s a theory that all life all over the universe developed from one single cell and was carried everywhere on comets and meteors, or just flying through space, seeding the universe with the same basic building blocks. In theory, dinosaurs, or things like dinosaurs, could evolve on different worlds to look similar, if the conditions they developed in were similar.”
The word sounded vaguely familiar, and the theory made a weird kind of sense, especially considering all the species I’d seen on the trade world. They all breathed the same kind of atmosphere I needed to survive. They looked different, but there was nothing that didn’t look like it could possibly have evolved on Earth, given different circumstances. Different dominant species. No asteroid that killed our dinosaurs, or no ice age, or a million different things that shaped the animals that lived on a planet. Or the plants. Don’t forget the plants.
We entered the dining hall, and he indicated a seat for me. In a few minutes he returned with different fruits and a warm, sweet drink that tasted a bit like honey.
“So how long until we’re in orbit around that moon?” I didn’t look at him when I asked it, focusing on my lunch.
“Couple of hours,” he answered. “Don’t know how long we’ll stay. Assuming they’re landing their whole ship, as soon as it moves, we’re not staying around. No way we want to get swallowed like you did.” He grimaced. “Sorry.”
“It’s okay.” But it wasn’t remotely okay. Patience. A couple of hours.
“What was it like? Inside their ship?”
I told him everything I could remember. The light that came from everywhere and nowhere. How the vines felt under my hands when the lights chased through them. The smell of the giant pod that ate our people. He hung on my words just like I was clinging to every new thing I learned on the Siitsi ship. When we finished our meals, we dropped the dishes off on a cart pushed by a small Siitsi who stared at me, chirping happily. My cuff didn’t translate anything, so I smiled in what I hoped was a friendly way. The little bird’s eyes got round, and it flitted away, rolling the cart full of dishes.
“So what do you want to see first?”
I pretended to consider a moment. “That shuttle I rode in on was cool. Can I see the shuttles?”
“Absolutely!”
Along the way I asked him to point out the scratches that were Siitsi language. “How do you know which ones are numbers and which ones are letters?”
He shook his head. “You’re thinking like a human. Their language isn’t anything like ours. For us, each syllable comes from letters put together to make a sound. Theirs is more like the writing of the old Earth Chinese language, where each stroke in a symbol contributed to the overall meaning of the symbol. A line might tell you how it’s pronounced or what it means or how it relates to the next character. It’s like that because their language is not really made of words like ours.” He thought for a moment. “I wonder what kind of language the Botanists use? Did you see any writing anywhere in their ship?”
I shook my head. “I’m not sure they have writing, or any kind of language. Not like Siitsi. Can you teach me anything? Like, what’s that say?” I pointed over a closed hatch.
“That’s a four,” he said. “Down, up, down, up.” It looked like a capital “W.” He pointed to the number on the opposite wall. “That’s the three. Down, up, down.” Like a backwards “N.”
I looked at it. “So a five is down, up, down, up, down?”
He laughed. “No. It’s a single down with a hash across. Like that.” The next doorway was marked as such. Sort of like a plus sign.
The door opposite would be a seven, then. A backwards “N” with a hash across.
I hoped we’d go into six, which was surely the door on the left, marked with what looked like a “V” with a horizontal slash, but instead he took us into five.
It was a huge hangar with one giant shuttle in it.
“Can we look inside it?”
“Sure.”
The shuttle’s entry hatch was open, its ramp extending onto the floor. No one else was in the bay, and I hoped that was normal when the ship was in flight. No reason to be around the shuttles when there was nothing to land on. We trooped up the ramp and into the big, open cargo bay.
“Are there space suits in here?” I tried to sound like a little kid.
“Right in here.” He showed me a small door next to the one I assumed led to the cockpit. I waved my hand in front of the small panel, but it didn’t open, and Ricky didn’t open it for me.
“Here’s the cockpit.” The door slid silently open with a wave of his hand.
Inside the cockpit was a total mystery.
“How do you start it?”
“Mostly automated,” he said. “That pad turns the whole thing on, releases the gravity grips that hold it to the floor, and signals to the big bay doors to prepare to open.”
The buttons and panels were all labeled with Siitsi writing. Did you expect an owner’s manual in English? An illustrated guide to flying an alien shuttle?
Ricky was obviously proud of the technology, and I kept playing the “awed little kid” role, which wasn’t all that hard.
“I bet it takes years to learn how to fly one. Maybe someday I could be a pilot, too.”
He smiled and pointed at a couple of long, thin rods protruding from the panel. “It’s not as hard as you’d think. The pilot steers with those, and when the shuttle’s sensors detect ground, it lands automatically.”
I touched a hand to the steering rods. You’re insane for even thinking this. “That’s really cool. Are they all smart like that?”
“Everything about a Siitsi ship is smart,” he replied. “Ready to go see the engine room?”
A huge yawn escaped me, and I pretended to stretch. “Actually, I’m still pretty wiped out. Is it okay if I go back to my room and get a nap? Maybe pick it up later?”
“Sure.”
On the way back to my room, he chatted on about his time with the Siitsi and the science he was working on. I’d mostly been pretending to need a nap, but the droning science lecture had me yawning for real by the time we reached my room.
“Oh, here,” he said. “Let’s get the panels to recognize you, since you’re staying at least a while.” He pressed his hand to the panel and made a Siitsi whistle. “Now press your whole hand there.”
I did, and he nodded. “Good. Now all you have to do is wave, and anything that’s not restricted will open for you. Just talk to the panels, and you can ask for directions. Your ear cuff will translate.”
He left me and I waved my hand to close the door.
Inside the room alone, I sat on the edge of my bed.
Totally insane. You can’t fly a bird shuttle. But no one else was going to help. In a couple of hours, we’d be in orbit around an ice moon, with the Botanist shuttle on it. My only way back to my brother. You’ll die trying. But I was all right with that. I wasn’t okay with living and not trying.
Just a couple more hours, Shane. I’m coming.