Barbary

“I meant it as a compliment!” she said.

“Oh,” Heather said. She patted Barbary’s shoulder. “I’m sorry. But I hate it when people give me that, ‘Oh, isn’t she mature?’ stuff. I feel like they expect me to die any minute.”

“I still meant it as a compliment.”

“Okay. I believe you. Come on, Barbary, sit up, you’ve got to get used to ignoring what your balance tells you sometimes. You sort of have to rely on your eyes.”

Barbary raised her head. The dizziness faded.

“I guess,” she said, “it could get to be fun…”

“Yeah,” Heather said. “Shall I do it again?”

“Not quite yet,” Barbary said with her teeth clenched.

“Okay. I’m not actually supposed to, this close to the station. Besides, we’ll be at the construction site in a minute.”

“Where is it?”

“Just there.” Heather pointed straight ahead at a cluster of stars.

“But…”

Sunlight touched one edge of a curve of metal. Barbary gasped. As the observation platform and the space station moved in their orbits around each other, the shadow of the station slipped away, leaving the delicate platform in full sunlight.

“It’s so small,” Barbary said.

“No, it isn’t. It’s huge. Look, you can just see one of the workers.”

“Where?” Barbary expected someone in a space suit to appear and scoop up the filigree sphere of the platform like a basketball.

“There. To the left.”

“I don’t see anything.”

“We’re still a couple of kilometers from it.”

The clarity of space had tripped Barbary up. She saw that she had mistaken something far away but distinct for something close. Now she could not estimate the platform’s size at all. It grew larger and larger. By the time Barbary spotted the worker who floated deep within the spindly struts and braces, the person was the size of a doll instead of the size of a speck. The platform dwarfed the raft.

“Hi, Heather,” said a disembodied voice.

Barbary started, then realized that the voice had come over the radio. A space-suited figure made its way out of the interior of the platform and floated just outside. She looked “up” at them while they looked “up” at her. Barbary felt very weird.

“Hi, Sasha. This is Barbary.”

Sasha raised the reflective visor of her helmet. She moved closer to the raft’s bubble and cupped her gloved hands around her faceplate so Barbary could see her. A yellow headband, bright against her dark skin, restrained her curly black hair.

“Welcome to Atlantis, Barbary.” She had a wonderful, soft accent that Barbary could not place, sort of British, sort of Russian.

“Thanks.”

“Are you coming out?”

“Not this time,” Heather said. “I didn’t bring any suits. I just wanted to show Barbary how the raft works.”

Sasha chuckled. “Yes. I saw your demonstration.”

Heather blushed. “I had to dodge a wrench,” she said.

“Or a foo-fighter?”

Heather grinned. “Sure. Didn’t you see it? I bet it was a spy from the alien ship.”

“When you see it again, tell those little green people to stop in for tea,” Sasha said. “Well — Got to get back to work.” She made a graceful dive to the other side of the raft, where a couple of her co-workers joined her. Heather extended the arms of the raft. The equipment clanged, startling Barbary all over again.

“Thanks, kids,” Sasha said, waving, as she helped tow the equipment over to the platform. “On the way back, don’t hit any of those little green pedestrians.”

Heather turned the raft end-for-end and headed home. Going back they were upside-down, compared to the way they had arrived, but after a moment it no longer felt upside-down to Barbary.

“What’s a foo-fighter?”

“It’s what pilots used to call UFOs — flying saucers — years and years ago, before anybody ever went into space. Some people thought they were alien spaceships coming to contact us, or spy on us, or take over our world, or give us the secrets of the universe. Or something.”

“Does that make the alien ship a foo-fighter?”

After a thoughtful pause, Heather said, “I guess it does. But nobody ever found any hard evidence that the old UFOs were real. This one’s kind of different.”

Heather piloted the raft smoothly into its bay and the airlock began its cycle.

“That was fun,” Barbary said. She still felt dizzy — but the ride had been fun.

“How long does it take to learn to drive one of these things?”

“Anybody can get in one and ride around in it,” Heather said. “But really driving it, with the computer overridden I don’t know. I’ve been doing it since I was a little kid.

“How long does it take other people?”

“Couple months, I guess. Mostly they just let the computer do it. It’s more fun to drive it, though. Next time I’ll give you a lesson.”

“Great.”

The airlock completed its cycle and the raft slid into the station. Heather opened the canopy and vaulted from her seat. Barbary followed, still uncertain in free fall.

“Thanks, Heather, Barbary,” Yukiko said.

“Any time.”

Heather led Barbary from the hub.

“What do you want to see next?” she asked. “The labs are pretty neat, and the library — or we could play on the computer —”

“I ought to go check on Mickey,” Barbary said.

“Oh, I’m sure he’s okay.”