Trouble in the Stars Read online

  * * *

  When Captain Astra comes in, I am sprawled on the floor with my feet on the couch, smiling at the ceiling.

  Lying there, I turn my head and practice my smile on her. “Hello.” I try raising one eyebrow, and both of them go up.

  She frowns back at me. “What in all of rat-bit space are you doing, Trouble?” she asks, going to the kitchen. It is too soon for lunch, so I don’t bother getting up.

  “Having nothing to do,” I tell her.

  She comes out of the galley, unwrapping a protein bar. “It’s remarkably clean in here,” she notes.

  Yep. Apparently I don’t have to sleep very much, even in my human body. I spent most of the night cleaning the mess-room until every bit of it sparkles.

  And now I have nothing else to do.

  I sit up, and the captain tosses me a protein bar.

  Something happens to my face. A smile! I didn’t have to try at all, it just happened! “Thank you,” I tell her.

  She stands there for a moment, frowning down at me, and I remind myself that she doesn’t trust me and that she could have me thrown out an airlock if she wanted.

  “You’re welcome,” she says slowly. Then she leaves the mess-room, but I don’t even have time to flop onto the floor again before she returns. Crossing the room, she hands me a flat, square item made of white plastic with buttons on it.

  “What is it?” I ask.

  She crouches next to me. “Trouble,” she says with a sigh, “every human in the galaxy knows what this is. It’s a remote.” Then she points to the screen that takes up almost all of one wall of the mess-room. “It controls the screen. You can use it to look at galactic broadcasts.”

  “What’s that?” I ask.

  “Information that’s sent out by the StarLeague on screens all over the galaxy,” she says, as if it’s obvious. “You can also access all of the art created during the entire history of humans.” She pushes another button on the remote, and on the screen words scroll past, and then settle. “Also art created by other species.” When she gets to her feet, her knee joints crack. “Ow.” She nods. “That should keep you busy for a while.”

  I don’t even hear her leave the mess-room.

  10

  That night I tear myself away from the screen for long enough to make dinner for the crew and clean up, and then I lie on the floor holding the remote, scrolling through A Compendium of Human Art: Earth, Second Era. The previous night the crew all left the mess-room right after dinner. But tonight—all except the captain, who is on the bridge watching the blip—they stay, talking and doing things that are fun.

  Amby, the blue-skinned humanoid, settles on the couch near me. “This,” they say, “is . . . Well, it is . . .” They wave bony fingers at the mess-room.

  “Nice,” says Shkkka from the table, where she’s working on a piece of machinery from the engineering section and also looking at the art displayed on the screen.

  “Clean,” Telly says. He and Reetha are sitting at a table nearby, playing some sort of strategy game. He bares his tusks at me.

  I smile back at him.

  “It’s homey,” Amby adds primly, and folds their hands over their middle.

  Before dinner, Amby and I had an interesting conversation. They came in early, settled in their nest-chair, and asked where I came from. I told them what I’d told the captain, that I didn’t come from anywhere. Then Amby asked if I had any family.

  Family.

  An interesting concept, but not something I know much about.

  “No,” I told Amby. “I don’t. Do you?”

  Then they told me about their home planet, where five of their parental units live, along with seventeen siblings who hatched out of the same birth-pod that they did.

  Home planet. I think that’s what Amby means when they say homey, anyway. A family place. I smile at them, take a bite of protein bar, and scroll to the next picture on the screen.

  It’s quiet for a while and then, at the game table, Telly gives a delighted shriek. Reetha makes a frustrated growling sound and gets to her feet.

  “Telly won,” Amby explains, unfolding themself from the couch. “And now it’s my . . . Well, I get to.” They switch places with Reetha, who lumbers to the couch and sits down.

  She’s watching me steadily with her round, slit-pupiled, unblinking golden eyes, but I ignore her, my attention on the screen. It shows me pictures of people from Earth.

  You probably haven’t heard of Earth, the planet that humans originally came from. I had never heard of it either, and I don’t know where it is, exactly. Humans are rare, so I’m guessing Earth is pretty far from the galactic center.

  The pictures are oil paintings, the screen says. Portraits. The colors would be blurred smears of blue gray to my dog eyes, but to my human eyes they are so rich and strange. There’s one picture that I keep going back to. It’s called The Lady.

  “Reetha,” I ask, pointing at the screen, “is this what humans look like on Earth?”

  Reetha snorts. “No.” With a clawed hand, she rubs at her crest, then nods at the picture. “Old. Ancient.”

  Oh. Earth, Second Era. It must be a long time ago.

  The Lady in the picture is a human female dressed in black, with long dark hair. Her face is round and pale, her eyes looking off to the side.

  Her mouth is making the strangest smile.

  I think it’s a smile.

  I get to my feet and take a step closer to the screen so I can see her better. Is she happy? Sad? Patient? About to stab somebody with a fork?

  I try making the same smile with my face.

  I think she’s happy.

  It makes me realize that there’s more to being a good human than just knowing how to inhabit a human body. There are also emotions.

  * * *

  Over the next four days on the ship, I do the following things:

  Ask Amby what a blip is, and they tell me it’s a dot on a screen, which doesn’t sound too worrying.

  Eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner at least three times each, every day, and also this new food called dessert.

  Learn to play the strategy game and find that I’m so bad at it, even Reetha laughs at me.

  Try to remind myself every morning when I wake up that I am not safe here, but it gets harder with every day that passes.

  Use the screen to look at all human art from Earth, Second Era.

  Accidentally shock myself again when I forget about the restraining cuff and try to leave the mess-room with Telly while we are having an argument about the smile on The Lady’s face.

  Figure out how to make other foods, like spicy rice and beans, slitherbread, and, for Telly, vegetables with soy protein.

  And the captain shows me this thing called the midnight snack. Neither of us is very good at sleeping, and every night after the rest of the crew has gone to bed, she comes into the galley to talk and make something delicious to eat. Strangely, I look forward to the conversations even more than the food.

  You’re probably wondering why I like spending time with the person who could throw me off the ship.

  Emotions, that’s why.

  On this night, Captain Astra is at the heating unit making scrambled eggs with cheese powder, and I’m sitting on the counter, asking her what cheese powder tastes like and how it gets that amazingly bright orange color.

  “What a question, Trouble,” the captain says. “It probably comes from neon cows.”

  “What’s neon?” I ask. “What’s a cow?”

  The only answer she gives me is a roll of her eyes—an interesting human gesture that I must try.

  When we sit at the table to eat, she starts talking about outer space.

  “I don’t want to talk about space,” I tell her.

  “Why don’t you like it?” she asks, and takes a bi
te of egg. She makes a face and puts down her fork.

  “Because I don’t want to be spaced,” I say, and dig into my eggs. Cheese powder, it turns out, is delicious.

  “Fair enough,” she says, and pushes her full plate of eggs across the table toward me. “Although at this point I don’t think anybody in the crew could be persuaded to toss you out an airlock.”

  I take a bite. “Devious,” I say through a mouthful of eggs, pointing at myself with my fork.

  “Uh-huh,” she says. “And you have egg on your chin.” Hooking a foot around another chair, she drags it closer, then puts her feet up, sprawling in her own chair.

  The captain’s emotions are interesting to me. And my emotions about her are interesting to me too. When I first came aboard her ship, I was a stowaway and she didn’t trust me. And now, for some human-emotion reason, that has changed. Now she makes me feel sort of warm and safe. The more time I spend with her, the stronger this feeling gets.

  Is that what human emotions are based on? Time and proximity?

  I think it’s more than that.

  I finish my midnight snack and start on the captain’s while she tells me about the deep space between stations. It’s always a jolt, she says, coming to a busy, bright, noisy station after being in space for a long time. She loves the feeling of being not-here and not-there, just suspended in the long, velvety darkness. She says that sometimes she sits on the bridge of the ship and listens to the singing of the stars.

  “The stars don’t sing,” I tell her.

  “Yes, they do,” she tells me, with a strange smile on her face. “You just have to know how to listen.”

  I don’t understand. There’s a way of listening so that you can hear things that don’t make any sound?

  Humans are so weird.

  She gets to her feet, yawning. “Good night, kiddo,” she says, and then she leans over and rubs my head, ruffling up my hair.

  I’m not sure what it means. My dog self liked being patted on the head, and my human self does too.

  “Stay out of trouble, Trouble.” And she leaves the mess-room.

  Talking to Captain Astra about outer space makes me think about being in my blob of goo form traveling through space. The blob of goo doesn’t have very much brain or any way of forming memories, and because I spent so much time in that shape, I’ve forgotten what came before, where I came from.

  But I do remember this. When I was out there floating through cold, empty, lonely space, I never sensed anything except silence.

  But I do wonder what it sounds like when the stars are singing.

  11

  I am so, so dumb.

  You probably knew this already, but I didn’t realize that a blip is not just a dot on a screen, it is a ship that shows up on the long-range sensors as a dot on a screen.

  Yes, the blip is a ship.

  And a ship is something to be very, very worried about.

  * * *

  We’re all eating breakfast when the captain stalks into the mess-room. Without speaking, she goes into the kitchen. Crash goes a cabinet. Whack, she throws something into the recycling tube.

  The emotion she is expressing is anger. I swallow a bite of neon-cow cheesy eggs and put down my fork.

  “How,” the captain growls, “am I supposed to make kaff when I haven’t had any kaff yet?”

  Another slam of a cupboard, and the captain emerges from the galley carrying a mug. Seeing us all, she stops short, and the hot liquid splashes over her hand. She yelps and then glares at us. “Well,” she says. “I hope you’re all getting a good breakfast, because you won’t have time for lunch.” She wipes her hand on her jacket, drying it. “The blip we’ve been tracking for the past few days is starting to look a lot like a Dart.”

  I don’t know what a Dart is, but the rest of the crew does, because they all stop what they’re doing and stare at the captain. Shkkka makes a worried hissing sound, and Amby whispers ohhhhnooooo, and Telly barks out one angry word that sounds like a curse.

  “Yes,” the captain says grimly, and points at Amby. “Get to navigation and plot evasive maneuvers. We’ll see if it really is following us.”

  “Y-yes, Captain.” Amby gets up from the table, bumping it with their knees, and bobs out of the mess-room.

  The captain turns to Shkkka. “Did you get the stealth-box fixed?”

  Shkkka is already on her feet. “Noooo,” she says with a nervous twitch of her antennae. “Isssss sooo complicated.”

  “Well, get to work on it!” the captain shouts, and Shkkka scurries out, followed by Reetha and Telly, heading to their stations.

  “See if you can get visual,” Captain Astra calls after Reetha. “I’ll be there in a minute.”

  Then it’s just the captain and me alone in the mess-room. She takes a drink of kaff and shrugs her shoulders to loosen them. “This has gotten way too complicated,” she mutters. I’ve learned that humans show they are tired by drooping, and they get circles under their eyes. The captain is very tired. Wearily, she sets her mug of kaff on the table and sits down next to me. “Listen, Trouble. I need you to tell me the truth.”

  “All right,” I say, even though I don’t really know what she means.

  “Are you the reason this Dart is after us?” she asks softly. “Are you being hunted by the StarLeague?”

  Her question makes my human body feel shivery and cold. The only thing I can remember is being a dog puppy on the station, and before that, floating through space in my blob of goo form. Nothing else.

  Am I being hunted by the StarLeague?

  “I don’t think so,” I tell the captain, my voice shaking.

  “Trouble,” she says quietly, “you must realize that everyone in the crew likes you, and it’s clear that you would like to stay with us. But if you’re the reason that Dart ship is following us, we will let them have you.”

  As she tells me this, I realize that I was starting to feel safe here. What a mistake. It’s this human shape. It’s making me do stupid things and feel stupid emotions that make me think in stupid, overcomplicated ways.

  The captain sighs. “It’s evident that you don’t understand about the StarLeague.”

  All I can do is shake my head, a human gesture that means No, I don’t understand.

  “Think about how big the galaxy is,” she says. “It’s mostly empty space, with stars and stations and planets far, far apart from each other. To keep the people who live in our galaxy ordered, and to keep trade routes running efficiently, the government—the StarLeague—thinks it has to have strict laws, and it has military ships like Peacemaker to enforce them. You don’t argue with ships like that. If Peacemaker’s Dart ship asks to board us, we have to comply. The Dart pilot will check the crew’s IDs—your identification chip. You’re a stowaway, not a registered member of the crew. If I don’t let them have you, they could take my ship and our cargo, throw the crew in prison, and put me on trial. And for other reasons, I can’t have them poking around my ship. We don’t have any choice about it.”

  “I don’t have any identification,” I tell her.

  “Everybody has an ID chip, Trouble, even you,” she says wearily.

  She’s wrong about that, though she doesn’t know it. Maybe I had an ID chip once, but I’ve changed shape so many times that somewhere I must have lost it.

  The captain sits with her head lowered, not looking at me. “Space is big. People travel with you for a while, and you may like them.” She pauses. “Or even love them. But things happen, and you never see them again.” She sighs. “That’s just how it is, Trouble. You’re always alone in the end.”

  Hearing her say this makes me have a human physical reaction that feels a little like the electric shock I got from the restraining cuff when I tried to leave the mess-room. It doesn’t matter if I like the captain, and it doesn’t matter if she likes me. Be
cause . . .

  You’re always alone in the end.

  * * *

  Then the door to the mess-room swishes open. “Captain!” Telly calls, poking his head in. “Report from the bridge. It’s a Dart, and it’s definitely on our trail.”

  “Rats,” Captain Astra curses, getting to her feet and heading out. Then she pauses in the doorway. “You,” she orders, pointing at me, “do not leave this room.”

  I hold up my hand, showing her the restraining cuff around my wrist.

  She frowns, nods, and hurries out.

  The door closes.

  But I’m not staying here.

  12

  As everyone knows, the most widespread species in the galaxy is the rat.

  There are rats on every station, every planet, and every spaceship, including this one. Nobody knows exactly where rats came from, only that they originated at some planet near the galactic center and soon started voyaging out to the very farthest reaches of the galaxy. On the mess-room screen I watched a report about how rats have even reached Earth, the humans’ home planet.

  Something that not a lot of people know is that rats are very, very smart, and also tricky. At one point in ancient human history, rats attacked using their usual weapon, a thing called plague, and nearly took over Earth for their own.

  What this means is that the rat is the perfect shape for sneaking and spying.

  I shift, leaving my human clothes and the restraining cuff behind in the galley. Feeling extra sneaky-clever in my rat form, I sniff out the trail markers that other rats have left in the mess-room. Following them, I scurry through the nearest rat-hole and then through the twists and turns of the ventilation tubes until I reach the bridge—the command center of the ship. The tube’s opening is near the ceiling, so I crouch up there and have a view of the entire room.