Space Hostages (7 page)

“Hey, kids!” crowed the Goldfish. “Say, Th
saaa
,
did you check out Jupiter? Can you tell me anything fun about the density of gas giants?”

Th
saaa
flashed irritable shades of violet and uttered a faint Gallic-sounding huff.

“Hello, Carl, Noel, Th
saaa
,” said Lena finally.

I blinked. I looked around to see if anyone else had noticed anything odd about that, but it didn't look as if anyone had. Maybe she hadn't noticed I was there.

“We brought you breakfast,” I said to Josephine, holding out the plate.

Josephine stared at the food as if she had some difficulty remembering what it was for, then said, “Oh, right, yes,” and devoured her breakfast in five seconds flat.

“You don't even notice when you're hungry,” I sighed.

“You needn't worry. I wouldn't let my sister
starve
,” snapped Lena.

“Oh,” I said, thoroughly taken aback now. “Wow. What? No, of course not . . .”

“Lena,”
said Josephine ominously.

“Josephine,” replied Lena in a neutral voice.

Josephine grabbed her tablet and started typing on it furiously. A message appeared on Lena's virtual screen. It looked like complete gibberish.

LHYE SLGX OGF. K mos mipdyl tulykl tgfkdr.

Lena leaned back a little, tilted her head at the message, then typed an equally incomprehensible reply.

Aup cfu tiphukrk? Aem ibkdrxmv ss cvk sjmjm rtqjmhpwzny.

Josephine and Lena had been writing to each other in complicated codes since Lena was thirteen and had decided cryptography was good for a six-year-old's developing brain.

Yhd m'd aijbmk. Pgbc sb caqwsbfs ksie sub mzna,
Josephine typed.

“That remark was beneath you,” said Lena, calmly, but out loud.

“You are being condescending,” Josephine growled.

Lena turned back to her screen. She typed:

O wco'x tlyr lpmsry csc hvqsn.

“I am
not
upset!” snapped Josephine aloud and, to my great alarm, looked as if she was about to burst into tears.

“Is everything okay in there?” Dr. Muldoon asked, scooting over in her chair.

“Maybe we should go,” I muttered.

“It's
fine
,” said Josephine fiercely, looking right at me.

“What is the purpose of these experiments?” asked Th
saaa
, who was delicately wringing their tentacles and turning awkward shades of dull yellow and khaki green.

“It's Lena's project, really,” said Dr. Muldoon. “I'm merely fiddling around with the raw materials of life itself, like always.”

“What is
that
?” inquired Th
saaa
, turning scandalized colors and pointing a tentacle at the piglet.

“Well,” said Dr. Muldoon, shrugging, “it's early stages, but I'm interested to see if the same emotions trigger the same colors in different species. If they do, think of the potential for cross-species communication!”

“You mean humans could change colors like Morrors?” I asked.

Th
saaa
brightened into pleased reds. “What a good idea. You could make humans normal. Why are you doing that with your face,
Aleece
? Humans would be much better like that.”

I wasn't so sure about that, but Th
saaa
had done
a good job of smoothing over the Lena and Josephine situation.

“And you, Josephine, what are you doing?” Th
saaa
inquired politely.

“I'm upgrading the Goldfish,” said Josephine, taking a deep breath and gathering herself. “You
really
should have given the poor thing Häxeri,” she reproached Carl and Noel.

Lena turned back to her own work.

“I've been managing just super without, Josephine!” the Goldfish said, and I thought there was a strained note in its cheerful voice.

“It . . . it will be okay, won't it?” asked Noel anxiously.

“Oh, sure,” said the Goldfish, sounding openly glum. “I'll be better than ever. I'll be a whole new me. You'll barely even know me, I expect.”

Josephine patted it. “You'll be fine, Goldfish. You'll still be you—you'll just be able to do everything faster and better.”

“I guess,” said the Goldfish.

“If you don't want it, you don't have to have it,” said Josephine. “But I
bet
you've been feeling all tired and glitchy, haven't you? I bet your processors ache at the end of a long day?”

“Well, yeah,” the Goldfish conceded mournfully.

“There you go,” said Josephine, patting it again.

“Will it be better behaved?” asked Th
saaa
acidly, though they were relaxing into calmer shades of blue and pink now things seemed to be settling down.

Josephine made a face. “Only if it wants to be, I'm afraid. But I think it can help us gather samples from the Oort Cloud. It's intelligent and it's just the right size.

“We don't know if any alien species other than the Morrors and the Vshomu have passed through the solar system before. We plan to look for detritus or anomalous gases in the Oort Cloud. If we find anything, we may be able to deduce something about who else is out there.”

“What . . . but the Goldfish can't fly in space?”

“Not
yet
, it can't,” Josephine said, grinning. “However with the right modifications . . .”

“I'm getting turbo thrusters!” said the Goldfish, sounding unequivocally enthusiastic this time.

“If I've got the balance right . . . ,” said Josephine, slotting some more components together and squinting at the harness she'd made. “Obviously weight won't be a factor when you're out in space, but you won't want it to be too heavy when you're operating in gravity. Hopefully the added
power will compensate. . . .”

Josephine seemed more like herself, I thought. But why was I spending so much time worrying about her these days?

“We're already at the Oort cloud?” said Carl. “I get to fly the
Helen
when we're through that. I mean . . . if she's okay with that.”

“I will do whatever my Captain commands,” offered the
Helen
.

“Hmm,” said Josephine, frowning thoughtfully at the ceiling.

“Have you talked to the
Helen
?” I asked her. I wanted to say that the ship was quite sensible and interesting when she wasn't talking about Trommler, but there didn't seem a polite way to say that in front of Helen. “She's very nice.”

“She wrote Mr. Trommler a poem,” said Noel.

Without much prompting, the
Helen
recited her poem again.

“Do you read much poetry?” Josephine asked, after a pause in which I hoped the
Helen
could not read facial expressions. “Are you interested in other books?”

“Oh, yes,” said Helen. “There are so many interesting things to learn about. But I haven't read very many yet.”

“I'm going to send you some books,” said Josephine firmly.

“How kind of you!” said the
Helen
.

Josephine examined the readouts on her tablet. “Are you ready, Goldfish?”

“As I'll ever be, I guess,” the Goldfish said glumly.

Josephine tapped her tablet once, and the Goldfish sank in the air. Carl and I sprang forward to catch it, but Th
saaa
's tentacles were longer and faster.

“Somebody take it—I don't liiiiiike it!” Th
saaa
complained.

Carl, Josephine, and I laid the Goldfish on the ground. It rocked pathetically. The blue shine of its eyes had gone out.

“You better have gotten this right,” Noel told Josephine sternly. “It's
our
Goldfish.”

“It consented!” Josephine insisted. “And it'll be fine!”

The Goldfish rose slowly from the ground to its usual level in the air. Its lights flashed on and off in a most disconcerting way.

“Goldfish?” asked Noel nervously.

“LOADING,” said the Goldfish in a loud, unpleasant drone, quite unlike its usual perky voice. “BOOTING.”

“Are you okay?” Carl asked.

“You are worried about it,” Th
saaa
accused Carl
,
in slightly betrayed grays and lilacs. “But you always complain about it.”

“I don't like it nagging me about my homework, but I don't want Josephine to
kill
it,” said Carl.

“Will you all stop being so melodramatic?” said Josephine.

The lights stopped flashing. But the Goldfish's eyes stared blankly ahead. I found I was holding my breath.

“Come on . . . ,” whispered Josephine. Perhaps everyone's melodrama was getting to her.

There was a very long pause.

“Kids!” the Goldfish crowed. “Whoo, boy, howdy, do I feel fantastic.” It swirled around us in an exultant circle. “My, my, would you just look at all that calculating power! Hey, Helen! Nice talking to you!”

“
Are
you talking to each other?” I asked.

“We just had a very nice exchange of data, yes,” confirmed the
Helen
. “I enjoyed learning about medieval crop rotation.”

“And you are one impressive operating system, ma'am!” said the Goldfish, dashing around in happy zigzags. “Hi there, little guys,” it said indulgently
to the tiny spider robots as they climbed over themselves to intercept it and crawl over its sides. “Hey, quit it,” it added as they formed themselves into a pair of wiggling arms on either flank. “That tickles.”

“You
see
,” said Josephine to the rest of us.

“It seems okay,” said Noel.

“And if I were to say . . . math?” Carl said casually.

“I'd say you need to work on the difference between dependent and independent variables, buddy,” said the Goldfish sternly. “You could do so well if you applied yourself.”

“It
is
still you,” cried Noel. I think he'd have hugged the Goldfish if it had stopped moving for one second. Instead, it darted almost into Josephine's face.

“Josephine!” it bellowed at her. The piglet woke up with an alarmed squeak and dived under Dr. Muldoon's workbench. “That baccalaureate won't earn itself, you know. Don't just stand there! Let's do science!”

“I have my Captain's permission to reenter normal space,” the
Helen
said
.

“
Then let's go for it!” rejoiced the Goldfish.

“Please do,” said Dr. Muldoon, who was now on
her hands and knees trying to retrieve the piglet.

“If you'll hold still for one second,” said Josephine, chasing the Goldfish about with the harness.

Lena stepped into the Goldfish's path, and caught it without apparent effort. Josephine had to climb on a stool to fit the harness so that the two little propulsors fitted neatly on either side of its tail.

Meanwhile, hyperspace faded to black. The stars emerged, shifting through the spectrum of colors, and oh, there were so many of them now, so many that it was a long time before I could pick out the bright one that must be the sun.

A shadow drifted past the windows, across the expanse of starlight. It made me jump—for a moment, it was as if there was something alive out there, swimming in the dark. Then another dark shape tumbled through the light from the
Helen
's window and I realized it was just a lump of ice or rock, part of the Oort cloud that envelops the solar system.

We were a very long way from home.

“You should be able to operate the propulsors—” began Josephine, and then we all ducked as the Goldfish
did
operate them, and catapulted sideways at tremendous speed.

“Not inside!” groaned Lena.

“I'm OKAY!” yelled the Goldfish, bouncing off the wall and knocking various important scientific things over. The little robots scurried to pick them up, crawling over anyone who happened to be in the way.

“There, there, Ormerod,” crooned Dr. Muldoon, cradling the frightened piglet in her lap and shooting the Goldfish an annoyed look.

“Sorry,” said Josephine, pushing rebellious tendrils of hair out of her face. “Let's get you outside,” she told the Goldfish.

She hurried the Goldfish to the airlock and opened the inner set of doors. The Goldfish jigged impatiently inside the chamber, still chattering away, and then the inner doors closed and the outer doors opened, and the Goldfish popped into space.

The first thing it did was fire its propulsors and go into a violent, flailing tailspin that carried it off into the darkness, bouncing off bits of floating debris, so far off into the distance that we could only just see its glow. Josephine sucked her teeth anxiously.

But then the Goldfish eventually worked out how to control its thrusters, and it flew back to hover
outside the window. I got the impression it was saying something, but we couldn't hear what.

“I should have given it voice transmitters,” said Josephine, slumping a little.

“That would have been wise,” agreed Lena.

“You can next time,” I said. “This is only a trial run, right?”

Josephine smiled at me.

“It says this is a very interesting experience, and it hopes Th
saaa
is making notes for their extended essay,” volunteered the
Helen
.

The Goldfish bobbed outside in the void, then swooped away.

“I hope it knows where it's going,” said Carl.

“I think it's going around the ship,” I said.

“Let's follow it,” said Noel.

“That sounds like a
wonderful idea
,” said Dr. Muldoon pointedly, so we all hurried out of the lab and ran down the corridor into the elevator. We reached the upper deck just in time to see the Goldfish soaring through the shadows of the Oort cloud and then vanishing overhead.

So we raced back to the passenger lounge, where the windows were huge.