Molly turned to Cole. There was a faint white line where his lip had been busted open. The scar remained invisible unless his full mouth thinned into a smile. “What are they?” she asked.
“Medical files for Jakobs and Dinks. From the day you got kicked out.” He settled back into his chair. “There’s a lot there,” he added, a smirk on his face.
Molly thumbed through the stapled pages and looked back to Cole. The silence in the barracks that day finally made sense. She wasn’t sure she approved, but it was nice to feel him beside her, even across the extra room provided by the first class tickets. She didn’t really appreciate the space, but it was balanced out by them not having to wear their visors, reflecting back the world around them. It was just her and Cole. Their real faces. Scars and all.
7
The best thing about first class, as far as Molly was concerned, was getting to see nearly every single passenger of the ship file by. For an alien-watcher, it was a cross between a parade and a fashion show. Even the humans, who made up a majority of the crowd, were garbed in such splendid regalia that some of them looked stranger than the handful of aliens wearing simpler outfits.
Children bounced past excitedly, chased by nervous parents. There was an air of excitement in the crowd as vacations began, homes were returned to, and business deals still held the potential of not falling apart.
The only morose passengers Molly saw were the handful of Palans who must have been returning home from vacation. She assumed they didn’t like their stay on Earth very much. She was dying to ask them why and find out more about their home planet. In fact, Molly wanted to set up a toll booth in the middle of the aisle, stopping each passenger and demanding answers for passage:
Who are you? Where are you going? What are you going to do there?
She wanted to know everything about everyone. But part of her suspected this urge was only half the story. The other half was her desire to let every single one of them know that she owned a starship, and the cute guy beside her was pretending to be her boyfriend.
When a Delphian in coach had a hard time reaching the luggage bins and wouldn’t accept offers of help, she nearly got her tollbooth. The meter-tall, stubborn little alien wrestled with his bag as the parade slowed to a crawl. Molly smiled and nodded at each person that passed her by, hoping they wouldn’t think her a snob just because she was in first class.
When the procession came to a full stop, a young Palan girl, her eyes fixed on Molly, crashed into the back of her father. She quickly checked to see if Molly had noticed, and then her face flashed with embarrassment. Molly smiled at the child and waved her fingers, which sent the girl’s face into the folds of her father’s coat, hiding from the world. Molly was fascinated by the girl’s skin, the color of dull steel. The ears on her stubbly head were very low, almost pointing downward. Molly wanted to try out the three or four words she knew in Palan, but she couldn’t muster the courage. Neither could the Palan child, who remained hidden until the line lurched into motion. As her father moved away, she peeked out and smiled shyly at Molly, then was carried off by her grip on his coat.
One of the last floats in the parade was a stunner: a Bel Tra couple. They sat in the very front of first class, which provided only a brief glimpse of their tall, thin frames and colorful attire. They both wore traditional Bel Tra lace, the dozens of layers of different transparent colors piling up to create an opaque hue unique to each individual. Molly felt goose bumps ripple up her arms; she nudged Cole to make sure he was looking.
“Huh?”
Molly turned in her seat to start talking his ear off, only to find Cole’s head resting against the window.
“Are you asleep?” Molly asked.
Cole didn’t even open his eyes. “I was,” he complained.
“Do you have any idea what you’re missing?” She hissed.
Cole cracked one lid and gazed at Molly for a second. “My nap?”
“Bel Tra!” Molly whispered.
“Seen ’em before.” His eyelid returned to its state of rest, sealing him off from the sights.
Molly couldn’t believe him. She thought they’d been watching the cultural display together. She leaned out and peered up and down the aisle, wondering if anyone would mind if she took some pictures with her reader.
Beside her, Cole emitted a strange snuffling sound. Molly turned back at the man of her dreams.
Just as he started snoring.
••••
When the passenger ship reached Earth’s primary Lagrange point—the spot in space where the gravity of the planet and its moon cancel each another out—it began its countdown for the jump to Menkar.
Molly leaned across Cole’s sleeping form to gaze through the small porthole. Earlier, she’d been eager to wake him, but now she was glad he wasn’t witness to her nervousness. She hadn’t done this outside of a simulator since she and her father came to Earth. The thought of getting sick, or having her heart race uncontrollably like it often did, had Molly squirming in her seat.
She glanced up at the numbers ticking down by their reading lights. When the counter reached “2,” she looked back through the carboglass, tightening her stomach reflexively. The only visual cue anything had happened was each star shifting to a new place. It was indistinguishable from a simulator display.
But there was no nausea. The hyperdrive in this monster must punch a big enough hole in space to prevent the sensation, Molly thought. She settled back in her chair and slowly released her grip on the armrest. The blood returned to her knuckles, coloring them pink.
So far, the grand adventure was proving to be a dud. Molly hoped all that would change once she took possession of Parsona. As long as their chaperone didn’t get in the way, she’d have Cole to herself and be able to keep him so busy with navigational duties that he couldn’t sleep through the trip back.
The Navy had pulled some strings to make this flight non-stop to Palan, an oddity for a frontier planet, but a measure to reduce the number of things that could go wrong on this mission. As they passed through Canopus, Molly heard several first class travelers express their dismay. Their final destination was Canopus, but they were having to return here via the Palan system?
Once more, the Navy’s thoughtfulness irked Molly. She felt horrible that she was responsible for messing up flight schedules. Even the sole Palan couple in first class seemed upset at the itinerary. Molly couldn’t understand this, unless they, too, were eager for layovers on new and strange Orbital Stations.
What everyone got instead was a direct flight from Earth to Palan. It took almost a full day to make the trip, most of it in a dimly-lit gloom of people trying to sleep half as well as Molly’s companion. By the time they arrived at the Palan system, he must’ve had eighteen hours of uninterrupted rest. No bathroom breaks. No food. No flirting.
Molly couldn’t understand how he contained himself. Even from the last.
Stressing about it prevented her from getting any sleep, herself. It even made it difficult to read or watch a holovid. Then she started worrying he would be a ball of energy on the trip back, while she would be a zombie. And this anxious line of reasoning made any chance of a nap impossible.
Cole finally woke when the Palan shuttle airlocked itself to their giant passenger ship. Palan’s Orbital Station could handle a vessel this size, but with only a few travelers getting off here, a direct shuttle flight made more sense. Molly wondered if this wasn’t just more of Lucin’s protectiveness. What a wreck he would’ve been if she’d gone off to fight in the Navy.
The airlocks on the two ships pressed together, sending a faint vibration through the hull. Cole bolted upright, wide awake. “Where are we?” he asked, completely alert.
“Palan,” she said, as grumpy as everyone else on the ship, but for a different reason.
“Already? Man, that went by fast. Why didn’t you wake me?”
“You seemed pretty out of it. And when you started snoring really loud, I went and sat with some guys back in coach. They taught me this cool card game called Mossfoot. You start off with—”
“I don’t snore that loud,” Cole interrupted.
“Well, I just got back and people were complaining.”
“Hmmm. Record it next time. I don’t believe you.”
Molly stood in the aisle with a few other passengers and reached up to collect her bag. “You’re just jealous I had a great flight and all you did was sleep.” She yawned and stretched, feeling exhausted. She really needed a nap.
And a shower.
Part II - Escape Velocity
“The floods will come to wash away
the wicked. And I’ll go gladly.”
~The Bern Seer~
8
Only a dozen or so passengers boarded the shuttle to Palan’s surface. Molly and Cole were the only two humans, making them the aliens to gawk at. The young girl from earlier was just as shy the second time around, recoiling from Molly’s wave, but with a timid smile. A Palan steward came down the aisle, checking that everyone had their harness secure before rushing to join the pilot in the cockpit. Or had that been the pilot? Molly wondered. There didn’t seem to be many crew members on the shuttle.
Cole automatically sat to Molly’s left again, beside the window. Molly assumed it was more so he’d have a place to rest his head than any attempt to pull rank. He nudged Molly and she turned to see him pointing out the glass. There was nothing out there but stars.
“What am I looking at?” she asked.
“That!” he said, rubbing his finger on the glass with a squeaking sound.
Molly loosened her shoulder straps and leaned over Cole, focusing on his finger. There was a faint crack in the carboglass running the length of the window! Molly felt the airlocks decouple and the shuttle slide sideways in space, preparing for its descent.
“Should we tell somebody?” she asked, cinching her harness up tight.
Cole craned his neck to inspect the porthole one row back. “That one’s even worse,” he marveled. “There’s no way this ship passed inspections.”
Molly felt like they should warn somebody, but the shuttle was already accelerating, pinning her to her seat.
“Wow. That’s a few Gs,” Cole said. “Somebody’s in a hurry.”
If he was trying to lighten the mood, it wasn’t working. A few minutes later, the shuttle hit the atmosphere and started taking a beating. None of the passengers spoke, they just looked ahead or out to the steel wings, which seemed to be flapping up and down like a bird’s. The sounds of grinding metal and bending trusses groaned throughout the ship, reverberating over the roar of air knocking against the hull.
After a few minutes, the heat inside the shuttle became intolerable. There was no air coming out of the vents overhead. Molly reached up, straining against the Gs, to twist the nozzle open. The plastic unit came off in her hand. She held the broken piece in her lap, beads of sweat streaking back from her forehead as the friction of reentry blasted the fuselage, heat radiating through the insulation and into the cabin. Molly sweated profusely, partly from the rise in temperature, but mostly out of fear.
She couldn’t remember being this scared in all her life. She needed to be in control, or at least be up in the cockpit so she could see what was going on. As they stopped accelerating, switching to a glide against the atmosphere, Molly considered unbuckling her harness and going forward where she could at least know how they were going to die. All she could see through Cole’s window was the glare of a bright sun and glowing-red steel.
They hit a pocket of turbulence and the shuttle lurched upwards, pressed Molly violently into her seat. She decided to stay put and cope with someone else being in control, but not at all comfortable with it being anyone other than Cole. After a few minutes of frightful shuddering, the mad plummet ended and the pilot smoothed out into another glide. The sun disappeared behind gathering clouds, revealing a vast ocean spread out below. A hiss filled the shuttle—the sound of air leaking in through cracks or maybe passengers heaving a sigh of relief.
Molly released Cole’s arm; she couldn’t even remember grabbing it. She looked down at his tan skin and saw small white frowns of indented flesh where her fingernails had been.
The landing felt like another bout of turbulence as the shuttle rebounded off the tarmac several times. When they came to a halt, Molly felt the urge to applaud the pilot. In fact, the murmurs of relief washing through the shuttle made her expect a standing ovation at any moment. Instead, the passengers collected their bundles and hurried toward the exit, the sense of urgency palpable, as if the shuttle still posed some sort of threat. Molly moved eagerly as well, but for a different reason. She was dying to get out and explore her first new planet in ten years.
The landing ramp descended and the first thing Molly noted about Palan was the heat. It assaulted her before she even got to the exit. It felt like a wall of water flooding the aisle. Molly took a deep breath against it, but the humidity was so high, it felt like she could drown. The wetness stuck to her, transferring heat straight to her bones and making her loose shirt cling to her stomach.
She and Cole swam with the others through the thick air, down the boarding ramp, and into a half-circle tunnel of corrugated steel. They were pressing toward a cacophony of clanging and yelling—poverty’s soundtrack. This was a tune Molly recognized from her childhood on a frontier planet. It was a chorus of competitive complaining, a group with very little yet wanting much. The sounds were as thick as the atmosphere; Molly could feel it all driving her back like the force of acceleration, back into the shuttle and out of there.
As they exited the tunnel into the Shuttle Terminal, Molly’s architectural tastes gagged. Even after a steady diet of what the Navy considered “spatially pleasing,” she couldn’t believe how rough this place was. Everything in the Terminal had the appearance of a temporary structure, something that could be packed up and moved when trouble arose. Palans conducted business in crowded clusters around rickety stalls and tents stretched with patchwork quilts. Molly noted they needed yet more patching—little of the original fabric remained. Frayed edges hung in long rows of tatters and thread.