This chapter is rather space-heavy. Sorry about that.
From last part:
"I've got to save Dad," I say again. And this time I knew I was going to say it.
There are all these other faces around me. Rick. Batman. Uncle Bernard. Grandma and Grandpa. Were they here all along? Were they out there when I fell from the tower? Did they see me fall?
Did they see me fly?
No matter. I fell. But I didn't hit the ground. I flew.
"I'm going out there on my own," I say to Mom. "If you don't let me have a space suit and a space ship I'll go there anyway."
"You're going to die if you try," Mom says quietly.
"Maybe," I tell her. "But maybe I'll survive if you'll let me have the suit and the ship."
Mom is just looking at me. Then something seems to, I don't know, leak out of her. She's looking smaller. Defeated somehow.
Then she straightens up and looks at Uncle Bernard.
"How soon can you have the suit and the ship ready?"
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New stuff:
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I'm here now.
I'm inside this cargo ship and I'm in space. The Earth is already shrinking behind me. I know that because I've figured out how to turn my "X-ray vision" on so I can look right through the hull of my ship. There are no windows here, you see.
And now I'm staring out into all this blackness to see if I can spot Dad's spaceship. I know it's coming this way, because Uncle Bernard told me it is. He says it has just passed the orbit of Mars, so it's approaching all right. You'd think I'd be able to see it by now. But you can't believe how big all this blackness is. And Dad's ship is small, not a whole lot bigger than mine. Spotting his ship with this much space around us is like being somewhere in the stands in the biggest sports arena you can imagine and trying to spot one particular dust mote somewhere over the stands on the opposite side of the stadium.
So I'm staring and staring into all this space... except sometimes I have to look at this little ship around me, my own ship, which is all that stands between me and all the blackness outside. It's like I can't really believe it - I'm here. In space. In this ship. I'm sitting here, or I'm floating, because there's no gravity in space. But I can sit or stand or walk around in my ship if I want to, and would you believe Uncle Bernard tells me that doing that sort of stuff here is like flying on the Earth? It's all about moving around any way you want to and not caring about gravity. Cool, huh?
But I don't feel so cool wearing this big white suit. Okay, I look just like a real astronaut, and if some of the kids at school could see me now, they'd go like, wow. Yeah, but the suit isn't too comfortable and it's bulky and clumsy, so I worry a bit about moving around in it and doing some really delicate work with my fingers inside these heavy gloves. I mean, I don't exactly have a good record when it comes to not breaking things! Ugh! When I think about that, I get kind of nervous and I feel like I have to go....except, there's no bathroom here. So I'm, uh, I'm wearing a diaper. Please don't tell anyone. Uncle Bernard tells me that all astronauts wear diapers, every last one of them, at least when they leave their ships, but that doesn't make me feel a whole lot better. Yeah, it's got my fantasy going, and I keep wondering if Neil Armstrong was doing anything inside his diaper when he set foot on the Moon and said his famous words, but for all of that...I made Uncle Bernard promise that he wouldn't tell Rick about my diaper. I promised myself that I wouldn't do anything in my diaper either, but I don't know... maybe I'll just have to.
I'm also wearing this big round helmet all the time. Do I feel like a space geek or not? Hi, I'm Clara E.T. Ellen Lane! Ugh. Well, if I'm wearing the diaper because I have to, I'm wearing the helmet for Dad. Uncle Bernard explained to me that this ship wasn't really designed to transport people at all, and even though he filled the storage compartment of it with air he wants me to save most of the air for Dad. That's why I wear the space suit all the time and breathe the oxygen inside my helmet, so I don't use up the air that is meant for Dad.
Besides, my helmet has some really fancy radio equipment, so when I'm wearing it I can talk to Uncle Bernard all the time. Except... it's not exactly easy to talk to him when I'm this far from the Earth, and it's getting harder and harder. You know about the speed of light and all that crap? Well, you know when you say something to someone on the phone or on the radio, your words travel to the other person at the speed of light. That's no problem on the Earth, where light can travel seven times around the globe in one second. But here I'm about twenty light-seconds away from the Earth, so it takes twenty seconds before my words make it to Earth and Uncle Bernard. And then it takes another twenty seconds before his answer gets back to me. So there are forty seconds of silence between anything I say and the answer I get. Forty seconds... do you know how long that is? And it's getting longer too, because I'm still moving away from the Earth.
And I need to stay in contact with Uncle Bernard, believe me. This ship... it's small, it's cramped, and worse, there are all sorts of thingies and gadgets and doodads everywhere that make the place look like the inside of a hard drive with a headache. That's what Rick said when he was using the monitor at Star Labs to talk to me and look at me inside the ship. Rick... I don't know, it feels like it has been so long since I saw him for real. On the Earth. And my ship is moving farther and farther away from him.
I really, really wish I had Rick with me here on this ship! Then I'd hug him when I felt small and lonely. And he would hug me back. And then he could tell me what to do with all this stuff around me. Boys are always interested in anything that blips and zaps and connects, aren't they? But me, I'm not touching those cables and buttons and gizmos if I don't have to, believe me. It's a damn good thing I have a camera in my helmet, so whenever I look at something the camera sends a picture of it to Star Labs and Uncle Bernard. At least I don't have to explain to Uncle Bernard what the heck I'm looking at anyway. After forty seconds of silence he will tell me what to do.
Well, talking about nothing, it's like I can't believe I'm here in space anyway. It's been only twelve hours since Mom asked Uncle Bernard how fast he could have a ship and a suit ready for me. Would you believe he had both things ready for me right away? Well, you know, Uncle Bernard always knew about my Dad being from Krypton and all and being tough and strong and everything. So anyway, Uncle Bernard thought that perhaps I would inherit those things from Dad, and then, well, Uncle Bernard just figured it would be cool if he could send me on a trip to space, I guess! So he made a suit for me just a couple of months ago, after he had asked my Mom if he could do a medical check-up on me and take my measurements! Ouch, you should have seen Mom when she figured out that Uncle Bernard had been preparing to send me to space just like that!!! But anyway, that meant that I had my suit just ready and waiting for me!
And the ship, well, it really is just a cargo ship, and would you believe it had been scheduled to be sent into space just last night? To launch a satellite? Uncle Bernard made some extremely fast changes to it to make it possible for a human to survive inside it - to make it possible for Dad to survive inside it, when I bring him over from his ship to this one. And then Uncle Bernard unloaded the satellite - I helped him, because if I hadn't it would have taken hours - so now he'll just have to explain to the people who paid to have their satellite launched that the ship flew very nicely, thank you, but no one remembered to bring the satellite along.
After we got rid of the satellite I sneaked on board - I managed to move very fast and still not break anything, even though I was wearing the suit!! I was right proud of myself. Yeah, but soon afterwards the "fun" started, the lift-off and the accelaration. Uncle Bernard had explained to me that this ship would launch as if there was no living being on board at all, so the G forces would be enough to kill a normal human being. But Uncle Bernard said I have grown very hardy and tough, so he believed I could tolerate the acceleration. Wow, you know - when Uncle Bernard said that he thought I would survive inside his space ship Mom really lost it and attacked him, I'm not kidding you. She made this kind of screechy sound and tried to throw herself at him. She tried to scratch and claw him, can you believe it? I'm glad Batman grabbed her and stopped her, because I wouldn't want to calm her down myself.
Well, Batman held on to Mom and stopped her from doing something crazy, I strapped myself down inside the ship where Uncle Bernard told me to, and then the countdown started, and the ship launched. And...ouch. No. That was not funny. I hadn't been sick for so long I couldn't really remember what it was like - but this time I felt like I was being spread out all over the inside of the ship like some kind of flesh-colored paint. It was like my heart was in my mouth and my eyes were at the back of my head and my intestines wrapped themselves around my lungs and my throat and I sure did something in my diapers. I'm lucky it only lasted for, like, fourteen hours, except Uncle Bernard called me on the radio and told me I had accelearated like that for only thirty minutes.
And then I came back to myself. I could actually move and see again. So I took a look, and I was inside this dark sort of morgue with crazy gizmos sticking out everywhere, and I don't know, for some reason I couldn't remember where I was and I got so scared I screamed. And then when I was staring at this mad kind of lab-closet around me the walls and everything just disappeared! And I was floating in space, can you believe it? There was just all this blackness all around me and stars and the Earth and the Sun, and I screamed like I was starring in a movie! Then I heard Uncle Bernard's voice in my helmet and he was sort of panicking too, asking me if I was all right or if I was in pain or anything. At first I couldn't even answer because I couldn't make the words, but then I told him that my ship had disappeared. Maybe a black hole had swallowed it? Maybe I was next? But Uncle Bernard told me I should try to feel around me and see if I could feel anything hard and solid anywhere next to me, anything at all. Could I touch anything? Guess what, I could. When I started reaching and sort of probing, I touched one of those whaddayacallems in the ship. Really, I did. And then another one. Uncle Bernard explained to me that I was still safely on board, but my X-ray vision had kicked in and I was seeing the universe outside me right through the hull of the ship. Wow, huh? Can you believe it? I just kept staring at it, at this whole universe thingie. I could never have imagined that there could be so much blackness, so much of, well, nothing.
But after a while it was too much. All that blackness, all the stars - it just went on forever and ever, and the band of the Milky Way stretched right above and below me as far as I could see. I started asking myself all these weird questions. Was there an end to the universe? If not, how could anything just go on forever? And if there was an end, an outer limit, what would it look like? Would there be a sort of stop sign saying, "This is the end of the universe - No trespassing"? I could feel my mind going into spin, like I was shrinking and shrinking until I'd never be able to find myself in this universe, much less find Dad. I had to put my hands before my eyes - or at least, I put my hands in front of the glass of my helmet - so I could shut the blackness out, and when I took away my hands again all I could see was the ship. I was safe again! What a relief!
But I knew I 'd have to use my X-ray vision again, so when I had calmed down I tried to peep through the hull again, just an itty bitty peek at the universe out there. Then I squeezed my eyes shut and clapped my hands to my helmet again and shut it all out, then I took another peek... After a while I got the hang of it. Now I can turn my vision on and off at will. Wow, you know. Wonder what Rick will say when I get back? If I get back, that is. No, no, I can't think like that. I'll get back. Of course I will. And when I meet Rick again I'll hug him... and then I'll tell him the color of his underwear. Hmmm, I wonder... boxers or briefs?
"Clara?"
Jeeeeze!!! Uncle Bernard! I had forgotten about him!
"Y- yes," I sort of croak.
Silence. Ten seconds... twenty... thirty... forty...
"Clara? Are you all right, my dear?"
My dear. Uncle Bernard is so sweet. Even though he probably is a bit of a crazy scientist.
"Y-yes, I'm f-fine." Darn it! Why can't I stop stuttering? How much is this universe thing getting to me?
Silence. Ten seconds... twenty... thirty... forty....
"Clara, honey, do you think you can concentrate now? I need you to concentrate. Are you listening to me?"
"Y-yes." And now he called me 'honey'. He's never done that before, that's for sure.
Silence. Silence... silence... silence....
"Good. You are approaching your father's ship. I will need you to change your ship's course so you can dock with your father's ship when you get close to it."
"O-okay.... How do I it?"
Silence... silence... silence... silence....
"Just move over to the control panel on your right...."
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Okay.... I've been doing this for... feels like a year, so I guess I must have turned thirteen by now. And nobody sang Happy Birthday to me....Uncle Bernard would say that's because I've only been doing this for, oh, about a day, or for twenty-four hours, or thirty-six.... changing the ship's course, fine-tuning it. So it's been like, a little bit more to your right, Clara... forty seconds of silence... a little bit more to your left... silence...good... silence... increase your ship's speed a little, please... silence... grab those two girders up ahead and push, so you can use a bit of your own strength and save a bit of fuel...silence... now pull on them and slow down gently....
I'm trembling. My arms are trembling. I...
I see spots before my eyes.
There's that little spot to the left of me... feels like it's growing larger....
Wow. I'm so dizzy.
I close my eyes. I open them again. The spot's still there.
I....
"Clara?"
"Hmmm?"
Silence....
Silence....
Silence....
Silence....
"Look to your left. You should be able to see your father's ship now."
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Yep. It was Dad's ship. The spot I'd been seeing was his ship.
And I managed to dock with it. Don't ask me how I did it. I was so tired, so dizzy, and the whole docking thing was like shooting a hole-in-one in space... except it wasn't, because it was really like going round an eighteen-hole golf course only making tiny little putts all the time. And on this golf course, the hole kept moving. And there were no greens or fairways or even roughs anywhere. Nothing to put your feet against and push against. Just emptiness.
But I got these two ships hooked up anyway. Before I could get it properly done, I had to get outside. There is this hatch on my ship that I could open. Uncle Bernard had even fitted an airlock in front of it so I could get out without releasing all the air into space. So there I was, floating outside my ship, wearing my spacesuit (of course) and using my jet engines to stay with the ship. When Dad's ship got close enough I simply grabbed it and guided it to the hatch of my own ship. I couldn't really hook the two ships up, not exactly, but I had some thick cables and I just tied the ships together and made a nice big knot.
So now I'm here. Outside Dad's ship, ready to go in. Ready to break in, as a matter of fact.
I work loose the spacesuit I've brought for Dad from its mooring outside my ship. When I find Dad inside, I've got to put him inside this suit as soon as possible. If I don't, I won't be able to bring him from his ship into my own without killing him.
Okay. I'm holding Dad's suit in the crook of my left arm, holding on to it securely without crushing it. Now I've got to rip a hole in the hull of Dad's ship so I can get in. But the hole mustn't be too big, so the air inside just whooshes out into space, but it must be big enough, so that I and Dad's suit can get in. How do I do this thing?
I carefully press my fingers into the metal hull of the ship. My fingers make deep indentations in it easily. Good going, so far.
But do I dare to press deeper? What will happen when I actually break through the hull? Will the air pressure inside make the ship sort of explode outwards when I make a real hole in it? And what if I rip my own suit? Uncle Bernard has told me that I mustn't. My suit is lead-lined. Uncle Bernard thinks it will protect me from the Kryptonite and Earthite radiation which is likely inside Dad's ship. But if my suit is ripped, I could get poisoned. Then I'll never save Dad. Or myself.
I tremble. But I have to do this. I dig my fingers deeper, getting myself a good grip, and pull.
Jeeeeeez!!! Yes, there is sort of an explosion of air as the hull is broken! Like the ship is f-rting straight into my face!
I have to get in! Inside!
I tear at the hole, making it bigger, and I force myself inside. But there's all this stuff in front of me and around me - snagging me, like I was inside a jungle of machinery and I'd need a machete to cut my way through it.
I grab and tear at the stuff in my face, ripping things apart and giving myself some good pushes to get deeper into the ship.
And then, wouldn't you know it, the ship goes dark?
Damn! I've ruined Dad's ship! It's dying on me! I can hear the engines shutting down, the air recycling giving out - whatever life support Dad may have had is gone now!
Dad! Where is he?
I listen. Can I hear the sound of anything living at all inside this space coffin?
There's the tiniest rustle... Dad?
No... that was a miniature little insect of some kind, maybe a little spider....
Dad! You can't be gone! You can't be dead!
I turn on the lamp inside my helmet. I have to find Dad! I have to look everywhere inside this ship until I find him!
I float ahead in a sort of swaying and staggering way because I'm so tired, when I remember Dad's spacesuit. If I find him - when I find him, and if he's alive - well of course he's alive!! - I have to put him in his suit as soon as possible. So I turn around, and Dad's suit is just floating there, drifting into another compartment or something in this ship. I follow the suit...
...and there's something in there, a sort of container or capsule or something...
...
....
...that... shape... inside it...
...Dad...?
Is he... frozen?
Is this a suspended animation thingie or something? Is Dad inside a sort of freezer?
Did he get himself frozen when he found he was getting poisoned?
Poisoned... I feel a little strange myself....
I have to get him out of here! But how do I get the spacesuit on him? If he is all frozen and stiff, I can't get the suit on him. I mean, I can hardly break his body at the joints when his joints won't bend on their own!
So what...?
I have to... lift the whole container and get it inside my own ship.
How...?
"Uncle Bernard? Can you hear me?"
Silence....
"Clara?"
"Uncle Bernard! You heard me!"
Silence....
"Clara, honey. Please don't cry."
Am I crying?
"Uncle Bernard... it's Dad... he's frozen... in this container... and the power and life support and everything is down... and I can't get the suit on him... and I don't know what I'm gonna do if he starts thawing... and I think he's gonna die... and I... I... "
Silence....
"Clara, darling. You've done so well. Listen, honey. Bring the whole suspended animation capsule into your own ship and hook it up to the power supply there. I'll show you how to do it once you've brought the capsule inside. Now, work the cables of the capsule loose from the power outlets here. Carefully."
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I got Dad's capsule inside my ship. There were so many cables to work loose, and when I finally got it free I felt like I was carrying a coffin with a dead octopus in it, an octopus with all its arms hanging out. And I was sure that Dad was dead. Like an octopus. A frozen one. One that was thawing. And rotting as it thawed. And I was crying the whole time I got the coffin over to my ship. Except it's not a coffin, it's a suspended animation unit.
But Uncle Bernard helped me get the power back to Dad's capsule. And it is working again, and Uncle Bernard doesn't think that Dad will be worse off for being taken off life support for a little while. If Dad is alive at all, that is. He probably is, but Uncle Bernard isn't quite sure. And he isn't quite sure if he can revive Dad when I get him back to Earth.
I keep crying. But now that I've hooked up Dad to the life support he needs, I have to get out again and send Dad's ship into the Sun. Uncle Bernard thinks it's really full of Earthite and stuff and it will really kill a lot of people if it crashes on the Earth. So it mustn't hit the Earth, so I must send it into the Sun instead. But first I must go back into Dad's ship and get the engines going. Then I must lay in just the right course, and Uncle Bernard thinks I may have to give the ship a push myself to give it the speed it needs. He thinks I should sort of grab hold of the ship and just push it. Boy, am I ever going to need Uncle Bernard's instructions in my ears.
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I jerry-rigged the engines, with Uncle Bernard's help, and got them going. Now the ship is really humming with life again. And I've laid in a course which should make the ship fall straight into the Sun. Now I've made the ship accelerate, but I had to do that from the inside of Dad's ship, so the ship has taken me along with it. I have to get out quickly, before I lose sight of my own ship, and I still have to give Dad's ship one last push.
Okay, I'm on the outside now. I grab hold of the outer hull. The sun is right in my eyes and the ship is moving straight toward it. There - I push the ship, gently at first, and then more firmly. It accelerates, moving faster toward the hungry blast furnace of the Sun. I let go.
I hear Uncle Bernard's voice in my helmet. It's crackling, though. Uncle Bernard is telling me I've done so good. Now I've just got to get back to my own ship.
My ship....?
I can't see it. I must have moved too far away from it when I was sending Dad's ship into the Sun.
I can see the Sun, of course. It's straight ahead. And then all around it there's blackness. And stars.
Where is the Earth? Is that the Earth? That little blue dot over there?
Guess so. The Earth looked blue before when I looked at it. When I was closer to it. Blue and white. That dot is the right color. And look... there's even a really small dark dot not far from the blue one. That must be the Moon. Funny, you'd think the Moon would be white, but it looks really dark from here. But that's what Uncle Bernard told me, too.
So I can see the Earth... that's where I want to go. Maybe I shouldn't bother with the ship. Maybe I should just try to fly there myself, on my own, back to the Earth.
But what happens to Dad if I'm not in my ship to steer it? What if my ship just crashes on the Earth? With Dad inside it?
Or what if it just drifts away into space somewhere? And never comes back?
Got to get back to the ship... but I'm so tired....
//Clara?//
What....?
What? Who? Hello? Who was that?
Hello...?
Nothing...?
That was Dad. I'm sure of it. He called me. He's alive. He needs me to save him.
I have to get back to my ship. I have to find it.
Hello! Dad! Hello!
Nothing....
"Uncle Bernard! Help!"
Silence... silence... silence... silence....
Nothing...?
"Uncle Bernard!"
Silence... silence... silence... silence....
Oh God... help me... there's just darkness everywhere... and stars....
//Clara...//
Dad...?
//Clara... this way....//
This way... this way... I don't know how I know...but I think the ship is this way... if I follow that bright star over there....
...
...
... think I've been drifting through space for hours....
...days....
...weeks...?
What's that?
Glinting... metallic...
...my ship.
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tbc....
