23

We practically skip out of the mall and back onto the 118.

“Mission accomplished,” Becka says, as we enter the main corridor of our ship. “We’ll be home in no time.”

For once, Ari doesn’t get all superstitious on us. He just lets out a triumphant hoot.

We walk back into the cafeteria. It’s been cleaned up and the whole place smells like pine and lemony soap.

“The robots?” Ari asks.

“Maybe,” I say, as I notice a little handwritten note taped to one of the folding tables: Cleaned up a little—but don’t expect us to make a habit of it. And don’t wait for us. We’ve decided to stay awhile. Sincerely, “Cranky” & “Stingy.”

“You think they’re okay?” Ari asks. Guess Creaky isn’t going to get that alone time after all.

“They’re fine,” Becka answers, rolling her eyes. “They hate working here anyway—”

She’s cut off by a snapping sound and a quick flash of white light.

“Why are you still here?” an alien asks, his voice raspy and tired. He must have teleported onto our ship. He’s dressed in a long dark cloak, hood pulled back revealing his face. He’s Elvidian, I think. His red eyes eerily reflect the white walls of the cafeteria. But his skin is deeply lined. As if he’s lived too long. Or seen too much. “Unless you want them to capture you—and they will capture you, if you stay put much longer.”

I stare at the weapon in the visitor’s hands, a glance he notices.

“This is not for you, Jack,” he says, putting the gun down onto the floor. His voice is familiar—I realize it’s the same voice I heard in my head before Orientation. The one that told me it wasn’t real.

“How do you know my name?” I ask.

“We don’t have much time,” is all he says. “I will be called back soon. I’ve been trying to help you. First, by returning your property to you during your imprisonment.” He tilts his head in Ari’s direction.

“You mean my Pencil?”

The Elvidian nods. “I had someone slip that device into your cell undetected. I could not risk doing more at the time.” He flicks his ear. Maybe I don’t understand that gesture after all. “But once you were free, you chose to endanger yourselves further. Though I suppose I should not have been surprised that you ignored my repeated warnings. Just like your father.”

“My father?” I say. “You know him?”

“No, but I did try to warn him against building that engine. I tried over and over. But he wouldn’t listen. I hoped my messages to you would be more successful.”

“Uh, Jack?” Ari asks. “What messages is he talking about?”

I sigh and project the texts up out of my ring: “You must leave.” “Leave this place.” And more, that I also kept to myself: “They will find you.” “They will hunt you down.” “The rest of your people are lost. They cannot be helped. Leave them. You can save yourselves now—or save no one if you delay.”

“You didn’t tell us you’ve been getting secret alien text messages this whole time?” Becka yells.

“What difference did it make?” I yell back. “We needed the QHC. We need to use my dad’s engine again. We need to get home and bring back help. What would you have done if I’d told you? Listened to him? Decided to give up? Then what? We’d just fly around this one terrible solar system for the rest of our lives, with the 118ers in jail and our families probably worried sick—all because of my dad? All because of me?”

Becka stares at me and shakes her head. “We wouldn’t have given up,” she says calmly. “And I can’t believe that you thought we would have.”

Ari nods. “You should have told us,” he says. “We’re in this together.”

“You voted me the captain,” is all I can think to reply.

He rolls his eyes. “So what?”

“Ahem,” the Elvidian interrupts. “As I said, little time.”

Oh, right. I’d almost forgotten about the alien. “Who are you? Why do you care what happens to us?”

The Elvidian sighs. “My name is Bale Kontra. I will do my best to explain.” He throws something into the air: a small, golden sphere that, when it reaches his eye level, explodes into a million pieces.

“Come here,” he says, “and watch.”

The shards hang in the air for a moment before reassembling themselves into a 3D image. A super-real hologram. We move closer to Bale Kontra as the picture comes together into a familiar scene, floating in the center of the cafeteria like a cloud.

“Is that . . . Jupiter?” Ari asks.

He nods, placing his hands around the sides of the floating diorama and making a gesture like he’s pulling clay apart. As he moves his hands farther away from each other, the image zooms out. I circle around the hologram and get my bearings: I can see Io, Europa, Callisto, Ganymede, and lots of Jupiter’s other moons too. There are ships everywhere. Other schoolships in orbital rotation, cargo and passenger ships in their space lanes, military and police vehicles on patrol. When I’m standing on one side of the image, I can see through to Mars, Earth, and the Sun. When I move to the other side, I can make out Saturn in the distance. It’s as detailed as if it were a portal to the real thing.

“Pay attention,” the Elvidian orders, as he swipes a hand across the picture.

It springs to life. The planets and moons begin revolving and ships start moving to and from their destinations. He grabs the outside of it again and tilts it seventy or eighty degrees, like he’s turning a globe. Next he squeezes his palms together, zooming in on a small speck toward the outer orbit of Ganymede.

“That’s us,” I realize.

“Yes,” he says, zooming out just a bit so we have a better view.

He waves an arm at the hologram and sets the display on fast-forward. The 118 orbits a spinning Ganymede, day after day after day. Sunrise, sunset, sunrise, sunset. A time-lapse video of space.

“I told him,” the Elvidian explains, as the weeks march on inside the cloud, “that if he was discovered, consequences would ensue. But he wouldn’t listen. And I couldn’t explain fully, in case someone was listening in. There were only so many messages I could send undetected. Eventually, it became too dangerous and I had to cut off the connection.”

“But what were you trying to warn him about?” Becka asks.

“This,” he says. “The Quarantine.” Suddenly, another ship materializes next to the 118, blotting out the view of Ganymede behind it. It’s enormous, and its black hull shimmers like it’s made of a pool of translucent ink. The Elvidian waves his arm the other way and the scene slows again. It’s back to replaying the recording in real time.

“That’s what attacked us?” I ask.

He nods and continues: “I will make this as simple as I can: The Minister is the ruler of our system. But that is not all she controls. She is extremely powerful, and she has extremely powerful allies. Think of them as a committee.”

As he’s speaking, the alien vessel passes directly in front of Jupiter. Against the background of that massive and colorful planet, we can make out the ship’s silhouette more clearly—like a giant sea urchin, with sharp black tentacles reaching out in every direction. A miniature, flying version of Elvid IV. Suddenly, the vessel glows brightly for a moment, flooding space with light that explodes outward like a shockwave in every direction. When the light hits the 118, it tumbles away from Ganymede, out of control.

“The dark matter required to prime the Quarantine is too unstable to release in a single moment. When the Quarantine vessel arrives, it disperses an initial shockwave to commence the process and then—over a period of several minutes—floods the target area with energy sufficient for its purpose.”

I only understand a little of that, but enough to know the only question that really matters: “And what is its purpose?”

“Think of the Quarantine as a security system of sorts,” he answers, “designed and operated by a secret committee of system leaders. Its purpose is to make sure the galaxy remains a peaceful place.”

Becka raises an eyebrow.

“At least, that’s what the committee claims. The members pretend that it’s about keeping us safe—when in reality, it’s about keeping themselves in power. Preventing new races from joining the galactic community. Maintaining the status quo.”

“Not sure I’m following,” Becka says.

“The committee has spies everywhere, monitoring not just our League of Independent Systems but also the primitive races like yours. There has not been an awakening for many years. Not because there are no young species left. But because when the committee discovers that a primitive race is close to developing the technology needed to travel the stars, they use the Quarantine to prevent the awakening from taking place.”

We hear a faint echo of a voice coming from inside the image: “QUARANTINE IN FIVE MINUTES.”

“You know the rest,” the Elvidian says, as he fast-forwards the scene again. We watch as the 118 hurtles helplessly away from Ganymede and listen as the familiar robotic voice counts down.

“But not really,” I point out. “We activated the light speed engine before the Quarantine actually kicked in. What would’ve happened if we’d stuck around?”

Bale Kontra gestures at the hologram. “What you are looking at is the most powerful teleportation device ever created. It grabs hold of the supposed threat and sends it to a far-off star system that functions as the committee’s dumping ground.”

“And where’s that?” asks Ari.

He shakes his head. “I have no idea. The Quarantine is a closely guarded secret. It took me many years to even learn of its existence. Many details are still unknown to me.”

I think about how my dad was down on Ganymede. If the Quarantine was going after the “threat,” it might have been targeting more than the 118 and its light speed engine. It could’ve also been targeting my dad—the guy who made the light speed engine. Which would mean . . .

The countdown concludes: “THREE. TWO. ONE.” And we watch as the 118 vanishes into nothingness and darkness blots out the whole projection.

“Can you rewind a few seconds?” I ask the Elvidian. “Rewind and zoom out, and slow it down a little?” My voice comes out kind of strangled. I’m hope my hunch is wrong, but—

The image zooms out and the scene reverses, back to before we jumped away. He plays it again, more slowly. And I watch as, milliseconds after the 118 disappears, the darkness fills the space where it once was, plus all the space around it, blanketing Ganymede—its atmosphere, its surface, everything—with its energy.

“Did the Quarantine target everyone on Ganymede?” I whisper. That sounds impossible—but that word just doesn’t mean as much as it used to.

“I’m afraid,” says Bale Kontra, “you were the only ones to escape.”

The light fades. And the image dissolves into dust that congeals back into the golden sphere, which falls back into the alien’s open palm.

The three of us are staring at him in stunned silence. My dad, Ari’s and Becka’s parents, the population of our whole moon, has been kidnapped by aliens and sent to a mystery location that could be literally anywhere in the galaxy.

“This is why I contacted you,” Bale Kontra tells me. “I saw that you were risking everything to get more fuel, to use your light speed engine again. To get back to your moon, presumably. But you will only be returning to an abandoned homeworld, where the Minister will easily find you again. You should instead find a remote place to stay hidden. Please.”

“How do you know all this?” Becka demands. “And why do you care what happens to us?”

“I oppose the agenda of that corrupt committee.” Which doesn’t really answer her questions. “I believe that the galaxy would be a better place with the new races in it, not worse. But I am no match for the Minister.”

He’s about to say more, but he’s interrupted by a short, shrill siren coming out of his translator bracelet. “I have to leave,” he tells us.

Ari grabs his arm. “But . . .” He pauses, clearly trying to think of the most important question of all the questions we still have. “. . . what do we do now?”

Bale Kontra effortlessly pulls his arm out of Ari’s grip and picks up his gun. Then he touches his wrist cuff and vanishes into thin air, leaving behind only a single word.

“Run.”