Up and Coming: Stories by the 2016 Campbell-Eligible Authors

Unsealed

originally published in the 2015 Young Explorer’s Adventure Guide

"Today we say goodbye to Dr. Alice, Engineer Felicia and our own Cheese Craftsman Joseph. Please join me in this moment of silence as we wish them well on their journey into whatever the horizon holds for them beyond this life." The radio voice was replaced by a crackling silence.

Ida stopped turning the radio’s crank, resting her aching right arm. Did those people have children? Her eyes filled with tears. She reached for the chain around her neck and touched the memorial disks for her own parents.

Her mother’s disk was worn smooth with time. Ida had worn it for three years—since she was nine.

Father’s disk, only six weeks old, was still hard edged and crisp. Since he had spent less time outdoors, he had lasted longer.

Ida stared through her tears at the door to the bedroom where her five-year-old brother Maurice now slept. Maurice had cried himself to sleep every night for weeks after Father died, clutching the new disk made from Father’s ashes. Mother’s disk had always been there, a matching decoration to Ida’s, but Maurice had no memory of their mother.

Ida wiped her eyes on her sleeve and picked up the radio. It had been almost a week since the last time she had caught the signal.

"…happier news." The young woman’s voice returned against the whirring of the turning crank. "We have three open immigration slots for the West City Dome. Those able to pass full skin and lung exams will be given top priority."

Ida let go of the crank and silence fell over the apartment again. She tipped her head back to lean against the wall, staring up through the window at the stars over the city. They were twelve stories up. Her mother used to reminisce about wide open windows and fresh breezes. The big window had been sealed shut for as long as Ida could remember.

The apartment was stuffy. The air cycled only once an hour. They had barely anything left to barter for food. The water filter was so old she wasn’t sure it was actually safe to drink anything it claimed to purify. At least the apartment door still locked and the toilet flushed. And they still had the bed where Maurice now slept.

Ida set the radio aside. She stood up and turned to look out the big window, stretching her sore arms over her head. When Ida was little, the night sky had been full of brightly lit buildings. Tonight the lights were scattered, looking more like fallen stars decorating the lonely silhouette of urban skyline. She pressed her face against the glass and could just make out the brightly lit mouth of the subway entrance, twelve stories down and three blocks away.

She turned back to the room and picked up their tiny electric candle, then opened the door to what had been their parents' bedroom as quietly as she could. Maurice lay curled around his stuffed pig. Barely pink and barely furry, it was Maurice’s one precious comfort; his link to a time when Father took them to the roof to stare at the stars through the telescope. That was before Father got sick. Before his skin rashes kept him in bed. Before he could barely speak because of the cough.

Ida crawled into bed with her little brother and he snuggled close. They had no other family left. The few friends they had made in the building over the years had migrated, usually disappearing with no word as to their destination.

Tomorrow it was their turn.

The next morning, Ida and Maurice ate the last of the food and packed their one bag. Two ragged toothbrushes. What remained of their clothing. A dozen mini-drives she hoped they might find a way to read someday, containing photos and family documents. Father’s telescope. The radio and the electric candle.

Putting on their air-skins was always a struggle. They were a snug fit. The opaque surface of Ida’s was glossy and decorated with multi-colored swirls, like marbled paint. It covered her body, leaving only her face and hands bare until those were hidden by matching gloves and her air-mask. She pulled on a long navy skirt and black tunic before turning to help Maurice with his air-skin. His was covered in vertical blue stripes in shades from indigo to aquamarine.

"Ida, it’s too tight." Maurice tried to twist away from her as she pulled it onto his shoulders. "It hurts." He danced from foot to foot, his eyes welling up.

"I know." Ida ran her hands down the sides of the skin, smoothing it and trying to stretch it, "but we can’t go outside without it."

"Where are we even going?" Maurice whined, then added, "Pig wants to know."

"Tell Pig, we are going to the West Dome. They have space." Ida touched Maurice’s face, his skin soft and unscarred against her palm. "And you and I can pass any health check they want to put us through." Maurice didn’t look convinced, but he let her tuck his ash blond curls under the hood and fit his mask over his face. He helped her pull on his loose pale blue tunic and trousers. Father had always admired the sunny domes that sprang up on the outskirts of their city. The only way in was through the old subway system, taken over and maintained by the groups who colonized the train cars and inhabited the stations. The Dome immigration checkpoints were very strict; Father could never have passed the health checks.

Ida stood in the doorway, trying to memorize the stark space, until Maurice’s wiggly gloved fingers pulled her toward the stairwell.

Inside the underground station entry, Ida and Maurice waited for the air to finish cycling. The scrubbed air from the whirring fans pushed against Ida’s air-skin, giving her goose bumps. Maurice laughed, the sound muffled by his mask, as a gust almost pushed him off his feet. Abruptly the fans shut off, leaving an echoing silence. Maurice yanked Ida forward before the doors even began to move.

As they passed beyond the airlock door sensors, the glass panels slid shut behind them. With a whoosh and a pop, the seal re-established. Just inside the station, two guards stood still and aloof. One man and one woman—both tall, their hair short and clipped, their skin pale. The uniforms looked hot and itchy, grey jumpsuits the color of a thundercloud made of some rough looking fabric.

Ida walked slowly, her fierce grip on Maurice’s small hand forcing him to match her pace. She felt the eyes of the guards on them as they walked, two children in the station alone.

When they reached the entry-level atrium, Ida paused near a bench and pulled off her mask. She relished the cool slightly sweet air. It was a relief to breathe the well-filtered air in a wide open space.

Maurice tugged at his mask. It caught on the air-skin hood, made bumpy by his curly hair underneath. Before she could stop him, he pulled hard and the mask popped off—ripping a hole in the hood of the air-skin and breaking the mask’s buckle at the same time. Ida couldn’t hold back her gasp of dismay.

"Sorry, Ida." Maurice mumbled. He stood very still, holding his mask in one hand, Pig in the other. It had taken ten minutes that morning to convince Maurice that Pig didn’t need an air-skin of her own.

Ida swallowed a sigh of frustration. "Don’t worry about it, Maurice." She helped him pull the hood down, tousling his curls as they sprang free. "Where we’re going, we don’t need air-masks anymore."

"We don’t?"

"Nope. The air inside the dome is clean."

Maurice smiled, as Ida pushed back her own hood. She tucked their masks and gloves into the backpack. She unfastened her hair, letting the long dark curls hang free down her back. Rubbing her scalp with her fingers she watched Maurice, now scrambling up on a bench. Ida pulled her clothing straight. The blouse had been her mother’s. It was much too big, hanging loose on her small frame. She would probably never be as tall as Mother had been. Father had always told her she took after his mother, small-framed and under five feet in height.

“I’m taller than you.”

"Get down, Maurice."

"I’m hungry," he grumbled, as he scrambled off the bench.

Father had taken them here to see acrobats soar through the air and flip across the red-tiled floor. Today, the adults bustling through were not there for a performance, and the tall woman high up on the ladder they passed was not an acrobat. Dressed in station grey, her short-cropped hair was fiery red and she wore a tool belt slung across her hips.

Ida and Maurice hurried down the steps to the lower level, urged on by the shrieking brakes of an oncoming train. Finally on the platform, Ida felt the press of air ahead of the train against the backs of her legs, making the thin fabric of her long skirt shift back and forth like water against her air-skin. Maurice stopped, pulling on her arm and turning to put his face into the breeze.

Near a tall concrete column Ida and Maurice stepped out of the stream of people. The train was barreling into the station, painted with the bold red flowers and fresh vegetables of the Harvest Crew. Most importantly, this train was headed the right direction—end of the line, the West City Dome.

The car that stopped directly in front of her was well lit. Bright flowers filled all the windows on display. When the door opened, frosty cool air billowed out, blowing Ida’s hair away from her face and filling the air with the scents of lilacs and lilies. People jostled in and out of the cars. The train pulled forward every few minutes, the tunnel swallowing up the lead car at one end and revealing a new car at the rear.

Ida began to run to toward end of the platform.

"Are we getting flowers?" Maurice called from behind her, tugging back on her arm as his legs couldn’t keep pace.

"Flowers? No." Ida looked over her shoulder and slowed down a little. "We need the passenger car."

As they reached the mouth of the tunnel, a car emerged with no food or flowers. It had a few rows of seats, mostly full, and an official man seated behind a battered counter. Ida hurried Maurice through the door.

"Two tickets to West City Dome please." Ida felt a little dizzy and out of breath. She was hungry and exhausted, but they could rest once they had their tickets.

"What can you offer, young lady?" The man looked over the counter at Maurice. "We don’t give discounts for children."

Ida pulled off her pack and proudly dug out the hand-crank radio. "The batteries don’t hold a charge, but the radio works if you keep the crank turning."

"What do we need a radio for? No radio reception down here."

"Oh." Ida’s heart raced and her face flushed with embarrassment. She should have thought of that. The train lurched forward for a few moments before stopping again.

"Anything else?"

She pulled out Father’s telescope, watching Maurice’s eyes grow wide as she placed it on the counter.

"What is it?" The man picked it up and turned it over.

"It is a compact telescope, for looking at stars."

"Do you see any sky here, young lady?" The man set it on the counter and pushed it back towards Ida. “How about your air-skins?”

"Our air-skins?" Ida was tempted to just say yes, but until they made it through the West Dome immigration point she couldn’t risk it. “I’m sorry, we can’t.”

"Well, we generally look for seeds, or tools for working our greenhouses. Anything like that?"

Ida shook her head. "No, sir."

"Find something we want, and we’ll be happy to take you out to the dome. Good day to you." He turned toward the adults that had lined up behind her.

"Good day." Ida mumbled. She shoved everything back in their bag and led Maurice off the train just as it stopped shifting forward again. Ida set their pack down and sat on the hexagonal tiles a few feet from the platform’s edge, pulling Maurice into her lap. Ida rested her chin on Maurice’s head, his curls tickling her nose. She cried silently, breathing evenly to keep Maurice from noticing.

How was she going to get them to West City Dome before the two spots they needed were already claimed?

She watched children race along the platform before they jumped back onto the train. They seemed happy and had the energy to run. Their clothing was mismatched but seemed tidy. There were enough children on that train that she and Maurice might blend in.

Ida got them up and walked Maurice back down to the end of the platform. She spotted a likely car, one with dark windows, maybe meant for storage? The car in front of it was bright and busy. Yanking Maurice in behind her, shivering a bit at the cold air within the refrigerated car, Ida walked confidently towards the door at the far end. They walked between overflowing displays of fresh corn. Just being near them made Ida feel even hungrier. The handle at the far end was covered in a thin film of frost. Her fingers chilled as she grabbed it and tried to pull it sideways.

It didn’t budge. She tried again, pushing down with all her weight. Still it didn’t move. Suddenly, one of the Harvest Crew was shouting. Ida had just enough time to get them back off the train before the crewman reached them. He leaned out of the car, eyes on them until just before his car was swallowed up by the tunnel.

Only a few moments later, the Dairy train pulled onto the other side of the platform, covered with portraits of cows large and small. Ida was so hungry she could barely think. She put her arm around Maurice.

"What color cheese do you want?"

"Cheese?" Maurice’s blue eyes lit up, "Orange!" he replied without hesitation. His answer never changed, but Ida always asked. "Do we have enough?"

"I’m not sure." Ida replied honestly. "I have some clothes that should get us something. You pick the car!"

This time, Maurice pulled Ida down the platform, evaluating the cars and finding each lacking. Finally, he stopped solemnly in front of a dim car whose overhead lights cast only a hint of warm glow on the space within.

Inside, the pungent smell of cheese enveloped them. A wide cold case featured blocks in every shade of beige, yellow and orange.

"Which one do you want?"

"That one!" Maurice pointed through the glass at the biggest orange-colored cheese. The man accepted one of Ida’s last shirts in exchange for a nice large chunk.

They sat with their cheese on a concrete bench. Ida broke it into small chunks on the unfolded waxed-paper. Then she scooped about a third of the chunks into her hand and left the rest for Maurice.

"Eat them slow," Ida whispered before she slipped the first chunk into her mouth. She hummed in pleasure. The flavor was so strong and bright. She hadn’t had any food since they ate the last of their rice that morning.

The crowds on the platform were thinning out for the day. They wouldn’t let them spend the night on this bench.

“Maurice, turn around.” Maurice turned without protest, still focused on licking his fingers. Ida pulled at his air-skin hood. The tear was definitely going to let in enough air to burn his exposed scalp, but she had no way to fix it. Maybe his hair would cover it enough that the West Dome exam wouldn’t catch it? “Let’s go back to the apartment Maurice. We’ll find a train tomorrow.” They could only trade away clothing for food for so long, but for now she saw no other options.

“What about my hood?” He trusted her.

“It’ll be fine,” she lied, “It’s a short walk. I’ll cover it with my hand. You’ll have to hold the mask on, okay?” He nodded, standing up and holding out his hands for his gloves.

As they reached the station-master’s kiosk on the same level as the air lock, a loud shrill blaring broke the general quiet of the station. Three sharp alarm blasts were followed by a short silence, then three more sharp blasts. A set of flashing amber lights came on all along the ceiling.

"What’s it mean, Ida?" Maurice shouted, his hands covering his ears.

"Air seal leak." Ida shouted back. Ida pulled out her brother’s mask. “Hold this on.” Ida wrenched her own mask in place and was wrestling to get her hair tucked back into her hood as a group of station guards convened at the kiosk.

"So fix the seal!" The station-master growled over his shoulder, stomping out of the kiosk door a few feet from them. He was a heavyset man, his hair white and his skin dark brown. Ida had never seen him leave the kiosk.

"If I could get in there I would," replied the same red-haired tall woman Ida had seen up the ladder in the atrium, stepping out right behind him. "The alarms show a leak inside a duct. None of us will fit. Even then, we probably can’t suit up fast enough and get in there before the air balance tips. The front entry air-chamber already can’t be used until we fix it."

“So, evacuation isn’t an option? Give me some other choice. What about your robot? I thought this was what it was for!”

“In the tunnels. Under the tracks. Not for up ladders and down ducts."

The station-master threw up his hands and turned to stalk back past Ida and Maurice.

Before she lost her nerve, Ida stepped in his path. “I’m small.”

He looked down at Ida, then back at the engineer. "What about this kid? Would she fit?"

“Sure,” the engineer admitted, “She would fit, but then what?”

"I’m sure I could do it." Ida volunteered. “And I have my full air-skin on already.”

The engineer stepped around the station-master to look Ida up and down.

"You can tell her over the radio what to do." The station-master decided. "Let’s get her in there. We can’t wait any longer or we’re going to have to beg trains to come in for a full evac. It’ll take all night to clean the air. No train is going to want to stop here while our alarms are coded like this." He stalked away to talk to the group of security guards, calling back over his shoulder. "Just fix it. I’ll send someone back with the smallest mask with a radio we can find.” He turned away from them yelling, “Someone turn off the siren." A few moments later, the alarm fell silent, but the amber lights still flashed.

“What about my brother?” Ida gestured to Maurice huddled by the base of the kiosk and holding his mask in place. His hood still flopped on his back, his ash blond curls wild on his head. Ida stepped closer to the woman, speaking under her breath so Maurice wouldn’t hear and get even more scared. “His hood has a tear.”

“Then I guess we better work fast. As long as the warning lights don’t shift to red, he’ll be fine.” Up close, the engineer was even taller than Ida had realized. "I’m Rayna." She offered Ida her hand. "What’s your name?"

"Ida." She shook Rayna’s hand.

Rayna spotted her necklace, pulling her own out of the neck of her uniform. Hers also had two disks.

“You two on your own?" she jingled her necklace and gestured with her chin at Ida’s.

“Yes. Mom three years ago. Dad last month.” Ida looked back at Maurice who started at her with his big blue eyes wide with fear. “We’re alone.”

When Ida looked back at her, Rayna was watching Maurice. “Not now you aren’t.” She shook her head and turned back to Ida. “We need you. I am going to give you the world’s fastest lesson on how to use this air-seal tool." She pulled a strange cylinder from her equipment belt. It looked like a cross between a flashlight and a small hand-drill. "Then you need to go up the ladder and into that duct."

Ida stared up at where Rayna was pointing. Could she back out of this? Maurice would be alone. What if she couldn’t do it? What if she fell?

“The biggest challenge to fixing a breach like this,” Rayna’s voice pulled her attention back, “is the flexibility of the material. You need to fuse the edges of the tear or patch it if the tear is too big. Everything must be tight, no gaps.”

Ida nodded.

“The tool works through a combination of heat and chemical reaction. You have to keep it away from your own air-skin or it will make a new hole where you don’t want one.” Rayna looked back at Maurice. “Get his hood up. It will still help some. One of the staff can keep an eye on him.”

Ida helped Maurice with his hood and told him she would be back soon. A woman sat with Maurice, whispering something that made him smile, still clutching his mask to his face as he held Pig close.

Ida practiced on some air-skin scraps, Rayna hovering over her shoulder giving tips. It was harder than it looked. The sealer felt strange and awkward in her hand, but by the time the radio-mask appeared, Ida felt like she was getting the hang of it.

Rayna had Ida take off her loose clothing, leaving her standing exposed in just the tight protective skin. Rayna dumped everything out of her equipment belt and onto the floor with a huge clatter. She wrapped the belt around Ida’s slim hips, showing her how to stash the tool and the patches.

Ida swapped her mask for the new one. The air in this mask was crisper than in her mask. Maybe drier? She let her thoughts on the texture of the air distract her as they moved to the bottom of the ladder. Rayna held it steady as Ida climbed. Ida heard a train rush through the station without stopping, felt the metal vibrate as it passed somewhere far below.

Ida didn’t look down, just up at the next step on the ladder. The new mask had a headlamp that lit her way as she clambered over the ledge and crawled into the narrow dark channel. It quickly got too small to crawl, forcing her lie flat and pull herself forward with her elbows. Around the first tight turn, the equipment belt got hooked on something. She had to shimmy backwards and roll over to get herself free, before rolling back onto her belly to continue inching forward.

She almost fell over the edge at the far end of the shaft, surprised by the empty space suddenly gaping ahead. Her gasp had Rayna calling through the radio.

“Ida?”

"I found the end of the duct."

"There will be a ladder leading down from that end too."

"I’ve got it." Ida found the first rung with her right hand. "Wait. How am I going to turn around?" There was a long pause. Ida stared at the ladder leading down into murky shadows. The headlamp made little impact on the inky blackness. No way she was going down head first. “Should I come back and go in feet first?”

"No.” Rayna finally replied. “No. I have an idea. Can you lie on your back and reach up? There should be a ladder leading up, too. You can grab a rung above and pull yourself up enough to get your feet on the ladder going down."

Ida turned over and looked up. The bottom step of another ladder glinted in the beam of her headlamp, leading upwards into more darkness.

“Yes. I see it. Let me try.” She rested her head against the bottom of the tunnel and reached. It was too far away. Ida carefully shifted further forward until her head was no longer supported. She reached up and her hand came close, but not close enough to wrap her fingers around the rung. “I still can’t reach. How did anyone ever do this?”

“They didn’t,” Rayna replied. “Before the underground was sealed, there were easier ways to get to that section from the outside. They were never meant to be accessed from inside the station.”

“Couldn’t I go through the old doors from outside? I have my air-skin.” Ida tipped her head back, letting her headlamp rove the far reaches of the cavernous space. She would have had better luck with her father’s telescope.

“No.” Rayna sighed. “Great idea, only that would contaminate the whole station.”

“Oh.”

“Can you brace your legs and push out further?”

“Umm…” Ida experimented with her legs, trying to figure out a way to keep herself from sliding all the way out of the duct and into the gloom below. “Maybe?”

“Keep trying.” This almost a whisper.

She rolled back onto her stomach to look down the ladder. She could grab the first rung and flip herself over, but she could picture all too easily her back smacking against the ladder, her grip slipping, and falling who knew how far down. She rolled onto her back once more, this time finding some indentations into which she wedged her feet on the sides of the duct.

And then, without thinking about all the ways it could go wrong, Ida pushed herself back and over the edge until her entire torso was out over the emptiness. She quickly sat up and reached as far as she could.

She caught the lowest rung above her with her left hand. For a moment Ida just hung there, breathing. Finally she pulled herself up high enough to grab on with her right hand as well and pulled her legs out of the duct to put them on the rung below.

“Okay. I’m on the ladder.”

“What?” Rayna barked with a laugh. “How?”

“If I live through this,” Ida laughed back, “I promise I’ll explain. Now what?”

“Down the ladder, across the bottom of the air shaft and then back up the ladder to the right.”

Before Rayna even finished, Ida was moving down the ladder, looking down to shine the headlamp at her feet. She had to jump down to the floor at the bottom. Across the open space she found the ladder on the opposite side easily enough.

“Rayna, the ladder is too high, I can’t reach.” Ida waited. “Rayna?” The radio remained silent. She pointed her headlamp carefully at the floor around her. The space stretched far beyond the beam of light. Ida tried not to think about getting stuck down here with no food or water as everyone else was forced to evacuate the station. She couldn’t think about Maurice alone, angry red burns branching down from his hairline and across his forehead.

Ida put her hand on the wall and began to walk along the edge of the space. She almost tripped on something. It was a broken wooden crate that looked like it had been dropped down the shaft.

It was huge and heavy and awkward as she dragged it into place. Finally she was able to clamber up its side and get onto the ladder.

Halfway to the top, Ida finally heard Rayna’s voice again.

“Ida?” Rayna sounded panicked.

“I’m here.” Ida replied, out of breath from the climb.

“Are you okay?”

“Yes. The bottom of the ladder was too high. I had to find something to climb on.” She paused to catch her breath. “Where am I going?”

“At the top of the ladder near the ceiling you should find a small door.” Rayna’s voice hitched, like maybe she had been crying. “Given the distribution of air degradation reported from this shaft’s sensors, the breach has to be in there somewhere.”

Getting the door unlatched was easy. Leaning back far enough to pull it open was hard. Then she was half inside a weird little box and looking for the breach.

It was obvious once she saw it. The panel covering one of the air exchanges with the outside was damaged. The left edge had torn free, the translucent material flapping as air rushed in.

Ida pulled out the tool. It felt cold and heavy in her hand. She had a moment of panic that she would fumble and the tool would fall all the way back to the floor far below, but then she got it turned around and pointed in the right direction.

“Remember, let each inch of re-fused material set for at least 90 seconds. That way it won’t pull out as you go.”

“Okay.” Ida fused the first inch. “Can you keep time for me? I just finished the first inch.”

“Started.”

She took a breath, and after a few beats of silence, “Orion. Cassiopeia. Pegasus.”

“Ida?”

“Sorry. My father and I used to look at constellations together on the roof of our building. He taught me to name as many as I can remember when I needed to stay calm.”

“I haven’t seen the stars in a long time.”

“It was the only time I liked putting on my air-skin.” Ida closed her eyes, remembering. “As more city lights went out, we just could see more and more stars.”

“It sounds beautiful.”

“It was.” Ida squeezed her eyes, trying hold the tears in. “It still is.”

“Time’s up. You can do the next inch.”

“Thanks,” she choked out, opening her eyes to a blur of tears. They trailed down her cheeks where she couldn’t reach to wipe them away. They were salty and warm when they reached her tongue. She blinked her eyes clear and fused the next inch. “Restart timer please. Ursa Minor. Ursa Major. Draco. Cygnus…”

When she finished the last inch, the air pressure dropped and Ida slumped against the side of the chamber. She closed her eyes.

“It’s done,” she whispered.

“Good job!” Rayna’s cheerful voice was followed by a flood of shouts. They hurt her ears, but she didn’t care. She had done it. She hadn’t died, Maurice was safe and the station was fixed. Her father would have been so proud.

Getting back out was easier, once she wrangled the broken box across the floor to the first ladder. She took the opportunity at the end of the duct to show Rayna how she had gotten onto the ladder at the other end.

Down on the floor, Rayna pulled her into a quick hug. Then she took her by the shoulders and looked her in the eyes.

“Well done.” She had a huge grin on her face.

“Looks like you might have found someone to train,” said a voice over the radio; Ida thought it might have been the station-master.

“We are planning to relocate,” Ida confessed, “if we can just find a train that will take us out to the West City Dome.”

“I see.” Rayna was interrupted by a long low tone broadcast over the speakers. The amber warning lights went out. She looked up. “That’s the all clear, you don’t need this anymore.” She reached over, pulled off Ida’s mask and handed it back to her.

“Ida!” The next thing Ida knew, Maurice was throwing himself into her arms and she was kissing his smiling face.

After Maurice and Pig peppered Ida with questions about her adventure for a few minutes, Rayna interrupted, a serious tone in her voice. “I understand you have your eyes on the West City Dome, but I would like to propose something different.”

“Okay.” Ida moved to stand beside Maurice, watching Rayna’s face as she held him close.

“I need an assistant. I can pay you with a combination of station scrip and food.”

“I’m hungry.” Maurice volunteered. Rayna and Ida both laughed.

“Someone bring this young man a sandwich.” Rayna called out, to a chorus of more laughter. “Scrip will work at any station and on most trains. If you want to move on in a few months, won’t be anything I can do to stop you.”

“I understand.” Ida nodded. An adult in station gray brought Maurice a sandwich. As he devoured it, Ida swore she could see him grow. “But Maurice needs a new air-skin. We barely got this on him this morning, even before the hood got torn.”

“We can take care of that.” Rayna waited patiently.

“Maurice?” Ida asked, watching him eat. “Should we stay?”

“This sandwich is good,” he replied around a mouthful of food. “Pig likes it here.”

“In that case,” Ida turned back to Rayna, “our answer is yes.”

“One final condition,” replied Rayna, “You owe me some star gazing.”

“Good thing we kept the telescope.”

Someone handed Ida a sandwich. It tasted amazing.

View from Above

originally published in the 2016 Young Explorer’s Adventure Guide

Kendree completed the final checklist and pushed the ignition button. It always unnerved her that there was no sound to confirm that the engines were cycled up. The lights on the control panel paraded past agreeably, just as they had every time her father had taken her out for practice. Mother said she was too young. Father said anyone who lived on a spaceship needed to know how to fly a shuttle. In case of an emergency.

This was an emergency.

The spacesuit crinkled as she swiveled to the launch panel on her right, taking deep breaths of the fake lemon-scented air from the refresher. Bracing herself for the alarm that she was 90% sure she had disabled, Kendree flipped the launch trigger. The shuttle lifted gently from the docking bay floor. No bells clanged. The lights outside the cockpit didn’t suddenly flash red and orange. The bay door slid smoothly open, revealing a wide swath of dark space and stars and the edge of the planet below.

Kendree checked the coordinates one more time, then initiated the autopilot. Her heart raced and she held her breath until the small shuttle was clear of the doors and had turned toward the planet. The navigation display projected a total travel time of 18 minutes.

She switched the side screen to replay the last few minutes of her friend’s video message. Elissa’s eyes were puffy and red, but she wasn’t crying. Her voice shook a little as she explained that her parents were evacuating her and her sisters. They were being sent to hide out on their family property a few hours away from the city and the battlefields that had formed around it. Elissa looked over her shoulder at some noise outside her door before turning back to say “Sorry, I have to go. I’ll try to send another message soon, but the country house doesn’t have an uplink to the satellite. I’ll miss talking to you.” She ended the transmission before Kendree had even been able to tell her to be safe.

Kendree had been nervous about the war brewing on the surface for weeks. It was all some awful drama left over from when different Earth factions had settled the planet generations ago. Her parents swore her friend would be okay. They kept saying that Elissa’s parents were scientists. They weren’t soldiers. They would evacuate to somewhere safe before it was too late.

She and Elissa had never met in person, but it was lonely up on the spaceship with just her parents. They had been in geostationary orbit over Elissa’s home city for over a year as Kendree’s parents did their Space Archaeology work. Her mother had met Elissa’s mother through the university in the city below and thought the two girls might enjoy meeting each other—at least over the video channel.

It was hard to be alone on the ship for so long with just her parents for company. She and Elissa had rapidly progressed from awkward “my mom says I have to talk to you” acquaintances to best friends who told each other everything. They loved the same books. They played each other their favorite music. Elissa told her that it was the best to have a friend who wasn’t part of the social scene down on the planet—she could tell Kendree anything. And she did.

The idea of not talking to Elissa for more than a day, let alone for some unknown long amount of time, made her heart ache. The idea that her friend might be in danger—that she could be hurt as politicians and their soldiers fought over who was in charge? That made Kendree’s skin crawl.

The sun was just cresting the horizon, flooding the planet below with a warm arc of light. The autopilot was handling everything, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t a bumpy ride dropping down through the atmosphere. This shuttle wasn’t big enough to absorb and suppress the vibrations. The cabin slowly ratcheted the pressure up to prepare her for the increased gravity on the planet surface. Kendree had watched instructional videos about this, but she had never felt it herself.

She had asked Elissa for the coordinates of the country house a few months ago when Elissa had first mentioned it. Kendree had accessed the maps her father used for his remote sensing studies and imagined visiting Elissa there. The maps were based on satellite imaging and were used to search for promising archaeological sites, but they worked just as well to view the terrain on the surface.

“Kendree, what are you doing?” Her mother’s voice burst through, loud and frantic over the ship-to-ship comm-link. She was grateful there was no video. Kendree considered just ignoring it, but her mother wasn’t going to give up.

“I’m just going down to pick up Elissa. I’ll be back in a few hours.”

“You can’t do that. Turn that shuttle around. It’s too dangerous.”

“I’m not turning around. In fifteen minutes I’ll be on planet at their summer house. I bet they won’t even have unpacked yet.”

“You can’t! Kendree…it isn’t safe.” She faintly heard her mother calling for her father, her head probably turned away from the microphone.

“You said that they were in a safe place. So it will be safe for me, too.”

“There are reasons we don’t go down to the surface of this planet, Kendree. Your body has no immunity to their illnesses. And you already have enough to deal with without getting sick.”

Kendree didn’t respond. She was watching the planet below speed toward her. To the east were the battlefields. So many soldiers in battle armor that glinted in the rising sun. Had they been marching all night to get into position?

The shuttle turned and she got close enough to see some of the large battle machines on the ground. Huge, hulking, and dark, they towered well above the heads of the troops. The largest one lumbered forward, jostling soldiers who clambered on its surface adjusting things she couldn’t see. She hadn’t realized how close to the battle zone the auto-piloted route would take her.

“It’s going to be fine.” She wasn’t sure if she was telling herself or her mom.

“You can’t open the doors when you land. You have to just relaunch. I am so sorry.”

“No. Mom, that isn’t an option.” The shuttle was now flying over the heart of the capital city. She could see the rolling countryside coming up fast.

“Kendree?” Her father was now on the line too. “Honey, I know you don’t want to hear this, but you could be a danger to your friend, too. She might not be immune to everything you’ve been exposed to.”

“Dad, we’ve been here for almost a year. That is a long enough quarantine for anything we might have brought with us. Or should I say brought with you. You never let me get exposed to anything.”

“There is a reason for that, dear.” Her mother sounded sad. Kendree knew that the life of isolation they led was to keep her immune system from being challenged. “I’m sorry,” she added quietly.

“I know you are. But I’m twelve. I’m not a little girl. Don’t worry, I have a good plan.”

And with that she shut the communication link down and watched the woodlands and fields unfolding below her. The shuttle cast a moving shadow as she flew west away from the rising sun.

She braced herself for what turned out to be a gentle landing on a fairly flat patch of grass.

Kendree reached down and disengaged the latches that had held her chair in place. With practiced deftness, she rotated 180 degrees and guided the motorized chair to the storage compartment where she had stashed her helmet and gloves. She hadn’t wanted to wear them for the flight down because they restricted her movement and sight lines, but she knew her parents were right. She was convinced she was no danger to her friends—but she knew that her immune system was compromised enough that they were a very real danger to her.

It had been hard getting into the suit without her parents’ help—but she had managed. She had only cursed once, and that time under her breath so she didn’t wake her parents before she had effected her escape.

They had had her suit custom made, her legs resting together inside the bottom half of the suit. There was no need for separate legs in a suit for someone whose legs didn’t work. For someone who couldn’t walk. When she put it on the first time, she had felt like a mermaid. She pulled on her gloves now, hating the loss of dexterity and sensation.

It was awkward getting her helmet on with her gloves in the way, but she managed it. She engaged the helmet lock and felt cool, sweet air begin to flow from the pack mounted on the back of her chair. Inside her mermaid space suit she was safe. She planned to keep herself quarantined in her room on the ship as long as the girls stayed with them.

Kendree opened the shuttle door and rolled down the ramp to the grass outside the small house. She approached the door to the small wood house slowly. The sun was up, but it was still early. The ground in front of the building was covered in gravel. She turned on the sound feed in her helmet to hear it crunch as she drove the chair across.

There was no sign of activity inside. She looked for some sort of intercom or button and saw none.

She was able to get close enough to the door to knock with her gloved hand, but there was no answer. She knocked again, this time as hard as she could. She waited, but still no answer. The doorknob didn’t turn. Of course it was locked. They were hiding and trying to be safe.

Kendree backed away from the door and surveyed the building more carefully. It was two stories, with two broad windows on the lower floor and four smaller windows spaced evenly across the upper level. She imagined that the girls’ bedrooms were upstairs. The windows were covered by curtains, but the window all the way to the left had a small plant balanced between the curtain and the windowpane. Elissa was obsessed with growing things. She would have brought her latest project with her and scouted out the window with the best sun in her room.

She needed some way to get her attention. The gravel at her feet was ideal, but it might as well have been a mile away. Her suit was not designed for picking up small objects on the ground. Luckily she remembered the grabber she always kept strapped to the side of her chair. She managed to use it to transfer a small pile of the rough grey stones into her lap. Her first try at throwing them was an utter failure. Gravity was weird. If she had been on the ship, with the gravity turned super low so it was easy for her to maneuver without using much leg strength, she could have tossed them the entire length of the ship’s central hallway. Here they landed barely beyond her feet.

Her second throw was no more successful. She stared thoughtfully at the tool leaning against her leg. She lifted it and put a few rocks in the scoop and carefully rotated it over her shoulder. Holding as tight as she could with both hands, she snapped the rod forward. The rocks went flying. They clunked against the wide wood door and fell onto the doormat. It took four more tries before she got the rocks to clatter on the window on the second floor. After her second hit, the curtain moved and there was her friend’s face. Kendree waved, then worried that she was just frightening Elissa. The curtain fell back in place quickly. Kendree held her breath until the door opened.

Elissa was shorter than Kendree had pictured. Getting to know someone just from their torso on a screen would do that, she guessed.

“Elissa.” Kendree suddenly realized Elissa couldn’t hear her. She toggled on the speaker in her helmet and called out again quickly. “It’s me! Kendree!” She hoped that Elissa could see her smile through the helmet from her spot shifting from foot to foot in the doorway. “I’m here to rescue you.” She gestured to the shuttle behind her.

“What?” Elissa peered out at the driveway and up at the sky before stepping out the door. She had fuzzy slippers on her feet and a red nightgown covered in yellow stars. “How did you get here?”

“I flew the shuttle.” Kendree sat up a bit taller. “I’ve been taking lessons for more than a year now. And the autopilot did most of it,” she admitted. “Get your stuff, we can’t stay long.”

“I can’t go with you.” She didn’t sound so sure. Elissa looked past Kendree’s chair at the shuttle. “How many people can fit in there at once?”

“There are seats for six.” Kendree waved her forward. “Come look.”

“I can’t believe you are here.” Elissa’s skin was olive, and her long black braid glinted in the morning sun as she picked her way across the gravel in her slippers. She stopped right in front of Kendree’s chair looking thoughtful. Kendree had never told her about being confined to chairs in gravity, but Elissa didn’t seem surprised. “Can I hug you through that?”

“I think so.” Kendree leaned forward a bit and Elissa wrapped her slender arms around the bulky suit. Kendree couldn’t feel anything, but her friend so close and holding her suddenly made her eyes feel leaky. She couldn’t cry. No way to wipe tears in here and she had to see to get them back to the ship safely. When Elissa stood up, Kendree took a deep breath and let it out slowly before speaking. “Is it just you and your sisters here?”

“Yes.” Elissa looked back over her shoulder toward the house. “I don’t know if we can talk them into going with us.”

“Sure we can.” Kendree smiled at the ‘us’. At least Elissa had decided to come with her. “Wake them up and get everyone dressed. We have to go fast. I think that some of the soldiers on the battlefield might have spotted me on my way in.”

“Oh.” Panic flashed in her friend’s dark eyes. “Okay. Wait here,” she said needlessly before turning to run back into the dim foyer.

Kendree waited. She watched birds wheeling in the sky overhead. The sky was so wide and blue. The trees so tall, taller than the house and shading it with their leaves. Kendree spent a lot of time looking at photos and watching videos of things she couldn’t easily get to in the real world—but the perspective of looking up was strange and unsettling. And kind of magical. She had spent most of her life looking down. Down from hospital windows. Down from the ship’s viewports.

Elissa reappeared dressed in a grey jumpsuit and carrying two dark bags. Her sisters, one older and one younger, were with her.

“Kendree,” she started out formally, “this is my older sister, Ruth, and my little sister, Vali.” They both shared Elissa’s coloring, though Ruth’s hair was cropped short and Vali’s hair was down to her shoulders and loose, waving in the morning breeze. Kendree wished she could feel the wind against her skin.

Ruth stood tall and looked almost grown up. Kendree remembered she was supposed to start at the city university in the fall to study linguistics. Vali hid behind Ruth’s legs. She was eight, four years younger than Elissa. They wore the same style grey jumpsuit.

“Are you ready to depart?” Kendree tried to sound formal and serious, even though she was bubbling over with joy inside. It was going to work!

“I can’t talk her out of it,” said Ruth bluntly, gesturing at Elissa with her chin. She kept a hand on Vali’s shoulder. “I’m not letting her go alone. And I can’t leave Vali here without us. So I guess we’re all going.” She hauled a huge backpack onto her back and grabbed another smaller bag with her right hand. She held out her left hand to Vali and then headed toward the shuttle with the smaller girl in tow.

“Okay.” Kendree turned her chair and accelerated to catch up. “Come on Elissa!” She called out, hoping her friend was right behind her.

The chair reached the ramp at the same time Ruth and Vali did. Ruth stepped back to let Kendree maneuver up and into the shuttle. In moments they were all aboard and figuring out how to strap down their bags at Kendree’s direction.

As soon as everyone was safely strapped in, Kendree closed the door and went through the pre-launch checklist again. She felt everyone watching her every move. Her mouth felt dry. She wished for a way to drink some water, but the helmet had to stay or she might as well not have bothered with it in the first place.

And then they were lifting off. The auto-route back to the ship was the default navigation program.

The shuttle wheeled back to the west toward the city.

“We shouldn’t be flying this way,” said Ruth, “Can’t you re-route us?”

“Umm..” Kendree took a deep breath. “I haven’t learned that yet. I’m sorry.”

They watched the city grow large before them. The shuttle gained altitude. Then they could see the battlefield.

“Are we going to fly right over them?” Elissa asked nervously.

Ruth started to murmur something. Kendree thought it might be a prayer, or some sort of private little song. Vali was silent, but Kendree was afraid to look at her tiny face.

“When I flew in they ignored me.” Kendree tried to sound bright and confident. “It’s going to be okay."

“I’m sure it will be.” Elissa backed her up, reaching across the space between them to put her hand on the arm of Kendree’s suit.

They could do nothing but watch. The field was even more full than when Kendree had flown in at dawn. Less than an hour had passed, but now the sun was at full strength, glinting off armoured suits and large war machines.

The shuttle rose and now all they could see was sky. Kendree had started to relax when the loud blaring of an alarm filled the small cabin.

“What does that mean?” Ruth shouted over the noise.

“I think…” Kendree clumsily flipped through the alert screens. “I think someone fired something at us from the ground.” She found the switch to change the view shown on the large main screen. Now they were watching the battlefield receding quickly behind them. In the center of the screen was something glowing, round, and getting closer to them as they watched.

“What do we do?” whispered Elissa.

“We go faster.” Kendree swiveled her chair and realized that she couldn’t type on the keyboard with her gloves on. “Elissa, I need your help.” Kendree rotated the pilot’s keyboard toward her friend. “I can’t type with these,” she waved her heavy gloved hands, “but I can tell you what to do.”

“Hurry it up.” Ruth said, still watching the screen.

Kendree talked Elissa through the menus as fast as she could. The shuttle began to accelerate, pushing them all back in their seats and slowly, so slowly, pulling them further ahead of whatever the soldiers had shot at them. Moments after their shuttle broke through the atmosphere, the missile exploded in a bright burst of yellow and gold.

“That was too close,” said Elissa. “I can’t believe it didn’t catch us.”

“Switch us back to autopilot,” Kendree sighed. She wanted to laugh or cry or hug someone, but she was still in her mermaid suit and strapped to her motorized chair. “We’ll be at the ship in just a few minutes.” She flipped the view screen back using the big switch, one of the few things she could manage with her gloves on. The sky changed from the blue of atmosphere to the darker background of space, with the ship already growing larger on the display.

The girls from the planet watched the ship open its hatch for them, gaping at the machinery and the wide reach of space beyond until they were swallowed by the dark docking bay.

The final step of the autopilot sequence disengaged the door and lowered the ramp. Kendree’s parents stood just outside.

“I told you she was wearing it!” her father elbowed her mother and pointed at Kendree’s space suit. “Well done!” he called to her.

“Kendree…” her mother choked out before she ran to her side, taking one of her bulky gloves in her hands.

“I’m sorry,” was all Kendree could manage before her face was wet with tears. “I couldn’t leave Elissa down there. I knew I could go get them.”

“We understand,” her mother responded gently. She took a deep breath and turned to their guests. “Welcome to our home, the TIRS-OLI.” Kendree had explained months ago to Elissa that her parents had named the ship for old Landsat satellite technology that was first used to map Earth from space, but from the confused look on Elissa’s face, her friend had forgotten, or maybe was just too worried to remember.

“Our parents…” Ruth began.

“Not to worry,” Kendree’s father reassured her “We sent them a message the moment you cleared the atmosphere.” He turned to Kendree. “A little close there at the end, wasn’t it?”

“Yes,” she nodded, tears now dripping off her chin and pooling in the bottom of her faceplate. “I told Elissa how to speed us up. I couldn’t with these.” She waved her glove-encased hands before clumsily disengaging her chair lock and moving to her father’s side. He put his broad arm around her shoulders. “I’m sorry,” she said again.

“Let’s get everyone settled,” her mother said cheerfully. “Girls, right this way.”

“Kendree, come with me,” said her father. “We need to get you into quarantine.”

“Quarantine?” asked Elissa, “Can’t she take all that off now that she is off the planet?”

“Her immune system is very poor, Elissa,” Kendree’s mother explained. “I know you and your sisters don’t seem sick, but just being in contact with you could make Kendree very ill. She is going to have to stay in her own zone for most of your stay. Besides,” she added more sharply, “that’s as close as we can get to grounding her on this ship.”

Elissa ran to Kendree, looking a little surprised at how light on her feet she was in the reduced gravity. Leaning down she put her forehead against the top of Kendree’s faceplate. “Once you are out of that thing, I’ll have them show me how I can talk to you.” She placed her hand on the glass over Kendree’s cheek. “Thank you for rescuing us, you crazy person.”

“You’re welcome.” Kendree smiled, the skin of her cheeks crackling from her dried tears. “Wait until you see the view!”