Galactic Adventures Page 6

‘Did you see that?’ says Yada.

  ‘Yeah – wow again!’

  ‘Oh, man, what? I missed it.’ Scott sighs.

  I search around the sky until my eye settles on Utopia again. I think about the fact that there are humans inside that flashing thing right now and, soon, in a couple of weeks, I could be one of them. I want to be there now. I don’t want anything to get in the way of that. But I wish Scott was going to be there.

  ‘Don’t you wish you were coming – just a little bit?’ I ask him.

  ‘Nah,’ he says. ‘I want to go home. I miss my Lego and comics and stuff. You guys have got to come to my house. I’ve got, like, a whole Lego room.’

  ‘Who cares about Lego? I want you to come with us to Utopia. That was the deal. We’re supposed to stick together, you know.’

  ‘Yeah, but earth’s better than space. Space stations are all cramped and the food’s freeze-dried and tastes bad. And you gotta do experiments and stuff. There’s not as much time to play. You gotta Velcro everything down or your food floats away from you. It’s bad.’

  ‘Don’t you want to see for yourself, though? Don’t you want to look back and see earth from way up there?’ I ask.

  There’s silence for a couple of seconds. ‘Not really,’ he says and sits up. ‘Like I said, earth’s the best place in the universe. If I already know that, why’ve I gotta go all the way up there just to find out what I already know?’

  Everything seems so simple for Scott. I wish it was for me.

  ‘I better move,’ he says. ‘My grandfather gets crazy-angry when I’m late.’

  ‘But you haven’t seen Utopia,’ says Raf.

  ‘That’s okay.’ He shrugs. ‘It’s just a flashing light. ’

  He stands up and we do, too. But then he looks sad. His bottom lip is sticking out.

  Raf gives him a big hug, wrapping her arms almost all the way around him. ‘Don’t be sad.’

  ‘You just said you didn’t want to go,’ I say.

  ‘I don’t. But I’m gonna miss you guys, that’s all. I kinda want to go to space just so I can hang out with you some more. You guys are the best friends I ever had.’

  I wonder if he really means it.

  Yada joins the hug. ‘We will still be your friends,’ she says.

  ‘Promise?’

  ‘Promise.’

  Then I go in and put my arms around all of them. I don’t know if I’m doing it because I’ll miss Scott, or as an excuse to hug Yada. Either way, it feels good.

  ‘Will you guys message me from space?’ he says.

  ‘Totally.’ Raf nods.

  ‘Will you never forget me in your whole life?’

  ‘Um – no.’ Yada doesn’t sound that convincing.

  ‘Am I the best friend you’ve ever had?’

  Nobody answers, so I say, ‘Definitely’. I try to do a better job than Yada at sounding like I mean it.

  ‘Can you throw another pie at Palatnik for me? Just if you get the chance?’

  ‘Sure,’ I say. ‘Love to.’

  That night, when I’m trying to sleep, I think about Scott’s empty capsule. I think about that winking light in the sky. I think about hugging Yada. I think about my mother and where she might be, like I do every night. I think about the kid in the junkyard. And I try to connect the dots.

  The week spins by in a blur. We all work super-hard, trying to make sure that none of us is forced to leave like Scott. Secretly I wouldn’t mind if Zarif went, but I don’t think that’s going to happen. The gruelling early morning physicals continue. We eat at Spirit three times day, we learn Russian and Chinese, study astronomy, astrophysics and aeronautics. We do underwater EVA (spacewalk) training. All of the other kids have a parent staying somewhere nearby and they get to see them sometimes on weekends. I’m becoming heaps better friends with the girls, but Z keeps us all at a distance. He trains harder than anyone. He’s secretive. He eats by himself. He goes to sleep early. He reads a lot. He talks less than the rest of us. He doesn’t do anything nasty and that’s kind of annoying, because there’s no real reason not to like him. He’s just – good. And he makes me want to be better.

  It’s a Saturday night, end of week two, right in the middle of our training, when I wake to find the door to our dorm open again.

  13. One-Way Ticket

  I listen carefully. My watch says 12.03 am. I squint, trying to make out a shape at the door. All I can see through the gap is something small, shiny and white. It seems to be floating about a metre off the ground. I wriggle to the end of my capsule and Marv squeaks.

  ‘Sorry,’ I whisper and place him at the head-end of the capsule. It smells like he’s done a wee somewhere in my bed, but I don’t have time to feel around for it. My eyes are fixed on the shiny white thing. I stand and pad silently across the room. I grab the handle and fling the door wide open.

  Nothing.

  The shiny thing is a silver cupboard door handle reflecting light from the hall. I look down the hallway, but there’s no movement, no sound. The dream I was having flows back to me. It was about the kid in the space graveyard. It’s been a week now, but I’ve dreamt about him every night. Tonight he was kind of hairy. He had thick brown fur on his face and he was bent over like some kind of ancient man, jumping from one rocket part to the next. I was watching him through the fence like I was at a zoo. The last thing I remember from the dream was the kid running right at me, towards the fence, in that half-limp, baring his teeth and screeching. Then I woke to total blackness.

  I think about jumping back into bed, but I feel too awake to sleep now.

  I slip into the hallway and tiptoe quietly. I give the men’s toilet door a shove. It opens and the automatic lights flicker on. The lights stay on whenever anyone’s in there and snap off as the person leaves. I close the door quietly and keep going. Where this hallway meets the other one, I take a right. The vinyl floor feels cold underfoot. The lighting is dim, but just enough for security to make their rounds. I can hear the tiny buzz of the yellow security lights, a distant motor and my own shallow breathing. Halfway down the hallway, I notice a crack of light under a door. I stop and look behind me, then back at the door. I think about running back to my room. I don’t want to get caught wandering around at night by Johnston or Palatnik. But I have to know who it is.

  I move to the door quickly, silently. I look left and right. No one. I put my ear to the door and hear the tap-tap-tap of fingers on a keyboard.

  The nameplate on the door, slipped into a thin metal frame, says ‘Human Resources’. It’s Madeleine Standish’s office. I’ve been in here a fair few times, but at night in the darkened hallway, all the doors look the same. Hearing the distant clip of footsteps, I panic, shove the door open and slip inside.

  ‘Aaaaaargh!’ someone screams, jumping up from the computer chair. But it’s not Madeleine.

  ‘Sorry, sorry, sssshhh ssssshhhhh. It’s just me. It’s just me. Someone’s coming.’

  ‘What are you doing?’ Yada snaps.

  ‘Sssssshhhhh.’ I flick the light switch off so that the room is only lit by computer glow.

  ‘What?’ she says.

  ‘Sssshhhh,’ I hiss, as the footsteps clack on by.

  ‘I asked Madeleine. I’m allowed in here.’

  I flick on the light. ‘What?’

  ‘I couldn’t sleep. Madeleine was working and she said I could use the web as long as I shut down.’

  I let out a heavy breath.

  ‘Why are you so jumpy,’ she says.

  I look at the computer. There’s a girl’s face on-screen, smiling. She has short, light brown hair. Her nose wrinkles as she squints in the sun. A shadow falls across one eye. The photo looks faded, old school.

  ‘What’s with the old photos?’ I ask.

  ‘I’m looking
at the children.’

  ‘What children?’

  ‘The ones who didn’t make it. The ones Scott talked about.’

  I’m interested. ‘Why?’

  ‘Come and look,’ she says. I sit on the arm of the chair. My side is rubbing against her arm. ‘This one – Meredene Holden. She’s the only girl. I think she’s pretty.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  She scrolls down. ‘This one is Douglas Bailey, one of the boys.’ The photo is of a skinny kid wearing a checked shirt and jeans. He’s got a zit on his nose.

  ‘He was thirteen,’ she says. ‘From Oklahoma. His father was a test pilot. All of them had parents in the air force, navy, space program. And this is Robert White. He was nine.’

  She scrolls down to the next picture. The face makes my mouth run dry. My eyes fill with tears. My ears go all hot.

  ‘What?’ Yada looks at me.

  ‘That’s the kid.’

  ‘What kid?’

  ‘The one I told you I saw out at the end of the runway. And in our dorm. That’s him.’

  ‘Don’t be silly. He’s not around anymore,’ she says, but she can see I’m not kidding.

  The door clicks open behind us and we both squeal like six-year-old girls and grab hold of one another.

  ‘What?’ The guy at the door raises a hand at us, which makes us scream again.

  He freaks out. ‘Stop. Stop!’

  It’s Palatnik. I’m half-relieved it isn’t Robert White and half freaked that I was about to be beaten by Palatnik’s Hulk-sized fist. He drops his hand slowly. I notice he’s wearing a tartan dressing gown and some dodgy-looking brown slippers.

  ‘What do you think you’re doing in here at this time a night?’

  ‘We just – we – sorry,’ I say.

  ‘Madeleine told me I could,’ says Yada.

  ‘And what about you?’ He looks at me.

  I lick my lips. ‘I must’ve been sleep walking.’

  ‘So you just sleepwalk into people’s offices, do you? Help yourself to their computer files?’

  I shake my head. ‘I don’t know. I was asleep.’

  Chuck looks like he wants to belt me.

  ‘He only just got here,’ says Yada, glaring at me. ‘I was just finishing.’ She quits the browser.

  ‘Get out of here. I’ll shut it down.’ He shoves us out the door. We look both ways in the hall, then start walking slowly toward our dorm.

  ‘Hey,’ he says. We whip around to face him, wide-eyed. I’m not sure if I’m more scared of Palatnik or what I’ve seen on the screen. ‘You two weren’t up to any funny business in there, were you?’

  Yada and I look at each other, wondering if what we saw on the screen qualifies as ‘funny business’.

  ‘No,’ we say together. He eyes us suspiciously, like he knows we’re lying.

  ‘Kids,’ he says, shaking his head. ‘Get! You’re just about outta chances. One more foot wrong and you’ll find yourselves in Johnston’s office.’

  We start walking slowly down the hall again. I want to get away from him, but I don’t really want to go back to our room.

  ‘Did you do a little bit of wee in your pants back there?’ Yada whispers.

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Me, too,’ she says.

  Then she starts running and laughing quietly, and I chase her all the way back to the dorm. She dives into her capsule. I check the room over, then shut the door and put a chair up against it.

  ‘That’ll keep the ghosts out,’ I whisper into the darkness.

  I crawl into my capsule, pull the covers up high and listen. I hear Yada rolling over. I hear chirping outside. There’s water running through pipes somewhere in the walls. I try closing my eyes but that picture of Robert White, the kid, is burnt into the back of my eyelids. How is it that I’ve seen him twice, but that website said he died in 1971? What does that mean?

  ‘Hey!’ I hear. At first my heart thumps, then I realise it’s Yada.

  I poke my head out of my capsule and look up at her.

  ‘Maybe it wasn’t the same kid you saw,’ she whispers.

  ‘Yeah, maybe not.’ But I know it was him. Why am I the only one who’s seen him, though? And if he isn’t a ghost – because ghosts don’t exist – and he’s actually still alive, then how has he managed to not age a day in 40-something years? Wouldn’t he be, like, 50 or so by now? ‘Hope you sleep okay,’ I say.

  ‘Yeah, you too.’ She disappears inside her capsule. And I fall back on my pillow. Marv is out cold right down the end. I wish he was awake. I could do with some company. When I snuggle down and everything’s quiet again, I think I can hear him snoring. I’ve never heard a rat snore before. It’s been a weird night.

  I try to let it all go and get to sleep, but my mind streams with questions for hours. The thoughts climb in through my ears and run through my head, out the other ear and up my nose, over the back of my brain and out of my mouth, tying my head in knots.

  The thing that really niggles at me is the fact that this kid loved space so much that he gave his life up for it. He didn’t know it at the time, but he’d bought a one-way ticket. A no-way ticket, really. He didn’t even get off the ground. In that half-asleep, half-awake, restless, sheet-twisting state I keep asking myself the question, if space travel is that dangerous am I really ready to do it? Am I ready to put my life on the line for that dream? You know what I come up with?

  Yeah, I am. I’d rather buy a one-way ticket into space than live a normal life.

  It feels like I have five minutes’ sleep before Palatnik flicks on the lights and begins barking orders at us all over again.

  14. Death Chair

  ‘This exercise will sort the men from the boys,’ Palatnik says.

  Yada clears her throat and looks him in the eye.

  ‘And the girls from the women,’ he says, annoyed by the interruption.

  Raf and Yada smile. Raf flashes her bright pink braces.

  There is a swivel chair sitting on a half-metre-high platform in the middle of the bright white room we’re standing in. In the corner is a desk with a computer and a couple of monitors.

  Palatnik walks over to the chair. The four of us follow.

  ‘Some call this an instrument of torture,’ he says.

  ‘What is it?’ Yada asks.

  ‘It is called the Vestibular Chair or the Death Chair. You will sit in it. The chair will spin. I will ask you to complete a series of movements. This exercise will assist you in dealing with motion sickness on Utopia. Your body needs to let go of its sense of which way is up, which way is down. You will most probably puke. Very quickly.’

  ‘We should get special training to deal with seeing so much vomit,’ Yada whispers to me.

  He looks down his sharp nose at her. ‘This is the training for that,’ he says. ‘You think you can do the chair without being sick?’

  ‘Of course,’ Yada says. ‘I will try anything.’

  Palatnik looks pleased in a sinister kind of way. ‘Well, come on up.’

  Yada turns to us, gives a bow and then climbs up and sits down. The rest of us sit in a row of orange plastic seats to watch. Raf and I call out our support for her.

  ‘I spend my whole life spinning on chairs at the library, so this will be so easy,’ she says.

  A young guy with a buzz-cut, wearing a lab coat, straps her into the chair. ‘You ready to rock?’

  ‘Born ready,’ she says.

  Palatnik hits a key on the computer and the chair begins to spin slowly.

  ‘Wheeeeee!’ she says.

  I laugh.

  ‘How is this?’ he asks.

  ‘Fun! A little bit slow. Can we go faster?’

  He hits another key and the chair spins faster.

&
nbsp; ‘How about this?’

  ‘Not bad. Still very slow. Veeeery boring,’ she says.

  ‘And this?’ He ramps up the speed again so that her features become a blur.

  ‘Aroooooooooo!’ she howls.

  Palatnik looks like he wants to break Yada, make an example of her, show her how hardcore he is at driving this rig.

  ‘Tilt your head forward,’ he says.

  She does.

  ‘Now back up. How do you feel?’

  ‘Faster, faster, faster!’

  His eyes narrow. He really wants to crush her but she’s making him look like a fool.

  ‘Tilt your head to the right,’ he says.

  She does it.

  ‘And back up. Now to the left.’

  Yada tilts her head the other way.

  ‘How do you feel now?’ he says.

  ‘Bit dizzy. But that’s good.’

  He almost smiles.

  ‘Now bending forward from the waist.’

  And she does.

  ‘Looking at your toes,’ he says.

  She looks down as the chair keeps spinning.

  ‘Now stay there, looking down for one minute,’ he says.

  A few seconds later Yada starts to whistle a random tune. She’s been known to bust out a Thai pop song every now and then. We laugh. Even Zarif laughs. Palatnik shoots us a razor-sharp glare from across the room. Yada keeps whistling.

  I’m starting to feel sick just watching her spin.

  ‘How d’you feel now?’ he asks.

  She stops whistling.

  Then she barfs all over her shoes.

  Digging her nails in, Rafaella grabs Zarif’s arm. I put a hand over my eyes. Chuck stops the machine and jots down notes on his clipboard. The intern unstraps Yada.

  ‘Who’s next?’ Palatnik chirps.

  No one puts up their hand. We all watch as Yada takes off her shoes and the intern mops up last night’s dinner with a towel.

  ‘I said who is next?’

  Zarif raises his hand.

  ‘Good. In the chair.’

  As Zarif passes Yada, she tries to smile. But she looks as sick as nine dogs. I feel sorry for her.