I don’t breathe until I’m in the fiction room and the door zips shut behind me. There’s no lock—hardly any of the rooms on the entire ship have locks—but if I can lie low here, the people in the entryway might eventually forget their anger and forget me.

The fiction room is smaller than the others on this floor; clearly, the ship’s makers decided that history and science were more important than novels. I wish it looked more like my library back home, with huge plush beanbags scattered across the floor, dark carpet, posters of famous authors on the walls, and tiny square dusty windows filtering in the sunlight. Instead, the fiction room looks like all the rest—cold and sterile and entirely too clean. It’s like a hospital room with books instead of beds: white tiled floor, stark paneled walls, silvery-metal table.

Even though the room is sparkling clean, there is an ever-present scent of dust and old paper rising from the tomes. Everything here is in alphabetical order regardless of subject matter. Chaucer is beside Agatha Christie; J. K. Rowling beside Dr. Seuss beside Shakespeare. When I get to the end of one row and look down the next, I see unreadable titles, some written in languages I can guess at—French, German, Spanish—and some I can’t even begin to decipher—Chinese? Korean? Japanese?

I could get lost here, but I need to see if Orion really did leave a clue for me to follow in the phrase printed on my wi-com. I quit wandering among the fairy tales and poetry (Grimm and Goethe) and head to the first row of books, running my fingers along their bumpy spines. I head to the first bookcase, scanning the titles—The Pilgrim’s Progress, Ender’s Game, Mousetrap—until I get to the one I’m looking for.

Inferno, Volume I of the Divine Comedy, by Dante Alighieri, shelved beside a slender volume of Shakespeare’s sonnets. Ironic—a book of love poems beside a book about hell. I pull out the poetry collection and toss it on the metal table near the door so it can be reshelved with the Ss; then I hook my finger on the spine of Dante’s Inferno.

Just the title makes me remember those weeks in Ms. Parker’s English class. I can feel the hard seat of my class desk; I can remember laughing with Ryan and Mike as we worked on our final project.

Funny how a book about hell reminds me of home.

As I slide Inferno off the shelf, something slips out, wafting to the floor. I bend over to pick it up—a paper-thin sheet of rectangular black plastic, about the length and width of my open hand. The feel of it reminds me of a floppy, but it’s smaller, and there is a fingernail-size bit of raised hard plastic in one corner. I slip it in my pocket; Elder will probably know what it is. I stand back up and reach for Dante again.

The door bursts open. I get a glimpse of a panicked woman’s face—eyes wide with fear, dark hair swinging. She races past me to the far side of the room and throws herself behind the last bookshelf.