The Testimony of Those Lost in the Sky

Six

Katy Londonderry, age nine, sat at the head of an empty table.

She had, as the first person awake, decided to take the captain's seat for eating breakfast purposes and ended up using it as a Thinking Chair instead. Besides her waited a pile of reconstituted powdered eggs and two toastlike crackers that had been inside the single-serving breakfast packet. These foods, along with Katy's neon green Kool Aid (ironically the red Kool Aid had been the first to be entirely consumed), were currently untouched.

Katy didn't assume many of the other folk on the pod had gotten much sleep. After Verizon's collapse Pete the psychiatrist had also fallen ill under similar circumstances.

This led to the lieutenant, followed by pretty much everyone else, concluding that the disease was infectious and not caused by injury. Infection spread like wildfire in close quarters, even in a large pod like this one. Katy remembered that much from those boring days of staring out a window called school.

The information that soon everyone would probably be sick, coupled with the odd between- bunks sleeping arrangement that had to be created after the shuttle's tipping over made for an utterly terrible way to sleep.

Katy, on the other hand, had slept fine. She woke up early normally. It had been a necessity back at home, where they would never be again. Stepping over the finally snoring Jack she had pulled her blankets along through the two- foot high sideways doorway and crept "down" to the Captain's room/ kitchen combo. The glowing wall panel read 5:51 as she booted up the lights.

She wondered what it could be that caused Verizon's sudden coughing fits. The temperature could be a problem (Katy hadn't gone anywhere on the ship without her blanket pulled around her like a shawl), but it was more likely that sudden cold would cause a mild fever or sneezing than a deathly hot forehead and serious coughing problem. It could have been the sudden change in environment and insane atmosphere, maybe. Or maybe even the asteroid itself carried some unknown pathogen that had worked its way into the ship.

That, or someone on the ship was causing the sudden sickness.

It wouldn't mean too much. The mayor's cough was suspicious enough. But there was always the chance that somebody brought in a bug on the shuttle on purpose. Katy didn't know why or how, but she wouldn't trust some of her fellow travelers any more than she could throw them.

And Katy was not a muscular person.

Then there was that lieutenant.

He was trouble. But he was odd, and seemed to be a sunny person. Even if he might've planned for the ship to fall over, he was the one who'd volunteered to look after Verizon. If that didn't get him back the extra brownie points he lost for being an insane drunkard when they first met, Katy didn't know what would.

But what was with his sudden and miraculous transformation? Katy wondered if he could've actually turned into a crow, flew onto the ship, donned a uniform and boarded before they even noticed.

The whole shuttle was a mess of confusion. Katy hoped Verizon would be ok, but didn't exactly feel like going to check on her.

She stuck her plastic spork into the wobbling ridges of egg on the plate. Katy hadn't had eggs too many times back at home, and those eggs had always had crisped edges and blackened sides. Nothing like the pillowy yellow on the plate in front of her.

Katy was still trying to work out the mystery of the disease, the lieutenant, and the eggs, when the red- headed fellow from that faraway country, Highlands, walked in.

"Worst. Sleeping arrangement. Ever." the man muttered, his hair sticking out every bit as much as the scrambled eggs. "Oh." He looked startled to see Katy there. "Hello."