My Other Car is a Spaceship (21 page)

Hal stared back.
“What are you looking at
me
for? It’s your idea.”

“
Males!
” Sue snorted and shook her head in exasperation. “Merry, if we find you a light, so it is not so dark inside, would that be all right?”

The little girl nodded solemnly.

“Very well. Let us find you a light.”

The three adults scoured the room looking for a flashlight, glow tube, even something with a viewscreen that would light up. Nothing. After ten minutes they gave up
in frustration.

“This is ridiculous,” Hal ranted. “
All hell’s going to break loose out there in a few minutes, and we’re stuck in here unless we can find a way to get Merry out without being seen. There must be
something
we can do.”

Sue frowned,
nodded meaningfully at Merry, who looked on the verge of tears, and then back at Hal, holding a finger to her lips. He got the hint.

Kalen thought for a moment. “Merry, sweetheart, do you know how to play hide-and-seek?”

She nodded.

“Good. Now
, how high can you count?”

She shrugged. “A hundred. I was the bestest counter in Mrs.
Fayed’s class before….” Her face clouded over. She was on the verge of tears again.

“That’s great!” Kalen said, hoping to head off the waterworks. “I
knew
you were a smart girl! Okay, how about if we play a game?”

Merry’s eyes lit up, tears averted. “A game?”

“That’s right. Do you think you can cover your eyes real tight and count to a hundred?”

“I s’pose so.”

“Do you think you could sit in
there
,” he pointed at the compartment, “and close your eyes and count?”

“I s’pose.
”

“That’s great! Okay, why don’t
we try a test? You sit in there with the door open and count to ten with your eyes covered and we’ll see how that goes. No peeking, okay?”

Merry nodded and walked to the cart. She was small enough that she had no trouble getting in.

Kalen knelt beside her. “Okay, sweetheart, go ahead. I’ll be right here.”

She closed her eyes and covered them with the palms of her hands.

“That’s good. Now can you count to ten?”

She did so.

“That’s perfect! Do you think you could do it again, with the door closed most of the way?”

She nodded, but
with less certainty than before.

“Okay, go ahead.”

As she counted, Hal whispered, “So far so good, but we really have to get going. Shift change’ll be any minute now. And it won’t be long after that before someone goes to our cell with breakfast and discovers we’re not there.”

Kalen whispered back. “I know, I know!”

“Ten!” Merry called out triumphantly, pushing the door open.

“That was wonderful, sweetheart! You’re such a brave girl! Now, do you think you could do it again, but with the door
all
the way closed?”

“I-I think so.”

“I think so, too. Okay, let’s try. Remember, I’ll be here the whole time, right outside the door.”

She nodded and Kalen closed the door gently. “Okay, sweetie,
go ahead.”

She began counting. As she tallied the numbers, Hal listened by the door.

“We’ve got to get going, Kalen. I’m hearing voices and footsteps outside. Someone’s bound to show up here soon.”

Kalen made a palms-up what-do-you-want-me-to-do-about-it gesture.

“Ten!” Merry pushed open the door and grinned up at Kalen. “How was
that
?”

He grinned at her. “That was
wonderful
, Merry! I can’t believe how brave you are. Okay, are you ready for a
real
test?”

She nodded, with more enthusiasm than before.

“Great! Okay, this time, when I close the door, you count up to a hundred, slowly. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“You’re such a brave girl. I know you can do it. Did you learn how to count silently, inside your head?”

She nodded.

“Okay, then. That’s what I want you to do. Are you ready?”

She nodded again.

“Great! Let’s do it, then. Remember, count slowly. I’ll be with you the whole way. You’ll be able to hear my voice.” He turned to Hal and Sue. “They’ll be looking for two humans and a Chan’Yi, and maybe a girl. If we break up, we won’t be as noticeable. Sue, you walk ahead, say fifteen meters. Hal and I will keep up a running conversation about, oh, I don’t know, sightseeing trips we’ve taken. Anything innocuous to sound casual. We’ll be less suspicious that way, and my voice may comfort Merry. Let’s go. Remember, be casual.”

“Here we go, Merry. Start counting.” Again, he gently closed the door.

Sue opened the door and took a quick look outside before venturing down the hall. Hal gave her a ten-second head start before following. Kalen trailed, pushing the cart, and pressed the sensor panel by the dispensary door to close it behind him.

As planned,
the men chatted while they walked. Each knew they didn’t have long to find another hiding place before Merry ran out of numbers and wanted out of the cart.

A minute passed and the trio hadn’t found anything yet. After two minutes,
Kalen began to worry.
She’s going to start getting antsy soon. We have to find
something
. Anything.

“You
, there! Stop!”

Kalen and Hal turned toward the voice coming from around the corner of the intersection through which they’d just passed. Kalen swallowed.
Uh-oh. Too late.

A large and imposing Melphim security guard rounded the corner
in a rush, heading straight for the two unarmed men.

Kalen’s only thought was for Merry’s safety.
There’s no other option. We can’t afford to do anything that would get her hurt.
He raised his hands in surrender.

After a moment’s hesitation, Hal did the same.

“
Very funny. I am glad I caught you! I have to be on-shift in five minutes and I just realized I do not have a clean uniform to wear. You saved me from having to walk all the way over to the dispensary to get one. Let me see….”

Hal and Kalen lowered their hands uncertainly as the guard
rummaged through the pile of folded gray uniforms. At last, he found what he was looking for.

“Ah. Perfect. I can stop by the dispensary at lunch time to sign for it, if that is acceptable?”

Even if it hadn’t been, the two men weren’t about to argue. “Of course,” Hal replied. “Anything for our men in gray.”

“Good. Thank you.” He turned and went back around the corner
with a friendly wave.

The two men exchanged relieved glances. Kalen let out a deep breath.

“That was close,” Hal said after a nervous chuckle. “I almost wet myself.”

“Closer than
I’m
happy with. Let’s get out of here.”

Now there was a slight tremor coming from the cart, as if someone were
continually tapping a foot against the inside wall.

“It’s okay, sweetheart,” Kalen whispered as he began pushing the cart forward again. “We’re almost there. Just a few
more seconds.”

They rounded a curve in the
corridor and saw Sue up ahead, waving frantically.

“In here!” She’d already unlocked the door with the calibrator. When the men and the cart entered, she locked the door behind them again.

Kalen looked around long enough to establish that the room was unoccupied. “Thank God that’s over with. Where the heck are we?” There were crates and sacks and storage containers galore neatly stacked throughout the cavernous space.

The side of the cart exploded open and a frightened face peered out. “
One hundred! Did I do okay? Did I win the game?”

Kalen crouched and took Merry into his arms. “
Yes you did. You were great, sweetheart. You’re a big, brave girl, aren’t you?”

Tears welled up in Merry’s eyes. “Th-that’s what my daddy said, when the bad pirates took him and mommy away.”

The tears flowed at last, and this time there was no stopping them.

OOWAH-OOWAH-OOWAH!

Everyone in the command center jumped when the alarm sounded. Penrod and Ishtawahl nearly collided when they rushed out of their respective offices.

“What the devil?” Penrod shouted to be heard. “Somebody kill that alarm!” The din ceased in mid-shriek.

Penrod
called down from the catwalk to his security Chief below. “What happened?”

MekFensal looked up from the console, his long antennae twitching in agitation.

“According to one of the guards, the prisoners from Holding Pen 3 have escaped. Wait! The guards are checking all the other pens one by one. It looks like the prisoner from Pen 1 has escaped as well. That makes four that we know of, so far, with three more pens to check.”

Penrod turned to Ishtawahl
, angry. “How could this happen? Prisoners escaping from one pen I could attribute to a sloppy guard. But
two
pens? That smacks of poor design or poor oversight.”

Ishtawahl swallowed hard.
He’d worked closely with the team that had designed the holding pens and other security measures implemented throughout
Smuggler’s Cove
. The team had recommended additional security measures, including injecting prisoners with subcutaneous tracking chips and installing holocams in every hallway, but Penrod had nixed both ideas as a cost-cutting measure. Buck-an-Ear Corporation might be run by pirates, but it still had a responsibility to the stockholders to be cost-efficient. Had those measures been in place, recapturing prisoners would have been child’s play.

“It is a new system, sir. Minor tweaking
of procedures is inevitable. Besides, it is only four prisoners, not a global prison break. We will have the prisoners under control shortly. After all, where can they go? This is an asteroid.”

That seemed to mollify Penrod somewhat. “True. All right. Round them up. Then I want those tracking chips and holocams implemented. Hang the cost.
We can’t afford to have prisoners running around loose. This will never happen again,
got it?
And make sure to secure access to all our ships. We don’t want anyone flying out of here.”

He turned and called down to his security
Chief again. “Mek, which prisoners escaped?”

“
The Unity Captain and pilot, a Chan’Yi astronomer, and a human child.”

Penrod tugged on his lip in thought. “Thanks, Mek.”

He turned back to Ishtawahl. “I may have been too hard on you. Perhaps our friends from the Unity had help. Get that doctor up here—in chains. I think we need to have a little talk with him. And find those prisoners!”

“Good job back there,” Hal said. He and Kalen explored the right-hand half of what appeared to be a warehouse. Sue and Merry had gone down the left side, looking for a “potty” for Merry.

“What, you mean with Merry and the cart?” Kalen shrugged. “Beginner’s luck, I guess.”

“Maybe so, but I don’t think I would have been able to get her in there—and quietly—in time to avoid getting caught.

“I may not have had kids of my own, but it doesn’t mean I haven’t been around
other
people’s kids and their parents. You pick up a few things, even if it’s only by osmosis.”

“
You
maybe,” Hal replied. “I’ve never been much of a kid person. Heck even when
I
was a kid, I usually hung around with teenagers and adults. Not many people my age or younger. That’s how I learned to shoot and ride motorcycles by the time I was ten.”

The pair inspect
ed the goods stored in the room as they talked. Many boxes were sealed, nailed shut, or locked. Others had already been opened and partially emptied. Some contained sealed food containers, but no way to open them; others held easily opened food items but offered no way to cook them. Still other crates contained machine parts, clothing, or toiletries. Unfortunately for the escapees, the room seemed to contain nothing really useful, such as a hyper-capable spaceship, or a stash of weapons.

“Hey, what’s this?
It smells sweet.” Kalen pulled a coarse sack full of something off a pile and read the label. “Janden fruit. At least we won’t starve while we’re in here. He hefted the sack over his shoulder. Let’s see what else we can find.”

A few minutes later,
Hal found a pry bar left atop a crate. That let them open some of the sealed crates. One huge one contained pillows. “I think I know where we’ll be sleeping tonight,” he said. “There must be dozens of pillows in here. Apparently these rough-and-tough pirates like their creature comforts.”

A soft shuffling sound caused the men to look up in alarm.

“Ah, here you two are.” Sue, at more than 2.4 meters in height, was barely able to reach down to hold Merry’s hand, stretched as high as the girl could manage. The ridiculous sight brought a smile to each man’s face.

“Did you manage to find a potty?” Kalen asked.

“We made do,” Sue replied, and left it at that.

“We made
doo-doo
,” Merry corrected, with an infectious giggle that made her milk chocolate eyes light up and a dimple appear in her left cheek.

Kalen laughed. “Good for you.”

“It looks like we can hide out here for now,” Hal informed Sue. “We’ve found food and a place to sleep. Also changes of clothing, if we need it.”

“Good,” she replied.
“But what about a way to destroy the nukes, or to escape?”

Hal shrugged. “One thing at a time.”

“Did you help your friends escape their holding pen?”

Penrod had Dr. Chalmis’Noud’Ourien chained to the ring in the wall of his office. “I’ll only ask once. After that, I’m prepared to get nasty.”

He nodded at the Thorian in the corner, who showed fangs when he smiled. There was no humor to his smile.

“Yes. I did help them,” Nude replied.

“I thought as much. But why didn’t you escape
with
them?”

Nude
explained and the light came on in Penrod’s eyes. “Ah. Of course. I’ll have to be more careful with my wording in the future. So how did you help them?”

Nude told him about the calibrator.

“Hmm. That could be a problem.” He used the intercom to contact Jern Ishtawahl, who was personally heading up the search for the prisoners. “They have a calibrator. See if you can find a way to nullify it so they can’t go any-damn-where they please.”

He turned back to Nude. “Where
were your friends going when they left their cell?”

“I do not know. And before you threaten me, I specifically asked them not to tell me, for this very reason.”

Penrod’s lips spread in a small smile. “It appears I underestimated you, doctor. Are you
sure
you wouldn’t like to join me? I could find a place in my organization for someone like you.”

Nude shook his head. “I could no more work for an amoral sociopath like you than
a grovellian slug could fly.”

“Pity. I like to think that with time, anything’s possible.
In the future, I must insist that you cease helping your friends. Should I learn the contrary, I would be most displeased.” He nodded to the guards. “Return the prisoner to his quarters.”

W
hen the door closed, he looked at the Thorian. “Once he gets there, make sure he understands how truly unhappy I am at his actions.”

He hesitated for a moment. “But
be sure you leave him still able to perform his duties as a doctor.”

A high-pitched shriek caused Hal, Kalen, and Sue to come running to the source.

Merry stood in the middle of an aisle, pointing a trembling finger ahead. “Th-there’s something
in
here. It-it ran across
there
.” She pointed at the next crossing aisle. “It had scary red glowing eyes and a long tail.”

Kalen and Hal exchanged glances. She hadn’t said
someone
, which hopefully left out guards, but some
thing
was almost as bad. If there was a wild animal loose in the warehouse or a starving rodent, or something equally nasty, it could get unpleasant.

Kalen put
a finger to his lips and gestured for Hal to go right and himself to go left. Each went back to the previous crossing aisle and attempted to encircle whatever it was that had spooked Merry.

Armed with only a pry
bar between them, each man hoped that
whatever
it was it was relatively innocuous.

Kalen saw movement out of the corner of his eye and charged. A flash of white ducked around a corner. Hearing the commotion, Hal attacked from the other direction, raising the pry
bar overhead to strike.

There it was, the
horrifying monster that had caused Merry to scream in fear.

Hal chuckled.
Sue, who had just arrived, smiled.

“It’s okay, honey,” Kalen called out. “It’s safe. You can come see.”

A small face framed in black hair peered hesitantly around the corner of a crate. Then she stepped out and walked toward the three adults, taking tiny steps, as if she were on the way to the gallows.

“Come on, sweetie, it’s nothing bad.”

Merry arrived and grasped the crouching Kalen’s hand. “What-what is it?”

The object before her was round and white
, less than sixty centimeters across and barely thirty centimeters tall. Two red lights near the front blinked periodically. A long whip antenna sprouted from the back.

“It’s just a sanibot, Merry. Nothing to worry about.”

“A what?”

“A sanitation robot. It scoots around cleaning the floor to keep dirt
, loose grain, and scraps of paper from underfoot. It would get pretty messy around here after a while if someone didn’t sweep up. And this is better than having guards with guns roaming through here, isn’t it?”

Merry thought for a moment. “He’s kinda cute, isn’t he? Can we call him
Roger?”

“Roger? Why Roger?”

“He’s a pirate robot, isn’t he?”

Kalen frowned. “
Sure, I suppose.”

“Good. I’ll paint a smile on his face and call him Jolly Roger.”

“What do you
mean
you haven’t found them yet,” Penrod thundered. “You’ve had four hours. How far can three adults get with a
child
, for pete’s sake, with all of us looking for them?”

Ishtawahl shrugged. “They must be holed up somewhere. There are
thousands of places they could be hiding: warehouses, storage lockers, unused tunnels, and so on. With that damn calibrator, the prisoners could be in any of them—
and
we have to search them one by one. That takes time. Some of the storage facilities are enormous. There are literally thousands of niches where a few people could hide.”