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Happy Go Lucky

by Garth Nix

Jean was seventeen so her Luck was the average of her two parents, a very healthy four point five. When she graduated from school in a little less than three month’s time, she would test her own Luck, but everyone knew that it would not be less than Dad, the surgeon’s, four point nine or Pop, the mathematician’s, four point one. Privately, Jean thought it would be at least a five, almost as high as you could get. After all, she was young and pretty and very smart. Surely her Luck must be even better than her parents?

But she did not think about her Luck as she strolled down the street towards her home, the last sunshine of the afternoon lighting her way as if she trod upon a golden road. She didn’t pay any attention to the street sweepers, who had just begun to come out as the day faded, ready to work through the night. They wore shabby reflective vests over many-times patched clothes, and each wore an ironic crown of twisted black wire upon their heads, the mark of the Unlucky. The crowns were attached to anyone whose Luck tested below one point two, and could not be removed. No one was ever lucky enough to recover from below one point two.

Both her fathers were already home, Jean saw as she approached the house, which was very unusual. High among the Lucky, they both had the latest model electric runabouts, Dad’s bright blue with a yellow stripe, Pop’s a more subdued shade of grey. They were parked in the drive, somewhat haphazardly, as if both had sped home in answer to an emergency.

Jean frowned, and quickened her step. The front door, responding to the Lucky golden bracelet shining on her wrist, slid open to admit her.

Inside the house, her fathers were arguing. They were normally very calm and analytical men, who would sit down and talk through any major issue. Now they were up and shouting, and Jean was shocked to see her dad actually tearing at his hair. She’d thought that was something people only did in stories, but there he was, tugging at the hair on either side of his temple as if he might rip some out by the roots.

“What’s going on?” asked Jean.

“You tell her,” said Dad to Pop. He stopped pulling out his hair and sank into one of the living room chairs, which sensing his tension, immediately began to massage his back. “It’s all your doing.”

Pop looked at Jean. His face was kind of screwed up and she felt the shock of sudden realization. He had been crying, in fact he had only just managed to stop when Jean came in.

“I…I wrote a paper on probability and chance,” he said slowly. “It was purely theoretical, I didn’t even attempt to publish it—”

“You never should have written it in the first place!” said Dad.

“I don’t understand,” said Jean. “You write papers all the time about all sorts of things.”

“The paper showed what Luck really is,” said Dad. “And he left it in his archive.”

“It was locked,” said Pop. He sat down too, and stared at the wall. “I don’t know how it got out.”

“How it got out?” asked Dad, incredulous. “It didn’t need to get out, you idiot! Every archive is trawled, it’s only a matter of time before anything subversive gets noticed!”

“Subversive?” asked Jean. “What are you talking about?”

“Our Luck is going to be re-tested,” said Dad grimly.

“Re-tested? You mean mine is going to be tested,” said Jean. “When I turn eighteen.”

“I mean all of us,” said Dad. “And it won’t be good, I can tell you.”

“But…no one gets their Luck retested after they grow up,” said Jean. “Do they?”

Dad and Pop looked at each other.

“Not everything is like they teach you in school,” said Dad.

“Very little,” said Pop. He looked directly at Jean, his face a study in misery. “I’m sorry, darling. I’m very, very sorry.”

“What for?” asked Jean. “Why are you sorry?”

“When they retest our Luck, we will go under one point zero,” said Dad.

Jean stared at her parents, unable to comprehend what her dad was saying.

“But how can you know that?” she asked. “The Luck meter is impartial…you must be wrong. We’re Lucky! I’m going to be five point zero! I know it!”

Pop bent his head. Dad went to the drinks cabinet, and poured a massive slug of whisky.

“Won’t be any of this where we’re going,” he said.

“You’re already drunk!” said Jean with distaste. “I don’t know what’s wrong with you two, but I’m going to my room.”

Retreating to her room was Jean’s standard tactic when she didn’t get her own way, or was otherwise displeased with her parents. They usually let her go without comment. This time, they didn’t.

“Jean, please,” said Pop, clutching at her elbow, panic on his face. “This is real. We have to face up to it, talk about what we are going to do.”

“You talk about it!” shouted Jean, twisting herself free. “I know the Luck meter will test me as a five. Maybe even higher. Good night!”

She stormed upstairs. Pop went after her, but stopped halfway up the steps as Dad called after him.

“Let her go,” said Dad. “She won’t believe it. She probably can’t believe it. Not until it happens.”

He took a sip of the whisky, but then set it down and slid the glass away. “You’re right about facing up to it. They’ll be here soon. I heard if you strap your watch to your ankle they sometimes miss it. And don’t wear good shoes. They take them.”

“I’m sorry, Nathaniel,” said Pop wretchedly.

“Maybe it’s just our luck,” said Dad. “The real kind. We’d better start gathering whatever valuables we can hide.”

“Valuables?” asked Pop. “What for? They’ll make an example of us…down to Unlucky for sure. Money won’t help us—”

“No,” said Dad. He looked at the bottle of whisky. “We will be Unlucky. But there’s a black market for small luxuries, things we might miss…money might give us some options.”

“Options? What options?”

“I don’t know,” said Dad wearily. “But better to have something just in case. Get everything small and valuable, and old clothes. We have to be ready.”

“And Jean?”

“The only thing that will break through twelve years of indoctrination is harsh reality,” said Dad. He hesitated, before adding, “We can’t protect her from this. We can only…”

He gulped and looked down.

Pop held out his arms, and Dad came into his embrace. They stood tight together for a minute, then slowly moved apart. Pop went to gather their jewelry, while Dad unstrapped his watch.

---

The Adjudicator and the Luck testers came at twenty past three that morning. Dad was waiting for them, empty glass in hand, the lounge still massaging his back. There was plenty of stress there, more than any upmarket furniture could massage away. Pop had fallen asleep next to him, his head on Dad’s shoulder. He was still unable to believe it was really going to happen.

The first thing Jean knew about it was when her room turned all its lights on at maximum brightness, played her usual wake-up music for ten seconds far louder than usual, and then followed with a bored official voice she’d never heard before.

“Get up, Jean. Get up. It is time for your Luck to be tested. Good luck.”

Suddenly worried, Jean slid out of bed, her heart thumping. She barely had any time to slip on some clothes before the door opened and the two Luck testers came in, their uniforms harsh and red in the bright light. One had a Luck meter in her hand, the other a laser cutter. Without preamble, the one with the meter pointed it at Jean and pressed the button. Heavenly voices sang from the meter, only to stop suddenly and be replaced by a dismal groan.

“Zero point seven,” said the meter, in a harsh, croaking voice.

“Unlucky,” said the tester. Jean stood uncomprehending, unable to believe what had just happened, her mouth open. It was too fast, too much for her to take in. The first tester put the Luck meter away and took out another tool from the pouch at her belt. The second tester stepped closer, took Jean’s unresisting arm and neatly cut off her Lucky golden bangle.

“No!” cried Jean. She made a lunge for the tester with the meter, who stepped aside. “Test me again! It can’t be right.”

“Don’t make this difficult,” warned the tester. She replaced the Luck meter and drew a small, egg-shaped device from a holster on her hip.

“Difficult!” screamed Jean. “I’m Lucky! Test me ag—”

The tester pressed the egg against Jean’s reaching arm, above the elbow. There was a bright, actinic spark and a sharp crack. Jean collapsed instantly, crashing to the floor, her muscles in spasm.

The first tester stepped forward with the strange tool and ran it around the young woman’s head. She felt a slight discomfort, not quite a pain, and saw in the large mirror by her wardrobe thatshe now had a crown of twisted black wire around her head.

The mark of the Unlucky.

Jean stared at her reflection, unable to believe what she was seeing. There was her perfect, dark skin without a blemish, her sparkling deep brown eyes, her beautiful tightly-curled hair…and somehow, totally ruining this picture was the twisted wire around her brow.

Frantically, she tried to lift her hands to the crown, but her fingers wouldn’t work and deep down she knew that even if they had, the crown could not be removed.

The testers picked her up and dragged her downstairs. Her parents cried out as they dumped her in a chair, and tried to go to her, but were waved back by the testers.

“You have twenty minutes for her to recover,” said the Adjudicator. “Once outside you have an hour to leave Gardenside.”

“Leave Gardenside?” mumbled Jean. Her voice was slurred, but still furious. “I’m not leaving Gardenside.”

“You can’t stay here,” said the Adjudicator. “This suburb is zoned four plus. Penalties apply if you are still here within the stated time.”

Jean snarled at him, so angry words would not come out of her unresponsive mouth. This could not be happening. She couldn’t believe it. She was Lucky, and things like this just didn’t happen to the Lucky.

“We’ll carry her,” said Dad. “Is that allowed?”

The Adjudicator made a dismissive wave of her hand. The testers stood back, though one still held the shock device ready.

Pop and Dad picked Jean up. She tried to struggle, but only succeeded in flopping around a bit more. Her parents clumsily maneuvered themselves and their burden out through the front door, and into the night.

They were Lucky no more.

---

Two days later, Jean came out of her rage and coolly decided that she simply wasn’t going to accept what had happened. She left the room Dad had found for the three of them to share in an Unlucky hostel that occupied the lowest level of a deep parking garage, and walked up the ramps toward the daylight. The black wire crown around her head glinted as she stepped out into the sunshine, the bright sunshine forbidden to the Unlucky.

She crossed the street and began to walk along the broad footpath reserved for the Lucky, striding back towards Gardenside and her former life. But she had only walked a hundred meters before a black and silver runabout whirred silently towards her. There was a loud popping sound and the next thing she knew she was tripping over herself and colliding with the pavement, her legs wrapped in some ropy, sticky substance.

A Luck tester casually climbed out of the runabout and walked over to her, brandishing one of the egg-shaped weapons Jean had been shocked with before.

“No!” protested Jean. “I’m Lucky, this is all a mistake. I’m Lucky—”

This time, the tester put the weapon against her head.

When she regained consciousness, Jean found herself back in the room under the car park. Her Pop was sitting by the bed, but there was no sign of Dad. Pop lifted Jean’s head and helped her drink a cup of water. It tasted metallic, another sign of how their life had changed. The Lucky drank filtered water.

Jean drank slowly, her conscious mind slowly reassembling itself into a working whole.

“You mustn’t go out in daylight again,” said Pop. “They said that was your last warning. They’ll kill you next time. You must realize that we are Unlucky now.”

“I know,” croaked Jean. She grimaced as a pain shot through her temples. “But that doesn’t mean we can’t do anything about it.”

“No, no, Jean,” said Pop, his voice full of horror. “I just told you! They’ll kill you. We have to lie low, learn how to live as the other Unlucky do—”

“No,” said Jean, forcefully. “I’m not going to do that. I’ll find a way out.”

“Out?” asked Pop. “What do you mean out? Jean, I know this is all my fault, and I’m desperately sorry, but we have to live within—”

“No,” interrupted Jean. She sat up, held her head for a few seconds, then gingerly got to her feet. “I’m going to talk to some people. Ask around.”

“Ask around about what?” exclaimed Pop, hovering around her as if she might fall over at any second. “Please, Jean. Be sensible. Lie down again. You don’t have to start work until tomorrow night, they said that at least, and it’s only street-cleaning. I did it last night, it isn’t very difficult.”

“I’m going to ask about getting out of here,” said Jean. “I mean really out.”

“What?” asked Pop. His forehead was creased with deep concern. “Jean, you need to lie down. Dad will be back soon, he’s helping a patient, you know the Unlucky…we…can’t visit the proper clinics, he’s doing what he can, if there’s some medication you need there’s a chance he can get it…”

“I’m okay, Pop,” said Jean, giving him a quick hug. “I’m going to ask around about how we can get to Starhaven.”

“Starhaven…” Pop stopped talking, but looked no less anxious. His mouth worked a bit before he got out another word. “What…what do you mean?”

“We all know it’s up there,” said Jean. “I’ve seen it at night, crossing the sky. Some of my friends talked about it, they said there are people who can smuggle you there. And Starhaven doesn’t have the Luck system.”

“All those things are true,” said a voice from the door. Pop jumped in instinctive fear, but relaxed as he recognized Dad.

“Starhaven is up there, as are other orbital habitats,” continued Dad. “They don’t have the Luck system, though some have other kinds of restrictive societies. And there are ways to get there. If you can pay for it.”

“Can we pay for it?” asked Jean. She’d seen her parents remove various hidden valuables from their clothing when they’d first arrived, watches and jewelry and some ancient golden coins. Dad had taken them away somewhere the first day.

Dad didn’t answer. He sat down on the foam mattress that served as bed and lounge. Pop went and sat next to him.

“Can we pay for it?” asked Jean. “Can we go?”

“I don’t know…” said Dad. “We might be Unlucky, but as long as we follow the rules, we’ll get basic food, this place to live…it’s nothing compared to what we were used to, but at least we’re alive.”

Jean looked around the bare grey walls of the room, taking in the pale single light panel, the dirty foam mattress, the plastic crate that contained a little food and a large bottle of water that had been filled from a park fountain.

“It’s not enough for me,” said Jean. “If I can’t get to Starhaven, I’ll try to get out some other way. I’m not putting up with being Unlucky.”

“I don’t know…” said Dad.

“We might get retested in a while,” said Pop hopefully.

“Don’t talk nonsense,” snapped Dad. “No one has ever been retested out of Unlucky. Why would we be different? I’ve told you that over and over. This is it.”

“At least Starhaven would be a chance of something better,” said Jean. “Surely a chance is worth…worth anything.”

“Let me think about it,” said Dad. “You think about what it means to at least be alive. Even if it is as an Unlucky.”

“I’m still going to ask around,” said Jean. “I mean, how to get to Starhaven.”

“Feel free,” said Dad. “We’ll talk about it later. I need to get ready. We have to go out to work.”

“Work,” said Pop, the mathematician, as he helped one of the former most-gifted surgeons of the city into his high-visibility coat.

---

Jean did ask around, talking to the Unlucky around her own age as they went off to work, or as they came back in the grey interval before the dawn. Most would not answer her, feraing some kind of Luck tester trap. The few that did offered nothing beyond the fact that if it were possible to get to Starhaven they would already have gone themselves.

Dad and Pop returned with the last group of Unlucky, too tired and dirty to want to discuss anything but a wash and sleep. When they awoke in the afternoon, Dad hushed Jean as she tried to bring up the subject.

“I’ve asked a woman who knows someone,” he said. “I’ll let you know what she tells me, when I hear. Let’s leave it until then.”

But Jean didn’t leave it. She kept asking, in the underground settlement, and out at night among the work gangs. The work was almost pointless, and very easy, simply a bit of sweeping and carrying that could be done in under an hour, though the shift went for a good ten hours of darkness. There was plenty of time to talk.

After a week, Jean found someone who claimed to have a connection to a people smuggler who arranged passage to Starhaven. A man in his twenties who had been born Unlucky told her there was a rendezvous once a month at a landing site outside the city. If you could pay, in precious metal or drugs or something equally transportable and negotiable, the smugglers would take you away. He had never had the chance to steal anything valuable enough to pay his way, but he told Jean he knew someone who had a few months before.

Jean told her parents the next morning. She wanted them all to go to the rendezvous and if possible, fly away to a new life, where they wouldn’t have crowns of braided black wire and there would be a chance she could study and become something. Not just a street sweeper confined to the night.

Her parents looked at each other as Jean spoke. Finally Dad interrupted.

“That rendezvous is a scam,” he said heavily. “The man you spoke to would be waiting there to rob us.”

“How do you know,” said Jean. “It’s worth a try. Anything is worth a try!”

“I know because I’ve been asking around as well,” said Dad. “There is a real rendezvous for the people smugglers. And…I…we…”

His voice faltered and he wiped angrily at his right eye.

“We’ve got you a place on a ship, Jean,” he said bluntly. “To Starhaven.”

Jean jumped up and flung her arms around him, but the hug grew looser as she realised exactly what he’d said.

“You’ve got me a place…” said Jean in a small voice. Fear had replaced anger, her defenses were broken. “What about you?”

“We can’t all go,” said Dad gently. “The fact is—”

“We’re too old for Starhaven or any of the other orbitals,” broke in Pop quickly. He gave a warning look to Dad over Jean’s head. He didn’t want their daughter to know they had only just scraped together enough money to send her, and there was no prospect of ever earning or gaining any more. They had nothing left to sell. “So we have to stay here.”

“Yes,” said Dad. “It won’t be so bad for us, Jean. The Unlucky need doctors so we’ll be looked after, as best as they can. Besides, we’ve had a long…we’ve had plenty of good years. And perhaps we should now be paying for the Lucky time we had, not caring about our fellows.”

Jean cleared her throat and wiped her eyes.

“Maybe I shouldn’t go either then,” she said bravely.

“You took your lead from us,” said Pop. “You shouldn’t feel guilty. And we want you to have a better life.”

“But without my parents!” exclaimed Jean. Her face was scrunched up, but no tears came to her dry eyes.

“Do you think you could stay here like this?” asked Dad. “Cleaning streets? Seeing the sun only at dusk and dawn? With nothing to look forward to?”

Jean stared at him.

“That’s what it would be,” said Pop. “I…we…we have to give you something better than that. We have to.”

“We’re not going to let you waste your life,” said Dad, very firmly. “Besides, we’ve paid for your place.”

Jean didn’t answer. She looked at them and then slowly nodded her head.

“I’ll go,” she said. “But I’m going to come back for you. One day.”

Dad smiled, but it was a small smile, the kind you have when you know something is forever beyond your reach. Pop smiled too, with a greater belief.

“We’d better get going then,” said Dad. “We have a long way to go to the pickup and no easy way to get there.”

There were no electric runabouts for the Unlucky, and they were only allowed on the trams after midnight. The three of them walked out of the city, on one of the roads that had an extra narrow lane for the Unlucky to trudge upon to their work.

It took another three hours at a steady pace to cross the green belt. They were all tired by then, so they stopped under one of the last trees and ate some of the basic fare of the Unlucky that Pop had brought in his backpack: vitamin-laced ration bread and the metallic water from the park fountain.

The desert lay beyond the green belt. They followed the single straight road out, walking through pools of darkness between the stark patches of light from occasional lamps that hung high above from some invisible filament, anchored every now and then by a slender tower of only slightly thicker material.

Though the road was at least partially lit and the surface kept in good repair, doubtless by Unlucky labor, none of them knew for sure where it went. Geography was not an approved subject for the Lucky, they were taught to believe that nowhere else really mattered. It was harder to ignore the orbitals, because they could be seen at night flashing across the sky, but again they were not considered a proper subject to discuss at any length or learn about.

“How far to go?” asked Pop, after they had walked for another hour. Dad still had a watch, but it was a simple extruded prefab now, not the status symbol of gold antiquity.

“Can’t be long now. They just said keep walking down the road until we see it,” said Dad.

“See what?” asked Jean. Her question was almost automatic, her voice without inflection. She still couldn’t believe what was happening.

“That, I think,” said Dad, pointing. Up ahead there was another patch of light, the last before a very long stretch of darkness. But it wasn’t the harsh, steady white illumination of the overhead lamps. It was blue and red, and flickered.

Closer, they saw that the light came from the idling exhaust of a scramjet, lined up to use the road as a runway, though only Pop knew what it was, and his knowledge was academic. He’d never actually seen one.

A woman, strangely dressed to their eyes, in a coverall with a ring collar for a helmet seal, came up to meet them. Up close she was stranger still, for her skin was a pallid white, the color of a wound dressing, so unlike the rich brown of Jean and her parents.

Jean stared at the woman for a full second, unable to look away, only now fully realizing that she was about to leave everything familiar behind her, even the basic appearance of people. She had never seen a pale-skinned person before.

The woman directed them off the road and into the sand to take a wide berth around the back of the scramjet. She had a weapon of some kind in a holster at her side and her hand constantly rested on the butt.

“Okay, I only got one passenger listed,” she said. “Unless you got a whole lot of extra currency on you.”

“It’s just me,” said Jean. “To Starhaven.”

“Yeah, yeah,” said the woman impatiently. “Say your goodbyes, because you two old guys need to get clear before we take off, and that’s in fifteen minutes. Make it quick, girl, because I got to get you rigged up.”

Jean felt nothing as her fathers hugged her. It was as if she were somewhere else, far away, watching all this happen. They both cried, but she had no tears within her. Her anger was long gone. Now she simply had a grim acceptance. She would go to Starhaven, and learn and grow, and then one day she would come back. Come back to rescue her parents, and all the Unlucky, and throw down the whole Luck system to give everyone an equal chance to make their own future.

The woman scowled as the hug continued.

“Hurry up,” she said. But it was a perfunctory warning and she didn’t try to separate them.

“Don’t cry,” soothed Dad, though it was him and Pop who were crying. “It’ll be good up in Starhaven. You’ll make friends up there, find someone, have a better life…”

“You will,” muttered Pop, his voice breaking. “We love you. Always.”

“I love you too,” said Jean automatically. “I love you.”

“We got to go,” said the woman. She hesitated, then added a grudging, peculiar apology that was more to Dad and Pop than Jean. “Sorry. It’s just the…we have to get going.”

Last kisses were exchanged. Jean was led away towards the front of the scramjet. Her parents watched for a moment, then started to trudge back through the sand, their heads bowed. After a few paces, their hands went up and clutched tight together.

Jean looked over her shoulder just as they disappeared into the night, blue-tinged shadows absorbed into the darkness. She felt a sudden pain pass through her body and an incredible weariness centered in her heart, on top of the physical ache from their long walk.

She knew then she would never see her parents again.

“Step into this,” said the woman, opening up an orange coverall that came with attached boots and gloves. “This is your survival suit. Anything happens, you pull this clear hood up and over, it’ll seal automatically when you hold it closed here. The you got twenty minutes of air and it will set off a beacon. You understand?”

Jean quickly sealed the suit and pulled the hood halfway up a couple of times to see how it worked.

“Sure,” she said. This was the beginning of her new life. She had to be keen and sharp and do everything properly. “Uh, what do you mean if something happens? How will we know?”

“Just routine,” said the woman, but she didn’t look Jean in the eyes. “It’s not like driving around your dinky city. Come on.”

Jean followed her up the lowered ramp and into the scramjet. She saw several crewmembers through the open cockpit door, but they looked through her or off to the side, as if she wasn’t really there, and quickly turned back to their glowing holographic controls.

The woman with the sidearm opened an internal door and gestured for Jean to go through into a sparsely-outfitted cabin. There were rows of long, couch-like benches with angled backs inside and already quite a lot of people half-lying on them, maybe forty or fifty, all in orange survival suits.

“Find a place, fit your feet under the restraints on the floor, lie backwards and hold onto the handles at the sides. Don’t let go unless instructed. If you have to vomit, there are pouches in the thigh pocket of your suit, seal it up straight afterwards. This is a quick trip, you won’t need food, water or a toilet.”

Jean nodded and walked into the cabin. A man and a woman who also wore the dark crown of the Unlucky shifted across a bench to make room for her at the end of the second row. Jean sat down, her mind noting that they were both older than her parents, so what Dad had said about being too old was clearly a lie. Inwardly, she had always known the truth, that there simply wasn’t enough money to send them all, and that only strengthened her determination to come back.

Jean slotted her feet into the restraints, leaned back and felt for the hand-holds on either side.

“Starhaven?” asked her neighbor.

“Yeah,” croaked Jean. It was hard to get the word out without a sob.

“It’ll be better there,” said the man. “A lot better.”

He sounded like he was trying to convince himself.

A crewmember poked her head into the cabin and shouted, “One minute! Hold on and don’t let go.”

Withdrawing, she shut the door behind her, and the passengers heard the heavy clank of it being manually dogged shut. There was a faint murmur at that, a restless shuffle along the benches.

It didn’t feel like a minute before there was a sudden roar of the jet and an acceleration that at first pushed them gently back but then continued, the push increasing until it hurt, at first a little and then a lot as there was a sudden change in engine pitch and the scramjet became nearly vertical. Jean pushed hard to keep her feet in the restraints and hold on, her knuckles went white. She heard screaming and shouting behind her: from the sound of it someone had come loose and crashed against other passengers.

A few minutes later, the acceleration increased even more. Jean felt as if someone was probing her face, pushing fingers into her cheeks hard enough to push through to her jaw, pressing her eyes into their sockets. She cried out, involuntarily, adding to the cacophony of screams and cries in the cabin. Then she passed out.

Jean came to only minutes later. The pressure had abated, and with it the pain. But now she felt an uneasy sensation in her stomach, as if it wanted to rise up through her throat. She gasped and coughed, and willed herself not to be sick.

Slowly the screams and the shouting subsided, but it was replaced by the sound of retching and whimpering. Jean looked around. She could really only see down her row, and no one was being sick there, but there were lots of white faces and screwed-shut eyes.

“Can’t be too much longer,” whispered Jean’s neighbor. He looked very pale and ill, the flesh bruised around his eyes and his lips a little blue. “We must be in orbit now. Free fall.”

Jean nodded anxiously. She was trying to be tough, but couldn’t help starting to worry about what would happen to her in Starhaven. Everything was happening too quickly—

A deafening alarm klaxon sounded, followed immediately afterwards by an amplified voice.

“Put your hoods on and seal. Put your hoods on and seal.”

Jean let go of the handles and began to fumble with her hood, but rose up out of her bench at the same time. She pushed her feet in hard and tried to flex herself backwards, still grappling with her hood. She got it up and over and closed, and heard a hissing noise from somewhere around the back of her neck. She grabbed the handles again and pulled herself back into place, taking a breath that smelt of dust and tainted plastic.

The man next to her was writhing about near the ceiling and still hadn’t got his hood over his head. Jean let go with her right hand and reached up to pull him down, but at that moment the ceiling above her suddenly parted down the middle and split apart. The man was jerked from Jean’s grasp and she lost her grip with her left hand and went spinning after him, one of fifty orange bundles propelled out into space in a haze of vented atmosphere and ice crystals.

Tumbling end over end, Jean saw the scramjet dwindling away from her, the top cargo doors closing. Already there was no one close to her, she could only just make out a few orange specks disappearing towards the stars or to the brilliant arc of the world below.

Instinctively Jean pulled herself into a ball, not because she thought it would help the spinning. Strangely, she was not terrified. She had known a moment of terror when she had been flung out of the spacecraft, but it was gone now. She was scared, but she forced the fear down and concentrated on trying to slow her breathing. The twenty minutes of air promised by the crewmember was likely as much a lie as the journey to Starhaven.

Whatever air was left to her she would use slowly. There was probably no chance of rescue, but whatever tiny chance there was, Jean thought, she would multiply it. She would count ten between breaths, and breathe shallowly, and think of past happiness.

Her fathers would think her safe, she thought, and that was one small good thing.

She shut her eyes, and thought of sunshine, her breath very low and slow. Her arms and legs trailed out as she relaxed, unintentionally reducing the spin. Another little piece of space debris, drifting out to join the many others waiting in that long, cold sub-orbital graveyard, waiting until the Earth would bring them down for a swift cremation, weeks or even months ahead.

But unbeknownst to Jean, there was a slow reaching arm of a grapple about to pluck her from that graveyard, a grapple from a battered craft that was firing micro bursts from its thrusters to match her velocity and vector.

Her air ran out as the arm brought her aboard. People in proper suits rushed through the airlock procedures, lifting her inside to their waiting medic, who hastily brushed them aside and cut off her hood, clamping on an oxygen mask and a telltale on her ear.

Muzzily, Jean saw her rescuers looking down on her. She saw strange faces, with skins of many different shades, but also with metal and plastic in place of flesh: a glittering steel eye surrounded by scarred flesh, a nose remade in plastic, a mouth refashioned after some terrible injury.

She could hear them too, talking among themselves. Something about refugees and Starhaven refusing responsibility, and the smugglers getting even worse, not even trying to drop their passengers anywhere they’d get picked up, and if they could catch that scramjet they’d vent it, just see if they wouldn’t, and there was one more they might be able to pick up, maybe two, but if this one’s air was already gone then their suits were useless, there was no point…

Jean tried to talk, but only a bare croak came out. Her throat felt incredibly dry and strange.

“Don’t talk,” said the woman…or maybe it was a man…with the steel eye. “Just rest. You’ll be okay.”

“You were lucky we were so close,” said someone else. There was a little chorus from everyone around.

“Very lucky.”

“Amazingly lucky.”

“Astonishingly lucky!”

Jean looked at their kind, caring faces, and finally began to cry.