Apollo's Outcasts

"I'll stay," Jan said.

For a second, I thought I hadn't heard her correctly. She had spoken so quietly, it was hard to hear her voice. Dad's eyes went wide as he turned to her.

"You can't..." he began.

"Yes, I can...and I have to." Jan looked straight at him. "If Jamey remains here, he'll be helpless...and so will you. You'd never abandon him, which means that he'd only slow you down."

"Then cut me loose," I said. "I can make it on my own."

"No, you can't." Jan nodded toward my mobil. "C'mon...how far do you think you'll get before someone picks you up? If they find you, then they can force Dad to turn himself in. And if that happens, this will all be for nothing."

My face felt as if it was burning. That was my sister: pragmatic even when it hurt. And boy, did it hurt. Seldom before had she, or anyone else in my family, made an issue of my having LBDS. They'd always worked around it, making allowances for the fact that I couldn't go anywhere without my mobil or at least a pair of crutches. This time, though, things were different. I'd be a ball and chain for my father as he was running for his life. And on my own, I wouldn't last a day.

Jan must have seen the pain in my eyes, because she knelt beside me. "Look, kiddo," she said, "you mean well, but I've got two good legs and you don't." A tight smile. "Besides, I've got a lot of friends. Time for me to call in a few markers."

"Jan, you don't have to..." my father began.

"I'm sorry, but we don't have time for this." The man at the terminal door was pointedly looking at his watch. "We should've started getting these kids ready five minutes ago." He held the door open a little wider. "Anyone who's getting on the shuttle, come now...or stay behind."

Logan turned to his folks; his father solemnly shook his hand and his mother gave him a quick hug, and neither of them dared to look at Jan or me. The Hernandez children were already going in; Eduardo was still mopping tears from his face--what a crybaby! I couldn't help thinking--while Nina remained almost eerily calm; she didn't even look back to wave farewell to their parents, but instead took her big brother's hand and led him into the terminal. Dad made up his mind; he gripped the mobil's rear handles and pushed it the rest of the way to the door, then bent down to detach my crutches from its side.

"You'll need to leave your mobil here," he said, unfolding the crutches and handing them to me. "Jan and I will take it with us and..."

"Sure, okay." Something that felt like a stone was stuck in my throat. I twisted around in my seat to look back at Jan. "I'm sorry, I..."

"Don't worry about it." She stepped forward to take my overnight bag from my hands, then helped me to my feet while Dad pushed the crutches under my arms. "We'll get in touch as soon as we can," she went on as she handed my bag to Melissa, who impatiently waited for me just inside the door. "Until then..."

"Break a leg," I muttered; an old joke between us. "Good luck."

"You, too." A quick kiss on the cheek, then she vanished.

It seemed as if my father wanted to say something else, but there was no time for long goodbyes. So he took my hand and grasped it as just as Logan's father had done with him, and I realized that no words were necessary, really. A final pat on the shoulder, and then he was gone.

He hadn't remembered that today was my sixteenth birthday. No one did, except Jan. There was a good reason why, but it stung nonetheless.



The last person through the door was Hannah Johnson. The two men who'd brought her to Wallops Island accompanied her all the way to the door; they seemed reluctant to leave her, but neither were there any overt displays of affection. They simply wished her good luck and she quietly thanked them, and then they both turned and headed back to their car.

Melissa was still glaring at Hannah as the door closed behind us. "Whoever you are," she hissed, "I hope you're worth it."

For once, MeeMee and I were in full agreement. "My sister gave up her seat for you," I added. "I hope you remember that."

Although she'd pulled her ball cap down low, it wasn't hard to tell that Hannah's face was red. The man who'd met us at the door saved her from making any sort of response. "All right, then," he said, "we're going to have to hurry now. Ms. Barlowe, Ms. Hernandez, Ms...um..."

"Johnson," she whispered.

"Right...Johnson." He pointed to a young woman standing a little further down the corridor we found ourselves in. "Please follow Ms. Cates. She'll take you to get you ready. Boys, you're coming with me."

Logan took my bag from Melissa, then accompanied me down the corridor, letting the others lead the way. The girls disappeared through a door marked PASSENGER PREP-F; a little farther down the hall was PASSENGER PREP-M, which is where Logan, Eduardo, and I went.

Our escort murmured something into his prong as he led us into the room, then he left us alone, shutting the door behind him. We'd barely had time to take in the hospital-style furnishings--gurneys, medicine cabinets, a counter with a computer terminal, some uncomfortable-looking chairs--when the door opened again and three doctors wearing lab smocks, surgical masks, and thin plastic gloves walked in.

For the next twenty minutes, I underwent the fastest physical I'd ever endured. I'll spare you the details except to say that it was painful and humiliating. The doctors were considerate enough to pull curtains around the gurneys the other guys and I sat on. This didn't give us very much privacy, since I could hear what was happening elsewhere in the room, but at least I didn't have to see it. And while Logan and I were used to having people seeing us without our clothes--joining a high school swim team isn't something you should do if you have body shyness--it was pretty obvious that Eduardo didn't like taking his clothes off even for a medical exam. He put up a stink that didn't stop until his doctor threatened to tell his little sister what a coward he was.

What is it with that kid? I thought. Is he disturbed or something?

The physician who examined me tried to be gentle, but he was in a hurry; every couple of minutes he'd glance at his watch, and then move just a little faster. One of the first things he did was to hand me a suppository, and once he was through giving me the jelly-finger treatment he asked me to insert it myself. The reason for this soon became clear; he'd barely finished taking a blood sample when my stomach began to cramp, and without a word the doctor handed my crutches back to me and hastily ushered me to a toilet where I was able to empty my guts. Dad hadn't given us a chance to eat breakfast before we left the house; now I knew why.

I had so many shots that my arms ached. But when the doctor opened my medicine box, he asked only a couple of perfunctory questions about the prescriptions and supplements I was taking before he closed it again and put it back in my bag. Apparently he already had my medical data in his pad; he didn't appear at all surprised to be dealing with a teenage kid who had LBDS.

It was obvious that he'd been expecting me. Dad must have sent him this info in advance. If that were true, though, then that meant my father must have anticipated that he might have to send his kids to the Moon long before he actually had to do so.

And if that was the case...did this mean he'd also expected President Wilford to be assassinated and Vice President Shapar to take his place?



I had no answer for that. But the very question itself made me nervous.

When the doctor was through, he left me alone for a few moments. I no longer heard Logan or Eduardo from the other side of the curtains, so I figured that they must have finished their own physicals. The doctor reappeared a minute later with an old-fashioned wheelchair and plastic-wrapped bundle containing a blue jumpsuit and a pair of cloth shoes. I'd never worn a single-piece outfit like this before; it fit snug but not too tight and had cargo pockets on its arms, chest, and thighs, with the ISC logo above the left chest pocket. The shoes were little more than athletic socks with plastic Velcro soles. He helped me into the jumpsuit but let me put on the shoes myself, then picked me up from the bed and carefully loaded me into the wheelchair. I'd been riding mobils for as long as I could remember, so an unpowered wheelchair was primitive beyond comparison.

I started to reach for my crutches, but the doctor placed my bag in my lap instead. "You won't need them," he said. "Not where you're going." And then he pushed aside the curtains and wheeled me out of the prep room.

The others were waiting for me in the corridor, each of them wearing identical jumpsuits and carrying their own bags. Hannah Johnson made her jumpsuit look good, and the Washington Nationals cap was a nice touch; I had to admit that, as much I was inclined to dislike her, she was easy on the eyes. On the other hand, Nina's outfit was a size too large, and she'd had to roll up the legs and sleeves for her to wear it at all. The doctor who'd examined me turned over to Melissa the job of pushing my wheelchair; he and the other doctors said goodbye and good luck, then disappeared through another door, once again leaving us in the care of the guy who'd met us at the door.

He took a quick head-count to make sure no one was missing, then without a word he turned to lead us to a security door at the end of corridor. His keycard opened it for us; an older man was standing on the other side of the door. One look at us, then he nodded and led us down another corridor to an elevator. It opened and we entered; the older man pushed the lowest button on the panel, and down we went.

As the elevator descended, Logan turned to me. "Was it fun for you, too?"

"Loads. Can't wait to do it again."

Melissa snickered and even Hannah managed a fleeting smile, but Nina's face remained without expression. Then Eduardo spoke up for the first time.

"I didn't have fun," he said. "It hurt."

At first, I thought he was being ironic. That, or just a bit dense. "Well, yeah..."

"I don't want to do that again," he went on, as earnestly as if we were discussing an important issue, then he looked at his little sister. "Will we have to do that again, Nina?"

"No, Eddie, we won't." Nina took his hand. "I promise."

He beamed at her. "Good. I like that."

Logan and I glanced at each other; neither of us said anything, but his left eyebrow raised a fraction of an inch. Eduardo Hernandez was intellectually disabled. He didn't show the physical signs of Down Syndrome, but it was clear to us that he had the mind of a child even younger than his sister. I was immediately ashamed of the unkind thoughts I'd had about him earlier.

The elevator stopped and we got out in what appeared to be a subway station. A glass-walled tram stood at the opening of a tunnel. The older man held up an ID to a uniformed guard standing within a nearby kiosk. The guard nodded and pushed a button on a control panel, and the tram's rear door slid open. The young guy who'd met us outside stepped back into the elevator without so much as a farewell; his friend ushered us into the tram, and once the others were seated on padded benches and my wheelchair was locked down, the door quietly shut and the tram began to move into the tunnel.

The trip took only a couple of minutes: a fast ride on an electromagnetic rail, with scarcely a bump along the way. When the tram reached the other end of the tunnel, we got out in what appeared to be an identical station. Another guard stood within another kiosk; she apparently knew that we were coming because she simply waved us through. We squeezed into an elevator a little smaller than the one at Operations and Checkout and let it take us up.

I don't know what I was expecting to see when its doors opened, but it wasn't anything I would've imagined. Before us lay an enormous hangar, and within it was the shuttle. Resting upon its launch sled, which in turn was mounted atop a long concrete and steel monorail, the spacecraft dominated the room. More than two hundred feet long, its down-swept wings and twin vertical stabilizers were positioned just past the three black exhaust bells of its scramjet engines. The twin doors of its cargo bay lay open beneath an n-shaped service tower, a stepladder leading from its upper platform down into the spacecraft.

I'd seen countless pictures of shuttles, of course, but I never thought I'd ever get so close to one. Melissa was pushing my wheelchair; I heard her gasp. Logan whistled beneath his breath. I didn't really notice how the others reacted, except that Eduardo--Eddie--yelped in childish delight, as if the shuttle was a toy some gargantuan kid had left for him.

"Wow!" he exclaimed, terror abruptly replaced by fascination. "What's that?"

"That's the magcat." I replied.

He gave me a quizzical look. "I don't see a cat."

I tried not to laugh, even though some of the ground crew did. "No, no...magcat is short for magnetic catapult." I pointed toward the open end of hangar, through which we could see the rail extending out toward the Sea Wall two and a half miles away, its beacons flashing against the reddish-orange first light of dawn coming over the ocean. "See, that's the launch rail. It's magnetized, and that thing carrying the shuttle," I gestured to the sled, "will shoot straight down it until it reaches the end. The sled will stop when it gets there, and that's when the shuttle will fire its main engines and lift off. Understand?"



"Uh-huh," Eddie mumbled, even though it was clear that he didn't. I glanced at Logan, and again he raised an eyebrow. Both of us knew this stuff cold, of course, but how do you explain superconductivity, opposing magnetic polarities, and 2-g acceleration to someone like Eddie? At least I'd managed to calm him down a little.

Men and women in overalls were waiting for us at the bottom of the service tower. One of them waved us over, and our guide quickly led us to the ladder. As we got closer to the shuttle, I spotted its name, stenciled to the forward fuselage just below the starboard cockpit windows: Spirit of New York. Someone came down the ladder from the platform and walked toward us. Almost as wide as he was tall, the muscles of his arms and legs bulging against his blue jumpsuit, he had red hair in a buzz cut and a face like a friendly bulldog.

"I'll take it from here, Gus," he said to our escort. The older man nodded and walked away as the man in the jumpsuit turned to us. "Hi, there," he said, forcing a grin that did little to hide his obvious discomfort. "I'm Captain Gordon Rogers, the LTV pilot."

"What's a LTV?" Eddie asked. The technicians laughed again, this time a bit more nastily, and he looked at his sister. "Did I say a dirty word?"

"No, you didn't." Nina took his hand again. "You need to be quiet now, Eddie, and listen."

Capt. Rogers didn't seem to mind. "LTV means Lunar Transfer Vehicle...it's what you'll be riding the rest of the way to the Moon after the Spirit drops us off in low orbit." He pointed to the service tower. "We'll use that to climb aboard. The shuttle pilots are already in the shuttle and set to go as soon as we're ready."

He paused to look us over, then his gaze settled on me. "You're Jamey Barlowe, right?"

I nodded and he smiled. "Okay, then...we're bringing you aboard first." Turning toward the ground crew, he stuck two fingers in his mouth and gave a shrill whistle. "Osama, Sally...give Mr. Barlowe a hand here, willya?"



If I thought I was going to leave Earth in any sort of dignified fashion, I was wrong. My wheelchair was left behind, of course--too much unnecessary mass that I wouldn't need in zero-g--but I could have climbed the service tower ladder by myself if I had my crutches. Instead, I had to put up with Osama lifting me out of the wheelchair and carrying me up the steps. He was big enough to make me feel like a baby in his arms. Sally followed us with my bag. She was nearly as big as her coworker, and when we reached the top platform, she squeezed past us to clamber down another ladder into the shuttle's cargo bay.

Nestled within the bay was the LTV, a cylindrical vehicle with narrow windows at the bow and along its sides and the nozzle of a liquid-fuel engine at the stern. Sally dropped my bag through the top-side dorsal hatch to another person waiting inside the vehicle, then reached up to carefully take me from Osama and then pass me down to the guy below her.

They were gentle about the whole business, but I'd rarely been more humiliated in my whole life. It didn't help that, when I happened to glance back at the others, I saw Hannah regarding me with pity. I always hated being thought of as the poor lil cripple boy, so I stared at her until she looked away.

The LTV interior wasn't much larger than my family van, with a small cockpit up front and six acceleration couches arranged on either side of a narrow passenger compartment. Correction: five seats and, in the very back beside a closed hatch, what appeared to be a refrigerator with a Dutch door open at the top half. The technician tucked my bag in a ceiling net above the oval portholes before turning to the fridge; he opened its door, revealing what appeared to be an acceleration couch surrounded by deflated plastic bags.

"Thanks, Dave. I'll take it from here." Capt. Rogers had come down the ladder behind us, and Dave grunted as he eased past him. The LTV pilot looked almost too big for his own craft; as he came toward me, he had to turn sideways to keep his broad shoulders from colliding with the forward seats.



"Jamey?" He loomed over me, making me feel like a little kid in the presence of a pro wrestler. "Pleased to meet you," he said, offering his hand. "You can call me Gordie."

"Hi...um, Gordie." Anticipating a big, manly handshake that would crush my fingers, I reluctantly took his hand, but his grasp was surprisingly gentle.

"Good deal. Now, then--" he patted the top of the fridge "--this is what we're going to use to get you safely into space. It's called a Linear Acceleration Restraint, but most people who've used it call it the cocoon. It's designed for people like yourself who were born on the Moon."

"Loonies, you mean."

"Uh-huh...so you've heard that before. Then you must be familiar with this, too."

I shook my head. I'd never seen a cocoon before; this was new to me. Gordie nodded and went on. "Anyway, every now and then loonies...um, people like you...come to Earth for a visit, and when they go back we use this particular LTV to get them there. In this thing, you won't be hurt when we take off. Understand?"

I nodded, and he reached down to carefully pick me up from where Dave had left me. "The seat and the cells all around you will fill up with a sort of gel," he explained as he placed me into the cocoon. "They'll cushion your body when we hit the high-g's during launch. Got it?"

"Sure." The seat was remarkably comfortable; I wouldn't have minded having it as an armchair back home. "But...when we take off, is it going to hurt?"

"Nope. Not a bit...and here's why." There was a small panel in the cocoon just above my head. Gordie opened it and withdrew a plastic face mask connected to a rubber hose. "You're going to wear this on the way up," he said, showing it to me. "It'll feed you oxygen mixed with anesthetic gas, the same stuff you get when you go to the dentist to have your wisdom teeth pulled. Just before we launch, I'm going to push a button in the cockpit that'll feed you the gas. In three seconds, you'll be out like a light." He snapped his fingers. "Next thing you know, you'll be in space."

I eyed the mask warily. "You're sure about this?"

"Done it a half-dozen times already." Gordie grinned at me. "Trust me, kid...you'll love it."

The others were beginning to come down the ladder; Melissa was first, her bag slung over her shoulders. I wasn't about to give Gordie a hard time while MeeMee was watching, so I nodded. "Make you a deal," Gordie said as he pulled the seat harness in place and attached it with a six-point buckle. "Sweat this out, and I'll show you how to fly this tin can. Okay?"

I had no interest in learning how to fly a spacecraft, but I gave him a thumbs-up that the pilot seemed to appreciate. He pulled the mask down over my lower face and adjusted its elastic strap, then closed the cocoon. It must have seemed as if I sitting in a refrigerator, because Melissa giggled when she saw me. Gordie gave her a wink, then he patted the top of the cocoon. "See you soon," he said before turning to make his way to the cockpit.

Logan took the seat in front of me, with Hannah across the aisle from him. He shoved his bag into the ceiling web next to Melissa's and mine, then paused to study me for a moment. "You look like a..."

"Shut up." My voice was muffled by the mask, but the look in my eyes must have told him that this was a bad time for a wisecrack.

Dave went down the aisle, helping the others pull their seat harnesses around themselves. In the cockpit, Gordie had seated himself at his console and had pulled on his headset. Dave had just buckled Eddie's when Gordie looked back at him. "Hustle," the pilot said. "They're moving up the countdown."

Dave raised his head. "What's going on?"

"Just hurry up and get out of here. We need to button down the hatch."

Melissa glanced at me; she didn't say anything, but something in Gordie's tone of voice bothered her. It worried me, too. I couldn't see anything through the porthole next to my seat except the inside of the cargo bay, but I could hear footsteps on the ladder rungs of the service tower.

Dave finished his work, then hastily climbed up the ladder. He pulled it up behind him and slammed the ceiling hatch shut; its lockwheel turned, and a second later we heard him knock twice against the hull, signaling that it was tight. His shoes rang on the ladder rungs; a few seconds of silence, then what little light came through the windows was abruptly extinguished as the cargo bay doors lowered into place. A loud thump signaled that the LTV was sealed in.

Air began to hiss through the ceiling vents, pressurizing the passenger compartment. In the cockpit, Gordie bent over his console, murmuring into his headset mike as he scrambled to complete the prelaunch checklist.

"Gordie?" Logan raised his voice to call to him. "What's happening? Why are they moving up the countdown?"

At first, it didn't seem as if the pilot had heard him. He finished the checklist, then began to tighten his harness. "Don't want to scare you guys," he said, not looking back at us, "but Launch Control has informed us that federal marshals showed up just a few minutes ago. Apparently they're searching for you."

"Searching for us?" Melissa's hands gripped her seat. "Why would they be searching for us?"

"They're not after you." Hannah's voice was little more than a whisper. "They're after me."

"What?" Logan stared at her. "Who are you, anyway?"

Hannah didn't reply, but instead turned her face away from us. When I looked up front, I saw Nina staring at her. Once again, I had a sense that she was smarter than a little girl her age should be, and that she knew something about Hannah Johnson that the rest of us didn't.

I was about to say something--not that anyone would've heard me anyway--when the cocoon began to tighten around me. I gasped as its cells began to fill with gel. It felt as if I was being squeezed by dozens of small, cold pillows, soft yet unyielding, that locked my arms and legs in place. I could still breathe, but I couldn't move.

An instant later, a sudden thump ran through the LTV, followed by a prolonged vibration. "They're moving the shuttle onto the track," Gordie called back to us. "Even if the feds know you're here, they can't do anything about it. Not without scrubbing the launch, at least, and that would take a..."

Another abrupt jar. The vibration became more pronounced. "Aw, crap!" Gordie yelled. "We're going now!" He reached forward to his console. "Jamey! Count backward from a hundred!"

Something that smelled like peppermint entered my mask. "One hundred," I said.

The vibration became a sense of fast forward motion. Melissa yelled something obscene.

"Ninety-nine," I said. For some reason, now seemed like a good time to take a nap. Eddie was crying again, but I could barely hear him. I was falling into the cocoon, my body becoming heavier and heavier. "Ninety-eight..."

And that was it. I was unconscious by the time the shuttle reached the end of the launch rail.





It didn't feel as if I'd fallen asleep. I didn't dream, nor was there any real sense of the passage of time. My eyes closed for what seemed like only a moment or two, and when they opened again, it was to see Gordie bending over me.

"Jamey? Are you okay?"

"Umm...yeah, I guess." My mouth was parched and my ribs were sore, but otherwise I felt fine. "Did we take off?"

Beside me, Melissa made one of her boy, are you an idiot sighs. Gordie paid no attention to her as he reached down to remove the mask from my face. "Yeah, we got away," he said as he returned the mask to the compartment above my head. "Let's see if you can raise your hands. Can you do that for me?"

The cells that had cushioned my body were empty again, but there was still just enough pressure in them to hold down my arms. I lifted first my right hand, then my left; it took no effort at all to do so. "Good, good," Gordie said, smiling as he watched this. "Now let's see if you can stand up."

"But I don't have my..." I began, and then I noticed something that made me forget what I was about to say.

Logan was behind the pilot...but he was upside-down, his feet planted against the LTV's low ceiling. His hair was fluffed out in all directions, and there was a puffiness to his face that made him look as if he was sick.

I looked over at Melissa. She was still strapped into her seat, but her hair had also formed a halo around her head that no amount of mousse could have controlled. Her face was ashen and she clenched a plastic vomit bag between both hands. It wasn't hard to tell that she'd upchucked at least once already and was fighting hard to keep from doing so again.



Hannah had unbuckled her harness and had turned around to look back at me. Her baseball cap was holding her hair in place, and she gripped the back of Eddie's seat to keep from joining Logan on the ceiling. A small silver medallion on a matching chain floated a few inches from her neck. It looked like some sort of religious symbol, but that wasn't what attracted my attention to it. The way it lazily dangled in midair was what made me truly realize where we were.

We were in zero-g...microgravity, if you want to use the technical term, or free-fall, if you don't. I turned my eyes toward the porthole beside me, and saw something I never thought I'd ever see with my own eyes: a vast plain of tan and dark green, curved at its farthest edges of its horizon, a blue expanse just beneath it. An early morning sun cast shadows from filmy white clouds, highlighting hills, rivers, a silver-white sprawl that looked like it might be a coastal city.

I suddenly realized that I was looking down upon Texas and the Gulf of Mexico from a low-orbit altitude of about sixty or seventy miles. It was the most incredible--the most drop-dead beautiful--thing I'd ever seen in all my life.

"Yep. We're in space." Logan must have figured out what I was thinking, because he grinned at me. "C'mon, man...let's see if you can stand up."

"No, I don't...I mean, I can't..." I told myself that all I really wanted to do was stare out the window, but there was more to it than that. What he was asking me to do had always seemed impossible. Standing upright without the aid of a pair of crutches, a simple act that everyone else took for granted, had been beyond my ability for as long as I could remember. Everyone was watching me, and I didn't want to make a fool out of myself.

"Go ahead, Jamey," Gordie said. "I'd like to see you do that, too." He opened the lower part of the cocoon and began to unfasten my harness. Once the straps were floating free, he gently took hold of my wrists. "All right, on the count of three. One...two..."

"Don't rush me," I said. Gordie let go, but it was clear that neither he nor Logan were going to take no for an answer. They were using the Velcro soles of their sock-like stickshoes to attach themselves to the fabric strips on the deck and ceiling. Gordie stepped back as I carefully planted my shoes against the floor. I took a deep breath, then carefully pushed myself out of the cocoon.

No crutches. No braces. No helpful hands to steady me. For the first time in my life, I stood on my own two feet.

"Jamey, be careful." From behind me, Melissa's voice was a low whisper. I felt her hand brush against my back, as if she was reaching up to keep me from falling over. It wasn't often that she showed any sign of actually caring for me; every so often, I suspected that my sister might really be human, not an alien imposter. That alone made me want to take the next step...literally.

Holding my breath, I detached my right foot from the carpet, moved it forward a few inches, put it down again. Then I did the same with my left foot. And then again with my right foot. I was walking. Never mind the fact that I was in space; what was more incredible was the fact I'd just taken my first steps on my own, without having to rely on anything.

"Attaboy." Gordie unstuck his shoes from the floor and floated beside Logan, who'd turned himself right-side-up and had backed away to give me room. "You're doing great, just great."

"Yeah...I guess I am." I was tempted to yank my shoes off the floor and do a somersault, but Melissa was right; I needed to take it easy. Yet when I happened to glance at Hannah, I saw admiration in her eyes. No girl had ever looked at me that way before. Despite the fact that she was responsible for Jan having to remain behind, it made me feel like I was ten feet tall.

"Okay, then." Gordie let out his breath, looked back at Eddie and Nina. "And how are you two doing?"

Now that I was standing erect, I could see the Hernandez kids. Nina was just as pale as Melissa; she'd probably become sick, too, but she managed a solemn nod. On the other hand, her brother was as happy as a kid in a playground. "This is fun!" he yelped. "Can I fly, too?"

"No, no. Just stay where you are for now." Gordie motioned for him to remain seated. Eduardo looked disappointed, but he nodded. "All right, " the pilot went on, "now that Jamey's up and around, I'll let y'all know what's going on." Holding onto a handrail running along the ceiling, Gordie turned to face me again. "Since you missed it, I'll give you the details. We left Earth about an hour or so ago. I deliberately kept you under, though, until the Spirit reached orbit and jettisoned the LTV."

"Just as well that you slept through it." Logan remained where he was, back against the fuselage and feet dangling in the air. "We hit Mach 7 before we left the atmosphere. It was a rough ride for a few seconds."

"Sorry 'bout that." Gordie gave him an apologetic smile. "Should've warned you, I guess, but I didn't have time. We had to launch before the feds stopped us...and believe me, they tried. The acceleration might've squashed you a bit, but at least we were able to outrun the jets they sent after us."

"Jets?" Hannah's eyes went wide. "You mean...?"

"Two Navy F-30s. I caught a glimpse of them on the video feed from the Spirit's external camera. They couldn't have caught up with the shuttle, but they might've been able to splash us if they'd gotten close enough to lock on with air-to-air missiles. But the shuttle was travelling too fast, so..."

"Why were they trying to shoot us down?" I asked.

Gordie chose to ignore that question. "Point is, we made a clean getaway. And don't worry about the Spirit. Just before he jettisoned us, I heard the commander talking to Flight Control back in Wallops, telling him that they were having mechanical problems and that he was going to make an emergency landing at the ISC launch center in Spain. My guess is that he and the pilot will request political asylum as soon as they're on the ground so that they won't have to face the music back home."



I winced when I heard this. The shuttle crew had sacrificed their citizenship for our freedom; it would be awhile before they'd go home again, if ever. And they were lucky; no telling what might happen to the people on Wallops Island who'd aided and abetted in our escape. They would be detained and questioned, no doubt about it. Some of them might even land in prison. All just to make sure that six kids made their way to safety.

"What about you?" I asked.

Gordie shrugged. "I make the trip to Apollo about once a month. I've got plenty of friends there, so it's practically my second home."

"What else have you heard from Wallops?" Logan asked. "Did our parents get away?"

"I don't know. We're radio silent till we reach the Moon. No communications with anyone for the duration." Logan was about to say something, but the pilot shook his head. "Sorry, but that's all I can tell you."

Gordie pushed himself away from the ceiling so that his shoes attached themselves to the floor again. "Anyway, once we complete this orbit, we'll be in the proper position to fire the main engine and head for the Moon. It'll take about two and a half days to get there. A ferry will rendezvous with us in lunar orbit and carry us the rest of the way."

As he spoke, I gazed out the window again. We were directly above the Gulf now, the Texas panhandle visible to the north-northeast. It would be early morning down there, with only a few clouds in the sky.

"Until then," Gordie was saying, "make yourselves at home." He pointed to a hatch in the aft bulkhead behind Melissa and me. "There's a galley back there with plenty of food and water, and also the head."

"There's a head back there?" Eddie's voice rose in terror.

"No, no, no!" Too late, Gordie remembered that he was speaking to someone who might take him literally. "That's just what we call a bathroom. It's not a...y'know, a real head." Melissa snickered, and both Logan and I gave her a dirty look. "The seats can be folded down against the deck...sorry, Jamey, but your cocoon stays where it is...and I have hammocks that can be strung up for us to sleep in. In the meantime...well, I've got a couple of pads if you didn't bring your own. And if you get tired of reading or playing games, you can always look out the window."

I already was. While the others were talking, I caught sight of something that didn't look right: a small, bright point of light, rapidly rising from the curve horizon below us. At first I thought it might be a meteorite burning up in the atmosphere, except that it was headed in the wrong direction, toward space instead of away from it. Almost as if it was...

No, I thought. That can't be a missile.

"I need to go forward again, start laying in the coordinates for the next burn." Gordie glanced at Eddie. "A burn is when I fire the main engine," he quickly added, and Eddie nodded. "Unless there's any more questions..."

"Gordie?" I didn't look away from the window. "You might want to see this."

Gordie glanced my way, almost as if irritated that I'd interrupted him. Then he pulled himself over to the window next to mine. For a second or two he said nothing as he peered out. Then his mouth fell open in astonishment and he threw himself back from the window.

"Get in your seats and strap down!" he snapped. "Do it now!"

"Why?" Melissa stared at him. "What's...?"

"Just do it!" Grabbing at the ceiling, Gordie launched himself toward the cockpit. "Coming through!" he yelled, pushing Nina and Eddie out of the way. "Make a hole!"

"It's a missile," I said. Gordie's reaction had confirmed my suspicions. "Someone down there has launched a rocket at us."

"Are you sure?" Logan gaped at me, then hauled himself over to the window Gordie had just vacated.



I glanced out my window again. Although the rising star was still far away, it was getting brighter, and its upward direction suggested that it was on a trajectory that would intercept us in less than a minute.

"Yes, I'm sure!" Gordie hastily turned himself so that he fell into the cockpit feet first; within seconds he was in the pilot's seat, snatching at the seat and shoulder straps and buckling them together. "That's an anti-satellite weapon. Probably air-launched by another F-30 sent up from Texas. They haven't given up on us yet. Now get in your damn seats!"

We scrambled to obey him, but none of us were prepared for this, so all we managed to do was get tangled in each other's arms and legs. I was trying to get MeeMee's feet out of my face when there was a hollow roar from the stern, and in the next instant an invisible hand shoved all of us toward the compartment's rear end. Gordie had fired the main engine; a second later, the entire LTV seemed to roll sideways, and I realized that he was firing the maneuvering thrusters as well.

He was trying to dodge the ASW. No time to get back in the cocoon; I grabbed the ceiling rung with both hands and hoped that our pilot knew what he was doing.

"C'mon, baby, c'mon." Logan floated above the seat row in front of me, clutching at the top of one of them as he stared out the nearest porthole. "Climb, climb, climb..."

"What's going on?" Melissa was trying to get into the seat beside my cocoon, but its straps were hopelessly snarled, and every effort she made to untangle them only made it worse. "Are we going to die? We're going to die, aren't we...?"

"Shut up!" Gordie yelled. "Nobody's dying! Not if I can help it!"

His bravado might have been assuring, but it came too late. Eddie's earlier giddiness was forgotten as he let out a terrified scream. "I don't want to die! I don't want to die! I just wanna go home...!"

"It's all right. It's okay." Nina pushed her brother into one of the forward seats, then wrapped her small arms around him and held him tight. "We're going to be fine," she said quietly, and in that moment she seemed more like a mother than a little sister. "Hush, now. We're going to be okay..."

The only other person remaining calm--or at least not panicking, as MeeMee and Eddie were--was Hannah. She was crammed between a seatback and a bulkhead by Logan's legs, unable to strap herself down, but she didn't seem to care. Her eyes were shut, and she seemed to be saying something under her breath. Praying? Probably. Then her eyes opened, and she caught me looking at her. There was fear in her eyes, but something else as well: resignation to an inevitable fate.

She looked at me, and her mouth opened and her lips formed one silent word: Sorry.

I was still wondering why she'd say that--this wasn't her fault, was it?--when Logan yelled, "There it goes!"

Twisting my neck, I ducked my head to peer through the window again, just in time to see a brilliant, utterly soundless flash of light. The anti-satellite weapon had just detonated. How far away, I didn't know; all I could tell was that it exploded somewhere below and off to the port side of the LTV.

"It's a miss!" I shouted. "It didn't hit!"

A loud, sharp bang! that sounded like someone firing a pistol, and I knew at once that I was wrong.



A second later an alarm shrieked from the cockpit, followed by a loud curse from Gordie. "Blowout!" he shouted. "We've got a blowout!"

He didn't have to explain what he meant. The ASW had detonated close enough to throw debris our way, and the bang we'd heard was a fragment penetrating the LTV's outer hull and fuselage. The alarm was the decompression alert, signaling that the spacecraft was losing air.



"Oh my God!" Melissa's scream was even louder than the alarm. "Oh...my...God!"

"Shut up!" Logan shoved himself away from the porthole, began to look around. "Where's the hole? Where did it...?"

"Look for it!" Gordie snapped. "It's gotta be around there somewhere." He switched off the alarm, but remained where he was in the cockpit. "You're going to have to find it and button it down! I've got my hands full!"

It wasn't until then that I realized the LTV had begun to tumble like a washing machine drum. True to Newton's third law, the fragment's impact had caused an equal and opposite reaction; with the escaping air pressure acting as a jet, the spacecraft was now rolling sideways. If Gordie didn't get our craft under control and fast, the LTV's orbit would decay and we'd commence a long, fatal plunge into Earth's upper atmosphere.

It was up to us to locate the source of the blowout. But even with the alarm shut off, it was almost impossible to tell where the hull had been breached. I couldn't hear a hissing sound, nor was there an obvious hole.

Eddie was in hysterics, and MeeMee wasn't helping much either. So when Hannah spoke up, her calm voice was almost lost in the din. "I think I found what did it," she said, and I looked around to see her holding up a small, jagged piece of metal about half the size of my little finger.

"Where did it come from?" I asked.

"I don't know. It bounced off here--" she pointed to the bulkhead above her head, on the starboard side of the compartment "--right after we heard the bang."

"That means it's gotta be around here somewhere..."

"Whatever you're going to do, guys, you better do it fast." Gordie wasn't shouting anymore, but his voice was still tense. "At this rate, we're going to lose our air in five minutes."

"You find the hole. I'll get the repair kit." Logan launched himself down the center aisle toward a bulkhead locker marked Emergency. "Is this where it is, skipper?"

"You got it." Gordie took a second to glance over his shoulder. "Pull the handle up, then pull it down...that's how it opens. And don't call me skipper...I hate that."

I might have laughed if the situation hadn't been so serious. Instead, I was trying to figure out how to locate the breach. Hannah's finding the fragment helped a little--it meant the hole was closer to the rear of the spacecraft than the front--but it only gave me a general direction in which to look.

The hole could be anywhere. Worse than that, given the size of the fragment, it was probably no larger than the diameter of a pen. Easy to seal, but hard to find. And Gordie wasn't kidding when he said that we were quickly losing pressure; I swallowed, and felt my ears pop.

"Everyone, look around," I said, trying to stay calm. "Look for the hole." Melissa was still weeping, and I grabbed her shoulder and shook her hard. "You too. Stop crying and help me look."

"Oh, why don't you climb back in your little cocoon and shut up!" Her face was screwed up in terror, and tears leaked from the corners of her eyes. "At least you'll have air in there!"

She was wrong, of course; the cocoon wasn't airtight, and even if it was, I wouldn't have lived very much longer than anyone else. I was about to tell her this when I noticed something peculiar: in zero-g, her tears were forming tiny bubbles that drifted away from her face. Floating in midair, as if caught by...

An air current. The sort that would be caused by a hull breach.

"That's it!" I yelled, still staring at my sister. "That's how to find it!"

MeeMee glared at me. "What are you...?"

Ignoring her, I pushed myself toward the aft bulkhead hatch marked Galley and yanked it open. The compartment on the other side of the hatch was no more than a cubbyhole, barely large enough for one person. It took only a second to find what I needed: a locker containing a couple of dozen half-liter bottles of water.



I snatched a water bottle from the galley and kicked myself back into the passenger compartment. By then, Logan had retrieved a plastic case from the emergency locker and had returned to the rear of the passenger compartment. "I got the seal kit," he said, then stared at me in bewilderment. "Hey, man, you picked a hell of a time to get a drink of..."

"Watch." I pried open the cap nozzle, pointed the bottle away from me, and squeezed. Water spurted from the nozzle and instantly coalesced into a thick, steady stream of bubbles, each perfectly spherical if not identical in size.

"What are you doing?" Melissa screeched like a cat who was about to get wet. "This is no time to be playing with...!"

"No! He's right!" Logan caught on; he grabbed a ceiling rail and pulled himself back from the water bubbles, making sure that he wasn't in their way. "Watch where they're going!"

The stream dispersed, becoming a cloud...and then the bubble cloud began to move, caught by air currents we couldn't feel but which nonetheless influenced the bubbles' direction. The LTV was no longer rolling--Gordie had regained control of the craft, at least for the moment--so there was no other force to act upon the bubbles.

The bubbles floated downward, slowly at first, then picking up speed as they moved toward the floor. As we watched, they began to form a spiral, much like a tiny waterspout, that jetted toward a spot in the aisle just past the edge of Logan's seat, across the aisle from where Hannah had been during the blowout. The airborne whirlpool disappeared through a tiny hole in the floor, the place where the fragment had punched through.

"That's it," I murmured. "There's where it is."

Logan opened the seal kit. Inside was a cylindrical object that faintly resembled a chalk gun and a set of flat, cellophane-wrapped patches of different sizes. I held the box while he quickly read the instructions printed on the inside of the lid, then he removed the gun and bent over to insert its pointed barrel into the hole. When he pulled the trigger, pink gunk that looked like chewing gum jetted into the hole. It filled the hole, stopping the remaining water bubbles--and the air--from escaping. The gunk hardened immediately; once it was solid, Logan selected a small patch about two inches in diameter. Tearing open its wrapper, he removed the cover from the adhesive backing and firmly pressed the patch against the sealed hole. The patch was made of some polymer as tough as the metal around it; it stuck to the hole, making it airtight.

"We're no longer losing pressure," Gordie called from the cockpit. "But let's be safe and check and see if there's not any more holes."

I moved through the cabin, squirting a little more water here and there. The bubbles lingered in midair, though, and didn't form any more waterspouts. "I think that's the only one," I said.

Gordie let out his breath as a long, relieved sigh. "That's as close as I ever want to get," he muttered, then he turned his head to look back at us. "Well done, guys...especially you two," he added, meaning Logan and me. "I don't know what I would've done without you."

I nodded, then looked over at Logan. He didn't smile as he packed the sealant gun back into the box. "Why did they fire that ASW at us?" he asked. "That's what I'd like to know."

"I've made the lunar trajectory burn," Gordie said, as if he hadn't heard him. "They're not going to be able to try that stunt again...we're out of range."

"I want to know the same thing." Melissa had calmed down again; so had Eddie, although he still clung to Nina for comfort. "Why did they try to shoot us down? Why are we so important that they'd want to kill us?"

For once, I had to agree with her. First the F-30s that had chased the shuttle after it took off from Wallops Island, then an anti-satellite weapon fired by another fighter. Seemed like someone was going to a lot of trouble just to stop a few kids from going to the Moon.

Gordie didn't reply for a moment or two. "I'm sure they've got a reason," he said at last, not looking back at us. "Anyway...we're safe, and that's what counts."



Logan and I traded a glance. Neither of us said anything, but I could tell we shared the same thought: something was going on that Gordie didn't want to talk about. I looked over at Hannah. She was smiling at me, her gratitude obvious. Then her expression darkened and she quickly looked away, as if trying to avoid answering the same question Gordie had refused to answer.

I remembered what she'd said to me, clearly yet silently: Sorry. As if she held herself to blame for the catastrophe Logan and I had only barely averted.

Hannah knew something, all right...but she didn't want to tell us what it was.