Make You See Stars (6 page)

“
I don’t like locking
myself in,” Alen said.

“
Yeah, I get that,” Tori
mumbled. He’d been locked away for six years. “Actually, I locked
the door behind me.”

“
Oh?” He looked up at her.
“Why?”

“
Because I was locking
someone out,” she replied, not volunteering any more information
after that.

Alen nodded briefly.
“Okay.”

She wasn’t sure he expected her
to
say more,
so she stared straight ahead into the valley below. “It’s really
beautiful here,” she said sincerely.

He laughed. “Hadn’t figured a
hard-ass like me for a lover of natural beauty, huh?”

Tori rolled her eyes.
“Ha
. Know
thyself, is what the ancient Greeks said.”

“
True. But not in
English.”

She looked aside
disbelievingly. “Fine.
Gnothi Seauton
, then, Captain Pretentious.” Despite the
darkness, she could register the surprised look in his eyes. “Oh,
right. Hadn’t figured a stupid, Elite cow like me for a lover of
all things classical, huh?”

“
Touché.” An amused smile tugged
at
the
corner of his mouth. “Why don’t you sit down and enjoy the view
with me for a while?”

“
All right.”
Tori gulped down her nerves,
taking a seat next to him. This wasn’t so bad – she could sit here
till eight when his program was running out. He wasn’t making
her
that
nervous. And they’d had an almost normal conversation up to
this point. A sort-of-sarcastic conversation, but still.

“
So, this landscape,” she
said, casting around for a topic of conversation. “Is this
somewhere in Croatia?”

He raised an eyebrow. “That’s
right. You’ve been asking people about my origins?”

“
N-n
o,” she stuttered. Oh Lord, here she
went again. “Just, someone happened to tell me. That you’re
Croatian, I mean.”

“
Yeah, I can vividly
imagine all kinds of things being told about me,” he said quietly,
not able to keep the bitterness out of his voice.

Tori cringed a little, but
decided to ignore his comment. “You know I actually thought you
were British at first? Your accent is pretty spot-on.”

He smiled. “I can say the same
thing about you. I thought you were from the British Isles, until
someone
happened
to tell me that Victoria Weiss is Ambassador Weiss’s
daughter.”

She rolled her eyes.
“People talk a lot, don’t they?”

“
You can say that again,” he
agreed. “Kind of reminds me of life in the joint. You wouldn’t
believe how much gossiping goes on behind bars.”

Again with the prison thing.
Tori tried a hesitant grin. “Come on, it can’t be as bad as high
school. I mean, have you
been
there?”

Alen laughed out loud, and it
sounded so surprisingly genuine that she joined in. “Well,
it’s
a long
time ago for me,” he admitted. “And I don’t think that Croatian
village school I attended till I kicked myself out could compare
to
your
high school.”

“
You got yourself
expelled?” Tori asked curiously. “Why would you do that? You’re,
like, a genius, right? Multilingual, fluent in ten
languages?”

He looked aside and scooted
closer, shooting her a
faint smile. “Hmm. I’m that much of a genius I’m
not buying for one second that you just
happen
to know that. You really did ask people
about me.”

He reached out for her, and
Tori felt his warm hand on her shoulder. Her next retort died on
her lips.
She wanted to tell him that she hadn’t, that her friends
had told her without her asking, but she couldn’t – or rather, she
didn’t want to break this silence. She wanted to know what would
happen next.

Alen’s eyes were dark-blue
under the projected, Croatian night sky when he observed her,
running his hand
lightly up and down her arm. And then, his hand traced her
neck and cupped her cheek. She stared into his eyes, her heart
slamming against her ribs.

“
So soft,” he
murmured.

All of a
sudden
,
panic rose in her chest. What the hell was she doing here in the
dark, alone with him? Tori bit her lip and tried to back
away.

Alen must have picked up on her
sudden mood change, because he narrowed his eyes. “You’re afraid of
me, aren’t you?” he said flatly, his gaze reflecting a mixture of
triumph and loneliness.

“
No,” she whispered. She wasn’t
– it had nothing to do with him.
“Besides, what do you care? You don’t even
like me.”

“
Really?” He laughed, his hand
still resting on the soft skin above her collarbone. “This feels
like I don’t like you?”

She clenched her fists in
frustration. “Oh, shut up. You think I’m a rich, spoilt brat, and
you hate my kind of people – whatever that
means, anyway. You’re just using
me.”

She stared him down, her
cheeks flaming, her eyes ablaze.

The next thing he did was
the last thing she expected: he got up and took a few steps away
from the bench.

“
Enjoy the last ten minutes of
the view,” he said calmly. “I
get it – you don’t want to be seen with me. I’ll
let myself out.”

And with that, he turned
around and walked downhill.

“
You’re an
idiot
,” she shouted after him.

Actually, she felt like an
idiot
herself. For liking a guy who despised her background. For
freaking out when all he did was touch her face. For wanting him
and pushing him away at the same time.

Tori closed her eyes and tried
to block the memories of that night at the convention center. She
found she couldn’t. Her first time with Dieter was etched in her
memory, and it would taint everything that came after.

When the night sky changed
and turned into a sunlit, Floridian sky with a blood-red sunset,
she slid off the bench and started down the hill to walk off her
stress in the forest. She wouldn’t let Anna’s gift go to
waste.

7.

When Tori got to Airlock
Seven the next morning, Jari was already waiting there.

“
Don’t you feel like we’re
just going on a field trip?” she said, holding up her lunchbox.
She’d really brought one. “Except for the cryo-suits, of
course.”

Jari laughed. “Best field trip
yet,” he said. “The furthest I ever got as a Helsinki Uni student
was the moon. And it’s kind of a bummer when you realize the
surface is literally
covered
in footsteps made by former astronauts. Nothing
ever gets erased there.”

Tori smiled. “Wasn’t it
weird to see all those old United States flags up
there?”

“
Well, the biggest one
fluttering in the non-breeze now is the Great German flag,” Jari
replied, sounding a bit sullen.

Tori nodded curtly. She knew
Finland and Germany hadn’t exactly been on friendly terms before
the wars. Nor had Croatia and Germany, for that matter. Having
lived on Mars for most of her life, she often forgot about the
tension in former Europe, now called Great Germany. On Mars, there
was
just
Germany – at least on the northern hemisphere. The south
was occupied by the Brits. As for the other super powers, the
Russians and Japanese were on Jupiter’s largest moons, and Mexico,
America and Canada had formed the Desidan Alliance so they could
work together in mining smaller moons in the solar system. All
other nationalities were pretty much scattered on space stations,
still on Earth or eradicated.

When they heard footsteps in
the hallway, they both turned around. Tori’s mouth fell open
wh
en she saw
it was the man who’d addressed her last night before she’d fled
into the Hydroponics Experience. The journalist.

“
Good morning to you both,” he
said with a friendly smile. “Mr
. LaFleur invited me along so I could
record your journey and write about it in the Desida Telegraph.” He
turned to Tori. “Sorry I caught you at a bad time yesterday. I
wanted to do a short interview with you, because you’re the first
woman to set foot on Enceladus.”

“
Oh!
” Tori shot him a guilty smile.
Apparently, she’d completely misjudged the situation. “Yeah. No
worries. We can talk on the way there.”

It didn’t take long for
Mr
. LaFleur
and Alen Novak to show up at the airlock, the latter of the two
carrying the suits they needed.

Alen
didn’t look her in the eyes when he
wordlessly handed her a cryo-suit, and Tori took it without
comment. If he intended to give her the silent treatment for
calling him out on his bullshit, she could do the same.

Once inside, LaFleur and Alen
went to the control room to give detailed instructions to the pilot
flying the spacecraft. Tori’s boss had downloaded the maps
Mr
. Yoruka
had provided them with onto the ship’s computer, but they couldn’t
fly by maps alone.

“
Should we put these on right
now?” Jari asked Alen when he returned after a few minutes. He held
up his cryo-suit.

Alen shook his head. “No need
yet. Unless you think it’s too chilly
inside
the ship, of course.”

Jari chuckled.
“
No, I’m
fine, Sir. Just let me know when.”

Tori was sitting at a separate
table talking to Ernst, the reporter. From the corner of her eye,
she saw Alen watching the two of them, giving her a dark look that
could easily pass for the criminal-Croatian version of an
eye roll. Of
course, he thought she was full of it, being the only person on
board doing a press conference of some kind. Another reason for him
to hate her wealthy guts.

And yet, he had seemed
genuinely interested in her last night.

When Ernst packed up his
recorder equipment and left to have a chat with the pilot, Alen
approached her table.

“
Hi,” she mumbled, shifting
uncomfortably in her seat when he sat down across from
her.

“
Hey.”
He put down his tab on the table,
clicking a few icons to open safety protocol sheets. “I’d like to
walk you through these before we land.”

“
Uhm… don’t you need Jari
to hear this, too?” she asked.

Alen looked up, his blue
eyes boring into hers. “You want me to call him over?”

“
Well, wouldn’t that be
most convenient for you?”

He sighed, his shoulders
drooping almost imperceptibly. “I guess.
Hold on, I’ll get him.” Alen got up
and went over to Jari, who was studying one of the control panels
on the other side of the room.

Tori bit her lip. What just
happened? Was he disappointed that she didn’t want to talk to him
alone? But that was ridiculous. This whole situation was.
She had to get a
grip. He was here to assist LaFleur with security measures, and if
she didn’t pay attention and allowed her frayed nerves to run away
with her, she’d be the first woman to
die
on Enceladus.

Her mind kept wandering when
Alen showed her and Jari how to safely put on the cryo-suits and
switch on the oxygen supply, what the warning lights on the panel
installed on their left sleeves meant, and how to use the safety
line if a surface explosion made them fly away too far. It
was
very
low gravity, after all.

“
Last but not least: any samples
you take back into the ship should be sealed away in
vacuum-containers
before boarding, and should not be opened under any circumstance,”
Alen finished. “Any questions?”

Jari raised his hand. “How do
you know this much about alien environments? You almost sound
smarter than
Mr. LaFleur.”

Alen laughed. “An education
without
any
distractions helps a lot,” he replied.

“
No frat boy then, huh?” Jari
smiled
hesitantly.

Not unless you could call
prison a fraternity, Tori thought to herself.
She absently listened to Jari
and Alen chatting about chemistry, quarantines and exobiology,
suddenly pissed off at Alen for talking so amiably to her fellow
intern, while every second word he uttered to her seemed to be an
insult or a sarcastic remark.

“
Approaching Enceladus,”
the pilot announced on the intercom. “Please get ready for a rough
landing.”

Alen looked up, a frown
crossing his face. “Hold on,” he said, gesturing for Tori and Jari
to stay put. He stalked off in the direction of the cockpit.
Tori shot Jari a
questioning look when they heard agitated voices over the intercom,
which was still on.