“You have a freight elevator? Where is it located?”

“The double-door elevator in the central cylinder is the freight elevator. It extends down to ground level if you press the bottom-floor button.”

I remembered the mystery button at the bottom of the elevator panel. “Cool. Okay, we’ll take care of moving him later. Next question, fuel reserves. Do you have something like a gas tank? Mileage limit?”

“I am fueled by antimatter. My reserves are large but not infinite. The only thing that really makes a large dent in them is generating wormholes for FTL travel, and I think we can agree we won’t be doing much of that, at least under current circumstances.”

“Right,” I said. “Which brings us to the Loranna. You said they were trying to use a loophole in the Galactic Covenant to try to take over. How does that work?”

“You may want to make sure you’ve taken care of bathroom breaks and gotten snacks. This will take a while.”

“Ah. Crap. Dinner’s in … ” I looked at my watch and sighed. “Pretty much any minute now.” As if to mock my despair, a text popped up at that moment. Dinner’s ready.

I stood. “You guys sure you don’t want to join?”

Patrick shook his head. “Your mom asked, but we got McD’s. Again. We’ll wait for you.”

“Like hell we will,” Nat said. “What we will do is get the story and give you a synopsis when you get back.”

“Assholes,” I said. I gave them a wave as I headed for the door.

I shoveled food into my mouth almost too fast to chew. I was trying to behave as normally as possible, but I was pretty sure I was blowing it, and badly. My mom watched me eat with a shocked expression that clearly said, Where did I go wrong? Dad kept making half-hearted attempts to discuss alternative colleges, but I couldn’t stay focused enough to even feign interest. Meanwhile Barkley, our dog, positioned himself beside my chair, waiting for a forkful to miss my mouth entirely.

I excused myself from the table as quickly as I could and rushed back out to the barn, where I found Patrick and Nat both sitting silently, staring into space, their expressions vacant. No, not vacant. Something worse. Shock, maybe?

“Wow, hello pod people. Something happen?”

“Oh, yeah,” Nat said. “We got the story. We’re in deep shit, Jack.”

“Deep shit,” Patrick echoed.

I flopped into my chair. “Fine. Hit me.”