Starsight

“Alanik of the UrDail,” he said, pronouncing her name as “ah-la-NEEK.” “Her flight logs say she was on her way to visit the Superiority’s largest deep-space commerce station. She never arrived though. She seems to have somehow found out where we were, and so came here instead. Oh! Spensa, she’s cytonic, like you! She is the only one of her people who can use the powers.”

I settled back in my seat, feeling numb.

M-Bot didn’t notice how much all this was disturbing me, as he just kept right on talking. “Yup, her log is encrypted, but I cracked that. She hoped to find answers about her powers among the Superiority, though her people don’t think highly of them. Something about the way they rule.”

I can feel where she was planning to go . . . , I thought again. The coordinates were burned into my brain, but they were fading like a dying engine. Sputtering and losing power. I could jump. I could go there. But only if I acted quickly.

I sat frozen in a moment of indecision. Then I stood up in my cockpit and called to Jorgen, who had climbed from his ship to observe the medical staff.

“Jorgen!” I shouted. “I need you to come here right now and talk me out of doing something incredibly stupid.”

He turned toward me, then—with a look of sudden panic—ran over and hauled himself onto M-Bot’s wing. I didn’t know if I should be thankful he responded so quickly, or be embarrassed by how seriously he seemed to take the threat of me doing something stupid.

“What is it, Spin?” he asked, stepping up to my cockpit.

“That alien put coordinates in my brain,” I said, explaining in a rush. “She was going to go try out for the Superiority’s space force, since they’re recruiting, and she wanted to see if they knew anything about cytonics, but I just realized this is the perfect chance to put Rodge’s plan into action. If I went and imitated her, it wouldn’t seem nearly as odd as if we tried to imitate a Krell. M-Bot got her entire log and planetary database, and I can take her place. You need to stop me because, so help me, I’m just about ready to do it because the coordinates are evaporating from my brain.”

He blinked at the flood of words coming from my mouth.

“How long do we have?” he asked.

“I can’t be sure,” I said, anxious as I felt the impression fading. “Not long. Five minutes? Maybe? Yes, and my gut is telling me to go right now. Which is why I need you to talk me out of it!”

“All right, let’s consider.”

“We don’t have time to consider!”

“You said we have five minutes. Five minutes’ consideration is better than none.” Then—like the insufferable rock of protocol he was—he carefully set his helmet on the wing. “Rodge’s plan was for you to imitate a Krell pilot and sneak aboard their station here near Detritus.”

“Yes, but Cobb doesn’t think we could ever imitate one of the Krell.”

“Then what makes you think you could imitate this alien?”

“She is from a backwater world,” M-Bot piped up. “Which is not an official part of the Superiority. Nobody in the Superiority will have met any members of her species, so anything Spensa does will not feel out of character.”

“She might still seem human to them,” Jorgen said.

“Which will be fine,” I said. “Because Alanik—that’s her name—came from a world that was allies with the humans not long ago.”

“Indeed,” M-Bot said, “they had a great deal of cultural exchange.”

“You don’t speak the Superiority languages,” Jorgen said.

I hesitated, then fished in my pocket for the translator pin I’d taken from the alien. The medics had her hooked up to a breathing device and were extracting her—carefully—from her ship. I felt a spike of concern, even though I’d only just met her.

I could still feel her touch in my mind. And her plea. A fading arrow in my brain, pointing into the stars.

I held up the pin for Jorgen to see. “I can use this pin to translate for me, I think.”

“Confirmed,” M-Bot said. “I can set it to output in English so you’ll understand what they’re saying.”

“All right, that’s a start,” Jorgen said. “Now, can you imitate that pilot’s ship with your holograms?”

“I’d need to do a scan of it.”

“Well, I guess we don’t have time—”

“Done,” M-Bot said. Then he shifted to an imitation of the alien’s downed ship. It was a far better fit than the Krell ship had been; M-Bot and Alanik’s ship were much closer in shape and size.

Jorgen nodded.

“You’re thinking I should go,” I said to him. “Scud, you actually think I should go through with this!”

“I think we should consider all of our options before making a decision. How much time left?”

“Not much! A minute or two! It’s not like I have a clock in my brain. The sensation is just fading. Quickly.”

“M-Bot, can you successfully make her look like that alien?”

“If she has the bracelet on,” he said.

I scrambled to pull it off his dash and slap it on.

“Handily,” M-Bot said, “our medics just finished a scan of her for vitals. And . . . There.”