Mike Stellar (20 page)

A crackly voice filled the cabin. “Over,
Liberator.
We hear you loud and clear.” Larc beamed at me, and I pulled myself down into my chair, stunned. Over and over in my head, I kept hearing “This is really happening…. This is really happening.”

“We’re coming in at delta speed,
Spirit
, right up on your portside flap.”

“Perfect,” the crackly voice said. “We’ll dust off the extractor and bring you in.”

Then I had a thought: the
Spirit
didn’t seem overly surprised to hear from us, and I would think they’d be freaking out to hear the voices of another ship after two years. It was as if they’d known we were coming.

“If you haven’t figured it out by now,” Larc said, turning around in her chair and facing me, “the
Spirit
already knew we were coming.”

I gave a weak smile.

“Our parents have been communicating with the
Spirit
for months now, planning this rescue.”

I blinked a few times and looked at Larc. “They must have been communicating in secret, though. ’Cause nothing in my dad’s books—the codes—there was nothing about public communication.”

“Well, people know they’ve been
trying
to communicate with the
Spirit
, but no one knows the
Spirit
has actually been answering.”

“How could they not know? Wouldn’t they hear or read the transmissions?”

“Oh, Mike, our parents are smarter than that! The
Spirit
has been sending encoded messages to the sabotage team. The code sounds and looks like—”

I snapped my fingers. “Static! It has to be static, right? Low-tech trumps high-tech.”

“Spot on, Sherlock,” Larc said, making an A-OK sign with her hand.

That totally explained why all our electrical appliances at home had seemed like they were on the fritz. I knew there was something crazy about the viserator shooting whorls of static for so long!

The pod lurched forward and we were bathed in a faint golden light while the grappling ray moved us steadily toward the
Spirit.
I was excited but 100 percent freaked out at the same time. The moment I’d wished for for two years was actually happening and I was sick with apprehension.

The pod bumped into the massive hull of the
Spirit
and an opening appeared. We clattered through a narrow tube and came to rest in a small circular alcove. The golden light disappeared and was replaced by the blue glow of our ship. A rushing sound filtered through the pod and I felt a sickly sensation in my stomach. My butt sunk into my seat and my hair fell around my ears. I felt the stuff in my pocket settle against my leg. We were back in AutoGrav territory again.

The ship automatically powered down with a kind
of roar-sigh that sounded tired. A door at the far end of the alcove slid open and a man walked toward our pod. He had outstretched arms and a broad smile.

“There he is,” Larc said, whipping her hair back into a ponytail and smoothing her jumpsuit. “It’s Captain Herschel Winkley.”

I watched as she threw herself into the man’s arms and hugged him as if he was her long-lost grandfather.

Hesitantly, I climbed out of the pod and walked toward the two of them. They were already immersed in deep conversation and barely noticed when I got there.

After a few seconds Larc said, “Captain Wink, this is my friend Mike Stellar. You know his parents and he knows Hubble. Mike, this is Captain Wink—commander of the
Spirit.”

“Ah, yes,” the man said, and I could see now that he was very old. “Michael Stellar. I’ve heard a lot about you.”

“You have?” I asked, not knowing how to respond. “I—I’ve never heard anything about you. Well, except for all the stuff in the news when the
Spirit
disappeared.”

“Mi-ike!” Larc said, laughing.

The old man laughed and patted my shoulder. “Come along now.” He swept me and Larc along with his outstretched arms. “We have a lot to accomplish and not a lot of time to accomplish it in.”

Before we took another step, though, the door to the
alcove opened again and a man stood there wearing possibly the biggest smile I’d ever seen. Even though he was skinny and wore a beard, I recognized Hubble immediately.

He swept me up in a whirling hug. Then he plopped me down and grabbed my arms. Roughly he pulled me to him and kissed my forehead with a loud smack.

“Holy mother of donkeys, kid, you’re huge! Immense! I mean”—he was turning me around now and laughing—“you look like a gen-u-ine grown-up teenaged kid.” He ruffled my hair, then took a step back and looked at me some more.

I was beaming. I didn’t know what to say. I couldn’t believe it was really him. Hubble. Right in front of me. Talking to me. Alive. Breathing. Hairy.

“Say something, kiddo. Talk to me. How’s Yeager? Is he as big as you?”

“Stinky’s fine,” I said. “He’s great—or he will be when he finds out you’re okay. He’s bigger than me now, can you believe it?”

“How’s your sister?” Hubble asked, his face clouding over.

“She’s fine, Hubble. She’s never given up looking for you, even when everyone said it was no use.”

Hubble grabbed me up in another hug. As I hugged him back, I could feel his ribs through his jumpsuit and that kind of brought me back to reality.

“We need to get you home, man,” I said, gesturing at him. “You look like you need a good dinner.”

“I do, little dude. I surely do.” He dropped his arm over my shoulder.

“Come on, you two,” Larc said, stepping around us and through the doorway. “We have stuff to do.”

As we walked
quickly through some dark hallways and wound our way up through the belly of the ship, I finally remembered to introduce Larc and Hubble. Hubble gave Larc a hug almost as big as the one he gave me, saying, “I’ve heard a lot about you.” Larc just grinned and said, “Likewise.”

“How have you heard a lot about …?” I looked at Hubble quizzically.

“We don’t have time to chat,” Larc interrupted. “Come on, hurry up!”

“She’s right,” said Captain Wink. “We’d better shake a leg, you two.”

At the same time, Hubble and I both stopped and shook our right legs furiously. His mother had always said “shake a leg,” so that was what Stinky and Hubble
and I did whenever she said it to us. Really, Hubble acted a lot like a kid in his teens. I always wondered how he’d gotten his job at the Project, even if he
was
a rocket science genius. He’s smart, but not a very serious guy.

“Not helping,” Larc said over her shoulder. “Let’s
go!”

Hubble took off down the hallway like his pants were on fire. Larc kept pace with him, while Captain Wink and I had to practically jog to keep up.

We arrived at a small, boring-looking door at the end of a hallway. Out of breath, I asked, “Where are we?”

It was a simple question, yet it was met with looks of consternation from everyone. Larc chewed her lip and looked at the ground. Hubble opened his mouth to say something, but no words came out.

I looked at everyone. “What’s going on?”

“We’re going to try to get home, Mike,” Hubble said slowly. “But there’s something you need to know about Larc—”

Suddenly the door opened and a small old man stood there. His expression was grim but it brightened as soon as he saw Larc.

He took her hand. “You don’t know what it means to us to have you on the ship,” he said in a raspy voice.

“It’s Jim and Albert and Marie you need to thank,” Larc said, walking into the room. “Not me.”

I leaned forward, dumbly thinking that by moving
closer to the scene, I would understand what was going on.

“You realize the time frame we’re on?” the old man asked as the others filed into the room behind Larc. I followed, mystified.

“Yes,”
Hubble said. He was scratching his head in the way that he does when he’s really impatient. I’d seen that move a lot when he was irritated at me and Stinky.

“Well, what’s the plan, then, Hubble?” the old man asked, equally impatient.

“The plan is the same as it’s always been,” Hubble said.

“But what about …?” The old man nodded ever so slightly in my direction.

“Without Mike I would have never made it here,” Larc said quickly. “He’s part of the mission now, David.”

“Fine, then,” David said, waving his hand dismissively. “I trust you. Can we please get started now? One more second in orbit of this dreadful planet is one second too long.”

Everyone except me looked expectantly at Larc. I was staring at David. I couldn’t believe I was in the same room as the famed David Hazelwood. And that he was so
small.
And
old.

Larc cleared her throat and said, “Well, we have a bit of a problem.”

“What is it?” Hubble asked, trying to sound calm.

“I needed help to power through the wormhole. Mike’s help, actually.”

“Mike?” Hubble asked. “But how? I don’t under—”

“That’s not the point, Hubble,” Larc said, interrupting him. “The point is that my power cells have degenerated. There was a short when some liquid seeped into the Wormer.” She held up her scar and poked at it. “I don’t think I have enough power to get the
Spirit
back to Earth.”

There was dead silence in the room. Finally Hubble said quietly, “How did Mike help with the wormhole?”

“It was his RRE, from a tracking serum administered by Albert and Marie.”

“Wait, wait, wait,” I said, holding up my hands. “RRE?” I knew what RRE was. We had studied that last semester. “That’s residual radioactive energy, right?”

Larc looked at me expectantly.

“I’ve been drinking that serum a bunch of times a day since we first got on the shuttle. If you need RRE to help with whatever it is you’re talking about, then I’m sure I have plenty to spare.”

Larc nodded. “It can’t hurt to try, can it?”

“Well, if it has anything to do with that finger
thing,” I said, involuntarily reaching for my ear, “it probably
is
going to hurt me.”

No one said anything for a minute. Then Captain Wink said, “If we’re going to give this a shot, we need to get this show on the road—
now.”

Hubble came over
and stood beside me. I gave him a what-in-the-name-of-donkeys-are-you-doing? look, but I didn’t have a chance to say anything, because Larc was talking again.

“First,” she said, “sit down, Mike.”

I sat. Captain Wink and David stood on either side of me like guards.

“Next,” Larc continued, “take this. Jim might want it back. He didn’t specify.” And she took off her hair.

That’s right.

Hair.

Gone.

She handed the mass of white to Hubble, who plopped it onto the table in front of me. I involuntarily flinched and stared at Larc, mouth agape.

“You should probably take this, too,” she said, unzipping her jumpsuit.

“Whoa!” I jumped up from the table, turning my back to her and shielding my eyes in one swift movement.

Hubble chuckled and sat me back down. “Nothing to worry about, Mike,” he said. I slowly opened my eyes and saw not the naked Larc I was expecting, but a glowing control panel of sorts that seemed to have arms and legs and Larc’s bald head sticking out from it. The hands reached up and peeled off Larc’s face. They handed it to Hubble, who took the face and plopped it onto the table next to the hair. I swallowed and looked around the room. No one else seemed shocked. Then the now faceless control panel spoke.

It said, “I’m sorry you had to find out this way, Mike. I kept meaning to tell you, but, well, it just never came up in conversation.”

“Oh, don’t look so shocked, boy,” Captain Wink said with a sympathetic smile. “Didn’t you ever think Larc was a little too perfect? Knew too much about too many things?”

“Uh,” I said. “Well. I never really thought she was perfect.”

The Larc/control panel monstrosity hee-hawed in Larc’s familiar way. “Thanks a lot, buddy,” the control panel said in Larc’s voice.

Trying desperately to set aside my absolute shock, I croaked, “So is-is that a petabyte processor or are you just happy to see me?”