Space Hostages Read online

  DEDICATION

  For Gemma

  CONTENTS

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Part 1 Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Part 2 Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Part 3 Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Part 4 Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  PROLOGUE

  You can’t cry in space.

  You can give it a good try, though.

  Tears won’t fall, without gravity. They collect on the surface of your eyes and you can’t wipe them away, so on top of being thrown out of a spaceship, you can’t see.

  I mean, I hope this doesn’t happen to people generally, but it was happening to me.

  I kept struggling. It was stupid, because there was nothing to fight, nothing to grab hold of. Nothing. Nothing so huge and total I was going to drown in it. But I still kicked and flailed. All that did was spin me over in helpless cartwheels. I saw the planet swing around as I tumbled, a blur of green and gold through my tears.

  I tried to stop moving, to stop breathing so hard. Need to save oxygen, I thought.

  But save it for what?

  I screwed my eyes shut and tried to shake the tears free. It didn’t really work, but when I opened them, I could make out a frantic scribble of movement against the dark sky. One other human out here with me, no more than the length of a room away, but unreachable; we could flail all we wanted, but we’d never be able to touch.

  And then I somersaulted over again, and there was too much water in my eyes; I couldn’t see him anymore.

  The planet rolled past again, slower this time, a bright disc of light carving through the black. I saw the dim outlines of continents. I wondered if they had names. I wondered if anyone down there would ever know I was there, drifting past above their heads, forever.

  We weren’t supposed to be here.

  No one was supposed to be here.

  PART 1

  1

  I still have moments when the fact that I’m friends with an alien strikes me as kind of weird. I’ll be chatting away to Thsaaa and suddenly I’ll be thinking, Tentacles. My friend has tentacles. Or, But seriously, five sexes? Or, It is just not normal for a person’s skin to change from stripy blue to spotty green while they talk about what they watched on TV last night.

  It is normal, though. It’s been a year, so I ought to be over it by now. It’s just that we don’t have many Morrors living in Warwickshire; it’s not snowy enough anymore, and there aren’t many job opportunities for them. Thsaaa lives in the Swiss Alps, so I don’t get to see them as much as I’d like.

  It was another rainy day. I’d come home, groaned hello to my dad and Gran, staggered upstairs, and flopped onto my bed, where I was now trying to gather the energy to peel off my work overalls for a shower. Even though the war with the Morrors is over, I’m still an Exo-Defense Force cadet, and I still have duties, though these days we weren’t so much defending Earth from aliens as defending Kenilworth from wet rubbish and the Leicester-to-Birmingham train line from long-fallen rotting trees. The ice didn’t get as bad around here as it did farther north, during the war when the Morrors were freezing the planet over, but it was still pretty bad, and it turns out fifteen years of snow and then floods of meltwater can do quite a lot of damage. There are always supposed to be more robots coming to help, but they never seem to actually arrive. There are some things I like about National Service, like the fact that I get to have some medical training even though I’m only thirteen, but clearing rubble in the rain is not as fun and character building as the government broadcasts try to make it out to be.

  But it was only two afternoons a week, and I always got to come home and eat a hot meal with my family, so it definitely beat plodding across Mars in the freezing cold wondering if you were going to starve, suffocate, or be eaten by Space Locusts first, which was how I’d spent the previous spring.

  Though sometimes I found myself . . . missing all that. Messed up, I know.

  The ChatPort light flashed yellow on the ceiling. I managed to lurch into a sitting position and clap my hands, and there was Thsaaa, standing in my bedroom. Not really, of course, though I could see a flickery slice of their sleeping niche behind them and a couple of different Paralashaths, which Thsaaa composed with, softly changing color at the edge of the projection.

  “Vel-haraaa, Thsaaa,” I said happily. My school doesn’t teach any Morror languages, which I think is stupid. Ten million aliens live on Earth now, so we’re probably going to want to know what they are saying, so I’m trying to learn online when I can. There are twenty-three surviving Morror languages, but I’m mostly sticking to Thlywaaa-lay, which is what Thsaaa speaks.

  “Your accent, it does not improve, Alice,” said Thsaaa, pronouncing it more like Aleece, which is not a Thlywaaa-lay thing.

  “Well, neither does yours. You sound more and more French,” I said.

  Thsaaa spread their tentacles in what I considered a very French kind of way, if French people had tentacles, and said, “Non, I do not sound French. I sound Swiss.”

  “How’s the Kshetlak-laya going?” Thsaaa likes studying the dead Morror languages that didn’t make it when their planet got eaten by the Space Locusts—or the Vshomu, which is the proper word for them. Thsaaa had been working on this long poem in the only Morror language I’ve heard that doesn’t sound like sighing or wind in the trees. At least it’s closer to a poem than anything else, but it’s supposed to be performed along with a specially composed Paralashath.

  Thsaaa went melancholy colors. “I have hit a difficult passage. I cannot get the text to harmonize with the Paralashath at all.”

  “Maybe it’s deliberate,” I said. “You know. Experimental.” Thsaaa flicked their tendrils impatiently. “Okay, I know! It’s all too subtle and complicated for me to understand. We did this poem in English today. It goes:

  “I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky

  And all I ask is a tall ship, and a star to steer her by . . .”

  Thsaaa normally likes nothing more than discussing poetry, especially if there’s an opportunity to explain why Morror poetry is better, but this time they said abruptly: “What are you weeeearing?”

  “What? Work clothes,” I said. “Not all of us get to do our National Service just showing Paralashaths to little kids in schools.”

  “I am aiding the reconciliation process,” Thsaaa protested. “Can you please put on something more formal?”

  “Do I have to wear a ball gown to talk to you now?” I said. “Wait, what are you wearing?”

  Thsaaa normally wears a long, plain kilt and nothing else, but today they were wearing an ivory robe with a pattern of oblong holes cut into the fabric over the chest, to show the colors changing with their moods in the spots and tendrils on their skin.

  “Fancy,” I observed.

  “I am speaking to you as an official Morror envoy,” they said. (Don’t call Morrors he, she, or it. They aren’t, so it’s rude.) “I have been entrusted with a message by the Council of Lonthaa-Ra-Moraaa! This is not a casual occasion.”

 
“Well, you didn’t tell me!”

  “I’m telling you now!”

  “All right!” I sat up straight and tried to behave. “Do I really have to change my clothes?”

  I got a little worried they might be going to say they were leaving. The Morrors have their own country on Earth—Uhalarath-Moraaa, which used to be Antarctica—and there are Morrors dotted about in cold pockets of the world like the Alps, but with the entire Morror species to accommodate, it’s still pretty crowded. So they’d just finished terraforming a little moon orbiting a gas giant in the Alpha Centauri system, and seven million Morrors who’d been living in spaceships and space stations around Earth had moved there.

  Thsaaa can be a bit of pain in the neck, but they are my friend. And Alpha Centauri is a lot farther away than Switzerland.

  “No,” conceded Thsaaa. “I apologize. I am a little nervous.” They gave their tendrils a brisk little shake and stood up straighter.

  “You have heard, perhaps, that the work to make Aushalawa-Moraaa habitable to my people is complete.”

  “Yes,” I said, feeling an extra tinge of anxiety.

  “Dr. Muldoo-oooon has helped my people very much.”

  (Thsaaa rather likes Dr. Muldoon’s name.)

  “Yes.”

  “I will read the message to you now.”

  Thsaaa spread out a long, narrow scroll, illuminated in many colors, across all six tentacles.

  “Dear Plucky Kid of Mars—don’t laaaaaugh,” said Thsaaa crossly. “This is an important document.”

  “Sorry. It’s just . . . they do know that’s not our official title, don’t they?”

  Thsaaa sagged a bit. “They do seem convinced it is,” they admitted. “I tried to explain. You know how it is.”

  “Grown-ups don’t listen to you,” I agreed.

  “Dear Plucky . . . ,” Thsaaa began again, and gave a very human sigh. “Dear Alice Dare. All the nations of Ra-Moraaa owe you a debt for your part in bringing an end to the long war on Earth. Today, humans and Mo-raaa uha-raaa live in peace, and a new world welcomes the first Mo-raaa uha-raaa settlers. To celebrate the peace between our peoples, we invite you and your fellow Plucky Kids of Mars to join us on May the thirty-first of this year, for a ceremony to inaugurate the Mo-raaa uha-raaa’s new home.”

  “Oh, yes,” I said at once, bouncing a bit on the bed. I didn’t hesitate, or think of getting chased by space locusts or crashing spaceships on Mars or anything else bad that had happened the last time I’d left the planet I was born on. “This is amazing, Thsaaa. You’re coming? You’re a Plucky Kid of Mars too.”

  “Yes, I will come. It will be an opportunity to learn more about the culture of our people.”

  “And also fun, maybe,” I said.

  “Laheela wath-eyaa, Thsaaa,” complained the voice of one of Thsaaa’s parents, in what I was pretty sure was agreement. An additional set of multicolored tentacles waved through the ChatPort, and Thsaaa’s quth-laaa-mi called cheerfully: “Hiiiiiiiiii, Alice!”

  Thsaaa’s parents are a bit worried Thsaaa is kind of a stick-in-the-mud.

  “And the others?” I said.

  “Carl and Noel are coming.”

  I hesitated. “What about Josephine?” I asked.

  “Josephine seems difficult to reach,” said Thsaaa.

  “Yeah,” I said, relieved it wasn’t just me. I used to talk to Josephine on ChatPort all the time; she’d stayed with us in Wolthrop-Fossey twice, and we’d all gone to Switzerland to visit Thsaaa together. But I hadn’t heard from her in a month. I knew she was working hard. She was doing her World Baccalaureate, even though she’s my age. Most people do it at eighteen.

  She’d said I was her best friend. But I’d been starting to feel a little as if perhaps that was only because we’d nearly died together several times on Mars. And now that we were back on Earth, perhaps she wasn’t so interested in someone reasonably clever but nowhere near ready to take her exams five years early.

  I shook the thought away. Josephine wasn’t like that, she wasn’t, and if I knew her at all, there was no way she’d turn down a chance to visit an alien planet. We were all going to be together again in space!

  “How will we get there?” I asked. “Morror ships are freezing.”

  “It is a human ship, with chilled chambers for Morror passengers.”

  “Oh. So, an Archangel Planetary ship,” I said. I knew a bit about Archangel Planetary. Rasmus Trommler, the man who owns the company, had been in the news a lot, partly because he invented Häxeri, which is a programming system that makes computers work so much better it’s in practically everything now—even the ChatPort—and partly because of scandals and court cases. Also, I’d been on Mars with his daughter, Christa, and putting it nicely, we hadn’t gotten along very well.

  Anyway, the only human-made ships that could go as far as Alpha Centauri were Archangel Planetary ships.

  “I am honored by the Council of Lonthaa-Ra-Moraaa’s kind offer,” I said solemnly, feeling perhaps it was time I started living up to Thsaaa’s fancy outfit and their request for formality. “I accept with gratitude.”

  “I hope your parents will let you come,” said Thsaaa.

  Until then it hadn’t occurred to me that I had to ask anyone’s permission.

  “They will,” I said. “I’m sure they will.”

  Thsaaa rippled farewell colors at me, and the ChatPort faded out.

  Then it flashed on again. “Oh, and Alice,” said Thsaaa. “Congratulations on the book.”

  I ran downstairs into the living room, where Dad and Gran were watching TV, and said, “We’re going back to space!”

  “What?” said Dad and Gran at the same time. Mum was off on a mission so it was just the three of us.

  “The Morrors want us to go to Aushalawa-Moraaa,” I explained. “Carl and Noel and Josephine and me and Thsaaa, because we helped stop the war.”

  “Ausha . . . wah?” Dad seems to have trouble hearing the differences between a lot of Morror words.

  “I thought that was what they’re calling Antarctica now,” said Gran with an edge of a grumble in her voice.

  “No,” said Dad, understanding in his face now. “You know. Morrorworld.”

  “Alice! The Morrors want to take you to their planet?” said Gran, horrified.

  Fair enough. A year ago, that would have been a really scary sentence. But things change.

  “They want us there for this ceremony, to sort of declare the planet open.” I wondered if you could cut a ribbon on a whole world. “And we’ve declared peace with them now. They’re nice.”

  “Alice,” Dad said, looking a bit gaunt, “I’m glad the war’s over. But I think it’s a bit of a stretch to say they’re nice.”

  I got slightly upset. “I thought you liked Thsaaa.”

  “Thsaaa’s a kid. It’s one thing for you to be friends with a Morror kid . . .”

  “And what about Thsaaa’s parents? They were nice to you. They gave you baked fal-thra in Switzerland.”

  “I’m not saying they’re all bad people, Alice.”

  Gran grunted. “Then they gave us a good imitation of it for fifteen years.”

  “Gran!” I said.

  “Of course, you can’t remember the world the way it was before.”

  “I have to live in the world the way it is now,” I said. “And it has Morrors in it. That’s partly why I wrote that stupid thing. How’re we ever going to have proper peace if we don’t get to know each other?”

  “Your book is not stupid,” said Dad with automatic loyalty.

  He shifted to make an inviting space on the couch that somehow I couldn’t help but flop into. He put his arm around my shoulders.

  “Alice, I know you care about humans and Morrors getting along,” he said softly. “And I know you want to see your friends. But I nearly lost you on Mars, and I didn’t even know how close it had been until it was all over. And Mars is, what, fifty million miles away? How far is the Morrors’ planet?”r />
  “I think it’s about . . . forty trillion miles,” I admitted. “But this is different. We’re not in a war. And you and Mum could come. There’s no danger out there except the Vshomu, and we’re good at dealing with them now. Dr. Muldoon’s been helping the Morrors with the terraforming—she’s been flying out there and back for months, and she’s perfectly fine.”

  “You can’t say that the Vshomu are the only danger in space,” said Dad. “We don’t know what’s out there. It’s not so long ago we didn’t even know there were Morrors.”

  It seems like a terribly long time ago to me, since it was before I was born, but I didn’t say so.

  “Well, no,” I admitted. “We don’t know everything, but that’s why it’s exciting.”

  Dad’s jaw tightened. “I can’t stop you from doing things you find exciting forever, but until you’re eighteen—”

  “Eighteen!” I said, horrified. I realized that, even without this trip, I’d somehow been expecting to be back in space before very long. I couldn’t stand the thought of it being five years. “But Carl and Noel are going.”

  “If Carl and Noel jumped off a cliff, would you?” asked Gran.

  “Weeeell,” I said. “There was this time when Carl did jump off a clifflike thing to get across a crevasse. Although Josephine went first, and it was the only way across, so . . .”

  Dad put his face into his hands.

  “My point is, I would jump off a cliff only if I could see it was the most sensible course of action in the circumstances!” I said. “And Dad, you knew about that! It was in the book.”

  “Yes,” said Dad. “Thanks for reminding me of that, and it wasn’t even the worst bit. Alice, after everything you went through, I can’t understand why you would want to go back.”

  I didn’t give up. For days I tried various tactics, such as “Can I go to space if I clean the kitchen every day for a month?” and “Can I go to space if I get an A in geography?” But nothing was good enough. I knew I had to tell the others that it looked as if they’d be going without me.