Space Hostages (23 page)

“Oh, they're so angry with us,” I moaned.

But there wasn't anything to do but keep going. “Heewa,” said Josephine encouragingly. “It's all right. Good Wurrhuya.”

“Lovely Wurrhuya, turn this way,”
coaxed Uwaelee, flying backward.

The Wurrhuya swerved back toward the cave. Silhouettes of frantic Eemala wings around us and panicking Krakkiluks below —

“Yalu! Yalu!”
cried Uwaelee, pointing.

A small opening in the rock wall, framed in tangling roots below it.

“Pyaeng-NEL!”
Uwaelee urged, which the Goldfish was too preoccupied to translate, but from her gestures, it meant
jump
. Easy for someone with wings to say.

“Bring us in higher!” shouted Carl, doing his best to be a pilot even now, gesturing furiously. The Wurrhuya rose past the protruding roots. “Guys, get ready!”

“OOLill-we!”
called a burgundy Eemala behind us. The Wurrhuya groaned in confusion and swung its neck back toward the call.

We had no more time to think about it. We jumped, and dangled nastily, and climbed—

And we were standing in a rough tunnel of stone,
lit by twists of glowing filament. Uwaelee ducked in above our heads and scampered forward, leading us through turns and junctions, past storage chambers and dormitories—

Then ahead of us, the tunnel opened onto a sheer drop above a great chasm, dappled with broken moonlight. There was a flimsy ceiling of metal netting above, holding up a blanket of golden moss. From the air, the pit would have been hidden.

Suddenly, Hoolinyae swooped across the great shaft of space and into our tunnel, her wings hiding what lay beyond.
“OONyala naWEY!”
she shouted, furious.

But I had already glimpsed something down at the bottom: the narrow, pointed turret of what could only be a missile launcher.

“Goldfish!” I said. “Go on!” And the Goldfish darted past Hoolinyae and into the chasm.

“Oh, hey,” I could hear it saying to itself. “Would you look at that.”

Hoolinyae chased after it. And we could see into the chasm again—the Goldfish emitting a blue beam from its mouth that played over the weapon's nose, steady even while the Goldfish dodged and dived.

“Waaay, Goltfeesh!” Uwaelee cheered it on.

“Hey, ma'am, gimme a second. I'm just trying
to scan the onboard computer—I won't hurt anything,” it said to Hoolinyae, forgetting to speak WOya. And even when Hoolinyae caught up, her hands slid off its plastic sides and the Goldfish dodged free.

“OeLUYA ul-ing nal-ull INlana?”
cried an indignant voice. Ningleenill swooped from a tunnel on the other side of the chasm and joined Hoolinyae in trying to catch the Goldfish.

“I could do it,” said the Goldfish brightly. “I need a little more data, but could I plot a course? You betcha I could. Why, we could have that satellite out of the sky in time for breakfast.”

“Goldfish, tell Ningleenill, tell him in WOya!” I shouted as Eenyo came flapping anxiously out of the caves and tried to soothe the scientist, which had the opposite effect.

At the same time, the Goldfish was talking in WOya.
“Sir, I'm sure I could help you out,”
and Ningleenill was saying, “
Who let this stupid device in here? It was the Krakkiluks, wasn't it?”

Eventually Eenyo and Hoolinyae managed to grab the Goldfish and steer it back to the tunnel where we were standing.

“Listen to it!” Carl pleaded. “It's a lot smarter than it looks, I swear!”

“How can we get them back down?”
worried Hoolinyae.

“Is there only one shot?” asked Josephine. “One missile?”

Eenyo's hand strayed nervously to his collar, but he didn't answer.

“Hoolinyae,” begged Uwaelee.

“No,”
admitted Hoolinyae.
“There are more. We have more than one try.”

“But not many. If we fail, there would be reprisals,”
said Eenyo. “
The collars would activate—millions would be hurt, at the very least.”

“What would happen if you didn't fail?” I asked.

There was a brief silence.

“Please tell us,” I said.

“This is all very foolish,”
complained Ningleenill.

“I know,”
Uwaelee burst out.
“I think about it all the time. Everyone's Nangael—broken, dead! Everyone would feel it. Everything would be wonderful.”

“Everyone would feel their Nangael die,”
agreed Hoolinyae, hesitantly. “
They know what it would mean—they have been waiting for it their whole lives. There are only a few thousand adult Krakkiluks on the planet; they could not contain millions of us. Our people would seize the weapons and the
ships and the governors' offices. We are ready. We have been ready for so long.”

The ships.
Those were the words that mattered to me most. I couldn't help it.

“You'd all be free,” I said. “We could go home. And we could warn our planet the Krakkiluks are coming.”

“
We have to be patient,”
said Ningleenill.
“A little more patience won't hurt us now, after all this time.”

“Yes it will!” s
houted Uwaelee.

She fluttered back from us into the chasm, dappled by the moonlight filtering through the ceiling of moss.

“I don't want to be patient. I've already grown up in a rubbish dump. How long do I have to wait? How long will Naonwai have to wait? Do it now.”

O
kay, hello! I'm back!

So, right, you know how we were hiding in a cupboard waiting to rescue Mr. Trommler, and Th
saaa
was kind of wilting and needed the
amlaa-vel-esh
to themself, so I was completely visible if anyone
opened
the cupboard and also I needed to pee? Yeah, a lot of things have happened since then, and they're
still
happening, so I wanted to get us caught up now because I don't know when I'll get another chance.

It had been very quiet for a long time. No one had come into the meeting room and there was no sign of Lena
doing
anything
.
We'd finished recording everything that had happened to us, and Th
saaa
had tried
to explain the rules of both huckle buckle beanstalk and a Morror game called Clasmala-aa, which we couldn't play because I don't have enough tentacles. And time went on and on, and Th
saaa
seemed so weak from the heat, and I figured there was no way we'd know if the Krakkiluks had caught Lena doing what she was doing, or if she'd already tried to do something and it hadn't worked. And anyway I was wriggling around so much that Th
saaa
said I should sneak outside quickly and pee in a corner.

“I'm not going to do that. That's disgusting,” I said.

Th
saaa
said it wasn't as if we liked the Krakkiluks, so it was perfectly fine to do something disgusting on their spaceship and I didn't need to feel bad about it, which sounded almost like something Carl would have said and made me sad.

Because even if everything worked out, and we managed to get Trommler and Christa and make it back on the
Helen
now, we weren't supposed to try and rescue Carl and the others.

So I did sneak out of the cupboard, not that I was going to pee in the corner, you know, I was just going to sort of think about it, and as I slipped out there was this really bright flash of light that filled the windows and made my eyes hurt, and the
whole ship shook a little bit.

Lena! I thought. But it couldn't have been Lena, because the flash had come from
outside
. So I went and looked out of the window, and I saw this bright spot zooming through space.

Th
saaa
must have seen the flash through the cupboard doors, because I felt a breath of chilly air on my neck.

“Is it a comet?” I said.

“It is moving away from the planet,” said Th
saaa
. “Surely a comet would be pulled into orbit at this distance.”

“How do you know?” I asked, because I couldn't see the planet through the window.

“I can feel its magnetism.”

“Oh!” I said, impressed. Sometimes I forget that Morrors have magnetic senses.

“I think it must have been a weapon,” said Th
saaa.

“Is someone attacking the ship?” I said. I hoped maybe it was someone from Earth or Aushalawa-Mo
raaa
trying to rescue us, but on the other hand, if it was someone else the Krakkiluks had upset, I didn't want to get blown up on top of everything else.

Nothing else seemed to be happening outside the ship, but whatever it had been, the Krakkiluks didn't like it, because suddenly we could hear them
clattering and tramping around, and then Th
saaa
had to throw the
amlaa-vel-esh
over me because the door opened and four Krakkiluks came in and started going
Splack! Clomp! Plosh!
very loudly and waving their arms around a
lot
.

Underneath the
amlaa-vel-esh
, the virtual screen flicked out of the little gold rod, and there was Lena's face hovering in it. “Hello, Noel,” she said.

“Shhhh! Not now!” I hissed, trying to turn the thing off.

The Krakkiluks stopped crunching and looked around. Th
saaa
and I froze in the corner of the room.

“Splunk, ack, crex,”
remarked one of the Krakkiluks, and they went back to yelling at each other.

Lena waited, and luckily after a couple of minutes the Krakkiluks reached some kind of agreement and clattered out.

“Something has happened,” she said. “I felt the ship shaking, and I can see the staff are responding to some kind of incident.”

“We saw this flash of light. Th
saaa
thinks someone fired a weapon at us,” I said. “But I guess they missed?”

Lena frowned. “Can you see the attacker?”

Of course we couldn't.

“Well, it makes no difference,” she said crisply after a moment. “If anything, it will keep the Krakkiluks confused longer. We have to proceed. You found Trommler as expected?”

“Yes, he's around the corner.”

“Very well,” said Lena, and looked away from the screen at something out of the shot; I could just see her hand move. Suddenly all the lights
did
go out. There was only the glow of the virtual screen and the stars outside the window.

I could hear crunchy cries of alarm from the passageway.

“I can see your position on my map,” said Lena. “Go back to Trommler's interrogation room.”

“We can't see!” I said. “Can you see?” I asked Th
saaa
, thinking of the magnetic sense and also remembering about how Morrors could see invisible stuff and wondering if they had any other useful abilities.

“No!” Th
saaa
said crossly. “Except for that screen, which surely all the Krakkiluks will see as well!”

Lena looked thoughtful, and the screen winked out. “Hey!” I said, alarmed, and shook it.

Then I felt something metallic poking into my ear, and I nearly screamed.

“I can see for you,” said Lena's voice in my ear, which was all kinds of creepy.

“What's that?” I yelped.

“It's the spider robot. Now keep quiet. I'll tell you where to go. Can you make your way to the door by yourselves?”

Bump-shuffling along in an
amlaa-vel-esh
is even worse in the
dark
, you know? We jostled out into the corridor, where there were Krakkiluks crashing about everywhere, and all we could do was stick close to the wall to try not to be stepped on. There were flashes of light—some of the Krakkiluks had flashlights, but that just made everything seem even more chaotic and scary.

“The door is forty feet away, on your right,” said Lena in my ear, but despite that we bumped right into a Krakkiluk's legs. But it was so dark I guess it didn't think too much about bumping into something.

Actually, the door wasn't as difficult to find as we thought, because there were Krakkiluks with flashlights in Mr. Trommler's room. The window kept flashing with light and shadow as the Krakkiluks waved their arms around, and they were talking Swedish and I could hear Mr. Trommler going “Nay! Nay!” more anxiously than ever.

“You still have the Krakkiluk DNA sample?” said Lena. “Use it and let Trommler out.”

“We can't—there's Krakkiluks everywhere!” I whispered. “And they're in the room with him!”

“Hmm,” Lena said, and then she went quiet for a while.

“Lena?” I said. “Lena, are you still there?”

“Shhh, Noel!” Th
saaa
said. “Listen!”

I couldn't hear anything at first, but then Th
saaa
shuffled us past Trommler's door, even though I thought we should stay there.

“Listen,” they said again.

I could hear somebody crying. Somebody
human
.

“Christa?” I said. “Th
saaa—
open the door!”

It took Th
saaa
a bit of fumbling around in the dark before they managed to touch the claw piece to the sensor by the door, but then they did, and it opened.

I could make out a shadowy heap on the floor against the far wall.
“Vem där?”
it said. That's Swedish.

“It's me and Th
saaa
!” I said, stepping out of the
amlaa-vel-esh
. “We're here to rescue you!”

“Oh,
Noel
,” Christa said, lunging forward and hugging me. Which was weird, though also it was maybe kind of nice to be hugged.

Then horrible grinding alarms went off everywhere, and there was a whiff of smoke in the air.

“You've moved. Go back to where you were,” said Lena's voice in my ear.

“How did you
do
that?” I moaned.

“Who are you talking to?” Christa said.

“I confused the temperature control system in tactical areas and started some fires. I think I could destroy this ship all by myself, given time,” said Lena, sounding rather pleased with herself.

“Please don't,” I begged.

“You said . . . you said the Morror kid is here?” said Christa doubtfully.

“Is that Christa?” Lena asked.

“I am here,” said Th
saaa
.

“Okay, is there any way we can get the invisibility gown over three people?” I said.

“No,”
Th
saaa
said.

“It's
dark
. If you would all stop
talking
so much and just go back out there, they won't see you,” Lena said impatiently.

I felt like in that case we should let Th
saaa
have the
amlaa-vel-esh
, because they were the one who needed it for medical reasons, and I guess I felt leaving Christa the only one visible would be sort of mean. Still, no matter how dark it was, that didn't
feel like very much protection against gigantic lobster aliens, and I didn't like going out there at all.

Christa didn't like it either.
“Åh Gud,”
she kept moaning, and honestly I don't know if her doing that or Lena in my ear telling me to make her shut up was more distracting.

But once we got outside, it looked like Lena's plan was working; a lot of the Krakkiluks were running off, to deal with the fires or because they were supposed to evacuate that area or whatever. The window in Mr. Trommler's door was dark now.

But there was still a Krakkiluk soldier standing outside it.

“There's still one
there
,” I said in despair.

Lena sighed.

“It's not
my
fault!” I said.

“Fine,” said Lena. “Which of you has the device I gave you?”

“I do.”

“Give it to Th
saaa
. Do you have the
amlaa-vel-esh
?”

“No.”

“Then take it. Don't put it on yet.”

“But Th
saaa
needs it!” I protested.

“Th
saaa
will be fine for a few minutes,” Lena insisted.

“The gown?” whispered Th
saaa
. “Here. If you need it, take it.”

I saw—just barely—Th
saaa
's silhouette appear in the darkness, and felt the weight of the gown settle over my arm. It was cold and slippery, but even I could tell it wasn't as cold as it had been.

“Leave the others and proceed fifty feet to the left,” said Lena.

“Noel?” said Th
saaa.
I suddenly wished I could see their colors.

“It's okay,” I said, and I did as Lena said. After, like, two seconds I couldn't see Th
saaa
and Christa behind me, or much of anything ahead of me, except stars out of a distant window. I hadn't been alone like that since Th
saaa
came and got me out of my cell.

“Keep going,” said Lena in my ear. “Stay close to the wall.”

That's what I was doing anyway; as well as not wanting to bump into any more Krakkiluks, feeling along the wall was the only way to tell which way I was going.

“Stop,” Lena said. “Turn around. Take off your boot.”

“You're supposed to say ‘Simon says,'” I muttered, but I did as she said, and I stood there feeling
like an idiot, stuck on an alien spaceship and holding an invisibility gown in one hand and a boot in the other.

“Move away from the wall. Into the center of the passageway,” Lena said. “I need you to do three things. On my signal, you will make a loud noise. When I tell you, get the gown on—
immediately
—and then throw the boot as hard as you can to your right while throwing yourself to your left. Do you understand?”

I understood, or near enough, and it made me want to make faces. “I'm not going to like this, am I?” I said.

“Probably not,” agreed Lena, and from her faraway cell, she turned on a single light in the ceiling right above my head.

I kind of froze up. The light was dazzling after so much dark. I couldn't see
past
it into the dark corridor where the Krakkiluk stood by Mr. Trommler's door.

“Make a
noise
,” Lena insisted irritably in my ear, though surely the Krakkiluk soldier must have already noticed, must already be coming.

“Hello, Mr. or Ms. Krakkiluk . . . ,” I said, not as loudly as I meant to. “I'm over here, I'm the human spawn you guys have been looking for. . . .”

I heard a rattle of pointy feet—and then I could
see the huge silhouette of the Krakkiluk charging toward me—

“NOW,” said Lena in my ear, but I didn't need telling. I threw on the
amlaa-vel-esh
and jumped sideways, flinging my boot to the right. It wasn't a good throw or anything, but it hurtled through the open door of another meeting room, and thudded on the floor.

The Krakkiluk hesitated for a split second, almost standing on top of me, and dived toward the sound.

The door whisked shut behind it. And from the Krakkiluk's blows against the door, I could tell Lena had it instantly locked.

“There,” she said, sounding pleased with herself.

“Awesome!” I squeaked, dragging off the
amlaa-vel-esh
because it was freezing inside it without Th
saaa
in there with me too.

I raced back along the corridor, and Th
saaa
had already opened the door and gotten Mr. Trommler out and Christa was hugging him, and probably saying “Are you okay?” in Swedish, but Mr. Trommler seemed all dazed and shaky and wasn't answering her.