Space Stations

“Should go,” she told herself. Leave with Keith Polanger and claim his cargo when they touched down. But she should take this telescope with her. It was the smallest of those fitted in the observatory. If she could find a way to free it from the panel—where were the fastenings?—she could maneuver it to Polanger's freighter. Even an old woman could maneuver practically anything in zero-G. Someone on Earth should know that they were being spied on by… by who?

Hoshi poked out her bottom lip and ignored another series of tremors, forced out the sounds of metal scraping metal somewhere overhead, concentrated instead on the snoring of the man caught in the view of the telescope, and the whispers of people beyond his room. She worried at the telescope's base and at what should be its drive clock. After a few minutes she managed to loosen both a little.

What do you want?

She turned with a start, seeing no one in the observatory with her. A sigh of relief: the voice was the man's. She glanced in the scope, seeing two men in his room, rousing him from sleep.

President, one was saying. We have a situation.

Something needs your attention, the other said. Lights were flicked on and clothes were brought for the man.

The blue suit, he told them. I wore brown yesterday.

Hoshi resumed her work as she felt the panel beneath her fingers tremble. Something crashed in a room below, and the lighting in the observatory flickered. She turned on her helmet beam as a precaution.

“Hurry,” she told herself. “Hurry or Keith Polanger will leave.”

The station rocked and Hoshi pushed off from the telescope, floating to the status panel.

“How much time?” she asked as she ran her gloved fingers over the controls, searching for the Streetcar's orbital status.

What is all the fuss about so early this morning? Morning? It's barely past one.

President, it is a matter of international concern…

“By my father's memory, no.” Hoshi's shoulders slumped inside her suit. Polanger's ship was gone. The precious antique lenses were gone, as were her hopes of returning to Earth alive. She felt so cold, and the ache in her limbs kept at bay by her excitement—

settled in again with a vengeance. Too long, she'd waited, caught up in a discovery of…

“Of what?” A telescope meant to study Earth and not the stars. But one she suspected came from the stars. It felt alien, its technology sleek and alluring—alluring enough to cost Hoshi her life. Damn her curiosity. So something alien had placed a scope on an abandoned space station, studying Earth like she might study a dragonfly's wing beneath a microscope. Studying Earth without anyone noticing.

We've detected two ships in orbit, sir. They're not ours.

China's? Brazil's?

They're not from Earth, sir.

Are you certain?

When no words immediately followed, Hoshi pictured heads nodding. The station bucked, and Hoshi found herself floating free of the status panel. Red lights were blinking, and she didn't need to read the indicator labels beneath them to know what was happening. The station was falling.

She felt so cold, achy. Lived long enough, she thought. She'd seen plenty of stars, the goat and the kids up close thanks to this station. In truth, she'd seen more than enough—

more stars than practically anyone else on Earth would ever see in their lifetimes. She drifted, listening to the voices coming from the telescope, to the station starting to break up around her.

“We're out of time!”

The voice came from beneath her. She turned, head down, feet against the ceiling, seeing Keith Polanger emerge through the doorway, fear splayed across his youthful face. “My ship,” he said. “Someone released it from the bay. I thought at first you did it for spite.

But I didn't think you were the suicidal type.”

They did it, Hoshi thought. The ones who installed the strange telescope. The ones who were in Earth's orbit, that the President of some English-speaking country had been roused from his sleep over. The ones that she and Keith Polanger would now die because of.

“But there's still a way out,” he said, reaching up and tugging her down. “I found a pod.

They built an escape pod into this place. It's quite small, but I believe it will…”

Hoshi pushed away from him, floating toward the alien telescope and worrying at it again.

“Old woman! I'm getting out of here. Didn't you hear me say there's a pod?”

“We're leaving with this,” she said, her voice even and free of the panic so thick in his.

One more tug and she had it, or at least a substantial part. She pushed it toward him, and he grabbed it, scowling and shaking his head. “It belongs to… them, the aliens. Someone below needs to see it, Keith Polanger.”

“Aliens?”

President, there are three ships now. The words still came, though part of the telescope was free of the fitting and in Keith Polanger's hands. But reports are they're moving away from Earth now. Fighter shuttles have been scrambled, but they won't reach the ships in time. We have images, though.