“The grav panels went out at some point,” Molly said. “Maybe on impact, maybe before. The ships must’ve rattled around in here, crashing against that side, and then the grav panels kicked back on. Now they’re holding the ships to the decking, which must feel like down for them.”

Scottie leaned over the control console to peer at the wreckage. “Watch your hands,” Molly said, nodding at the controls.

“Yeah, sorry.” He gripped the back of the flightseats and squinted out through the carboglass. “You don’t have any binoculars?” he asked.

Molly shook her head. “No. Just SADAR. Why do you ask?”

“Thought I saw something moving up there,” Scottie said, pointing.

“That’s not—”

“I see it too,” Cat said. She leaned forward and peered toward the line of busted ships. “I’ll be a Drenard’s uncle,” she said, “somebody’s alive in that cockpit!”

Molly was about to argue with them when she saw it as well. Some-thing definitely moved inside one of the shattered canopies. It was impossible to make out any detail—it was just a dark form shifting behind a spider web of fractured glass.

“I’m gonna test the panels,” Molly announced, almost out of habit, as if Cole were there and she needed someone to second the idea.

She lowered the landing gear and settled gently to the decking. As she reduced thrust, Molly waited for the ship to slide back, matching the lean of the StarCarrier, but Parsona didn’t budge. The solid deck-ing beneath them matched the evidence hanging above in all those Firehawks and their scattered debris: the StarCarrier’s grav panels were fully functioning.

“This feels freaky,” Scottie said.

“Forget about the planet,” Molly told them. “Just concentrate on the decking. The decking is down.” It was easy to say, but hard to sound convincing. White puffy clouds slid across the rectangle of blue at the end of the hangar bay. They were looking up a steep slope and trying to tell their bodies it was something else.

“Are we all gonna go out there?” Scottie asked.

“We might need the muscle,” Molly said, already formulating a plan and making a list in her head. She looked back through the cockpit. “We might even need Walter. Anybody know where he is?”

ѻѻѻѻ

“I have to go,” Walter thought. He peeked out of his room and up the length of the ship.

“Everything okay?” he heard through the band.

“Yeah, jusst—”

“Why are you thinking about sshipss going down, Walter? Iss everything alright?”

Walter cursed himself. He was concentrating on not thinking about that!

“It’ss fine, I jusst need to go help Molly.”

“I undersstand. Hey Walter?”

“Yeah?” He glanced out again, then ran across and snuck into Molly’s room while his mysterious friend kept talking.

“When you come ssee me and bring me thosse armss, why don’t you bring Molly with you?”

Walter knelt by her bottom drawer, looking for the tell-tell hair. “Why?” he asked, dying to end the conversation and get out of there.