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LENA’S EARS CAME BACK on-line first. She couldn’t move and couldn’t open her eyes.
“No swearing on this ship!” yelled the First Officer, “I won’t have it.”
“But where are we?”
“Look up, you idiot.”
“Oh.”
“’Where are we?’ is far from the right question,” the unmistakable voice of the captain. Thoughtful but long-suffering. “Paging Chief Engineer, get your skinny ass back up to the bridge dearie, I need you to tell me what the hell just happened.”
“Excuse me?” Uncle Richie’s voice, quite close by, but in a tone Lena wasn’t at all used to. Concern? Lack of confidence? Uncertainty? Something like that. “Can we turn our attention to—?"
Lena heard the hissing the First Officer used to indicate disdain.
“Ah,” the captain again, “yes. Hmm.” Her voice became nearer, but quieter. “Yes, let’s get the doc up here too, shall we?”
Lena flinched as someone touched her hair. She still couldn’t open her eyes or move anything, but was warm and comfortable, so for the minute, she chose to relax and enjoy the chaos that seemed to be ensuing around her.
Lots more swearing, a brief shouting match, someone getting sent off the bridge on a charge, which sounded to Lena like a grown-up version of the time-outs she’d luckily been experiencing less and less of with her mother.
“Has anyone contacted her mother?” said the captain.
Uncle Richard made a strangled noise in his throat.
“Contacting anyone’s gonna take a wee while until we work out where we are—oh—" the Glasgow tones of the engineer, were not well-suited to surprise.
Lena wanted to sit up and talk to everyone. She just needed to get the signals to her parts. Eyes first, maybe. She managed to move her eyeballs, from there she turned her attention to her eyelids. They were heavy or at least gummed shut somehow.
“Hey there Lena.” The soft voice of her uncle, by her ear. “She’s coming round.”
“Easy there,” said a new, deep, male voice accompanied by a waft of disinfectant and peppermints. “Don’t move yet.” She felt a gentle hand on her arm and a medical cuff being wrapped round it. “Let’s have a quick look, mmm? Before anyone moves anywhere.”
The cuff beeped and whirred, contracted and relaxed, and finally hissed as it finished its diagnostic cycle. There was a moment of silence. Lena tried to move her eyelids again.
“Well, Doctor Fuller?” the captain’s voice again.
“She’s fit as a flea.”
“But—"
“Yes, I know,” Doctor Fuller had excellent reassuring tones. If his skills were any kind of match for his bedside manner, they were all going to be fine. “Ben!” he called into the room. “Fetch me some wipes please.”
Slowly but surely, with two sets of hands working on her, wiping, and wringing out lemony scented water, Lena managed to open her eyes. It was like the last scenes in The Wizard of Oz, with everyone round her bedside. She’d watched that so many times with her mother, well her watching and her mother working on some new paper or other for the university.
She strained her head up to see a little better. The large kind face of Dr Fuller loomed in her view, she tried to focus on him, but something behind him distracted her. On the viewing screen behind him was an awfully close view of a massive planet, with a quirky angle of an unmistakable ring system. Weak sunlight was breaking over the tan-coloured stripy surface. Saturn. They were in orbit around Saturn. She wanted to gasp, but there was something in her mouth and her nose. Lena felt rising panic as she tried to sit up. The medical cuff on her arm gave a warning beep. There were tendrils made of the same pearlescent material that the ship was made of, but these were nearly transparent. There were fluids moving along them in brief pulses. Yet more tendrils draped across her legs. She didn’t dare look.
“Okay, lovely,” Dr Fuller said, “let’s see what we can do here.”
He gently lifted the tendrils from her face, appraising them with wide eyes. Dr Fuller seemed to have a whole vocabulary of sub-vocal noises to express interest, surprise, concern, and he was using all of them.
“Is she going to be okay?” asked Uncle Richard. His face was pale.
Dr Fuller raised a hand for silence. Then tapped the cuff on Lena’s arm. It tightened in response and began to beep with what must have been her heartbeat. He lifted one of the tendrils that snaked into Lena’s nose. He caught her gaze, smiled, and then raised an eyebrow, indicating what he was thinking with a flick of his eyes to the tendril in his hand. Lena nodded. Nodding back, Dr Fuller pulled on the strange tube. Lena observed pressure but no pain.
The beeping went so fast, it was almost a buzz. Dr. Fuller dropped the tube like it was a snake.
“Right," he said, then catching Lena’s eye again, “you okay?”
Lena nodded slowly as she was feeling woozy. Her vision broke up into sparkles. She could hear everyone bustling.
“What’s happening?”
“She’s fine—"
“She’s clearly not—"
“She’s fainted,” said Dr Fuller, then a cross mutter from him too, and someone stomped out.
“Captain, I’ve had the techs set up a remote aerial, got a sat link home. It’ll take a while to get a signal to them, hour or so, then same again back?”
“Would you like me to compose something?”
“No, charmed as I am that the first officer would do that for me, I think that’s my responsibility on this occasion,” said the captain. “Send them a ping, so they’re waiting for a transmission in ten. I’ll be in my ready room.”
Lena still couldn’t raise her head; she thought a nap might be sensible. She felt sick and she wanted to go home.
