Gnat was asleep in less than a minute.
As the hovertrain sped towards New Hull, Scrap and Paige stared out of the top of the carriage into a bright green-blue sky, doing their best to avoid eye contact.
“Y’know, I really can’t help you,” Scrap said at last. “I know your sister thinks I’m—”
“Gnat still believes in Father Christmas.” Paige spat out her interruption. “If you’re the King of the Robots, we’re as good as dead. No offence.”
“…None -zk- taken,” Scrap replied. Paige took a green ration ball out of her satchel and began chewing it joylessly.
“Mum never even got to test the core tracer,” she continued. She looked down at the armguard on her wrist and tapped one of its small screens. “The chance of it being able to pinpoint a specific core somewhere on this Somewhere is a thousand to one. It must have locked on to you by accident.”
“…Must’ve,” Scrap muttered.
Paige peered at the screen. “Is this right? Are we heading west?”
“Yeah.”
“Then I guess we’re going in the right direction.”
“Right direction for what? There’s nothin’ for you in New Hull besides trouble.”
“Not the city – the right direction for the ship,” said Paige flatly.
“Ship?” grunted Scrap. “What ship? What are you -zk- talkin’ about?”
Paige paused for a moment, a shiver of mistrust running down her spine.
“The rocket ship that brought all the robots here,” she said at last. “It’s still on Somewhere Five One Three. That’s the mission. Find the ship and get off-world. Find the Pink-Footed Goose.”
Scrap winced at the words. Memories that he had buried at the back of his brain-frame wrestled their way to the fore once again. So much had changed since he first set off for Somewhere 513, full of hope and determination, ready to claim this world for the humans and ready it for their arrival. So much change, and all of it bad.
“For cog’s sake – the Pink-Foot? The Pink-Foot is your mission?” he hissed. “That ship is on the other side of the -zk- planet! It’s in the middle of the Elsewhere!”
“I know,” said Paige, checking that Gnat was still asleep.
“Slap bang in the no-return belly of the Badlands!”
“I know. Keep your voice down.”
“You ever been to the Elsewhere? No, you haven’t – ’cause if you had, you’d be dead and dusted. If the meteor storms or hot hail doesn’t kill you, the glowsharks or batrillas will! Word has it, everythin’ in the Elsewhere wants you dead!”
“I said keep your voice—”
They both froze as Gnat rolled over with a throaty snore, then immediately fell back asleep. With her eyes still on her sister, Paige took a deep breath and said, “Well, that’s the mission.”
“A wild pink-footed goose chase, is what it is!” Scrap hissed. “So what’s the plan? Get the ship space-worthy, swing by the Foxhole to pick up your -zk- mum and then jet off to the nearest spaceport? The Pink-Foot doesn’t even have life-support!”
“Clause nineteen-nine of the Automated Colonization Provision Code,” said Paige, reciting the text with less effort than it took Scrap to remember the plants in his flower bed. “All robot ships must be fitted with five functional stasis pods in case said ship is called upon to divert its course for the purposes of retrieving or rescuing a life form or life forms in distress.”
“But that ship was stripped for parts and left to rot years ago – you’ve more chance of gettin’ off-world by flappin’ your -zk- arms than getting the Pink-Foot to fly.”
Paige’s small shrug was heavy with doubt but her reply was plain, slow and defiant.
“I guess that’s why Mum thought we needed help.”
“Your mum wasn’t thinking at all!” insisted Scrap. “I mean, you’ve been out in the world for three days and you’re -zk- already being hunted. What you need is to go home, back to the Foxhole – it’s the only safe place on the planet for you. Your -zk- mum must’ve been—”
“You don’t know anything about my mum,” Paige interrupted.
“I know no one in their right mind would send you out into the—”
“You don’t know anything about my mum!” repeated Paige. “And you don’t know me either! I can find that ship with or without you or the ‘King of the Robots’ or anyone else. I don’t need help.”
“I was just sayin’—” Scrap began.
“Well, don’t,” Paige said firmly. “When we get to wherever this train is going, I’ll make sure Gnat leaves you alone. You go your way, we’ll go ours.”
Scrap scratched his head … sighed as he discovered another dent.
“Fine,” he said. “OK then.”
He watched Paige shove the rest of the ration ball in her mouth and lean back against the wall. Even if she was too stubborn and too stupid to go home, Scrap thought, she was right about one thing – she and her sister were better off on their own than with him, and he was OK with that. Maybe if he was something – anything other than “Scrap” – he could have helped them. But as it was, he was the junkiest junk case he’d ever seen. He was in no fit state to help anyone.
Of course he also knew that Paige and Gnat didn’t stand the slightest chance of making it across the Elsewhere to the Pink-Footed Goose.
The humans’ mission was over before it had begun.