Half an hour later, the
Saretta rises before the rebels like a solitary skyscraper. The earth trembles in anticipation of the mighty ship's liftoff.
A few wooden shacks, recently constructed and apparently not intended to stand long, are scattered around the base of the ship. Occasionally, a technician wheels a gurney into a door at the base of the starship. After studying the situation briefly, Tita graps Gasper by the shoulder and motions for him to follow her into one of the buildings. She turns to the others and waves them away.
Gasper and Tita sneak through the night to the building's door. Immediately after a technician leaves the building, Tita grabs Gasper by the wrist and enters it. Inside, they stand in a plain wooden hallway. The walls are insulated with noise baffles, and the engine noise is only a dull roar, although the floor vibrates.
"What are they doing?" Gasper asks.
"It's a colony ship," Tita respons. "They're putting people into Coldsleep and loading them aboard. I'm going to stow away. You're coming with me."
Gasper shakes his head. "We got you here; that was the deal."
Tita shakes her head. "I'll need your help. Besides, what are you going to do here on Terra? You're an outlaw."
Gasper does not respond.
"The freedom of the Omegan colony depends on the success of my mission," Tita almost shouts. "And besides, don't you want to see the new world with me?"
Gasper shrugs his shoulders. "I guess you're right."
Tita smiles and leads the way into the next room. Five women wearing the white gowns of lab assistants labor over operating tables. They look up curiously.
"We were told to report to Nurse Harrow," Tita says.
One of the women, her face covered by a surgical mask, nods her head. "Oh, yes!" she croons. "The governor's niece. I've been expecting you. This way."
Gasper gives Tita a strange look and follows her to the nurse's work station. "Take off your clothes," the nurse says. She motions the nervous Gasper to get up onto the table. "You'll awaken several months into the voyage," she says. "We've hidden cold-weather survival gear for your team in space CC-100 of your hold. Got that?"
The woman holds up an air-hypo. "Repeat it," she says.
"CC– ..." The woman pricks Gasper with the hypo. "Ow!"
"One hundred," the nurse finishes for him.
Gasper's thinking grows difficult. "What's happening?" he asks. The nurse leans over him. Her face seems elongated and unnatural. "CC one hundre-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-d-d-d-d-d," she says. Gasper closes his eyes and feels as though he is falling from a very great height.
In his dream, the ground gives way like a feather bed when Gasper strikes it. He has fallen over a hundred miles, expecting to die when he hits the ground. Instead, the earth swallows him, burying him in deep folds of cold.
The folds begin to squeeze and Gasper chokes. Suddenly, the sun shines hot and bright directly into his eyes.
"Wake up, sleepy-head," says a comforting voice.
Gasper coughs violently and feels something shoot from his mouth. His lungs burn with the raw sensation of breathing normally again. He blinks several times, then stares up into a flashlight.
"How do you feel?" asks a woman's voice. It's Tita.
"Terrible," Gasper says. "What happened?"
"We're in transit," she says. "You're the last to come around. Put this on."
Gasper feels a heavy suit laid across his body. His memory returns in a flood. "But we were supposed to sleep for months!"
"Three months and four days, so far," says a man. Gasper struggles to see him, but it is too dark.
He slips into the heavy jumpsuit, then shivers as he realizes how cold he is. "How are we going to survive in this?" he asks. "I'm freezing."
"It'll get a little better as you come around," Tita says, "but we won't have to stand it much longer. We're going to take over the ship."
Gasper whistles. "Can you fly one of these things?" he asks disbelievingly.
"That's not the point," Tita responds. She helps him off his gurney. "Watch your feet, it's slippery."
Gasper and the others pass the next three days getting to know each other and walking between rows of Coldsleeping colonists. Although Gasper feels weakened, he is amazed at how rapidly his strength returns. By the fourth day, he is jogging through the dark, frozen hold and doing push-ups. By the fifth day, he is desperately bored.
"How long are we going to wait?" he asks. "I'm as scared as the next man, but I say we get this mutiny on the road – before we go crazy in this frozen cave!"
"Which way is the front of the ship?" Tita responds angrily. "We don't even know that. I suggest we explore our environment before we unleash our pop-guns."
"You mean you don't have a map of the ship?" Gasper exclaims. "I thought you had this thing organized."
"I did the best I could!" Tita snaps.
"Hold on," interrupts Kershaw. Although he has the face of a boxer, Gasper has already learned to respect Kershaw for his careful thinking and patience. "You weren't around when we planned this thing, Gasper, so you don't know how difficult it was to put together. But you're right about one thing – none of us expected to be shoved into a cargo hold and locked up tight. Maybe we should have thought about it, but we didn't. Tita and I have been walking this hold for over a week now, and we haven't found sight of anything that looks like a hatch. It appears we're stuck in here."
"Great," Gasper sighs. "For how long?"
"Five years," Tita answers quietly.
"What?" Gasper shrieks. "Five years? We'll go crazy!"
"That won't be a problem," Kershaw says evenly. "We'll starve long before that."
"I don't believe it!" Gasper shrieks. "I save her life and look what she does to me!"
"At least you'll die free," Tita snaps.
Gasper shines his light in her face and growls. A moment later, the absurdity of the situation strikes him and he says, "I suppose we could eat a few of the colonists."
They all break out in tension-relieving laughter. Finally, Kershaw says, "Look, if there's an emergency in flight, the crew must have a way to get back here. All we have to do is find it. We obviously haven't found it so far because we're looking for a hatch. Instead, it's got to be something like an air vent or a garbage-way. I propose we start a methodical search of the entire hold. We'll examine every piece of metal on every wall, and we'll find a way out of here."
"Agreed!" Gasper responds. "Now let's eat. All this talk of starvation has made me hungry."
After a sparse meal of dried rations, Kershaw assigns each person to search specific quadrants of the walls and even the ceiling and the floor. Gasper is assigned to search the floor. He starts in the far corner and begins shining his flashlight over every square inch of the icy floor.
Eight hours later, he reaches the middle of the floor. He pushes his thousandth gurney aside and nearly faints with excitement. A hatch is located squarely beneath it.
"Bingo!" he yells. "I've found a hatch."
The others scurry over. Gasper opens the hatch and jumps down throught the opening into another room below. It is about twenty feet high and the same size as the cargo hold. It is filled with hundreds of crates. Gasper opens one of the crates and finds a dozen assault rifles.
"Hardshot!" he exclaims. "There are thousands of weapons here."
Kershaw jumps down and opens a case. "Field rations! At least we won't starve."
"The rations I can understand," Gasper says. "But why do they need all these weapons? There's enough firepower here to equip a batallion."
"How rough is Omega?" Kershaw asks. "Is there a war going on?"
Gasper shakes his head. "They wouldn't send colonists to fight a war, unless they wanted to lose."
"And if they wanted to lose, why provide all this equipment? It doesn't make any sense."
"But think about how well this hold is hidden," Gasper says. "We would never have found it if we weren't desperate. They're smuggling this cargo!"
Tita ushers the remaining rebels down into the secret hold and shuts the hatch. She starts handing out assault rifles to each rebel. "We've just solved the problem of how to get out of here," she says. "There's company in the main hold."
Tita briefly instructs the rebels in the use of assault rifles, while Gasper gets a boost up from Kershaw to peer into the main hold and observe the company. Two men have entered the hold from an access panel bolted onto the far wall. They are carefully inspecting each colonist.
Gasper is now in command of ten rebels (not including Tita, who does not participate in any battles).
Manpower: 10, Ordnance: 7, Morale: 9, Stealth: 9, Melee: 5.
• Gasper orders the rebels to ambush the two men.
• Gasper remains in hiding, hoping that the two men will leave before discovering signs of the rebels' presence.