A Million Suns

35 ELDER

THE NEXT MORNING, I WAKE TO A COM.

“Are you up yet?” Amy’s voice is excited.

“I am now,” I say, stretching. “Is anything wrong?”

“Nope,” she says. “Come down to the cryo level.”

“Amy, is this about Orion and his frexing clues?” I ask, pulling on pants. “I don’t have time for that. I’ve got to focus on the engine and keeping the ship going — look at what happened yesterday while I was on the cryo level.”

“Don’t get sassy. Just come down here.”

“Sassy?”

“Come on!” she says. “You’re going to want to see this!”

“Oh, really?”

“Elder, remember the video last night?”

“The vid that got cut off? Amy, either Orion was loons or someone else messed with that video. Either way—”

She cuts me off. “That’s beside the point. There was still enough information for me to figure it out. Remember when Orion said Eldest started to scare him? He said it happened after he got off the ship.”

“Off the ship?” I say, so surprised that I pause on my way to the grav tube.

“Whatever he found, he saw it outside the ship.”

“Which means…” I say, not daring to finish my thought aloud. I start running to the tube entrance.

“That the next locked door must contain spacesuits.”

Amy’s pacing in front of the elevator by the time I reach the cryo level. “What took you so long?” she demands. Before I have a chance to answer her, she grabs my arm and starts dragging me to the hall in the back.

“I read the whole thing last night,” she says, tossing me a slender book.

“What’s this?” I turn it over, reading the title.

“Shakespeare’s sonnets. Keep up. Anyway, I read the whole thing — actually, I had to read it twice — but I finally noticed something very interesting.”

“Interesting how?”

“Turn to page 87.”

Balancing the book in one hand, I carefully turn the pages. Amy taps her foot impatiently, but I don’t want to risk damaging this treasure from Sol-Earth. I turn over page 85. And—

“Where’s page 87?” I ask. I flip page 85 back and forth — but the book jumps straight to page 89.

“Exactly,” Amy says, a huge grin spreading across her face. “It’s so neatly cut out of the book that you’d never notice that page was gone unless you were looking for it.”

“This is the clue?” I ask, handing the book back to Amy.

“I think the clue was on page 87,” Amy says. “Someone altered whatever clue Orion left in the armory, trying to make us give up and quit looking. Whoever did that also cut the page from the book.”

“How did you find it?” I ask. I’m trying to remember what any of Orion’s videos said that indicated Shakespearean poetry.

“It was in the fiction room,” Amy says. “Anyway,” she continues when I open my mouth to question her further, “the point is — that missing page. It had a sonnet on it.” She turns back to page 85 and shows me the book. “This page has Sonnet 29 on it.” She turns to page 89. “This page has Sonnet 31. Which means that page 87 must have had Sonnet 30 on it.”

Amy tosses the book to the ground and my eyes go wide to see a treasure of Sol-Earth treated so casually. Amy doesn’t notice, though, as she spins around to the largest door at the end of the hall. “Codes have to be at least four digits long,” she says. “So try 0030.” She jerks her head to the door on the right of the hatch.

“This is never going to work,” I say.

In answer, Amy punches 0030 in the keypad by her door.

“Told you,” I say when nothing happens after I punch the code in my door too.

Amy picks the book back up and examines it again. “But… I was so sure.”

I look over her shoulder. “I don’t know why you think those sonnets are numbered. They have letters beside them, not numbers.”

“It’s Roman numerals,” Amy says dismissively. Then she lowers the book, meeting my eyes. “It’s Roman numerals. We shouldn’t use 0030 as the code — we should use XXX. And a zero in front, since there needs to be four digits.”

She rushes to the keypad and tries 0XXX.

Her door doesn’t unlock. “Why did the Romans use letters instead of numbers?” I ask.

She ignores my question. “Try that lock,” she says, moving closer to the door I’m at.

“You’re getting your hopes up for nothing. Orion was loons. This whole clue chase is loons.”

“Just. Try. It.”

I roll my eyes and tap out 0XXX on the keypad.

Beep! Click.

“Frex,” I say in awed surprise.