Jeopardy Chapter 15

“Why are we still in here if the aliens left the flower room?”

“I don’t know for certain that they won’t be back,” Harchett answered.

“I don’t want to stay here with the chickens anymore. Let’s go.” Zalara stood up and brushed the litter from her clothes, taking Honey’s hand and leading her to the door.

“Wait, girls—”

Zalara didn’t waste time waiting for anything. She opened the door with abandon. The dim lighting was still brighter than the chicken coop, and the dust-free air was a huge improvement.

“If I was a chicken I’d rather be out here,” Honey said. “That’s nasty.”

“Usually the door is open.”

“Girls—”

“There’s no aliens here, Mr. Harchett. Only plants.” The man inched out of the coop behind a hen that squawked at him. He took a few breaths and took another step, then followed Zalara out to the garden bay. In the dim lighting, fluorescent plants glowed the color of chlorophyll along the entire top shelf, casting an eerie luminosity against the ceiling.

“Lights,” she said, and the room instantly had the ambiance of sunlit, damp, dewy air, and the fresh scent of living vegetables. Harchett jogged to the door and found it locked as the Zlōger had left it.

“Damn.” He looked around the room for any other possible escape routes or doors. “There should be two exits for every room,” he muttered.

“What about the tunnel?” Zalara asked. He looked at her face sternly.

“Tunnel?”

“The air tunnels. But you’ll get stuck.” Honey skipped to the back of the room and began to push a container up against the wall. Zalara followed the blonde ponytail and joined in the pushing. Above their heads on the wall, a half by half meter square opening hid behind a copper-colored grille.

“This ventilation system is self-contained, Zalara. You can’t get very far in there.”

“It’s not that far to the door.”

“Have you been in there before?” Zalara looked at Honey and giggled.

“All the time,” she answered. Harchett squinted at them before he climbed on the box to help them remove the screen.

“You watch out for the aliens, girls. I think they’re up to trouble. Locking us in here probably wasn’t an accident.”

“At least we could eat eggs and vegetables,” Honey said. “How would we cook them, though?”

Zalara hadn’t thought of that. Plenty of food, but all of it raw. That would have been okay because Bailey had told her vegetables shouldn’t be cooked too much anyway.

“Should we let you out first?”

“Of course!”

“Okay, see you in a minute,” she promised, and climbed into the air vent with Honey on her caboose. The hydroponics’ air system went almost directly to the corridor once they passed the fan box. The fragrance of the hydroponics bay turned into the sterile, recycled air that the rest of the ship had. When she arrived at the end, she swiveled on her behind and tapped the inside of the vent with her feet. She slid around again and slipped out, feet first, and dropped to the deck. Honey followed suit.

The corridors were quiet, and dark. That wasn’t a normal situation, not normal at all, not even at night. The floor lights would be lit if it were night.

“Where is everybody?” Honey whispered.

“I don’t know. The blue squishy people are up to something bad.”

“Why do you think that?”

“My papa said he didn’t trust them. And he trusts everyone, mostly,” Zalara explained. “He wouldn’t let our ship be dark, so someone else did it.”

They hopped a few meters to the hydroponics hatch. Zalara tried to open the door, then Honey tried to help her. She looked at the door control panel that blinked an icon of an old-fashioned key, in red.

“Mr. Harchett?” she called at the door. “It’s locked.”

“I know it’s locked. Unlock it.”

“I don’t know how. I pushed the button but it’s still red.”

“Use the number pad,” the man called. She looked at Honey, her blue eyes as clueless as a caterpillar. “Put in these numbers:  1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13.”

“There’s no number thirteen on the pad.”

“Push one and then three.” She complied. The magnetic seal released and the red key stopped flashing, now a steady green. The door promptly opened from the inside and Mr. Harchett lept out, took a few deep breaths, and looked around.

“I should get to the galley. Come on, stay with me. Why’s it so dark in here?” Zalara looked at Honey, and they both looked at the steward. Zalara didn’t notice before that he was still wearing his kitchen clothes, and they weren’t white anymore, but speckled with chicken litter and a couple of sticking feathers.

“I think the aliens made it dark.”

“Someone said their ship was dark,” Honey added.

“Let’s get up to the galley,” Harchett said, and headed for the elevator. The girls trotted to keep up. When then arrived, they found the power down, the elevator not working. “Stairs,” he said. “Stairs, the low-tech solution.”

In the dark the three of them climbed the rigid ladder to the deck above, which was closer than the stairwell down the corridor a few meters. Zalara trembled faintly but kept climbing. Her mother once told her that a goldfish had better night vision than the two of them.

At the end of the corridor on Deck Three, they looked in the mess hall. It was empty, and clean; the shelves were bare and the tables bald. Continuing through to the galley, another locked door stopped their journey. Harchett punched in the numbers again, and the lock disengaged.

“Stay here, girls.” Zalara set her jaw and her fists balled up. The dark, empty mess hall made her shiver and she intended to stay with an adult. Harchett pulled on the handle and turned around. “I mean it, stay here, we don’t know what’s in there.”

Honey sat down at the nearest table and folded her arms. Zalara relented. Putting on her best pout, and using her most reluctant pace, she joined her friend in reticence. Harchett opened the door into a dark, quiet galley. He took a few steps and disappeared, the door shutting behind him.

The girls waited in the dim light, the only source at all coming through the windows from the planet and moon they orbited.

“I wish there was something to eat,” Zalara said.

“I wish Mr. Harchett would come back.”

“He’s grown up but we don’t need him.” Her words belied her quickened heartbeat and cold hands. She gazed out the polarized window at the planet’s hazy surface of blue. “What’s taking him so long?”

“Are you scared?” Honey asked.

“No, I’m not scared. Just hungry.” She hopped down and banged on the door. “Mr. Harchett? Miz Bailey?” She pounded her fist against the hatch a couple more times before a tangy salt percolated in her throat and breathing was hard. Oh, no, no, she couldn’t cry in front of Honey.

“Is anyone in there?” Zalara shouted.

“Maybe we should go back to the hydroponics bay.”

“I want to go home,” Zalara sniveled. “Come on.” She took Honey’s hand and led the taller, older girl out of the mess and to the stairs, not the ladder in the tube. “We have two layers to go,” Zalara told her informal sister, and started up the steps in the dark.

When they arrived at the Jackson’s stateroom, the door was locked.

“Now what?” Honey asked. Zalara puckered up her face and squeezed her eyes shut. People should be in the hallways and the lights should be on.

“Something’s wrong. Let’s go to the bridge.”

“We’re not allowed to go there.”

“I’m allowed to go there.” Without hesitation Zalara marched to the elevator but the power was out. Stairs didn’t need ‘lectricity.

“I don’t want to get in trouble,” Honey said.

“My papa won’t get mad at you if I told you to come. That’s called an order.”

They climbed up the clanking steps, pushed hard to open the door, and they looked out before taking any steps onto the forbidden plane. All she saw was Mr. Lee at the helm and the big planet in the windows.

“What are you two doing up here!?”

“I want my papa.” Chen looked around the bridge and at Commander Gugnichacrik on the floor. He jumped up and scurried to the girls.

“Come on, it’s not safe here,” he told them, taking Zalara by the hand and running her back to the doyen’s office, Honey on their heels. “Stay here until someone comes to get you. It might be a while."

“Where’s my papa?”

“He’s on the ship, somewhere, I don’t know.”

“I’ll call him.”

“No! Zalara, there are aliens on the ship. Stay here, you’ll be safe. Don’t use the intercom.”

“Are the aliens bad?”

“They’re being bad at the moment, yes, but let us adults take care of it.” He backed toward the door. “Don’t be scared, you’re both very brave to come up here. Captain’s going to take care of it.” He shut and locked the door. The girls looked at each other.

“I still have to pee.”