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hand away from my face, I saw that the boat
had completely disappeared. I cautiously approached the spot where it had
rested, and could not see any sign that it had ever existed.
    “Thank you, Subo Ak,” Ekahua said.
    I felt a raindrop fall on my cheek and looked up into the
evening sky. Clouds had gathered, and we would soon be caught in a downpour.
    “We need to find shelter,” I said.
    “I do not have the strength to rise; you must carry me.”
    I picked Ekahua up, and he was far lighter than I had
expected.
    When I had climbed the side of the mountain earlier, I had
passed a cliff where I had seen a small crevice. I didn’t know how deep the
crevice went, but I hoped it would be large enough for us to fit inside.
    At the very least, it would keep the rain off Ekahua, and we
would be hidden in case the Q’eqchi’ warriors sent a scouting party this way.

6
    Unknown
Station :
    Sol
System :
    To Alex’s
complete surprise, he woke up.
    The last memory he had was of the Solan Empire soldiers
firing at them. In retrospect, he realized they’d been shot with tranquilizers
rather than bullets or ion pulses.
    Opening his eyes, he looked around. He was in an infirmary,
along with the other three. They were all hooked up to medical equipment and
life support. An oxygen mask pressed against his mouth, and he felt the pinch
of an IV needle in his arm feeding him nutrients.
    Michael and Yaxche were still unconscious, but Alex saw that
Kenny was coming to. A soft moan escaped the physicist’s lips, muffled by his
own mask, and he moved his head in quick, jerky motions.
    Alex recognized the signs of bio stasis. Some people did not
come out of it as well as others. NASA had experimented with the technique in
the past, inducing a state similar to a medical coma in their astronauts on deep-space
missions, but had discontinued the practice after determining the long-term
effects were potentially harmful, ranging from muscle atrophy to dementia.
    How long has they been in stasis? It was apparent the Solan
Empire soldiers had decided it would be easier to put their prisoners to sleep
for the trip, rather than deal with them. Depending on how bad Kenny’s injuries
were, he might have actually benefited from the long sleep, giving his bones
time to knit.
    Alex had a gnawing feeling deep in his stomach. He hadn’t
eaten solid food in who knew how long; he was suddenly ravished. Quelling the
hunger for the time being, he closed his eyes and concentrated. Where were
they?
    Pushing his sight out, he was shocked to discover that
they were no longer on the patrol ship that had attacked them.
    He surveyed their immediate surroundings. They were in a
large station, the design of which was not familiar to him. In passing, he
sensed there were more than a thousand people on the station. It wasn’t until
he looked beyond the edges of the complex that he realized they were nowhere
near Pluto.
    From the moment Alex had been exposed to Kinemet on Macklin’s
Rock, he’d been able to hear the planets—the Music of the Spheres, as Yaxche
called it. Every celestial body had a unique combination of forces—radiation,
gravity, spin, mineral composition, and chemical makeup. Over the past several
years, Alex had been able to identify the planets by their individual
frequencies. With an odd feeling, he realized they were in orbit between the
inner asteroid belt and Mars.
    Based on ion pulse engine technology, it would have taken
them four months to traverse the distance. That didn’t seem plausible to Alex;
he should have suffered far worse aftereffects from the medical stasis in that
case. At the very least, he would have had significant weight loss in that
time, and though he was acutely hungry, he didn’t feel much slimmer than
before.
    Waking up must have triggered a sensor. He pulled his sight back as he heard a door open in the infirmary, and footsteps approaching.
    Turning his head, he saw an unfamiliar man in a white lab
coat coming toward