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Stapleton, Kieran’s physics teacher, was running for the shuttle bay, but Kieran grabbed his sleeve. “Harvard, what if this is what they want us to do?”
    “Not now, Kieran!”
    But Kieran wouldn’t let him go. “What if…” The idea formed in his mind as he said it. “What if they’re planning to blow out the shuttle bay?”
    Harvard stopped, thinking, as another bunch of people ran in.
    “We’ve got to stop people going in,” Kieran said to Harvard, whose face was pale under his thick graying hair. “We can’t have the whole crew in there! They’re sitting ducks!”
    “Are you asking me to defy the Captain’s orders?”
    “Yes!” Kieran shrieked as another group ran past. It now looked as if almost the entire crew surrounded the air lock doors.
    “Harvard, you have to tell them!” Kieran pleaded. “They won’t listen to me.”
    “Maybe you’re right.” The man’s eyes scanned the crowd, looking for the Captain.
    Another dozen people filed past them, Kieran’s parents among them. He could see his father’s strong back, his mother’s golden hair. “Mom! Dad!”
    His mother waved him away. “Kieran, get out of here!”
    “Don’t go in there!” Kieran pleaded. “It’s a trap!”
    But she was already running for the air lock. How many were there now, crowded around the doors, waiting? Three hundred? Four? They seemed so stupid standing there holding their rakes and shovels, farmers who didn’t know how to fight. “Why aren’t they listening to me?!”
    “Go,” Harvard told him as he stepped through the doorway. “I’ll tell the Captain.”
    A sudden, deafening wind ripped through Kieran’s ears. He tried to stay on his feet, but he felt the soles of his shoes sliding along the floor. He was being sucked toward what looked like an enormous hole in the side of the ship.
    No. It wasn’t a hole.
    The air lock doors were opening to the emptiness of the nebula.
    Kieran grabbed on to the doorway. “Oh God!” he screamed, but he couldn’t hear his own voice.
    Kieran looked for the other crew members.
    Hundreds of pinwheel shapes were twirling out the open doorway. The shapes were people.
    “Mom! Dad!” he cried into the wind, searching for his parents.
    “Kieran!” someone screamed.
    Harvard Stapleton was ten feet away, on his hands and knees, struggling toward Kieran. The wind sucked at him, pulled on his clothes, flattened his hair, kneaded at the skin on his face.
    Kieran flattened himself on the floor and stretched his feet toward Harvard. “Grab on to me!”
    “Close the door!” Harvard screamed, even as he struggled toward Kieran.
    “Just another two feet! You can make it!” Kieran bellowed.
    Harvard lunged for Kieran’s foot and held on with both hands, pulling himself up Kieran’s legs until they could fight their way into the corridor.
    He felt Harvard’s hold on him loosen for just a moment, and then suddenly the metal door to the shuttle bay closed.
    The wind stopped.
    It was so quiet.
    “What are you doing ?!” Kieran screamed. “They’ve got no air!”
    “We can’t depressurize the entire ship, Kieran,” Harvard said. But he was crying.
    Kieran pressed his face against the glass and watched as a cluster of survivors opened the ramp to the nearest shuttle. A few crew members straggled toward it, but they were losing consciousness in the vacuum. Kieran studied them, looking for his parents. He was near despair when he saw his mother emerge from behind a OneMan, crawling weakly toward the open shuttle.
    “She needs air!” Kieran screamed, and punched at the lock. The doors opened and the wind began again, earsplitting and deadly.
    Kieran watched as his mother, revived by the air, got up and ran weakly toward the shuttle ramp. She dove onto the ramp, and someone on the inside pulled her all the way in.
    Harvard closed the doors again, and the gale disappeared.
    “Your mom’s safe. Okay?” Harvard said. “Now go to the auditorium.”
    “What about