17

“I can’t see the way out,” Max said, feeling uneasy.

“Might be a long passage,” Lucinda answered.

“None has been this long, Max said as they hurried on through the darkness. “I see the exit,” he said finally. They came to it and looked out into a blue station.

“The color’s right,” Lucinda said as they stepped out into the brightness and started across the floor. “Wait,” she added, and hurried back to the column to mark the exit:

THIS PASSAGE CONNECTS WITH A BLUE STATION

THE MARKED ENTRANCE THERE CONNECTS WITH
CENTAURI A-4

“I think that’s clear enough.”

“Those markings had better stay with the columns,” Max said.

“We haven’t seen the columns spin the last few times. It’s as if they wanted us to get lost, and now they want us to get home. Let’s wait a few minutes and see if the column spins.”

As they waited, Max thought of Emil and wanted to say something to console Lucinda, but nothing seemed right. He knew that she was blaming herself, even though it wasn’t her fault. No one could look out for another person forever.

“It’s starting to spin,” Lucinda said as he looked out across the station. He turned around, and they watched the column blur and whine, and finally stop. They went up to their exit and saw Lucinda’s sign. “That’s a relief,” she murmured. “We can rely on our markings.”

Then, as they went out into the station and searched for the mountainous shape of the habitat, Max realized that nothing would be as it had been. The life he had loved was over, even if they got back. He felt closer to Lucinda now, but wondered how she might feel toward him later.

“I hear voices,” she said.

Max stopped and listened. “I hear them, too.” His pulse quickened. It didn’t seem possible that they had found the right station in the vast alien web.

They ran forward. The habitat loomed up before them in the brightness, still frozen in the alien floor. Several figures were out by the forward manual lock.

“Hey!” Lucinda shouted to them.

Max hurried after her, feeling strangely detached, as if this weren’t happening.

“Lucinda!” one figure cried out, waving.

Max saw Linda ten Eyck. Jake was with her. They rushed up and embraced their daughter. Both seemed thinner, and Jake had not shaved for some time.

“Where’s Emil?” Linda demanded, looking around.

“Max!” his mother’s voice cried. Joe and Rosalie rushed up from his left and hugged him wildly. He felt a moment of relief as his mother kissed him, but it died away when he heard Lucinda struggling, on the verge of tears, to tell Linda and Jake the bad news.

“Max, where have you been all week?” Joe demanded.

His mother gave him a suspicious look, then glanced at Lucinda.

“When we couldn’t read your wrist IDs inside the habitat,” Joe went on, “we started to search out here.”

“You just started?” Max asked, noticing two older boys in front of the airlock. One of them was Muhammad Bekhter; the dark-haired boy lifted a hand in greeting.

“We’ve been coming out here for two days,” Joe said. “It seemed impossible that anyone would have come out here, but the alarm sensor insisted that the manual locks were open. I almost fell over when I went to check and saw they were open, and realized that you had come out here.”

“We hoped that the three of you were together, hiding somewhere in the hollow,” Rosalie added.

“Why would we be hiding?” Lucinda asked softly, turning away from her mother’s gaze.

“Have you seen the column!” Max asked nervously.

His father nodded. Lucinda turned to him and asked, “Has anyone else gone through it?”

“No, we’ve kept people away, and someone’s always on guard by the airlock.”

“Good,” Lucinda said with relief.

“What happened, Max?” Jake demanded, holding Linda’s hand. She stood rigidly at his side.

“You couldn’t pick up our IDs,” Max explained, “because we were light-years away. The portals in the column lead to stations in other star systems. One of them goes to Alpha Centauri A-4.”

“Emil’s still there, at the colony,” Lucinda said.

“He was poisoned by some briars on A-4,” Max continued, “but the colony found us. He’s in the hospital on the habitat. They gave him antitoxin.”

Max saw Linda ten Eyck stiffen, staring at her daughter in disbelief, her hands trembling. She had lost a brother, and now her son was in danger, or already dead.

Jake put his arm around her. “What are his chances?”

“We don’t know,” Lucinda said in a shaking voice, still avoiding her mother’s gaze.

“Can you take us to him?” Linda asked.

“The portal closed up behind us,” Max answered. “We don’t know when it will open.”

“Can you show us?” Jake asked.

Max nodded. “Sure, but—”

“Rosalie and I will come with you,” Joe said.

“But what’s happened here?” Max asked, looking at his parents, then at the guards by the airlock.

“We’re in a station of some kind,” his father said, “probably somewhere in a close orbit around the Sun.”

“Some people wander out,” Jake explained, “so we’ve posted guards, in case anyone gets the urge to go exploring.”

“That’s what happened to us,” Max said, looking at Lucinda, “but the feeling wore off after we’d gone through the column.”

“It seems to affect people by degrees,” Linda managed to say, looking dazed as she stepped away from Jake.

Max looked at his father. “Lucky Russell rescued us from A-4. The colony’s excited about the possibility of having a direct link with us.”

“Sure,” Joe said, “if we can figure out where we are.”

“But you said we’re near the Sun,” Lucinda said.

“That’s only a guess,” Joe replied. “We could be halfway across the known universe, from what you two have told us.”

Linda said, “A link with Centauri, or with anywhere else, won’t mean much if the habitat remains trapped here.”

Max felt uneasy before the two sets of parents. Rosalie was looking at him strangely, as if he had become someone else.

“We’ll get extra packs,” Jake said, looking at his wife with concern. “Are you kids up to showing us the way right now?”

“Sure,” Max said, hoping that the barrier would be down.

“Could you make a sketch of the portal connections?” Linda asked, her voice trembling.

“Yes,” Max said, “but there’d be no way to tell distances. We can describe the places, but not where they are. We saw different suns in the sky, so we had to be light-years away. Centauri is the only known place we visited.”

Something rumbled in the distance, as if a storm were approaching. They all looked up, but the blue brightness was unchanged.

“We haven’t heard that before,” Linda said.

There was a flash high over the habitat. It came again, brighter. Suddenly it was flashing every second, brighter each time.

“Everyone, back inside!” the navigator shouted over the rumble.

As they retreated toward the airlock, Joe glanced at Max. “Do you know what this is, son?”

The flashes came faster, and the rumbling deepened. Max stopped and turned around. Lucinda did the same, and as he looked at her he knew what they both expected.

“What is it?” Linda demanded.

“I think the aliens are about to show themselves,” Max said.