The Glow of Fallen Stars (Ventura Book 2)

Chapter Two

We've almost given up on it ever being daylight again by the time the dawn creeps in, at first just a paleness that is so delicate we don't dare believe it, then colours that finally make it true and undeniable. We have just begun to feel cold when Huxley herself makes the horizon, and streams her heat and light on to us as if she's bringing us to life.

37 lies offshore, shining and silver and blackened and burned, already looking like a chunk of another world, another life. It is barely staying afloat, and of course it has drifted somewhat further out. So this is the point at which we realise we will be totally screwed (Ezra's words) if we don't do something about it.

The sea is so different this morning, pulsing in waves every few seconds, great curving sun-glinting arcs of water that look easily twice as tall as us. They pulverise themselves into a wall of foam when they hit the shallows – mesmerising, beautiful, petrifying.

Squinting out at it, I say, 'It wasn't like this yesterday, was it?' and Dom shakes his head in my peripheral vision.

'I guess something had just crashed into it. From space and everything, so . . . ' He shrugs, then looks at me. 'At least we can swim.' He puts his arm around my shoulder. 'Swimming lessons on a space traveller finally come in useful for something,' he says, and he is smiling.

We swim out there in a line with Dom at the front until he is treading water and waiting for us. Once I get close to him I realise how tired I am, how flooded with pain every muscle in my body has become, and I try to tell him but I can't, because every time I open my mouth water fills it. Dom lets me grab at him a few times, lets me dig my nails into the skin on his shoulder, and then he pulls me into the shelter of his body and says, 'You need to not panic, Seren – you're wasting energy, and we need you.'

Which makes me want to be better at it, but not actually any more able to be so.

'I'm going to get you inside so you can operate the winch,' Dom yells about fifty times before I manage to get him to understand that I have no idea how to go about it. 'I'll give you a boost. Just look for it on the On-Planet Utilities menu.' He tows me right to the side of 37, where the waves batter me repeatedly against the blackened metal. Somehow Dom gets me up to where I can grab the bottom sill of the hatch and I lever myself up, even though my arms are shaking and the whole thing is almost impossible. But finally I get the top half of my body over and I am hanging there, staring down into the nose of the shuttle where I can see the back of our seats and a whole bunch of stuff that has slid down to the front because 37 is pitched forward in the water.

'We need to do this fast, Seren – release the winch cover panel and start unspooling it. The electrics are probably flooded so it may have to be manual, OK?'

I manage to get the bottom half of my body up over the sill but then gravity takes over and I slide, face first, all the way down the floor into the nose, face-planting on the control panel and mashing my lip into my teeth. While I am trying to get the systems screen to boot up, Mariana drags herself up and over the edge and sits with one leg either side like a sensible person would, and then looks down at me.

'Oh my God, what have you done?'

I touch my face and see the blood.

She climbs down to help me figure out the winch release but nothing happens, so we end up watching through the front windscreen while Dom dives down to find the manual release lever, kicking past us like a fish, then rising back up to the turmoil above. He does this four times, then Ezra tries but has to haul himself down using the nose cone because he's nowhere near the swimmer Dom is. We are staring at the drifting upturned soles of his feet in the blue light when we hear the grind of the lever and the breach alarm sounding. The OPU screen shows that the unspool is in progress so we climb up the seatbacks to where we can hang out of the back door.