STOWAWAY TO THE STARS

As Karen sat by Larry’s bedside, more tears trickled down her face, but she barely felt them. It was strange where everyone had gone, but it didn’t matter – nothing mattered any more. She was glad to be alone with her misery, and with Larry in his last few minutes of life.

After a short time the nurse returned again. “He’s putting up an amazing fight, this friend of yours,” she said.

Karen whispered, “Maybe, but I guess it will not be long now. That big number on the machine seems to be going down slowly.”

The nurse looked at it, and consulted her notes.

“Yes, I think you’re right. That’s amazing.”

She looked at Karen’s uncomprehending expression. “You do realize that a lower reading is better? This is his overall trauma index. It’s monitoring his stress level and instability. I need to get the doctor in to see this.”

She pressed a pad on the wall and in moments the doctor reappeared, closely followed by Ket and Gen. Gen moved straight over to Karen and put her arm round her. The nurse explained to the doctor about the readings and he checked them.

He paused for a moment, looking thoughtful, then said, “Right, let’s try an increase of ten percent in the painkiller and the sedative.”

The nurse adjusted the machine. The trauma index increased a point, and in a few seconds another. There it held for at least two minutes. Karen stared at the number, mesmerized, willing it to go down. Just when she thought she might burst, the index changed, and this time it was a point less. Then slowly another and another. The doctor took a deep breath.

“That’s incredible. Okay, try another ten percent.”

This time the index merely held steady for a while, then began to tick slowly down again.

“Let’s have one more increase.”

This time the index barely slowed its downward trend, then it dropped faster and suddenly the numbers rapidly unwound to zero.

“My God, he’s stable now, we’ve done it!” exclaimed the doctor. “We’ve dragged him back out of his grave, or at least something has. I can scarcely believe it, it’s inconceivable he could live through that trauma.”

Ket was even more unrestrained. “Larry, you tough old son of a bitch. I knew you could pull through with a bit of incentive!”

Gen looked at him sharply, then turned back to comfort Karen, who was mopping furiously at a flood of tears. Through them she heard the doctor saying, “Right, he’s fully under now. We need to get all the free radicals from the radiation damage cleaned out. After that he needs complete rest to build up his strength so we can sort him out. Nurse, get a set of tissue samples for cloning.”

The doctor turned to talk to them. “I’m afraid I’ll have to ask all you visitors to leave now. We’ll operate on him tomorrow, he should be recovered enough by then. It’ll be a long operation, but you’re welcome to come and see him beforehand.”

As they were hustled out Karen turned to Ket.

“What did the doctor mean, ‘he’s under now’? Was he not under before?”

Ket grinned and shrugged.

Gen took her arm again as they made their way out of the hospital. Karen was still getting used to the dramatic turn of events that had returned the man she had given up for lost.

****

During the ride home, Karen sat alone in the back of the car, dazed and emotionally drained by the experience. One worry dominated her thoughts. Had Larry been conscious when she revealed her feelings for him, and if so what must he be thinking of her?

Ket, on the other hand, was clearly hyped up by his friend’s recovery. Eventually he glanced back at her and said, “Well, Karen. You’ll soon be getting home and all this will be a distant memory.”

She looked at him blankly. “Oh, are you going to take me home then?”

“What? Not likely. Larry can sort out his own mess.”

Now she felt confused as well. “But how? He is so badly hurt, he will not be able to do anything for ages.”

A look of dawning comprehension came over Ket.

“Karen, I am so sorry. You seem so at home with us that I sometimes forget that you’re not from the Union. Didn’t you understand what the doctor meant about tissue cloning?”

She shook her head.

“Then your medicine must be way behind ours. Larry’s injuries aren’t any problem to our doctors. They can generate fresh skin and tissue to replace everything that has been damaged. We can even clone fresh limbs, heart, anything. In a few days they’ll have Larry like new.”

Karen’s face lit up. Of all the wonders she had come across in the Union, this had to be the best. “Oh my God, I had no idea! That is fantastic. On Earth it would take years, and he would lose his arm and have terrible scars, or worse.”

The significance of what Ket had first said dawned on her, and her face fell again. “Oh, then I suppose he will be able to take me home soon, and I’ll never see any of you again.”

Gen interrupted. “Karen, ignore my stupid husband. He’s teasing you. Remember what I told you this morning? You’re one of us now.”

****

That night as Ket lay in bed with Gen, she turned on him. “What did you get up to this afternoon? I noticed your crack about incentive, even if Karen didn’t.”

“Gen darling, I didn’t want to lose your brother and a dear friend. I thought his best chance was to have a real incentive to live. And, though he is dear to us, and I hope we are to him, neither of us was the one he would really fight to live for. So I persuaded the doctor to let Karen stay with him alone.”

“How did you know that she would say anything?”

“Oh, I didn’t know for sure. I thought she might, and I reckoned it would be much better if it came spontaneously. If she hadn’t said anything within about five minutes, I was going to tell her to do it.”

“How did you know what she was saying to him? She spoke in English. Actually I felt a bit devious, listening and watching from outside.”

“Well, she wasn’t telling him about the weather. I was pretty confident from the tone of her voice that she was opening up to him. As for listening in, I had no compunction about that. Believe me, I would have done whatever was needed to give Larry the best chance.”

“What made you so sure how they felt about each other?”

Ket laughed. “Did you see how Karen looked at Larry when he wasn’t watching? She couldn’t take her eyes off of him. As for Larry, well, I’ve known him a long time. Anyway, he more or less admitted it to me last night. But the stupid sod told me he was waiting for a signal from her. And there was no way she would give him one any time soon. She was too much in awe of him. I was planning to draw him a diagram after the attack on the Ziloni, but events overtook us.”

“Will you say anything to Karen? Perhaps she ought to know what you were up to.”

“No, it would be a bit difficult. It was rather underhand, but you know I did it for the best. If things work out I’m sure Larry will say something. When he’s feeling better I’m certain he’ll figure out what went on. He knows me too well. He’ll realize that she wasn’t there alone by accident.”

“Well it looks as though tomorrow could be interesting.”

****

In the next room Karen tossed around in bed, unable to sleep for the thoughts buzzing in her head. The events of the day and what her future might hold whirled endlessly in her mind. She looked at her little finger, that now held her false ID embedded inside. Why had Larry really spent so much to get her an authentic one? Could Gen be right that Larry had plans to let her come back to visit the Union again – maybe even join the IEP? After her uneventful life on Earth, the excitement and adventure of exploring new planets was a powerful attraction.

But Larry had already had to tolerate her stowing away on his ship and making him take her with him on a dangerous mission. Throughout it all he had been unfailingly kind to her, but she’d rejected his compliments for fear that she would give her feelings away.

What if he had been conscious and heard her impetuous outburst earlier today? He’d never shown any interest in her, so that must have been the last thing he wanted to hear when he was at the edge of death. Would he still be willing to help her revisit the Union, let alone get her into the IEP? These thoughts kept chasing around in her head and it was late before she finally fell into a restless sleep.

****

Next morning, after an early breakfast, they set off for the hospital. When they arrived, Larry was wide awake, but his injuries still looked awful under the transparent dressing. Although desperate to see him, Karen hung back now. She stared at her shoes – anything to avoid looking at Larry. Her worries flooded back. What had he heard the day before, and how did he feel toward her now? She badly needed to know, but how could she find out?

While Karen agonized, Ket moved forward and sat down beside his friend.

“How are you feeling today, you crazy idiot? You had us all so worried yesterday.”

“Loaded up to the eyeballs with painkillers, so it’s not too bad. I’d rather not go through yesterday ever again, though.” Larry attempted to grin through the transparent dressing.

“So what the hell happened?” asked Ket. “You were only supposed to be gone a short while, but you disappeared for ages and came back barely alive, scaring us all rigid.”

Larry explained how he had come to see the Ziloni ships stalking the attack fleet.

“I sat for a long while agonizing over what to do. I seriously thought about doing nothing. Then I remembered what you said. We only had that one chance of sorting out the Ziloni properly. I knew that I’d never be able to live with myself if I did nothing and it all went wrong. My stupidity got Annek killed at the start of this affair. The least I could do was put my life on the line too.”

Karen winced when she heard this comment. Please let Larry not have heard her rash declaration the previous day. If he had, what would he have thought, when he had just put his life on the line in memory of his dead partner? She wanted to curl up and die of embarrassment.

Ket pressed on with his questions. “So what exactly did you do?”

Larry described his plan, the attack and the near miss.

When he finished, Ket said, “You were in horrible shape from the blast. How did you make it back?”

“Once I was past our fleet I was just about able to hit the jump pad with my undamaged hand. Then I killed the thrust, tripped the emergency beacon and crawled over to the stasis unit, which mercifully was empty.”

He gave a momentary shudder. “By all the saints, that crawl took a long time. I don’t ever want to have to do something like that again. I think I did it more as a way of stopping the pain, rather than in the hope that I’d be saved.”

Karen felt more tears pricking her eyes. Christ, she always seemed to be crying at the moment. But she couldn’t bear the thought of Larry, alone and in such pain. How was he talking about it now so casually?

In fact he’d already moved on to a new thought. “By the way, did I get any of the Ziloni?”

“I think so,” Ket replied. “Did you say there were four originally? Well, when the fleet sent ships back to clean up, only two were left.”

“That’s not a bad result. At least I didn’t go through all this for nothing.”

“Too right you didn’t. The main result was that you saved the mission, Larry.”

Karen ached to talk to Larry, but she couldn’t find a good opportunity to break in on Ket’s questions.

He continued to chat with Larry until they were interrupted by a doctor. Damn, now she had lost her chance altogether.

“Larry, we’ll have to disturb you now,” said the doctor. “It’s going to be a long operation for you today and we’re ready to start.”

Larry raised his good arm. “Give me a minute, please,” he said. “I haven’t had a chance to talk to Karen yet. Karen, why are you hiding at the back there? I have something I need to say to you.”

Oh Lord, this was her final chance. She moved to the front and he took her hand with his good one. Her heart was pounding so much that she thought he must be able to hear it.

He switched to English. “Karen, my angel, I would never, ever think of you as a bolshie cow!”

She gave a nervous laugh, then gasped as she realized that her fears that he might have been conscious yesterday were well-founded. “Oh my God, you did hear what I said. I am so sorry. I thought that you were going to die and it all just came out, but I had no idea that you could hear me. Did you mind very much?”

“Mind! Karen, you saved my life. I was right on the edge, I wanted to die so the pain would stop. But when I heard the girl I’m madly in love with tell me she loved me too, suddenly the pain didn’t matter any more. There was no way I was going to die after that.”

The meaning of his words sank in, and she whispered, “Oh! Oh dear Lord, please let me not be dreaming.”

Larry grinned. “Don’t worry, it is no dream. Now I know how you feel, I shall always be here for you.”

Karen’s face lit up and she squeezed his hand. “I can scarcely believe it. I had no idea that you felt that way too. Thank goodness I told you how I felt. They need you to go now, but I’ll be waiting for you to come back.”

The porters levitated Larry’s bed and wheeled him away for the operation. Karen flicked her hair back in her characteristic gesture. As she did so she caught sight of Ket and Gen, who looked at each other and smiled. Oh well, they probably didn’t need to understand English to know what was going on.

Gen moved to put her arm around Karen, whose mood over the last two days had ridden a rollercoaster from initial happiness to the depths of despair, through cautious hope to total elation. Her life had changed forever because of a reckless decision to stow away on a trip to the stars.

If you have enjoyed reading this book, It would be much appreciated if you could spare the time to give it a short review.

Also don’t forget there is more material about the book on my website:

www.stowawaytothestars.co.uk

And finally, before you go there is one loose end to tie up: