Orion Lost E-Book

Alastair Chisholm

• Herausgeber: Nosy Crow
• Kategorie: Für Kinder und Jugendliche
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Seitenzahl: 342

Beschreibung

The transport ship Orion is four months out of Earth when catastrophe strikes - leaving the ship and everyone on board stranded in deep space Suddenly it's up to thirteen-year-old Beth and her friends to navigate through treacherous and uncharted territory to reach safety. But a heavily-damaged ship, space pirates, a mysterious alien species, and an artificial intelligence that Beth doesn't know if she can trust means that getting home has never been so difficult... Hugely gripping, with incredible twists and a fast-paced, action-packed story, this is an unputdownable science fiction adventure - perfect for fans of Star Wars.

Leseprobe

To Rose and Amelie, who are the masters of their own ships. And to Catherine, for everything. A.C.

Author’s note

In this book you will meet an alien species, called the Videshi. Some of you may know that this is a real word – in Hindi, Videshi means foreign, or foreigner, or stranger.

This book takes place in the future, and when I was imagining the world of the future, I thought that India would probably become a prominent power, perhaps even the leading spacefaring nation – the captains and commanders of space exploration. I imagined that it might be an Indian crew who met the first alien ship. What would they call this alien? I thought they might call it stranger. Foreigner. Alien. And they would report it back to the people of Earth, who would use their word … Videshi.

1

Prologue

There was a ship, in space, lost.

It was a large, old, mining transport, designed for long-haul trips to small moons and asteroids. The enormous squat engines and hydrogen scoop underneath gave cheap and steady propulsion, but not much acceleration. The command module was small, but its cargo section was huge, taking up most of the ship.

It was broadcasting a radio signal: —Earth ship Orion, four months out of Earth and heading for Eos Five. Our location is Sector 278. Coordinates 549 dash 2 by 902 dash 8 as of—

An experienced miner might notice odd things about the ship. It had been patched and refitted, and its life support systems – gravity, oxygen, food processing – extended to cope with a much larger crew. Extra equipment was fastened round the hull, designed for planet exploration. Rovers, diggers, habitats, all with landing gear but no launch rockets of their own. They could land but they’d 2never take off again.

Not a mining transport any more then, but a colony ship, taking a group of brave new-worlders off to some distant settlement, and then staying to help them set up.

—currently adrift, said the message, and we have no propulsion, although our Jump drive is functioning.

Four large power generators bulged out near the base, but two of them were cold and dark and only a few of the ship’s outer lights were working. It was turning gently, and as it turned, it revealed an enormous scorched rupture near one of the engines.

We have experienced severe damage to the ship.

A ship in deep space hardly ever sent out a distress signal. What would be the point? Ships were like tiny motes of dust in the vast sky, so far apart that the chance of one coming across another by accident was effectively zero. Near Earth, or around the Solar System, sure, perhaps heading to one of the older and more established colonies, on a well-known route. But not out here. Here you could travel for six months and see no one, and no evidence that anyone else had ever existed. Here there were no friends.

Command has been compromised and we are unable to establish order. All command crew ranked able-bodied or higher are disabled and cannot resume control.3

In fact, this far out – so far from Earth you could barely see its sun as a tiny flickering star – if you found anyone at all, it would be more likely to be Scrapers, pirates and thieves. Or worse still, the mysterious, alien Videshi: strange, half hidden, half understood, terrifying.

A ship in deep space hardly ever sent out a distress signal, because if you were helpless enough to send one, then you did not want to be found.

The message repeated: This is a general Mayday from the Earth ship Orion, four months out of Earth…

Something found them.

4

1

Beth

“I think I’m going to be sick,” said Beth.

Her mum, strapped into her seat like the other passengers and crew of the shuttlecraft, looked up from her mission manual.

“No you’re not,” she said.

“No, really, I don’t feel so good. It’s the gravity, it’s—”

“No, you’re not.” Beth’s mum leaned across and gazed into her eyes. “I know it was pretty intense when we launched. And yes, zero gravity is strange, and a long time ago people did get sick, but not these days. You’ve had your pill, and you’ll be fine. Trust me.”

Beth nodded. She didn’t feel fine. She felt as if her stomach was turning over and over, floating free and ready to jump in any direction. She tried to smile.

“OK … I guess. I feel a bit funny, though.”

Her dad turned to her and grinned. “Me too. I think everyone’s twitchy, don’t you?” 5

Beth looked around.

The ship they were on – the transport, her mum called it – had about sixty seats, all full. Suitcases were strapped against the walls and ceiling to stop them flying around during launch, but a few of them had been unfastened since; they trailed tendrils of Velcro and bobbed slightly, like jellyfish. Most of the passengers were also strapped in, though some had undone their webbing after take-off.

Take-off… Wow. Beth had flown on planes and travelled on the Hoop, but she’d never felt anything like the launch, when the transport and everyone on it had hurled into the sky like a thrown pebble. She hadn’t felt sick then; instead there had been a sensation that she was going to faint, that she was melting into the chair, that she was on the world’s biggest, maddest roller coaster and she couldn’t get off.

Then the odd awareness of reaching the top of the climb, and the weightlessness, and that moment just before you fall back down to Earth … only there was no falling back. Instead they fell forward, very slightly, and Beth had watched in astonishment as one end of her strap had floated, gently, in front of her.

And then the seat-belts had unlocked and most of the children had scrabbled to free themselves, and the adults had pretended that it was all completely normal. But 6they’d been shaking and gaping as much as the kids.

That was two hours ago. After the launch, there had been the long slow drift towards the exit point, and the sight of Earth through a thick window, gradually shrinking. Gasps as the Moon came into sight – still small and far away, but perfectly clear. And after a while, the wonder and astonishment becoming slowly normal.

“We’ll see the Orion soon,” said her mum. “Look out for it, towards the left.”

Beth peered through the porthole but couldn’t see anything. She shrugged. It would show up on the screen soon enough – the portholes were just a luxury, only on this ship, command class. The other transports were sealed in and twice as full. Benefits of her mum’s command position as a lieutenant. Beth smiled. Not quite as posh as the first-class cabin ahead, for the captain and senior officers, but even so. Pretty cool.

Her stomach was still bouncing and jumping around. She wondered if Dad was right, if everyone else was really feeling like this. The other children seemed fine. One girl, three rows down, was typing rapidly at a pad on her lap and staring at two screens that floated in front of her, held in place with some sort of thin elastic. Her hair was tied into dozens of thin black braids drifting around her head, fastened with pink butterfly clips; the screens bobbed and 7turned and the girl’s head bobbed with them. How is she OK? wondered Beth.

The other girl felt her looking, glanced up and waved. Beth managed a pallid smile and moved her hand in a tiny ‘hello’ motion.

Beneath her, she felt a rumble and a momentary sense of weight to one side.

“Look,” Mum said. “You can see her on the screen.”

On the display panel, small but very clear, hung a tiny ship, small as an acorn and about the same shape, fat and round. As it came into focus, passengers looked up from their pads, stopped their conversations. Someone gave a small whoop and people laughed.

“Isn’t she something?” said Mum. They stared at the little acorn.

“I dunno,” drawled Dad. “Looks a bit small to me.”

“Oh, she’s not!” exclaimed Beth. “She’s six hundred and seventy-two metres end to end and four hundred side to side, and – oh, shut up.” Her father grinned and she rolled her eyes.

Mum said, “Ignore him. She’s a good size. Plenty of storage, plenty of room for berths.” She smirked. “Even enough for your space chickens, dear.”

“Hah!” he snorted. “And space pigs, I’ll have you know. And space wheat, and space courgettes, and a whole 8space farm for that matter. And if you don’t want to be eating flavoured yeast all the way to Eos Five then you’ll be nice about them, and nice to the farmer.”

Her mum sniffed. “Nothing wrong with transport rations; I’ve eaten them many times. And your two pigs aren’t going to feed a thousand colonists. But don’t you worry – we’ll still let you have your little garden.”

“You do know which way to point that old pile of junk, do you?” he asked. “Could be more than nine months. I’ve seen you trying to read a map before.”

They glared at each other and then giggled.

“Shut up, you two,” said Beth, going red. “Everyone’s looking.”

Mum waved a hand. “Let them.” She shook her head. “Anyway, I won’t be navigating. I’m purely third class, scraped in by my knuckles. I’ll mostly be making the coffee.”

Beth looked across at her. She couldn’t imagine anyone ordering Lieutenant Carol McKay to make coffee. With a face apparently chiselled from stone, Beth’s mum had grey eyes that looked like they were staring into a storm at sea, and white-blonde hair cropped into an army bob. She was born to lead a battalion into battle. Compared to her, Dad seemed like a cheerful bag of laundry.

The Orion was closer now, and Beth stared at the screen. 9It did look like an acorn. And for the next nine months it would be their home. They would live in it, all bundled together, and it would carry them far, far away – so far it was impossible to imagine – to a tiny prick of light, and a tiny pebble around that light, and then…

“It’s a new world out there,” said Mum softly. “Ship life is awkward sometimes, but it’s not so bad. And when we get to Eos Five … there’s a future waiting for us. A chance to make our own decisions, create our own lives.”

“I know,” said Beth. “But what if something happens on the trip? What about the Scrapers? Or the Videshi…” She shuddered.

Beth’s mum shook her head. “No. We’re going well away from the common routes. And space is so … big. There’s no chance of meeting anything, really. Trust me – the worst thing that might happen on this trip is boredom.” She bumped heads gently with Beth. “I know you’re nervous, but it will be fine. And when we get there it will be hard work. But it will be ours.”

She grinned, and despite her worries, Beth grinned back. Yes. She could do this. Everything was going to be great. Yes.

Then she was sick.

10

2

Day One

Their cabin was small, and beautiful.

Beth had known roughly what to expect; she’d seen layout plans back on Earth and taken the virtual tour. It was like a caravan, or a ship’s kitchen, hiding storage space in secret compartments and nooks. Every square metre of wall had cupboard doors. There was a sofa with drawers underneath and a large screen that folded away. Everything seemed to be made of wood, which was nice, even though she knew it wasn’t real. A warm carpet felt soft underfoot as she walked in.

Walking… Thank god. When they’d finally docked with the Orion, after what seemed like hours of waiting (with the faint smell of sick and cleaning foam pervading the shuttle, and everyone pretending not to notice), Beth had felt the gentle pressure of gravity push her into her seat and had groaned with relief.

Dad had given her a hug. “That’s it, love,” he’d said. 11“You made it. Normal gravity from now on, eh?”

She knew this wasn’t quite true. The ‘gravity’ on board Orion was a force generated from the middle of the ship, like an apple core. If you went out to the edges you would feel it less, and as you climbed down inwards you would feel it more … until you reached the centre, and it simply disappeared.

Weirder still was that it always pulled towards the core, so people round the far side of the ship seemed ‘upside down’ compared to you. Normally you couldn’t see them, but as you moved towards the front you would meet them in corridors that came together as the gravity faded away. The thought of it made Beth’s stomach wobble again.

But here everything seemed normal. Her legs lifted her and moved her about, things stayed where you left them, and she walked into their new home and looked around.

The ceiling was low, but there was space to stand up. They had a tiny kitchen nook, enough to make tea or coffee or a snack; they would be eating from the ship canteens for the most part. Her parents had one small bedroom and Beth another, even smaller, just a narrow raised bed with cupboards and a tiny workspace underneath. The opposite wall was less than an arm’s reach away; it was like living inside an egg. She loved it the moment she saw it.12

She unpacked in ten minutes. A pile of clothes dumped into the cupboards, a precious few knick-knacks on a thin shelf. Her diary – an actual physical book, a real luxury and her one true indulgence – stowed safe with some pens under her pillow. A couple of posters on the ceiling, and she was done. She sat on the bed and looked around, happy.

Her mum knocked on the wall next to her door and leaned in. “Hey.”

“Hey,” said Beth, smiling.

“All unpacked? Everything neatly folded and put away?”

“Oh, sure.”

“Uh-huh.” Beth’s mum looked sceptical. “Dad’s gone to the farm to see how the animals are doing – want to join him?”

Beth shrugged. “Maybe later. Can I explore?”

Mum nodded. “If you head towards the front, you should be able to find the cafeteria. That’s probably where everyone will be. If you get lost, ask the ship.”

So Beth found herself outside the cabin, trying to remember whether the front of the ship was left or right. She picked left and wandered along, examining everything.

The corridors were squat and plain – no fake wood 13here, just metal and cream paint that still smelled recent. Messages and indicators flickered by on display panels along the walls. The Orion was an old ship and even with the new paint the corridors felt aged.

There was a faint rumbling sound everywhere she went, perhaps from the generators. Sometimes the corridor sloped downwards, and occasionally she came to a split and picked directions at random. They always seemed to lead to more corridors; the ship felt huge.

Eventually she gave up.

“Ship,” she said, and in front of her a head appeared: the face of Ship, the Orion’s central interface.

The head was a hologram, apparently floating. It was blue, and completely smooth and bald. The designers had shied away from making it look too human, because that sort of thing creeped people out. But its eyes were very lifelike.

“Hello, Beth.” Ship’s voice was calm and neutral, neither warm nor cold.

“Can you tell me how to get to the cafeteria?” Beth asked.

“There are six cafeterias on board the Orion. One is for command personnel only, two are located towards the stern, two are—”

“Just the one nearest our cabin, please.”14

If the avatar was upset at being interrupted, it didn’t show it.

“The nearest cafeteria is one hundred metres away. Turn round and follow the corridor until it branches. Take the left corridor. I will show these directions on the screen.”

The panel next to Ship blinked and a little figure appeared in orange. A line traced out from the figure, back along the corridor.

“Thank you,” said Beth.

“You are welcome,” said Ship, and disappeared.

Turning round, Beth followed the line. As she passed each panel it lit up with her trail, and at the junction it blinked and she obediently turned left. She realised there was someone up ahead, coming towards her, chattering and feet pounding. For a moment she—

“Argh!”

Someone ricocheted round the corner and crashed into her, knocking her to the ground. Pads and other gadgets bounced around them.

“Oops! Sorry! Ha ha!” It was a small girl in a pink T-shirt, who was now scurrying around and picking up her things. She had black braided hair decorated with butterfly clips. Beth realised dazedly that she was the girl from the transport.15

“Up you come, hello!” She pulled Beth up and then stared at her, then at one of her pads, then at Beth again.

“Hello … Beth!” she said proudly. She peered again. “Beth McKay, hello! I’m Limit. Isn’t this awesome?”

“Sorry, what?”

“This ship. Isn’t she great? Have you seen the gravity? It’s fantastic, it’s like field lines, have you seen how it changes in waves? Awesome. You were on the transport!”

Beth blinked.

“And then you were sooooooo sick, it was awesome. Mikkel – this is her, the girl who was sick! It’s the zero-g, it totally messes with you, plus it’s completely unhealthy long-term and does stuff with your bones which is why they put in the gravity here even though it’s so expensive and uses power like crazy. Have you noticed the field lines?”

“Wait!” croaked Beth. She held up one hand. “Wait a minute. Er. Hello. I’m Beth.”

“I know, you’re Beth McKay, and your mum is … comms ops, and your dad is … cool, applied agriculture –” the girl read the information off her pad – “and you’re in Cabin Sixteen/Thirty-two and, and—”

“Lauryn, she knows this.”

For the first time, Beth noticed the boy next to them. He was shorter than Beth, thin and pale with white-blonde hair, and he wore rumpled jeans and a grey jumper. His 16eyes were grey too, and pale, peering through his fringe. He spoke with a soft Norwegian accent, or perhaps Swedish, and his face had a slightly dreamy look, as if he was only half there. He smiled gently at Beth.

The girl stopped and grinned. “Hello,” she said cheerfully.

“Hello … Lauryn?”

Lauryn nodded. “Yeah, but that’s just my normal name. My handle is –” she raised a hand and made some sort of gesture – “Limit. You should call me that.”

“Limit?”

“Totally! What’s your handle?”

“I’m just Beth.”

“That’s OK, you’ll think of something. This is Mikkel; he doesn’t have a proper name yet either.” Mikkel nodded.

Lauryn/Limit pointed her pad at Beth. “We’ve been tracking you!”

“What?”

“On the pad! I’ve figured out how! We saw you coming down the corridor.”

“I told her we could ask Ship,” said Mikkel, shrugging, “But she wanted to work it out herself.”

“Why were you tracking me?”

“Well … you were the only one I could find. The tracker’s got a limited range. But also because you were 17so cool when you threw up – bleurghhhh!” She mimed being sick, then turned to Mikkel. “You should have seen it, zero-g sick, it just went everywhere, and then all these cool flying robots came down, and sucked it up, and everyone was, like, eeeeeewww, and—”

“OK!” snapped Beth. “Yes, I was sick. It was the zero grav—”

“That’s what I said. That’s why the gravity here is so awesome. In fact, this ship is awesome all over. Have you scanned the engines yet?”

“Er, no?”

“You should! They have some sweet automation, it’s all wired to Ship, it’s completely routable everywhere and all the cabling is embedded into the infrastructure and, and…”

“It’s awesome?” ventured Beth.

Lauryn nodded wildly. “Totally.” She trotted off down the hallway. “C’mon,” she said, waving her pad. “I want to try this some more.”

Mikkel followed her and Beth found herself pulled along in their wake. “Try what? Where are we going?”

Mikkel said, “We are trying Lauryn’s app. It works out who people are by—”

“By scanning their faces and matching them to the pre-flight profiles they put up, you know, where they 18introduced everyone. Look—” Lauryn thrust the pad at Beth, who saw a brief glimpse of her passport photo. “It taps into Ship’s processors for the face recognition. Anyway, I want to try it out with a crowd, so – here goes!”

She paused, and Beth realised that they were at the entrance to the cafeteria. Lauryn dived in, and Mikkel too, leaving Beth standing outside on her own. She shook her head in bemusement, and then grinned.

Here goes, she thought, and followed them in.

19

3

Vihaan

The cafeteria was a large, brightly lit space, part refectory, part coffee house, with tables scattered around and a few sofas at the back. The serving area was automated and staffed by small kitchen robots.

It was noisy, with groups of kids from about nine and up chattering, shouting and running around. There were no adults – instead, Ship was keeping order. She was everywhere, her disembodied blue heads holding dozens of conversations.

Lauryn was already heading at speed towards a group near the door. They seemed older than Beth, fifteen or so, and she realised that everyone had more or less clumped together into age groups. Lauryn wielded the pad at them and talked rapidly.

“—Marcus Ackar, you’re from Germany, cool, and you’re Fiona Howard, you’re a gymnast – awesome! – and you like dogs…” The teenagers looked at her with20a mix of bemusement, humour and mild contempt, but Lauryn didn’t seem to notice.

Mikkel and Beth watched her.

“She’s enthusiastic, isn’t she?” said Beth.

Mikkel smiled. “She found me when I was ten metres out of my cabin,” he said in his soft, precise voice, “and I think she has not stopped talking yet.”

They ordered milkshakes from the little serving droids and took them over to the empty end of a table. Mikkel nodded towards a large bright mural of a landscape under a red sun, occupying one whole wall of the cafeteria. “Look,” he said. “Our new world.”

Beth realised it was a moving simulation of a landscape, with a title: “EOS FIVE”. Their new home… It looked similar to Earth, though the colours were different. Eos was a dwarf star and its light was redder, giving the scene an orange cast. The grass was slightly blue, genetically altered to cope better with the alien light and soil. It stretched across the world under orange-blue skies and soft clouds.

“It’s beautiful,” she said.

“Yes… But it does not look like that, hey?”

“I know,” said Beth. “They’re still cooking it. I saw the stream about the terraforming machines.” Right now, she knew, the colony point at Eos Five was covered in hundreds 21of machines, robots and terraformers; planting the seeds, carving rivers, encouraging soil microbes, preparing the land. It would be years – decades, centuries, perhaps – before the whole planet was transformed.

“It’s all really rough and wild out there just now,” she said.

“Yes,” he said, nodding seriously. “But we are rugged and adventurous.” After a moment Beth realised he was joking and sniggered.

“That’s me, for sure,” she agreed.

“I am studying Advanced and Xeno Languages,” he said. “This colony, it is all English speakers, but if we meet an alien I will be ready. I know the Videshi for I surrender – please do not kill me.” Again, his face was absolutely serious, and then he gave a very tiny smile.

Beth laughed. “Always a handy skill,” she said. “Better than me. I’m doing Command Training.” She always felt slightly embarrassed to say it out loud. “It’s what they give you if you don’t have any actual skills, I think. I don’t know if I’m really the leader type.”

“I should salute, yes?”

“Oh, for sure,” she said. “I wish—Hey, is that Lauryn?”

Mikkel turned. At the other end of the cafeteria a row was breaking out. A large boy was laughing and holding a pad up in the air, and Lauryn was jumping up for it. 22

“C’mon, tiny!” he yelled, “You can make it! C’mon!” Lauryn nearly reached it, but the boy pushed her and she fell over.

“I think it is—” started Mikkel, but he was already alone.

Lauryn had picked herself up. She was blinking, as if trying not to cry.

“Please give it back,” she said in a small voice.

The boy held it out, but he was still grinning.

“Listen up, tiny,” he said. “You keep your nerdy little toys away from us. Go back to your own end with the preschoolers, OK? Or next time—”

“Or next time what?” snapped Beth. She shot in between Lauryn and the boy and squared up to him. “You give it back to her now.” Her blood pumped in her ears and she felt the hot, slightly dizzy sensation of knowing she was about to do something reckless.

The boy looked surprised. “What?”

“NOW!” Beth shouted. People turned and stared, and the boy looked uncertain, but he didn’t back down. Beth, meanwhile, was realising that he was a good head taller than her and looked like he could fight. But her anger kept her going.

The boy’s eyes flicked to someone behind Beth, as if for help. Beth whirled round. Sitting across from 23them, leaning back on a chair, sat another boy – about her age, maybe older, with light brown skin and black, short-cropped hair. He wore a military-style jumpsuit that should have looked dorky but on him seemed right. He gazed at them and smiled, as if he found the scene amusing.

He stood up and walked across. “Why are you screaming?” he asked Beth. He kept his voice low and calm, but looked at her as if she was an unruly servant.

But Beth wasn’t about to be intimidated. “This lummock yours?” she demanded. “You like watching him bully people? You proud of that?”

The boy grinned. His teeth were straight and very white. “Arnold,” he said, without looking away from Beth, “give the little girl back her toy.”

The other boy – Arnold – threw the pad on to the ground near Lauryn, and Beth heard it scrape as it landed. Lauryn pounced on it and then shouted, “I’m not a little girl!”

The boy smiled again. “You’re a girl, and you are certainly little. Arnold has explained that you shouldn’t be bothering your elders and betters.”

His voice stayed calm, quiet. It was hypnotic. Beth felt herself deflating.

“And who are you to be so bloody mighty?” she 24managed. “You think you’re so special?”

He laughed, and so did some of the others around her. But before he could answer, the face of Ship appeared between them.

“Excuse me,” it said. “This activity is disturbing the other children. Also, property damage has occurred. Is everything all right?”

“Absolutely,” said the boy smoothly. “We were just advising some of the less mature children on proper behaviour around others.”

“That’s a lie!” snapped Beth.

Ship paused for a second and then said, “Your account is inconsistent with the actions recorded in this area, Vihaan. Please clarify.”

“My apologies,” said Vihaan, still smiling. “I’m sure everything is fine now.”

Beth hissed, but Lauryn was pulling her away. She heard Ship say, “Your father has asked me to discuss all such interactions with him, Vihaan. Is there anything you wish me to add?” and to her satisfaction she saw a scowl cloud the boy’s face.

Then they were away, Lauryn on one side and Mikkel on the other. Lauryn stared up at Beth in wonder.

“You. Were. Awesome.” she said.

“Not leadership material, hey?” asked Mikkel.25

“Um.” Now it was over, Beth felt only embarrassment. And she noticed the scrape on Lauryn’s pad. If I hadn’t done that, she’d probably have got it back in one piece, she thought. Why did I go rushing in like that?

“Do you know who that was? Do you know? Do you?” Lauryn was almost dancing along beside her.

“What? Er, no. Should I?”

Even Mikkel laughed. “That was Vihaan Joshi,” he said. “Son of Amarjeet Joshi, yes?”

Beth stopped. “What, really?”

Amarjeet Joshi. Captain Amarjeet Joshi, commander of the Orion and everyone on it.

“Oh no.” She clapped a hand over her face. “Mum’s going to kill me.”

26

4

Sleeping

A week later, the Orion had her official launch party.

By now she was travelling at over a hundred thousand kilometres an hour and they were far from Earth, well beyond the Moon, and a sizeable fraction of the distance to Mars. The ship had settled in now, with last-minute repairs and reorganisations complete, and they were nearing their first Jump point. The essential part of their journey was about to start, and so Captain Joshi had arranged the launch party to celebrate.

He stood at the front in his white formal dress uniform, next to a screen that showed a maintenance hatch on the outer hull. As the crowd watched, one of the Gizmos – the large maintenance robots aboard ship – left the ship, carrying a small bottle of champagne. It smashed the bottle against the side of the hull and the champagne vaporised into space, and the sky burst into glorious colour as hundreds of tiny firework microsatellites created 27a laser lightshow.

A man came out of the crowd and nodded to the captain. He too wore a white dress uniform, although Beth thought that he looked rather better in his than Captain Joshi. He was younger, and a little shorter; he had high cheekbones and deep brown, almost black, eyes, a very crisp black quiff of hair and a neat stubble beard. He was smiling at the light show.

“Who’s the man next to the captain?” Beth asked.

Beth’s mum looked up. “That would be Captain Kier,” she said. “He’s captain of the Sparrowhawk, our scout ship. He’ll be joining us for the whole trip.” She glanced across at Beth. “Handsome, isn’t he?” she asked, sounding amused.

“Mu-um,” muttered Beth. She felt her face go a little red and ducked her head, and it took her a few moments to realise there was someone standing next to her chair.

“Good evening, Lieutenant McKay,” said Captain Joshi.

Beth looked up.

Captain Joshi was very tall, and his gleaming bald head made him seem taller. He had a long, slightly curved nose, dark eyes and thick eyebrows. He was smiling politely, but his manner suggested he would rather be under enemy fire than at a party. Next to him stood Captain Kier, with 28one hand tucked in a pocket and a glass of champagne in the other.

“Good evening, captains,” said Beth’s mum. “May I introduce my husband, Douglas? And this is my daughter, Beth.”

The captains and Beth’s dad nodded to each other. Captain Joshi started asking questions about the farm, and Kier turned to Beth.

“Hey,” he said. “I’m Henry.”

“Hi,” she said.

He was handsome, she thought, and seemed far too young to be a captain, but he carried himself with a smiling confidence, somehow relaxed and ready for action at the same time. Unlike most adults, whose gaze tended to drift over the children in search of someone more interesting to talk to, he looked directly at her – as if he was genuinely interested in what she thought.

It was such a surprise she realised that she couldn’t, in fact, think of anything. She coughed. “So, ah… You’re a captain then?” she managed. A tiny voice inside her wailed in embarrassment. Stupid, stupid question. But he didn’t seem to mind.

“No, I’m just a glorified pilot,” he said, and shrugged. “The Sparrowhawk is a one-person scout ship – she’s tiny, really. But they gave me this suit for free, so I thought I’d 29try it out.” He held his arms out and posed. “What do you think?”

She grinned. “Pretty sharp.”

“Why, thank you.” He grinned back. His accent was Californian, and he spoke with a humorous and self-deprecating twang.

“It sounds dangerous,” said Beth. “Mum was a scout once, for the army. Some of her stories are a bit scary.”

But Kier shook his head. “It’s usually very boring. Most missions, the hardest thing I have to do is stay awake! Don’t believe her – you can’t trust anything grown-ups tell you, you know.”

She smiled. “Even you?”

Kier laughed. “Oh, especially me!”

Captain Joshi turned. “Ah, Beth,” he said. “Good evening. I’ve been hearing about you already. I understand you’ve already met my son?”

Beth’s mouth went dry. Kier lifted an eyebrow. “Um…”

The captain leaned slightly towards her and held a hand up. “Ship showed me the footage of the incident,” he said. “It takes courage to put yourself between your friends and danger. But – your mother would tell you that courage is useless without discipline, hmm?” He stood up straight. “I understand you’ll be taking the Command classes,” he said. “I’m sure my son will be delighted to see 30you there.” He smiled at them in a distracted way, as if checking it off a to-do list, nodded to them all and turned to another table. As they left, Captain Kier gave Beth a wink.

Beth stared at her plate for a moment, red-faced. When she looked up, Mum was looking at her with a strange, appraising expression. Was she smiling?

“Well,” said Beth’s dad. “First week and already the captain knows your name. You’re clearly on the fast track to success – cheers!” He raised his glass and grinned, and Beth laughed despite herself.

With the Orion officially launched, they were ready for their first big step across space. The week of acceleration had lifted her up to enormous speed; at her current velocity the Orion could go all the way round the Earth in only twenty minutes. But Eos, the tiny star they were heading towards, was twenty-six light years away – hundreds of millions, billions of kilometres. It would take almost three hundred thousand years to reach it, travelling normally.

That was why they Jumped.

“It’s like this,” her mum had explained, many months before, when they were still back on Earth. They’d been eating dinner, and she pinched two points in the tablecloth in front of them.31

“How far apart are these points?”

Beth had shrugged. “Half a metre?”

“Sure. Now, imagine we could do … this.” She lifted the cloth up and pulled the points together so that they touched.

“Now how far?”

“But…” Beth had frowned. “But we can’t just do that with space, can we? I mean, what about everyone else … living there?”

“That’s the freaky thing,” said Mum. “It’s already like that. We think space is like a big room where you go forward, backward, up, down, left, right; but it’s more like … like a ball of string. It seems solid, but it’s actually one long strand wrapped over and over, bumping up against itself. When we Jump, we skip across the bumps.”

Beth looked at the tablecloth. “Really?”

Her mum laughed. “Well … honestly, no, it’s a lot more complicated than that. How about this – the universe is really weird, and sometimes we can do really weird stuff and pretend it makes sense. Someone understands it, but it sure ain’t me, kiddo.”

“Oh. So why do we have to Sleep?”

“Well … turns out it’s a bit too weird. The Jump does something to our consciousness. Scrambles it. Anything more complicated than a lugworm comes out comatose 32and never wakes up. It happens to computers as well – circuits fry, CPUs crash. There’s just no way to go through the Jump with your mind intact.

“So…” She shrugged. “We cheat. We make a copy of our consciousness – everything we know, everything that makes us who we are. The ship copies its memories too. Then we go to Sleep, the ship sets course for a Jump, hibernates … and wakes up a second later. It boots up, downloads its backup, then it downloads our backups, then we Wake – and we’ve travelled about two hundred billion klicks.”

“Seriously?”

Mum nodded. “Seriously. I mean, it’s a bit more complex than that. Getting the ship to wake up again was a tricky problem.”

“But … does the ship know all your thoughts, then?”

“No – but good thinking! No. People thought it could, but mind-state is just too complex. The ship can’t read your state, or change it. It can only store it and transfer it back. It’s weird, but it works, and we’ve never had a failed Jump.”

They’d gone on to talk about Eos Five, their new home, and what would have to be left behind, and the habitat they would live in, and Beth never gave the Jump another thought.33

Now it was time. The children would Sleep first, then non-essential crew, then the rest. They would Jump, and then they would be Woken in reverse order – essential crew, non-essential, and finally the children.

So Beth and the others now stood in a cargo container filled with sleep pods, ready to climb in. Each child had an adult with them; Beth was with her mum. Beth thought the other children looked a little nervous, except for Lauryn, who had to be physically restrained from tapping at her pod’s control panel.

Ship’s hologram floated at the front of the room, and on its signal they climbed up and into their pods. They were comfortable; each one had a foam mattress and a pillow.

Beth’s mum looked in over the top. “OK?”

“Sure.”

Ship said, “The Jump will take less than zero point zero five seconds to complete; however, your Wake-up will be delayed while the crew ensure everything is safe. When you Wake you may experience some disorientation; this is normal and will pass.

“When you are ready, please let your carer know.”

Beth looked up at her mum and gave the thumbs-up. A few seconds later, the sides of the pod slid up, then across, then completely over her…34

…and Beth McKay was gone.

It was pitch black. All the lights were out. There had never been light. There was no memory of light. There was nothing.

Then … something. A thought? An idea that there had been something before; an awareness of something now. A feeling. Thump … thump … thump…

It was something familiar, it was something, it was … a heartbeat.

The thing in the darkness listened to the sound of this heartbeat for a long time. Then it thought: I am alive. The black was now a red glow, although there was still nothing to see. And there was a thin soft sound that went in … out … in…

Breathing. I am alive. There is somebody I was.

“Beth?”

That was new. A sound, but from outside, not part of her.

A word floated up from within: Mum.

And suddenly Beth McKay remembered who she was, and where and why and when and what she was doing. She was lying in this sleep pod and they’d put her into Sleep, but now she was waking up and Mum was waiting for her, the red glow was light filtering through her closed 35eyelids. She was awake.

She opened her eyes. It stayed dark.

She opened her eyes again, but nothing happened. She had sleep dust gumming them shut, she thought. She tried to lift her hand to rub it away, but couldn’t move.

She couldn’t move.

She tried again, and again. Nothing happened. She started to panic. She felt/heard her heartbeat speeding up, thump-thump, thump-thump, thump-thump, and her breathing increase, but nothing else.

“I’m trapped!” she shouted, but made no sound. “I can’t move! Help! Mum! Help me!”

Thump-thump-thump-thump-thump—

“Beth? Beth, if you can hear me, relax.” Mum’s voice poured down on to her like cool water, soft and gentle. “You might be finding it hard to move. That’s OK, it’s OK. Relax. Listen to my voice.