H3: The Hat: Part 3

    Hours went by. Footsteps walked past the closet door, frightening Flyspur, but no one opened the door. Maybe Nova had managed to convince Travis to leave him alone. Flyspur tried to rest, though his thoughts kept him awake. After what he guessed was nearly eight hours in the closet, the door opened. 

    Nova held her finger to her lips. “I’m getting you two out,” she whispered.

    His muscles screaming, Flyspur stepped from the closet.

    Nova crept down the hallway toward the hold. She darted past an open door. Flyspur peered into the room as he passed. Travis sat in a chair, his body slumped over. Even in sleep, his face was tight and tearstained. 

    Flyspur paused. Travis wasn’t evil, just desperate to find his family. If there’d been a way to help him without endangering the crew, Flyspur would have taken it, but there wasn’t. He hurried past the door and stopped at the end of the hallway. Rover sat slumped against the cell bars, his head bowed. His cybernetic arm hung at an odd angle. He’d damaged it in his attempt to escape.

    Nova stopped. “He might start yelling again if he sees me. We had to give him some tranquilizer to calm him down, but that should be wearing off by now.”

    Flyspur nodded. “Thank you.”

    Nova pulled Flyspur’s tablet from her pocket. She also held a small pad that looked like some sort of computing device. “Here. This little pad has maps of the planets we’ve visited, as well as the profiles of all the lost colonists. Maybe if you combine our maps with the ones you have, you’ll have more luck finding the colony.”

    Flyspur took his tablet and the pad. “What happened?”

    Nova winced. “Our first colony ship, which had Travis’s entire family on it, got attacked by aliens. Everyone else left them for dead, but not Travis. Even after he saw the videos of his dad being gunned down, he never gave up.” 

    Travis stirred. 

    Nova glanced down the hallway. “You better go.” She handed Flyspur a key. “If you find the others, you’ll be able to use this pad to contact us.”

    Flyspur scrambled to the cell and opened it. The door swung without making too much noise. He hurried in and shook Rover.

    Rover blinked, his eyes unfocused. 

    “Come on, we’ve got to go.” Flyspur helped Rover to his feet. “Quietly now.” 

    Flyspur led Rover to the ramp and lowered it while Rover was still too groggy to remember what had happened.

    They were almost out of earshot when Rover seemed to come awake. He straightened, then looked Flyspur over, poking at the bruises. “Are you alright, Blue?” 

    “Fine,” Flyspur said. “Come on.”

    Rover turned toward the ship, his face morphing into a scowl. He pulled up his sleeve and took a step toward the ship. “I’ll teach them what happens when they hurt my friends.”

    Flyspur grabbed his arm. “No, Rover. We need to get out of here. Please. They’ll catch us again.”

    Rover’s expression softened, though he still glared back at the ship. “They hurt you.” 

    “It was a mistake,” Flyspur said. “Come on.” Flyspur tugged Rover’s hand. At the same time, he hailed the Nellie-Bell on his tablet. Flyspur made up his mind that he’d take a long bath before he let Cloud see him.

    The fact that Rover didn’t argue worried Flyspur more than the dents in his cybernetic arm. Rover just stood, his shoulders slumped and face downcast. He didn’t even seem to care that he’d lost his hat.

    The Nellie-Bell picked them up near where Rover had been trading before everything went bad.

    

    

    Two weeks later

    

    Nova walked to Travis’s room and tapped the door gently. 

    “Stay away from me, backstabber!” Travis yelled.

    Nova opened the door and lifted a pad. “What are you going to do? Dump me out the airlock?”

    Travis turned away from his window and glared. “If you were on Earth, they’d have executed you.”

    Nova forced herself to smile. “Not when I just got us more information on the aliens than we’ve found in the last five years.”

    Travis’s eyebrow cocked upward, curious.

    Nova turned the pad so Travis could see it. “I gave that little blue alien, Flyspur, a pad.”

    “You gave them our technology?” Travis lifted his hand, as if to strike Nova. 

    She scrambled back, unsure if he’d really hit her. He’d never hit any of his crew before, but his mood had been darker than normal ever since Andrew escaped. “I put a bug in it. The alien hooked it to his device, so now I can see everything he does, and I have all his files. The computer is working on translating them to English as we speak, but for now, we can track your brother. We’ll know where that tablet is, no matter where they go.”

    Travis lowered his hand. “You’ve got access to alien information?”

    Nova nodded. “Everything on his tablet. Granted, we’re so far away that it takes a day or so to get the information here, but I’m learning quite a bit. We can even listen in on conversations the crew has when they contact each other, so you’ll be able to check up on Andrew.”

    “He’s still with that alien,” Travis spat. “It could be opening his head up as we speak.”

    Nova sighed. “Nearest I could tell, Andrew was in good health, other than a little extra fat. He’ll be fine, especially now that we can keep an eye on him.” If they ran into him again, she resolved she’d be the one to make contact before Travis could turn things into a disaster.

    Travis seemed to calm a bit, to the point he only looked like he wanted to lock her in the brig, not throw her out the airlock. “You really think this will work?”

    Nova flipped her pad around so Travis could see an image of Andrew playing with some sort of mechanical contraption. “We’ll be able to learn exactly what’s going on. Once we know the situation, we can make contact.”

    Travis took the pad and stared at it. He wiped his eyes, then walked back to the window and gazed out. “The colony’s out there somewhere, I can feel it better than ever before. They’re alive.”

    Nova walked across the room and stood next to him. Now, she knew he was right. Andrew couldn’t be the only one who survived. The rest of them had to be out there somewhere. The question was, who would find them first, Andrew and his blue alien friend, or Travis?

    

    Flyspur sat in his cushioned seat and thumbed through his tablet. It had taken over a week to figure out how Nova’s star map corresponded to Flyspur’s much more extensive version, but he’d finally got it right, as well as downloaded all the information from the pad. He examined the map, noting the distant planet marked as Earth. Now, after years of searching, they finally knew the location of Rover’s home planet, but if Travis was any indication of the way humans thought, going to Earth would be borderline suicidal. Flyspur’s gaze moved to the other planets, then to the one marked as extremely hostile, where Rover’s ship had been attacked. Flyspur mentally drew a line from that planet to Jssfloon, which had not been on Nova’s map. If Rover’s escape pod was any indication of the general trajectory, checking the planets between the scene of the attack and Jssfloon would be the logical place to start looking for the lost colony. Maybe they could even go to the planet where the attack happened. After all, Rover was a lot better about introducing himself than Travis. 

    Flyspur stood. His knee still ached a bit, but otherwise, he’d recovered. He walked to Rover’s room and peeked in. Rover sat in the captain’s chair, his face downcast. It seemed like the encounter had aged him by ten years, which made him look much more like Travis.

    Rover looked up, his eyes dull.

    Flyspur held up his tablet. “I’ve been looking at maps, and I think I know where we should start searching for humans.”

    Rover looked away. “I don’t want anything to do with those critters. If my own brother’s a villain, what’ll the rest of them be like?”

    Flyspur sighed. “Travis isn’t a villain, just desperate to find his family. Imagine if it was your crew who went missing. You’d do anything to get them back.”

    “That’s no excuse for treating you like that,” Rover snapped. He folded his arms across his chest. “I’m done chasin’ humans and that’s final.”

    Flyspur frowned. Rover needed some goal in life. Without one, he’d drift aimlessly like coral on the sea. Flyspur flipped through the images on his tablet until he came to the crew list. He found the member he was looking for and handed the tablet to Rover.

    Rover glared down at the tablet, then his face softened. “Who’s this?” His voice came out soft, a welcome change from the harsh tone he’d spoken in all week.

    “That’s Abigail Finnigan,” Flyspur said. “She’s your mother, one of the people who is missing. For all we know, she and the others are locked in a zoo somewhere.”

    Rover scratched the back of his neck. “Can’t Travis find her? He’s the one who remembers her.” 

    “Travis doesn’t have a clue where the colonists are. He doesn’t even know what planets are hostile.” Flyspur grabbed the tablet back and switched to the map. “We have extensive maps of the solar systems. I’ve already figured out half the planets they aren’t on, just by looking at the news stories.”

    Rover frowned, still torn. “But what if they’re like Travis?” 

    Flyspur forced himself to smile. “Then you’ll just have to prove to them that little blue aliens don’t want to attack them.”

    “Show me the picture again.” 

    Flyspur switched back to Abigail’s picture.

    Rover squinted and tapped his head. “She does look mighty familiar.” He smiled for the first time in weeks. “What kind of son would I be if I didn’t rescue my own mother?” 

    Flyspur smiled. “Let’s get them.”