Apollo's Outcasts Page 5

  "What?" Logan stared at her. "Who are you, anyway?"

  Hannah didn't reply, but instead turned her face away from us. When I looked up front, I saw Nina staring at her. Once again, I had a sense that she was smarter than a little girl her age should be, and that she knew something about Hannah Johnson that the rest of us didn't.

  I was about to say something--not that anyone would've heard me anyway--when the cocoon began to tighten around me. I gasped as its cells began to fill with gel. It felt as if I was being squeezed by dozens of small, cold pillows, soft yet unyielding, that locked my arms and legs in place. I could still breathe, but I couldn't move.

  An instant later, a sudden thump ran through the LTV, followed by a prolonged vibration. "They're moving the shuttle onto the track," Gordie called back to us. "Even if the feds know you're here, they can't do anything about it. Not without scrubbing the launch, at least, and that would take a..."

  Another abrupt jar. The vibration became more pronounced. "Aw, crap!" Gordie yelled. "We're going now!" He reached forward to his console. "Jamey! Count backward from a hundred!"

  Something that smelled like peppermint entered my mask. "One hundred," I said.

  The vibration became a sense of fast forward motion. Melissa yelled something obscene.

  "Ninety-nine," I said. For some reason, now seemed like a good time to take a nap. Eddie was crying again, but I could barely hear him. I was falling into the cocoon, my body becoming heavier and heavier. "Ninety-eight..."

  And that was it. I was unconscious by the time the shuttle reached the end of the launch rail.

  It didn't feel as if I'd fallen asleep. I didn't dream, nor was there any real sense of the passage of time. My eyes closed for what seemed like only a moment or two, and when they opened again, it was to see Gordie bending over me.

  "Jamey? Are you okay?"

  "Umm...yeah, I guess." My mouth was parched and my ribs were sore, but otherwise I felt fine. "Did we take off?"

  Beside me, Melissa made one of her boy, are you an idiot sighs. Gordie paid no attention to her as he reached down to remove the mask from my face. "Yeah, we got away," he said as he returned the mask to the compartment above my head. "Let's see if you can raise your hands. Can you do that for me?"

  The cells that had cushioned my body were empty again, but there was still just enough pressure in them to hold down my arms. I lifted first my right hand, then my left; it took no effort at all to do so. "Good, good," Gordie said, smiling as he watched this. "Now let's see if you can stand up."

  "But I don't have my..." I began, and then I noticed something that made me forget what I was about to say.

  Logan was behind the pilot...but he was upside-down, his feet planted against the LTV's low ceiling. His hair was fluffed out in all directions, and there was a puffiness to his face that made him look as if he was sick.

  I looked over at Melissa. She was still strapped into her seat, but her hair had also formed a halo around her head that no amount of mousse could have controlled. Her face was ashen and she clenched a plastic vomit bag between both hands. It wasn't hard to tell that she'd upchucked at least once already and was fighting hard to keep from doing so again.

  Hannah had unbuckled her harness and had turned around to look back at me. Her baseball cap was holding her hair in place, and she gripped the back of Eddie's seat to keep from joining Logan on the ceiling. A small silver medallion on a matching chain floated a few inches from her neck. It looked like some sort of religious symbol, but that wasn't what attracted my attention to it. The way it lazily dangled in midair was what made me truly realize where we were.

  We were in zero-g...microgravity, if you want to use the technical term, or free-fall, if you don't. I turned my eyes toward the porthole beside me, and saw something I never thought I'd ever see with my own eyes: a vast plain of tan and dark green, curved at its farthest edges of its horizon, a blue expanse just beneath it. An early morning sun cast shadows from filmy white clouds, highlighting hills, rivers, a silver-white sprawl that looked like it might be a coastal city.

  I suddenly realized that I was looking down upon Texas and the Gulf of Mexico from a low-orbit altitude of about sixty or seventy miles. It was the most incredible--the most drop-dead beautiful--thing I'd ever seen in all my life.

  "Yep. We're in space." Logan must have figured out what I was thinking, because he grinned at me. "C'mon, man...let's see if you can stand up."

  "No, I don't...I mean, I can't..." I told myself that all I really wanted to do was stare out the window, but there was more to it than that. What he was asking me to do had always seemed impossible. Standing upright without the aid of a pair of crutches, a simple act that everyone else took for granted, had been beyond my ability for as long as I could remember. Everyone was watching me, and I didn't want to make a fool out of myself.

  "Go ahead, Jamey," Gordie said. "I'd like to see you do that, too." He opened the lower part of the cocoon and began to unfasten my harness. Once the straps were floating free, he gently took hold of my wrists. "All right, on the count of three. One...two..."

  "Don't rush me," I said. Gordie let go, but it was clear that neither he nor Logan were going to take no for an answer. They were using the Velcro soles of their sock-like stickshoes to attach themselves to the fabric strips on the deck and ceiling. Gordie stepped back as I carefully planted my shoes against the floor. I took a deep breath, then carefully pushed myself out of the cocoon.

  No crutches. No braces. No helpful hands to steady me. For the first time in my life, I stood on my own two feet.

  "Jamey, be careful." From behind me, Melissa's voice was a low whisper. I felt her hand brush against my back, as if she was reaching up to keep me from falling over. It wasn't often that she showed any sign of actually caring for me; every so often, I suspected that my sister might really be human, not an alien imposter. That alone made me want to take the next step...literally.

  Holding my breath, I detached my right foot from the carpet, moved it forward a few inches, put it down again. Then I did the same with my left foot. And then again with my right foot. I was walking. Never mind the fact that I was in space; what was more incredible was the fact I'd just taken my first steps on my own, without having to rely on anything.

  "Attaboy." Gordie unstuck his shoes from the floor and floated beside Logan, who'd turned himself right-side-up and had backed away to give me room. "You're doing great, just great."

  "Yeah...I guess I am." I was tempted to yank my shoes off the floor and do a somersault, but Melissa was right; I needed to take it easy. Yet when I happened to glance at Hannah, I saw admiration in her eyes. No girl had ever looked at me that way before. Despite the fact that she was responsible for Jan having to remain behind, it made me feel like I was ten feet tall.

  "Okay, then." Gordie let out his breath, looked back at Eddie and Nina. "And how are you two doing?"

  Now that I was standing erect, I could see the Hernandez kids. Nina was just as pale as Melissa; she'd probably become sick, too, but she managed a solemn nod. On the other hand, her brother was as happy as a kid in a playground. "This is fun!" he yelped. "Can I fly, too?"

  "No, no. Just stay where you are for now." Gordie motioned for him to remain seated. Eduardo looked disappointed, but he nodded. "All right, " the pilot went on, "now that Jamey's up and around, I'll let y'all know what's going on." Holding onto a handrail running along the ceiling, Gordie turned to face me again. "Since you missed it, I'll give you the details. We left Earth about an hour or so ago. I deliberately kept you under, though, until the Spirit reached orbit and jettisoned the LTV."

  "Just as well that you slept through it." Logan remained where he was, back against the fuselage and feet dangling in the air. "We hit Mach 7 before we left the atmosphere. It was a rough ride for a few seconds."

  "Sorry 'bout that." Gordie gave him an apologetic smile. "Should've warned you, I guess, but I didn't have time. We had to launch before the feds stopped us...and bel
ieve me, they tried. The acceleration might've squashed you a bit, but at least we were able to outrun the jets they sent after us."

  "Jets?" Hannah's eyes went wide. "You mean...?"

  "Two Navy F-30s. I caught a glimpse of them on the video feed from the Spirit's external camera. They couldn't have caught up with the shuttle, but they might've been able to splash us if they'd gotten close enough to lock on with air-to-air missiles. But the shuttle was travelling too fast, so..."

  "Why were they trying to shoot us down?" I asked.

  Gordie chose to ignore that question. "Point is, we made a clean getaway. And don't worry about the Spirit. Just before he jettisoned us, I heard the commander talking to Flight Control back in Wallops, telling him that they were having mechanical problems and that he was going to make an emergency landing at the ISC launch center in Spain. My guess is that he and the pilot will request political asylum as soon as they're on the ground so that they won't have to face the music back home."

  I winced when I heard this. The shuttle crew had sacrificed their citizenship for our freedom; it would be awhile before they'd go home again, if ever. And they were lucky; no telling what might happen to the people on Wallops Island who'd aided and abetted in our escape. They would be detained and questioned, no doubt about it. Some of them might even land in prison. All just to make sure that six kids made their way to safety.

  "What about you?" I asked.

  Gordie shrugged. "I make the trip to Apollo about once a month. I've got plenty of friends there, so it's practically my second home."

  "What else have you heard from Wallops?" Logan asked. "Did our parents get away?"

  "I don't know. We're radio silent till we reach the Moon. No communications with anyone for the duration." Logan was about to say something, but the pilot shook his head. "Sorry, but that's all I can tell you."

  Gordie pushed himself away from the ceiling so that his shoes attached themselves to the floor again. "Anyway, once we complete this orbit, we'll be in the proper position to fire the main engine and head for the Moon. It'll take about two and a half days to get there. A ferry will rendezvous with us in lunar orbit and carry us the rest of the way."

  As he spoke, I gazed out the window again. We were directly above the Gulf now, the Texas panhandle visible to the north-northeast. It would be early morning down there, with only a few clouds in the sky.

  "Until then," Gordie was saying, "make yourselves at home." He pointed to a hatch in the aft bulkhead behind Melissa and me. "There's a galley back there with plenty of food and water, and also the head."

  "There's a head back there?" Eddie's voice rose in terror.

  "No, no, no!" Too late, Gordie remembered that he was speaking to someone who might take him literally. "That's just what we call a bathroom. It's not a...y'know, a real head." Melissa snickered, and both Logan and I gave her a dirty look. "The seats can be folded down against the deck...sorry, Jamey, but your cocoon stays where it is...and I have hammocks that can be strung up for us to sleep in. In the meantime...well, I've got a couple of pads if you didn't bring your own. And if you get tired of reading or playing games, you can always look out the window."

  I already was. While the others were talking, I caught sight of something that didn't look right: a small, bright point of light, rapidly rising from the curve horizon below us. At first I thought it might be a meteorite burning up in the atmosphere, except that it was headed in the wrong direction, toward space instead of away from it. Almost as if it was...

  No, I thought. That can't be a missile.

  "I need to go forward again, start laying in the coordinates for the next burn." Gordie glanced at Eddie. "A burn is when I fire the main engine," he quickly added, and Eddie nodded. "Unless there's any more questions..."

  "Gordie?" I didn't look away from the window. "You might want to see this."

  Gordie glanced my way, almost as if irritated that I'd interrupted him. Then he pulled himself over to the window next to mine. For a second or two he said nothing as he peered out. Then his mouth fell open in astonishment and he threw himself back from the window.

  "Get in your seats and strap down!" he snapped. "Do it now!"

  "Why?" Melissa stared at him. "What's...?"

  "Just do it!" Grabbing at the ceiling, Gordie launched himself toward the cockpit. "Coming through!" he yelled, pushing Nina and Eddie out of the way. "Make a hole!"

  "It's a missile," I said. Gordie's reaction had confirmed my suspicions. "Someone down there has launched a rocket at us."

  "Are you sure?" Logan gaped at me, then hauled himself over to the window Gordie had just vacated.

  I glanced out my window again. Although the rising star was still far away, it was getting brighter, and its upward direction suggested that it was on a trajectory that would intercept us in less than a minute.

  "Yes, I'm sure!" Gordie hastily turned himself so that he fell into the cockpit feet first; within seconds he was in the pilot's seat, snatching at the seat and shoulder straps and buckling them together. "That's an anti-satellite weapon. Probably air-launched by another F-30 sent up from Texas. They haven't given up on us yet. Now get in your damn seats!"

  We scrambled to obey him, but none of us were prepared for this, so all we managed to do was get tangled in each other's arms and legs. I was trying to get MeeMee's feet out of my face when there was a hollow roar from the stern, and in the next instant an invisible hand shoved all of us toward the compartment's rear end. Gordie had fired the main engine; a second later, the entire LTV seemed to roll sideways, and I realized that he was firing the maneuvering thrusters as well.

  He was trying to dodge the ASW. No time to get back in the cocoon; I grabbed the ceiling rung with both hands and hoped that our pilot knew what he was doing.

  "C'mon, baby, c'mon." Logan floated above the seat row in front of me, clutching at the top of one of them as he stared out the nearest porthole. "Climb, climb, climb..."

  "What's going on?" Melissa was trying to get into the seat beside my cocoon, but its straps were hopelessly snarled, and every effort she made to untangle them only made it worse. "Are we going to die? We're going to die, aren't we...?"

  "Shut up!" Gordie yelled. "Nobody's dying! Not if I can help it!"

  His bravado might have been assuring, but it came too late. Eddie's earlier giddiness was forgotten as he let out a terrified scream. "I don't want to die! I don't want to die! I just wanna go home...!"

  "It's all right. It's okay." Nina pushed her brother into one of the forward seats, then wrapped her small arms around him and held him tight. "We're going to be fine," she said quietly, and in that moment she seemed more like a mother than a little sister. "Hush, now. We're going to be okay..."

  The only other person remaining calm--or at least not panicking, as MeeMee and Eddie were--was Hannah. She was crammed between a seatback and a bulkhead by Logan's legs, unable to strap herself down, but she didn't seem to care. Her eyes were shut, and she seemed to be saying something under her breath. Praying? Probably. Then her eyes opened, and she caught me looking at her. There was fear in her eyes, but something else as well: resignation to an inevitable fate.

  She looked at me, and her mouth opened and her lips formed one silent word: Sorry.

  I was still wondering why she'd say that--this wasn't her fault, was it?--when Logan yelled, "There it goes!"

  Twisting my neck, I ducked my head to peer through the window again, just in time to see a brilliant, utterly soundless flash of light. The anti-satellite weapon had just detonated. How far away, I didn't know; all I could tell was that it exploded somewhere below and off to the port side of the LTV.

  "It's a miss!" I shouted. "It didn't hit!"

  A loud, sharp bang! that sounded like someone firing a pistol, and I knew at once that I was wrong.

  A second later an alarm shrieked from the cockpit, followed by a loud curse from Gordie. "Blowout!" he shouted. "We've got a blowout!"

  He didn't have to explain what
he meant. The ASW had detonated close enough to throw debris our way, and the bang we'd heard was a fragment penetrating the LTV's outer hull and fuselage. The alarm was the decompression alert, signaling that the spacecraft was losing air.

  "Oh my God!" Melissa's scream was even louder than the alarm. "Oh...my...God!"

  "Shut up!" Logan shoved himself away from the porthole, began to look around. "Where's the hole? Where did it...?"

  "Look for it!" Gordie snapped. "It's gotta be around there somewhere." He switched off the alarm, but remained where he was in the cockpit. "You're going to have to find it and button it down! I've got my hands full!"

  It wasn't until then that I realized the LTV had begun to tumble like a washing machine drum. True to Newton's third law, the fragment's impact had caused an equal and opposite reaction; with the escaping air pressure acting as a jet, the spacecraft was now rolling sideways. If Gordie didn't get our craft under control and fast, the LTV's orbit would decay and we'd commence a long, fatal plunge into Earth's upper atmosphere.

  It was up to us to locate the source of the blowout. But even with the alarm shut off, it was almost impossible to tell where the hull had been breached. I couldn't hear a hissing sound, nor was there an obvious hole.

  Eddie was in hysterics, and MeeMee wasn't helping much either. So when Hannah spoke up, her calm voice was almost lost in the din. "I think I found what did it," she said, and I looked around to see her holding up a small, jagged piece of metal about half the size of my little finger.

  "Where did it come from?" I asked.

  "I don't know. It bounced off here--" she pointed to the bulkhead above her head, on the starboard side of the compartment "--right after we heard the bang."

  "That means it's gotta be around here somewhere..."

  "Whatever you're going to do, guys, you better do it fast." Gordie wasn't shouting anymore, but his voice was still tense. "At this rate, we're going to lose our air in five minutes."