Barbary

“Oh, well. There are some rations in the survival ball. But they’re pretty boring. Probably we should wait till we’re really hungry before we use them.”

Barbary thought she would get sick if she tried to eat. She felt empty and scared.

Heather bent over the scanner once more. “Hey! Look at this!”

Barbary peered into the scanner.

“I just see stars.”

“Keep looking.” Heather touched the blink control.

In the center of the picture, one of the bright points jumped.

“Is that Mick?”

“Has to be,” Heather said.

Barbary flashed the control again; again the image jumped.

“Now zoom in.”

Barbary did so. The raft appeared. The airless distance of space transmitted details sharp and clear, but all she could find was the silver and plastic shape of the raft, and the shadows of Thea’s contraption inside. Nothing moved.

“There it is!” she said. She magnified it even more. “I don’t see Mick, though.”

“Let me look.”

Heather teased the scanner controls.

“Can you see him?”

“Umm… no,” Heather said. “I can’t. But there’s a lot of stuff in there. He’d practically have to sit on top of it for me to find him.”

“He’s probably sitting under it,” Barbary said. “Yowling. Or growling like a wildcat.”

Heather laughed. “I bet you’re right.”

Barbary felt both overjoyed and, terrified. Heather had found Mick — but Barbary would not be able to stop worrying till she saw for herself that he was all right.

“Where is he?” she asked. “Right in front of us?” “No, he’s kind of over to the side.” Heather pointed. “Thea must have planned to circle all the way around the alien ship, then follow it as far as she could. I’m going to have to turn us pretty hard. Are you strapped in?”

“Uh-huh. How long will it take to get there?”

“A couple of hours, maybe. I’m just guessing, though.”

“How do we get him when we get there?”

“We can’t. There’s no safe way to open a raft in space unless everybody inside is in a space suit or a survival ball, and Mick couldn’t get in one by himself. So we’ll stick out our claws and grab his raft and turn us both around, and go back.”

“Oh,” Barbary said. She had been hoping there was some way of getting from one raft to another. But at least she would be able to look inside and see Mick.

“Hang on.”

The raft plunged into free fall as Heather cut the acceleration. Barbary flung her hands out before her, for it really did feel as if she were falling. The steering rocket flared on, the stars swung, and the rocket on the other side counteracted their spin. Now, Barbary knew, they were traveling in the same direction as before, but Heather had turned the raft a few degrees to the left.

Heather applied some thrust to the raft. The new acceleration would add to their previous velocity, changing their direction and speed so they would be heading more nearly toward Mickey.

Getting to the right spot in space took a lot of care and calculation. It would have been much easier if they could have flown the raft like an airplane, or like a spaceship in a movie, banking into turns and swooshing from place to place. But in a vacuum, without any air, ships could not bank into turns or swoosh.

“I don’t want to kill any more velocity than I have to,” Heather said. “It takes too much fuel. So I’ll probably have to correct our course a bunch of times. But for now we’re sort of heading for where Mick ought to be when we get there.”

Barbary tried to figure out how that worked. It sounded suspiciously like a math word problem, which she had never been very good at. She had never seen the point of figuring out when two trains would pass each other when the only trains left were tourist attractions that she had never ridden anyway. But being able to figure out in her head how to meet another raft in space would be useful. She wished she had paid more attention to word problems in school, and she wondered if it was too late for her to learn how to do what Heather could do.

“Hey, Heather — Heather!”

Heather jerked up from the scanner, blinking and confused.

“Huh? What? I’m awake!” She stopped, abashed.

“No, you’re not,” Barbary said. “You fell asleep sitting up! Heather... look... maybe…” With a shock, she realized how much danger she and Mick had put Heather in,

“Oh, no!” Heather said. “Don’t even say it! We’re not turning around and going back like we just came out here to make trouble and then lost our nerve!”

Barbary hunched in her seat. She felt miserable. “I’m afraid you’re going to get sick,” she said.

“I’m okay! I’m just a little tired!” Heather snapped. Her expression softened. “Look,” she said. “I don’t have to do anything for a while. I could take a nap, and you could keep an eye on the scanner. I’ll set it so the image of Mick’s raft will get closer and closer to the center till we intercept it. If it goes past the center of the focus, wake me up to correct the course.” She showed Barbary the faint band of color outlining a square in the center of the scanner. The other raft lay at the left edge of the screen; it moved, almost imperceptibly, centerward.