Space Hostages Read Online Free PDF

can’t!” I said, already watching the curve of the Earth come into view. “I’m sorry!”
    â€œOh, you sound it,” said Dad bitterly.
    And of course I wasn’t really sorry, except about leaving him.
    â€œYou are in a world of trouble,” Dad promised.
    â€œAll right,” I agreed peaceably. Because whatever trouble I was in was over a month away and easily worth it. “Are you feeling any better?”
    But I lost the signal then, and since no one likes being yelled at by their dad, I was relieved. I turned off the tablet, and did a little celebratory dance in the middle of the blue sky.
    I rose for two hours. Everything was silent except the faint hum of the elevator and the moan of the wind. The clouds shrank into wisps below me. The blue of the sky thinned around me like a pretense I was seeing through, and there was the blackness behind it.
    And then, instead of endless space outside, there were walls against the windows, sealing the capsule in, and there were outer doors lining up with the capsule doors. The elevator stopped with a clunk and hiss as the pressure equalized, and the doors slid open. I trundled my suitcase out.
    I was standing on the edge of space. Every surface of the great curved chamber around me was transparent, even the floor. The sun blazed in the black sky.
    Under my feet I could see the whole circle of the Earth now. It shone back at me like a bright blue eye.
    Robots were unloading the elevator climber, but there were some people about too, directing their movements, coming and going from the ships outside. . . .
    The ships. There they were, bright against the black, some docked against access passages, some floating amid little crews of busy service robots like big fishes letting little ones nip parasites from their scales. A Flarehawk carrier. A large, ugly, mud-brown mining vessel. And looking small beside it, there was a beautiful ship, like a swan with folded wings, that could only be the Helen of Troy .
    â€œHey!” called a woman in a technician’s uniform. “You’re one of those Mars kids, aren’t you? You need to hurry—the Helen ’s about to leave.”
    I dragged my suitcase toward the beautiful white ship. There was no obvious security to stop me from running down the passageway to the airlock, but as I entered it, I felt a brief tingle on my skin and a computer voice said, “Welcome, Alice Dare,” so I think something scanned me in some way. The EDF have owned my biosignature since I went to Mars, which is a little creepy when I think about it. One final set of doors opened to let me through, and then I rushed onto the spaceship.
    I was in a pale, softly lit space, as anonymously pleasant as the lobby in the hotel I’d left on Earth. There was a water feature, and soothing glass sculptures, but there were no windows. The doors I’d come through had shut behind me.
    â€œUh, hello,” I said. One of the problems of very modern technology is that you can’t always tell if it’s in things or not, and that’s how you find yourself talking to walls and potted plants and feeling like a moron when they don’t talk back. These didn’t.
    I felt a little bit disappointed. Someone might have come to meet me.
    The central set of doors obligingly let me through. Small lights blossomed under the floor to greet me as I walked. But my eyes hadn’t adjusted to the loss of the sunlight yet, and the passage seemed shadowy. I passed doors on either side, but none of them opened. I crept deeper into the ship, trundling my suitcase behind me, trying to ignore the feeling that I’d made a serious mistake and something bad was about to happen.
    Then there was a breath of cold on my neck. I jumped pretty high, I expect. I spun around, but no one was there. Yet I had the impression of movement, a shimmer on the edge of my vision. . . .
    â€œTh saaa ! Stop it!” I complained, and heard the