Page 46 of Into Orbit
I stroked the vines until they released her hands, then checked her wrists. There was nothing but a slight redness where the back of her hands had rubbed on the heartree’s bark; I soothed my fingers over it. ‘You’re incredible, Maeve.’
She swallowed, her lips pursing. ‘What are you doing to me?’ she whispered. ‘It’s like … It’s like I’m being re-made from the inside out. The things I thought impossible almost seem close enough to touch.’
I bent and kissed her, brushing my lips over hers so softly she sighed. As her arms linked around the back of my neck, my wrist screen beeped. I shifted so we could see it.
Routine assistance manoeuvre imminent,flashed over the screen.Prepare for orbit sequence.
‘Something … help … now?’ Maeve said, her forehead creasing as she tried to read the Tirian glyphs.
‘Very close,’ I said, then told her the correct meaning.
‘So we’re stopping to help someone?’
‘We’re not stopping, not really. Ships never stop when they’re in flight. They can’t. In deep space, there are very few opposing forces to slow them down, and if they enter a body’s orbit – like a moon or a planet – they get caught up in that body’s gravitational pull.’ I scanned the rest of the message. ‘That’s what we’re doing now. The Captain is directing the ship into the orbit of a small moon, which will slow us down.’
Maeve gave a heavy-eyed smile. ‘I would have listened in physics class if you’d been my teacher.’
I flushed. ‘I could never be a teacher.’
Maeve’s smile turned to a frown. ‘Of course you could be,’ she said. ‘You could be anything you wanted.’
I kissed her again, just because I could, shivering in the warm glow of intimacy, so new and so unfamiliar and sowondrous.
‘So, why are weslowing?’
‘The message said that our ship picked up a distress signal from the moon – a small, personal craft that ran out of water. It’s a Darnagh ship, and they’re a peaceful species, so we’re slowing so the guards can take them some ice.’
Maeve laughed softly. ‘Space ice. My life is so wild.’
‘Do you want to watch?’ I offered. ‘They simulcast the official trips off the ship as training exercises.’
‘Theofficialones,’ she smirked, pulling her jumpsuit back on. ‘But not the oneyoumade.’
‘My mother discourages the collection of strange aliens, as it turns out,’ I said dryly. I held my hand out to her, pulling her up, breathing her in. ‘Come on. It should be good to watch.’
‘Fuck,’ Maeve breathed. ‘I wonder if this is how people felt watching the moon landing. All tense and breathless and full of adrenaline.’
I rested my head on her shoulder, resolutely ignoring Adair. When my heartree had drawn back its leaves, Poppy had gone, which was unusual, but Poppy’s love Rosa was doing the ice run, so I supposed she’d gone to watch with the rest of her family. I didn’t begrudge her – I’d want the same – but Adair was making my skin crawl even more than usual with his knowing smirks and too-long glances.
The Pods were tiny specs of white on the screen, almost lost against the endless black of space until whoever was taking the screencast narrowed in on their location. The Darnagh ship had landed on one of an unnamed, gaseous planet’s many moons; the Pods crawled towards it, each weighed down with an ice net and a sizeable cube of treated ice, carefully cut to fill the specifics of the smaller ship’s tank. The Darnagh captain must have been oddly careless with their water supply – or else they’d run into some kind of trouble.
I frowned at the screen. ‘I wonder where they were headed. We’re still so far out from the centre.’
‘The universe has a centre?’ Maeve said absently. ‘I thought it was always expanding. Although, to be completely honest, that fact weirds me out, so I try not to dwell on it.’
‘It is constantly expanding. It’s not thecentrein a topographical sense, it’s the centre in aculturalsense. For some reason, there was an explosion of life very early in Sectors Five, Six, and Seven. The sectors comprise multiple galaxies, each boasting multiple solar systems, most with complex life forms. It doesn’t take very long – in the scheme of things – to go between them, so they’re like … a bunch of your cities being close by, all with different life forms and cultures, each bringing something unique and interesting to universal development. Tir is on the edge of Sector Seven, and Natare is in the middle of Sector Six.’
‘So you and the one who stole Tessa are practically neighbours,’ Maeve murmured.
‘Are you still so certain she was stolen?’ I said gently.
Maeve shot me a frown. ‘No,’ she admitted. ‘But I need to know for sure.’
The Pods entered the moon’s orbit and began their descent to the surface. The cast zoomed in on their progress as their landing thrusters engaged and they sank gently down, landing a few minutes later in a tiny cloud of dust. It immediately settled, some of it on the Pod.
‘Urgh,’ I said, wrinkling my nose. ‘Those Pods will need a thorough wash.’
Maeve snorted. ‘You’re atree,’ she said. ‘Your heartree literally lives in soil. Scared of a little bit of moon dust?’
