There was no clock in my room, and even if there had been, I couldn’t have read it. The numbers hadn’t made sense to me when Ricky explained them, but I saw the six. The small shuttles were in bay six.
I rested for what I thought might be a little more than an hour. The voice in my head went round and round.
You’re never even going to get it to fly.
If you do, you’ll never even find the moon.
If you do, you’ll never find the right place to land.
If you do, you’ll never land it safely.
If you do, you’ll never survive the cold to get to the Botanist ship.
If you do, you’ll never get on board.
If you do . . .
I stopped there. The idea that Shane might already be dead—that they all might—I couldn’t even let the thought turn into words. He had to be alive. And I had to save him.
When I thought enough time must have passed, I used the little bathroom and crept out of my room.
Walk normal. Don’t sneak. Look like you’re supposed to be here.
Two wrong turns made me backtrack. When I passed a human, I nodded, keeping my eyes down. My oversized pants bagged around my ankles, and the shirt was rolled up at the sleeves. But the boots fit me well enough, and I tromped down the halls until I found the elevator.
Hadn’t thought of that.
There weren’t any buttons. Everyone else just whistled at it. And I wasn’t sure what floor I was going to.
“Shuttle hangar six,” I said, hoping there wasn’t any kind of voice-recognition software analyzing my tone to hear the shake in my words.
The door slid closed and the elevator moved. I sighed and leaned against the wall.
My stomach growled. Should have stopped for a meal. How long did it take for a shuttle to reach a planet? An hour? Two? Ten? How long ‘till I reached anywhere with food? You’re not going to. You’re going to crash in flames. Or freeze on an alien moon. I dug my fingernails into my palm hard enough to quiet the doubts. Doesn’t matter. I’ll find Shane or die trying.
Would it matter, though? If I died trying to rescue him, he’d never know. I could just as easily stay here on this comfortable ship. Go live with the dinosaur people, or learn how to speak bird and fly around the galaxy. Shane wouldn’t know either way.
But I would.
The elevator door slid open. I retraced my steps from earlier in the day with Ricky. A few Siitsi passed me, walking faster than me on their long, backwards-bending legs.
Stealing their shuttle. Very heroic.
But they had more. They wouldn’t miss it.
Down the hallway. I guessed the single slash down was bay one. The distance to the next set of doors told me that it was a huge hangar. Was there just one huge shuttle in there, or a bunch of smaller ones? There was so much I’d never know.
You could. You could stay here.
But the words in my head were drowned out by the words in my memory.
Don’t ever give up hope.
It’s what I’d said to Shane when I left him in that livestock hold. How many days ago? I refused to think about it. He was alive. He had to be. And I made him promise not to give up hope. He’d hold onto that hope until they dragged him out of the room. Until they shoved him down the corridor. Until they pushed him up the ramp. Until they tossed him off into the pool of acid in the mouth of the Botanist pitcher. Until the acid dissolved him into the tiny molecules they would use to make more moving plants to take over some other planet, filling it with grasping vines and silent, staring pods.
He would never give up on me. So I would never give up on him.
Down the hall. Four. Five.
I waved my hand in front of the door to bay six.
It opened.
I glanced both ways down the hall. No one in sight, human or Siitsi. I stepped through the door, which closed behind me.
The bay was smaller than the one Ricky had shown me earlier in the day. Three small shuttles sat side by side, noses pointing in, away from the huge, closed hatch on the far wall.
You’re going to have to back it out.
I didn’t even know how to fly it forward.
You’re going to crash it right here in the hangar.
Maybe I was. Rescue Shane or die trying.
Which shuttle to take? They all looked the same. All of them had open hatchways with extended ramps. I decided to take the one on the far left. There was a little more room between that one and the one in the middle. At least if I wrecked it, I wouldn’t take out all three of them.
I trooped up the ramp. Inside was a small cargo bay, maybe big enough for thirty people to sit on the floor. Forty if they stood up. There weren’t more than twenty, maybe twenty-five, people left on the Botanist ship when I left it. There would be fewer now. Plenty of room for everyone. When you back out of here and fly down there and walk across the ice and get in another shuttle and fly to their black bean ship and find them and rescue them and fly back down to the ice planet on their shuttle. Jonah, the hero.
Jonah, the dead man.
I waved my hand in front of the little door to the cockpit. A clanking sound behind me froze my arm for a moment.
Someone’s here.
Diving into the cockpit, I hunched down in front of the pilot’s seat, curling into a ball.
Footsteps on the ramp.
A rustling and swishing sound from the little cargo bay.
I peeked up around the seat.
Shiro stood there with a long, white exposure suit draped over each arm.
“We’ll need these once we get there.” He eyed me with a shake of his head. “And move, kid. You’re in my seat.”