Page 112 of Bound By Stars

Weslie

Six days to Mars

The crowd breaks, bodies rushing forward like water through a bursting dam. I catch onto the signpost next to the arboretum’s entrance, bruised wrists aching.

Jupiter is swept ahead, catching my fingers as he passes. Swimming against the current of moving people, he lunges toward me and locks his hand around my forearm.

We both pull until each of us is anchored by the sign, panting and red-faced as the crowd rushes past on all sides.

The wide pathway through the center of the room is packed with bodies, splitting off to either side, taking trails to bypass the bottleneck. The blue sky overhead flickers to a pale gray ceiling, disrupting the illusion. A robin disappears mid-flight. People flood around us, filling the paths through the trees in the maple quadrant.

I wince every time another person slams into me. They’re all too close. If I fell, they would trample me without hesitation like the people left behind in the corridor. And what if the oxygen is shut off? There isn’t enough in here. The artificial gravity presses down hard on my chest, crushing me. My forehead is damp, even though I can see my rapid breaths in the air. I bow my head, pinching my eyes shut.

“That way!” Jupiter shouts, tugging on my arm.

“Give me a minute.”

He leans close, brushing my hair away from my face. “Think of it like the dance in second class. Imagine these people are moving to music.”

“Two—people—were—already—trampled—to—death!” The panicked words blend together.

“That was the gravity shift. We’re okay.”

“I…can’t…breathe.”

He presses his forehead to mine, taking an exaggerated breath. In. Hold. Out. Hold. “Stay close to me. We’re going to get out of here.”

He scoops an arm around me, pulling me away from the buoy and swimming across the packed pathway. “Excuse me, excuse me,” he repeats over and over again.

“I don’t…think…anyone’s…concerned…with manners…right now.” The laugh that escapes lightens the weight on my chest.

Behind us, a huge man is bulldozing through the mob, crushing people together and knocking over anyone in his path. The crowd surges forward, taking us with them.

Catching hold of a birch branch, Jupiter yanks me out of the way. “Deep breaths. You’re doing great.”

I follow him and the branch until we’re out of the crowd, tucked into a patch of birch trees, wrapped around a thin trunk. My curls float around my face. Fallen leaves drift into the air. My feet lift off the floor. No more artificial gravity.

Screams tear through the room again. People float through the trees, using the branches to launch themselves forward.

“Most of them have never experienced weightlessness. This could go bad fast.” Jupiter’s eyes follow the untethered people into the air. There’s a loud crack. Bone on bone. Two people drift over the main pathway behind us, both unconscious from the collision.

Another woman pushes off too hard, flying into the ceiling above us. Blood droplets float around her. She drifts back toward the trees, her body limp, the sky flickering in and out around her.

“Hold onto me.” Jupiter pulls my arms around his shoulder and pushes off toward another tree trunk a few feet away, staying low to the ground so our feet graze the artificial grass. He moves cautiously, gently gliding from tree trunk to tree trunk, ignoring shouts for help, screams of terror, and bodies shooting too fast through the air.

The birch trees end. The pathway is a twenty-foot gap between us and the next anchor point in the eucalyptus quadrant. Strips of shed bark hover between the trees. The bluish-green leaves point in various directions without gravity pulling them down, moving like feelers as people drift past. The wrongness of it makes my skin crawl.

He looks back at me and takes a deep breath, launching forward.

Halfway across the path, a woman comes out of nowhere, knocking into us, throwing me off Jupiter’s back, and shooting us off course. I spin so my feet point to the ceiling until I hit a branch and grab hold, tearing leaves off as my hand runs over the bark.

Below me, Jupiter has his boot hooked under a lower branch.

Climbing to the trunk of the tree, I catch his outstretched hand and gently pull him to me as easily as if we were in water. “I think I’ve decided space travel really isn’t my thing.”

“Good. You’ll be stuck on my planet then.” He lets out a breathy laugh rustling my hair as his body softly collides with mine. “Let’s get off this ship.”

At the base of the eucalyptus tree, we keep moving, easily pulling ourselves through the dense forest. Jupiter keeps peeking over his shoulder to check I’m with him until we’re at the edge of the trees. The arched passageway, flanked by eucalyptus on one side and pine on the other, is close.

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