Earth Star

14

When we arrived back at our class dig site dome, everything felt oddly small. We dutifully put our palms on the portal room check-in plate to sign in, and headed for our room with our trail of hover luggage following us. The walls of the corridor seemed to close in around me.

‘Has this place shrunk in the last few weeks?’ I asked.

Fian laughed. ‘I was thinking the same thing. The domes at Zulu base were much larger.’ He opened the door to his half of our room, and looked warily inside. ‘They haven’t put the wall back yet. Zan!’

Even with our two rooms opened up into one, this was nothing like the size of our accommodation back at the base. It had no private bathroom, no food dispenser, and there’d be no cheese fluffle for breakfast now. I allowed myself a single sigh of regret for past luxuries.

‘Shall we go and say hello before unpacking?’ I asked. ‘It’s 20:00 hours here, so everyone will be in the dining hall.’

Fian nodded.

I nervously checked my reflection in the mirror, which was, of course, a mere fraction of the size of the one back in our joint officer accommodation.

‘It’s all right,’ said Fian, watching me with amusement. ‘You haven’t got the word “Major” tattooed on your forehead. Do you have any advice for me?’

I looked at him in bewilderment. ‘What about?’

‘Well, you’ve got previous experience of this sort of thing. A few months ago, you were a civilian and pretending you had a Military background. Now you’ve just swapped around to being Military and pretending you’re a civilian.’

I giggled, and the strangeness of being back suddenly vanished. Major Jarra Tell Morrath had just been a dream. I was back in the real world, the sensible world, where I was just a student on the University Asgard Pre-history Foundation course. ‘Let’s go and find everyone.’

We headed to the hall and found the old familiar evening scene. A few of the class were still sitting at tables and eating. Others were lounging on cushions, backs leaning against the grey flexiplas walls, chattering away while half listening to Dalmora singing and playing her reproduction of a twentieth-century guitar. As we entered the room, there were yells from all around, and everyone leapt up to greet us.

‘You’ve been away ages,’ complained Krath. ‘Where have you been? You couldn’t have left Earth so …’

‘No, Krath!’ said Amalie. ‘Remember what Playdon told you. No being nosy!’

She turned to me and Fian. ‘Krath kept coming up with more and more incredible theories about where you’d gone and why, until Playdon gave him a lecture on his fellow students’ right to privacy.’

I wondered if any of Krath’s theories had included aliens, and bit my lip to stop myself laughing. Fian and I had been prepared for questions from the class of course, and had agreed what to say. Fian said it.

‘I don’t really want to explain a lot of personal details about a family problem.’

Krath sighed but seemed to accept that, at least for now. ‘It hasn’t been the same without Jarra knowing absolutely everything about everything. We’ve had to answer all the difficult questions ourselves!’

At the start of the year, I’d been busily parading my knowledge at everyone, desperate to show my hated exo classmates that I was better at everything than they were. I suddenly realized that desperation had been more about proving things to myself than to them, and I’d felt it all my life, but I didn’t any longer. I’d never been good at understanding the emotional stuff inside my own head, so I wasn’t sure what had changed or why, but it felt a huge relief to be free of that pressure.

‘I knew a lot about New York and excavation work because of all the trips with my school history club,’ I said. ‘You’ll know more about Eden than I do, because you’ve been working on the ruins for the last few weeks. My history club never came here because it’s too dangerous for school parties and amateurs, and I only had a couple of lessons about Eden at school as part of the preparations for when we went to visit Ark.’

‘If you’ve already been to Ark, Jarra, you’ll be able to tell us what it’s like there,’ said Dalmora. ‘Will Fian be coming to Ark with us as well?’

‘Of course I’m going to Ark,’ said Fian, ‘but you aren’t. You’ll all be going home for a few days.’

Lecturer Playdon appeared and the class made way to let him through. ‘I was expecting Lolia and Lolmack to evacuate to Ark to be with their daughter, but I was surprised to find the whole of team 1 is coming as well.’ He shook his head ruefully. ‘I’ve been unable to talk them out of it.’

I was confused. ‘But why?’

‘I don’t want to go home,’ said Krath. ‘My dumb dad did a programme for his nardle conspiracy vid channel, Truth Against Oppression, claiming the Solar 5 crash was a fake to generate publicity for the Military.’

He waved his arms in frustration. ‘How could he do that? I was there myself! Well, nearly there. I was there soon afterwards anyway, and I saw the crash site and know it was genuine. I told him how you nearly got killed, Jarra, and he actually said we could do with a few less apes to feed. Well, when he said that, I told him he could …’

He glanced at Playdon and decided not to risk the next few words. I think we could all fill them in for ourselves.

‘So, anyway,’ he continued more calmly. ‘I’m going to Ark instead.’

I was strongly in favour of Krath thinking for himself and standing up to his idiot father, but I wished he wasn’t doing it by going to Ark. I thought of that sphere in geostationary orbit, somewhere uncomfortably close to being right over our heads, and turned to look at Amalie and Dalmora.

‘But what about you two? You surely aren’t serious about staying? The portal system will shut down, the way it always does during a solar storm.’

They exchanged glances, and Dalmora spoke up for the pair of them.

‘I know you’re remembering what happened back on the New York Dig Site, Jarra. When we heard there was going to be a big solar storm, with the portals out for at least three days, we panicked and couldn’t get off world fast enough. It had just snowed as well, and other worlds don’t have solar storms, or snow, so it was frightening for us.’

I nodded. ‘Planet First carefully select new colony worlds to avoid the frequent solar storms we have on Earth. It was perfectly natural for you to be worried. I just don’t understand why you’d want to stay this time.’

‘It’s a historic event.’ Dalmora’s eyes shone in the way they always did when she was getting romantic and emotional. ‘The population of Earth evacuating to the ancient caverns of Ark, and I have the chance to be there! Totally amaz! My father’s sent me a lot of vid equipment, I’ve got permission to take it to Ark, and Amalie and Krath are going to help me make some vid sequences.’

I spotted the smirk on Krath’s face. It all made sense now. Dalmora wanted to make a romantic vid of the Ark evacuation. Amalie admired Dalmora and wanted to help her. Krath wanted to be part of it because he was chasing Amalie.

I felt Krath was wasting his time there. Amalie was from a frontier world in Epsilon sector, which had a lot more male than female colonists, so girls there could take their pick of men. Amalie would surely be aiming higher than the nardle Krath, even if he’d improved enough to realize his father had less sense than a plate of cheese fluffle.

I frowned. ‘How does your father feel about this, Dalmora?’

‘He warned me there could be an element of risk, but I told him I knew that. He’s quite proud that I’m staying.’

Chaos take it, Ventrak Rostha, the famous vid maker, was just as romantic as his daughter. I should have guessed that. When people watched his history vids, they felt caught up in the past, really caring about it, and all that emotion had to come from somewhere.

I pulled a face at Fian. My return to being an ordinary pre-history student had lasted only minutes. I was Major Jarra Tell Morrath again now, thinking about aliens and feeling horribly guilty. The Threat team thought the next solar storm was the key moment. If the sphere was going to attack, it would do it then.

Lots of people I knew would be taking refuge in Ark. Fian would be there because he was too stubborn to leave me. Lecturer Playdon was making a fully informed decision to be there as well. My friends from Next Step were Handicapped and couldn’t leave Earth, so Ark was their safest option.

Lolia and Lolmack didn’t know what was really going on, but I was sure they’d choose to stay with their daughter anyway. They’d already been through a nightmare to keep their baby and aliens wouldn’t stop them. Krath, Amalie, and Dalmora were different. If they knew the truth, they’d probably go off world, but I couldn’t warn them.

I suddenly realized I’d been just as blindly romantic as Dalmora. I got emotional about all the Military traditions and medals, but I hadn’t realized the hardest thing about Military life until this moment. I couldn’t tell Krath, Amalie, and Dalmora classified information, but if my friends went to Ark and got hurt or worse as a result, then …

I sighed and said as much as I could. ‘It’s a historic occasion, but you’d be safer going off world. I keep trying to talk Fian into visiting Hercules for a few days.’

‘I’m staying with you.’ Fian waved his ring finger pointedly at me and there were several excited squeals from the class.

‘Rings!’

I was forced to display my own ring, and the conversation moved on to the subject of flowgold. Petra and Joth had signed up for their Twoing contract while Fian and I were away, and Petra insisted on showing off their rings as well. It wasn’t a good moment for someone who suffered from ring phobia. My poor, scared, left little finger wanted to run away and hide in a dark corner.

‘Of course,’ Fian said smugly, ‘we chose not to have end-date markings on ours.’

‘Zan!’ cried Dalmora. ‘You’re planning to wear the same rings when you get married. How totally romantic!’

‘We do that in Epsilon sector,’ said Amalie. ‘We get married very quickly on the frontier, so it’s hardly worth bothering with different rings.’

Krath grinned at her. ‘We could elope to Epsilon.’

She gave him a look of unenthusiastic assessment. ‘I’ve turned down twenty-three other offers, Krath, and all from men with better legs than you!’

Everyone laughed at Krath’s outraged face, even Playdon. Everyone except for one person. Petra was looking at me with an expression of pure loathing on her face, and I knew she was already planning the names she’d call me as soon as she caught me on my own.

I turned away from her, pretending to listen to Amalie explaining how the rest of team 1 had been helping Playdon train the other teams while Fian and I were away, but my mind was thinking about Petra and her ape haters. If they started their insult campaign again, I’d have to tell Fian about what was going on. I could explain to him that I wanted to fight my own battles, and he’d let me do it, but he’d also ask the obvious questions about why I hadn’t told him about this before and why I hadn’t reported Petra to Playdon.

I’d been avoiding thinking properly about that, but now I finally forced myself to do it. If I complained to Playdon, it needn’t just be my word against Petra’s, because it would be trivially easy to set my lookup to record one of our conversations. I hadn’t done that, not just because I always hated asking for help and wanted to fight my own battles, but because I hadn’t wanted Fian or Playdon to hear the things Petra and her friends were saying about me. I’d spent my life watching off-world vids where people said those things about the Handicapped, and I’d had an unconscious, nagging fear that …

Oh, this was ridiculous. Petra’s insults would have stopped on the first day if I’d complained to Playdon, or even if she’d believed I might. I’d had some teachers at school who’d taken the easy way out and ignored trouble, but Playdon wasn’t like that. He’d dealt with problems between class members several times already, always decisively and with perfect fairness to both sides. He took any conflict in the class extremely seriously because we weren’t just living together in one small dome, we also had to work together in dangerous places.

Petra had known she could do whatever she liked and get away with it, because she’d noticed my weak spot; the fact that I didn’t want Fian to hear her insults. She’d been happily taking advantage of that, and I’d been stupid enough to let her do it, but that stopped right now. Fian hadn’t changed his mind about me because of what Major Maven had said; he’d just been angry, and he’d react in exactly the same way to Petra.

I turned around and smiled at Petra. Her initial glare changed to a puzzled look and then to anxiety. This time she was the one who turned away.