ready for that, and it probably wasn’t the time, but I did it anyway. Because . . . well, scud. He’d just encouraged me to trust my instincts.
It was wonderful. I felt a strength to him as he kissed me back, an almost electricity coursing through him into me—then back again stronger because of the fire that burned in my chest. I lingered in the kiss as long as I dared, then pulled away.
“I should go with you,” he said.
“Unfortunately,” M-Bot said, “we have only one mobile receptor. You’d be identified as a human immediately.”
Jorgen grunted. “I suppose someone has to explain this to Cobb anyway.”
“He’s going to be mad . . . ,” I said.
“He’ll understand. We made the best decision we could with the limited time and information we had. Saints help us, I think we have to try this. Go.”
I held his eyes for a moment, then broke the gaze and jumped back down into the cockpit.
Jorgen touched his lips with his hand, then shook himself, picked up his helmet, and leaped off M-Bot’s wing. He pulled back to where everyone else was focused on the alien’s ship, oblivious to the powerful moments that had transpired.
“I’m confused at what just happened between the two of you,” M-Bot said. “I thought you insisted to me several times that you had no romantic inclinations toward Jorgen.”
“I lied,” I said, seizing on the compelling sensation the alien had embedded in my brain. It was nearly gone, but it still felt like an arrow into the sky. Just as it threatened to disappear completely, I somehow yanked on it.
“Cytonic hyperdrive online,” M-Bot said. “It actually—”
We vanished.
PART TWO
9
I was only in the nowhere for a moment, but in that place, time seemed to have no meaning. I floated alone, with no ship. Infinite blackness surrounded me, punctuated by lights that seemed so much like stars—only malevolent. They could see me hanging there, exposed. I felt like a rat suddenly dropped on a string into the middle of a cage full of starving wolves.
The eyes focused on me, and their anger built. I was trespassing in their domain. I was an insignificant worm . . . but my presence still brought them pain. My world and theirs did not belong together. Their lights surged toward me. They’d rip my very soul to shreds and leave only scraps of—
I appeared back in M-Bot’s cockpit.
“—worked!” M-Bot finished.
“Ah!” I yelled, jolting. I grabbed the sides of my cockpit seat. “Did you see any of that?”
“See what?” M-Bot said. “My chronometer indicates no time has passed. You engaged the cytonic hyperdrive . . . or, well, I think you are the cytonic hyperdrive.”
I put my hand to my chest, pressing it against the thick material of my flight suit, which seemed very strange now that it was the wrong color. My heart raced and my mind reeled. That place . . . the nowhere. It had been like swimming through a deep-cavern lake without any lights. All the while knowing things lay beneath, watching me, reaching for me . . .
That was them, I thought. The things that destroyed the people of Detritus. The things we saw in the recording. The delvers were real. They and the eyes were the same thing.
I breathed in and out deeply, calming myself with effort. At least the hyperjump had worked. I had used my powers again, with the help of the coordinates that Alanik had placed in my mind.
Right. Time to be a hero. I could do this.
“Spensa!” M-Bot said. “We’re being contacted!”
“By who?” I asked.
“By whom!” Doomslug said from beside me.
“You’ve brought us in near a Superiority space station of some size,” M-Bot said. “Look at your five. The radio chatter here is quiet, but distinct.”
I rested my hand comfortingly on Doomslug, who was fluting in annoyance, perhaps sensing my discomfort. I searched in the direction M-Bot had indicated, and saw something I’d missed in my first brief scan of the starfield. It was a distant station of some sort—lights in the darkness that were clustered around a central flat plane.
“Starsight,” I said. “That’s what the alien, Alanik, called it.” I scrambled to pull on my helmet and buckle in. “They’re contacting us? What are they saying?”
“Someone on the station is asking us for identification,” M-Bot said. “They’re speaking in Dione, a Superiority standard language.”
“Can you spoof Alanik’s transponder signal?”
“Doing so.”
“Great. Then stall them for a little bit while I think through this.”
M-Bot clearly still looked like the alien