Space Hostages Read Online Free PDF Page A

Space Elevator. I’m a Plu— I mean, I was an evacuee on Mars and stuff happened, I need to go the Morror planet; the Morrors are expecting me.”
    â€œI know who you are, sweetie,” said the lady, smiling. “But you’re by yourself?”
    â€œMy parents can’t make it,” I said. “But Mum will be coming out later.”
    Now, when you’re thirteen, telling people they need to let you travel an enormous distance without your parents mostly isn’t going to work. But they were expecting me. And none of the others had their parents with them; Carl and Noel’s dad has nerve damage from the war and their mum was too busyrunning the movie theater they owned. And Josephine’s dad . . . well, I didn’t completely understand what was going on with Josephine’s dad, but he wasn’t coming.
    â€œYou’ll have to hurry,” said the lady, in what seemed to me an unbearably leisurely way. “Your climber leaves in . . . two minutes.”
    Then a little autotrolley came scooting up to me and beeped encouragingly. I fell onto it, and it whisked me up to a pair of forbidding metal doors engraved with both the EDF crest and the Archangel Planetary logo. The doors slid open, and then I whirred down a long glass-covered tunnel over the waves of the bay.
    â€œThe next climber for Orbit Station One departs in one minute,” said a disembodied voice, for no reason I could see except to stress me out.
    â€œCome on,” I moaned to the trolley, which was no smarter than a vacuum cleaner and doing the best it could anyway.
    â€œThe next capsule for Orbit Station One . . .”
    â€œAs if it could go somewhere else!” I complained.
    We emerged into an oval open space like a concrete arena. The noise of the waves and the wind outside rang around the heavy walls, and there was an acrid smell of engine oil and salt water. This closeup, the tether was a bundle of separate flat strips like ash-gray hair ribbons, each terrifyingly thin and delicate, descending impossibly from the sky and looking far too fragile to support the huge double disc of the platform fastened to it, let alone the stack of drum-shaped cargo capsules being loaded aboard. There was a handful of crew members in yellow overalls inspecting things, and as the trolley carried me around to the far side of the elevator, one of them jumped down from a service ladder and signaled okay at someone above.
    â€œThe elevator is ready for departure,” announced the disembodied voice, a little muted by the roar of the sea. And the elevator began to rise.
    â€œWAIT!” I screamed, tumbling off the trolley.
    And thank god, the person in the yellow overalls saw me. He raised his hand and the elevator stopped, two feet off the ground. And there was the passenger capsule, another drum-shaped container with a wide band of windows around the outside, and doors that slid open as I rushed forward. The autotrolley beeped in farewell as I heaved my suitcase inside and climbed in after it. I collapsed, breathless, on top of the suitcase.
    The doors snapped shut, and I was rising into the air. Before I got my breath back, the world belowhad dwindled away and ships in the bay shrank first into toys and then into grains of white rice. Looking down, I found myself clinging to the suitcase, as if that would help if I fell.
    I’d thought there would be other people there, but there weren’t. I suppose all the scientists and soldiers who needed to be up there already were, and there still weren’t many people who could afford space cruises just for fun. There were two rings of seats, one facing outward and one facing in, a tiny bathroom inside a sort of pillar in the middle, and a little shelf where there was complimentary tea and coffee.
    My tablet beeped. I pulled it out of my shoulder bag and tapped it warily, as if it might be red hot.
    â€œALICE, GET DOWN FROM THERE!” Dad yelled.
    â€œI