I rocketed out into the night sky, the blurry shapes of smaller buildings pitching beneath me, and immediately the inside of my ship started flashing purple and making this ENGH ENGH sound, like that’s ever helpful. If you’re at the point where an escape pod even seems like a good idea in the first place, then I don’t think you need a siren to tell you how your life is going.
Other Boovish ships like silver fish darted past the windshield, this way and that. I remembered that the jail where they were keeping J.Lo was in Sector 3, so I yelled that.
“Sector Three jail!” I told the rocketpod. “Sector Three!” It was about as useful as shouting “Bagel!” at a toaster. But just then I was about to crash into a tower, so I grabbed the T-stick in front of me and yanked it to the right. I slalomed around the edge of the tower, grinding sparks, and jerked the stick to the left to avoid another. A school of little ships scattered at my approach. Finally there was a big bubble building that looked too big to avoid. It was coming up fast, so I pulled back on the stick, hard. So hard it snapped off at the base. The seat belt squeezed the air right out of me as the rocketpod slowed, getting closer to the bubble building, closer still, until—bump—my windshield bounced off a window belonging to a very startled-looking Boov on a treadmill.
The rocketpod hovered in midair, humming. I sort of waved at the Boov. The Boov gave a little wave back.
I tried to push and pull at what was left of the T-stick, but nothing worked. So instead I unfastened my belt and opened up the front of the pod. The wind howled in, smelling like tar.
At least it was night. At some point during my stay in the HighBoovperial Palace it had gotten dark, and I remembered just enough of what J.Lo had told me to know that it was going to stay that way for days. It took a long time for New Boovworld to get out from Saturn’s shadow.
I balanced on the lip of the open hatch. Below me were thousands of smaller buildings, all of them glassy and round and lit up like bulbs on a marquee. Amid these were towers, antennae, bubbleship buildings with octopus hoses, a big telecloner on a low rooftop. Smokestacks and a careless fog. And, straight ahead, a Boov squinting at me from his living room. I saw the slant of a big screen. Looked like they were newscasting about tonight’s presidential debate.
I made that little circular movement with my hand that means roll down your window, but the Boov just frowned and shrugged. “Open your window!” I shouted. “Please!” But he only stared back, blankly.
I went back for the hoverbutt and showed it to him. I tried to mime with my fingers what I wanted to do. My pod was a little too far away from the building to jump, but I hoped with the hoverbutt under me I might just make it. I thought I’d done a good job of silently explaining myself, but the Boov just winced and offered me a houseplant.
“HUMAN!” trumpeted the air, all around. “LIE DOWN ON THE FLOOR OF YOUR VEHICLE!” It buzzed in my ears and rattled the windowpane in front of me. I looked left and right and discovered that a cluster of green cruisers had snuck up on me. The Boov inside the building retreated behind an armchair.
I put my hands up, but one of them was still holding the hoverbutt. Which I figured was pretty harmless, but maybe it wasn’t as commonplace as I’d assumed.
“DROP THE DEVICE!” said one of the Boov in the green cruisers. “DRRROP IT! THERE’S A GOOD BOY. DROPIT!”
But instead I put it under my butt and stepped out into nothing.
Which right away was obviously a complete mistake. I’d thought the hoverbutt would let me fall as fast or slow as I wanted, but nope! I just dropped like a brick. A Styrofoam brick—low gravity and all. Still, good for a quick getaway, bad for every other conceivable reason.
The fog roiled all around. And, looking straight down as I was, the antennae passed like arrows. Like lances. Every smokestack was the barrel of a big gun. And all of it in slow motion as I fell at a rate that felt just breezy enough not to kill me, but just fast enough to get me excused from gym classes for the rest of my life. I leaned left and right, trying to steer, trying to prolong my dumb death or whatever for just another second longer. Coughing, eyes tearing against the sting of smoke and stupid failure, I didn’t notice at first that a swarm of tiny bubbles was rising up to meet me.
Then the bubbles were fizzing all around me, buffeting the hoverbutt. I got so startled that I dropped it, and I watched helplessly as it was knocked off course and sailed into the darkness. Was this some kind of attack?
The bubbles kept coming, popping now against my backside and pushing feebly against my momentum. Now they came larger, big as baseballs, and larger still, a volley of volleyballs. I was actually slowing down. I looked up and saw the flashing lights of Boovcop cruisers descending after me.
Then the bubbles abruptly stopped.
I was picking up speed again. A familiar little silver bee rose up in front of my face.
“It’s you!” I shouted over the rush of stale air. “That...billboard sign thing! Help me! Keep hitting me with bub—”
The bee swiveled around and blew a bubble the size of a washing machine, which shot out and hit me in the face.
Rather than slowing me down, it just knocked me backward. Backward, and into the open mouth of a high-rise sucktunnel.
FOOMP.
I went into a bend, whapped against the sides of the tube, and slid into a curve. And then I got barfed out the other end of the sucktunnel, proceeded to plow through a safetypillow, and touched down improbably in the center of a dark alley. No, that’s not right—it wasn’t a touchdown, exactly. A smackdown? Like pro wrestling, it looked both painful and fake.
I got up, shaky and panting. My seat hurt, but a glance down the alley showed me what could have been: the hoverbutt was hoverbusted, bits and stuffing everywhere. None of it my own personal bits and stuffing.
The silver bee dropped into view and hovered in front of my face.
“Hello,” I said.
It pulled back and chased its tail, blowing bubbles until it formed a word.
“I know that one,” I said. “That’s ‘hello.’”
The bubbles popped and the bee made a new word. I knew this one too.
YES.
“Were you...waiting outside the palace for me all this time?” I asked it. “How did you know it was me in the rocketpod?”
The billboard bee’s antennae crackled and snapped. It juggled its bubbles and spat out more. It formed one word, then another, then another, and I had to put up my hands.
“Sorry,” I said. “Sorry. I only know ‘hello,’ ‘yes,’ ‘no,’ and ‘bathroom.’”
All the bubbles popped, or drifted away. The bee stared at me.
I thought about what J.Lo had said, about Boov moving their heads and blinking to avoid looking at these things.
“Aw,” I said. “Are they not paying enough attention to you?”
NO.
Sirens were growing closer, but they sounded spread out. Like they’d lost me. There wasn’t anyone else in this alley, which was open on one end.
“Do you know where Sector Three is?” I asked the bee.
NO.
“Can you...spell ‘Sector Three’?”
It buzzed around, pooping bubbles, big ones and small, dot dot dot, around and around. Finally it came to rest in the center of a complex constellation. I did my best to memorize the pattern.
“I’m looking for any signs that look like that, then,” I said. I looked the bee in its weird face. If that was even a face. “Thanks for helping me. Will you help me some more?”
YES.
“I’m calling you Bill. That all right?”
YES.
“Okay, Bill,” I said, starting down the alley. “Let’s go.”