Wilder’s chest? Pale brown, peer-
ing over the V-neck of his jumpsuit. I pushed off to him so hard,
we crashed and spun while I held his collar and investigated the
tattoo like mark. A circle with four squiggles, two sticking out of
the circle, two sticking in.
“Whoa, Maisie,” he said.
62
Dangerous
Technically I had been rubbing his chest. I let go and
looked at the same spot on my own chest. Starting four finger-
widths from the hollow of my throat, a deep-brown crooked X.
The others loosened their collars—Jacques’s mark was as dark
as mine. Ruth’s and Mi-sun’s were henna brown, each shape
unique, reminding me a little of Arabic symbols.
“That’s it, isn’t it?” said Mi-sun. “That thing that went into
my palm. It’s still inside me.”
“Why did it attack me but not you?” Ruth asked her astronaut.
“I don’t know.” She was a dark-haired woman, petite with
large, scared eyes.
“Mine got brighter when I held it,” I said.
“So did mine,” said Jacques.
“You affected these tokens differently than we did.” Howell
held onto a wall and bobbed up and down, as if wishing she
could pace. “Was this the first time five people touched the to-
kens all at the same time? Are they linked to act together? Were
there environmental factors? Or do you all have something in
common that we lacked—genetics or age?”
“You should have known,” I said. My arm burned with the
memory of pain. “We’re minors , and you just threw us into space
and assailed us with unknown alien technology!”
“How could I have known?” A drop of sweat lifted from
Howell’s brow and floated in the air. “I couldn’t have known.
I . . . I . . .”
“You’re reckless and crazy and you’re going to get us killed!”
I yelled.
“I told you it was alien. No one made you touch it.”
The talking went on. There were lots of “What’s happen-
ing?” followed by “I don’t know” in various forms. It’s amazing
63
Shannon Hale
how often people will repeat the same opinions in case no one
heard them the first three times.
Howell said we’d find out more back at HAL where they
could do tests, but that we wouldn’t risk the trip till she was sure
we were stable. Mi-sun started in with a dry wail. Ruth locked
herself in the toilet closet. If the token was sucking my life away
and would leave me an empty husk there wasn’t anything I
could do about it, so I decided there was no reason to waste the
few hours I had left in space.
I helped Dragon unload supplies from the pod, tossing
around huge bags of food as if they were feather pillows. When
Wilder joined us, I opened my mouth to ask him why he’d been
so weird before, but the words melted on my tongue. Nothing
seemed to matter compared with the things in our chests.
Every once in a while (i.e., a hundred times an hour) I
checked to see if the mark was still there. My skin over the mark
was warm, a localized fever.
The crew got us dinner and tucked us into the crew beds,
which were like sleeping bags attached to the walls.
I shut my eyes, trying to shut off my thoughts, and the
darkness seemed to shift into something tangible, something
real and huge, something that I could fall into. I was already
falling. Fear of what the token might do to me made my heart
feel leaden, and yet excitement tickled my belly.
I shifted in my sack, afraid and excited and too tired to sleep.
64
C h a p t e r 1 0
After a few hours of darkness-staring, I pulled free from
the Velcro bag and went back to the lab. A headache had been
swelling ever since the token crawled up my arm. I found pain
relievers in a med kit and took them with a squirt of water.
The moon was out of sight, but a thick band of speckled
light showed one sweep of the Milky Way. For years I’d known
its stats—a spiral galaxy housing 300 billion stars, just one of
billions of galaxies in the universe. But until that moment, I’d
never really
ing over the V-neck of his jumpsuit. I pushed off to him so hard,
we crashed and spun while I held his collar and investigated the
tattoo like mark. A circle with four squiggles, two sticking out of
the circle, two sticking in.
“Whoa, Maisie,” he said.
62
Dangerous
Technically I had been rubbing his chest. I let go and
looked at the same spot on my own chest. Starting four finger-
widths from the hollow of my throat, a deep-brown crooked X.
The others loosened their collars—Jacques’s mark was as dark
as mine. Ruth’s and Mi-sun’s were henna brown, each shape
unique, reminding me a little of Arabic symbols.
“That’s it, isn’t it?” said Mi-sun. “That thing that went into
my palm. It’s still inside me.”
“Why did it attack me but not you?” Ruth asked her astronaut.
“I don’t know.” She was a dark-haired woman, petite with
large, scared eyes.
“Mine got brighter when I held it,” I said.
“So did mine,” said Jacques.
“You affected these tokens differently than we did.” Howell
held onto a wall and bobbed up and down, as if wishing she
could pace. “Was this the first time five people touched the to-
kens all at the same time? Are they linked to act together? Were
there environmental factors? Or do you all have something in
common that we lacked—genetics or age?”
“You should have known,” I said. My arm burned with the
memory of pain. “We’re minors , and you just threw us into space
and assailed us with unknown alien technology!”
“How could I have known?” A drop of sweat lifted from
Howell’s brow and floated in the air. “I couldn’t have known.
I . . . I . . .”
“You’re reckless and crazy and you’re going to get us killed!”
I yelled.
“I told you it was alien. No one made you touch it.”
The talking went on. There were lots of “What’s happen-
ing?” followed by “I don’t know” in various forms. It’s amazing
63
Shannon Hale
how often people will repeat the same opinions in case no one
heard them the first three times.
Howell said we’d find out more back at HAL where they
could do tests, but that we wouldn’t risk the trip till she was sure
we were stable. Mi-sun started in with a dry wail. Ruth locked
herself in the toilet closet. If the token was sucking my life away
and would leave me an empty husk there wasn’t anything I
could do about it, so I decided there was no reason to waste the
few hours I had left in space.
I helped Dragon unload supplies from the pod, tossing
around huge bags of food as if they were feather pillows. When
Wilder joined us, I opened my mouth to ask him why he’d been
so weird before, but the words melted on my tongue. Nothing
seemed to matter compared with the things in our chests.
Every once in a while (i.e., a hundred times an hour) I
checked to see if the mark was still there. My skin over the mark
was warm, a localized fever.
The crew got us dinner and tucked us into the crew beds,
which were like sleeping bags attached to the walls.
I shut my eyes, trying to shut off my thoughts, and the
darkness seemed to shift into something tangible, something
real and huge, something that I could fall into. I was already
falling. Fear of what the token might do to me made my heart
feel leaden, and yet excitement tickled my belly.
I shifted in my sack, afraid and excited and too tired to sleep.
64
C h a p t e r 1 0
After a few hours of darkness-staring, I pulled free from
the Velcro bag and went back to the lab. A headache had been
swelling ever since the token crawled up my arm. I found pain
relievers in a med kit and took them with a squirt of water.
The moon was out of sight, but a thick band of speckled
light showed one sweep of the Milky Way. For years I’d known
its stats—a spiral galaxy housing 300 billion stars, just one of
billions of galaxies in the universe. But until that moment, I’d
never really
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