“Solar power?” I suggest tentatively. “The suns’ light gets trapped inside the glass?”
“Maybe.” Elder turns the cube over in his hand as if expecting to find an on/off switch.
“Those square depressions in the windowsills,” I say, rubbing my knee where I scraped it against the windowsill as I was escaping. “The ones we thought were meant for idols or something? They’re the exact size of the cube.”
Elder runs his hands over the smooth surface. “Put the cube in the window in the morning so it charges with light all day and glows all night. Genius.” He looks up at me. “Remember the square light in the ceiling of the communication building at the compound?”
“You think it was something like this?”
Elder nods. “I bet the top is exposed on the roof so it can charge. Maybe all the electricity—the computers, the communication bay—runs on solar energy.”
Already, the light in the cube is starting to fade. It had barely been charged in the sunlight at all before I stuffed it in my sleeping bag this morning.
“The one piece of information that’s been consistent since we’ve landed,” Elder says, “is that the FRX found valuable resources here on Centauri-Earth. It’s the first thing anyone ever talks about with this mission, even your dad. What if this is the valuable resource?”
I nod. “It makes sense,” I say. “Solar energy is free. Enough of these would light up a city.”
“And if it breaks . . . ” Elder tips his hand over but doesn’t drop the cube. “Boom.”
He’s thinking the same thing as me: this is what killed Kit. Whoever made the cube can also make bullets. The cube didn’t break when it hit the stone floor, but if they found a way to make the bullets break on contact . . . well, that would explain why it looked as if Kit’s chest exploded.
“I think there’s something else,” Elder says.
He explains to me his theory that the one thing linking the victims together is Phydus.
“But I don’t know how we can prove that this is about the drug,” he says. The glass cube is barely glowing now, making the room filled with more shadows than light.
I think about the emptiness in Dr. Gupta’s eyes as the ptero ate him. The way Lorin died without a mark on her. The samples of their blood in the lab in the shuttle.
And then it hits me.
“I know how to prove it.”
36: ELDER
I take the glass cube with us as Amy leads me to the shuttle, keeping it covered until we’re in the forest. Amy has her gun, but I’d like to be able to see if an enemy is approaching us—ptero or alien.
As we trudge through the forest, I can’t help but think about how comfortable Amy’s sleeping bag looked, how nice it would be if it—and she—stayed in my building tonight rather than returned to her parents. These thoughts soon evaporate, though. The forest feels more dangerous now. When Amy and I snuck out to the compound last night, we did so with the belief that the deadliest things on this planet were the monsters in the sky. But now we know something else is out there, and the knowledge makes the shadows feel ominous, deadly.
There’s a soft glow under the shuttle as we approach, and I know Amy is right: glass on this planet somehow traps solar energy. I think bitterly about the lead-cooled fast reactor in the engine room of Godspeed, the flashing red light that means it’s in meltdown. If there was some way to make the energy in the glass on this planet fuel the ship . . .
If we could do that, then . . . what? Bartie could wait to distribute the black patches for another few years? They’re trapped, and just like Amy warned when we left them there, there’s nothing for the people of Godspeed to do but wait for death.
I have to save them.
Amy leads me to the lab aboard the shuttle. As we pass the armory, I consider pausing and selecting a gun for myself, but I keep walking. I’d rather have answers than weapons.
“Mom’s been having me help her with her experiments,” Amy explains as she picks up a long-stemmed cotton swab and walks over to the Phydus pump. Its wires are still exposed and broken from my hasty dismantling of the pump so long ago. Amy lifts the panel that covers the spout where Eldest used to deposit Phydus. Some of the sticky, viscous liquid is still inside, and although it’s dried into stains on the edge of the valve, Amy jabs the cotton swab deep into the pump and extracts it, covered with the dark syrup.
Amy moves quickly to make sure the Phydus doesn’t drip off the swab until she can scrape the liquid into a cup. Then she places the cup into a machine.
“Analyte generator,” Amy says as the machine works. “It basically just makes a test so that we can see if something has Phydus in it.”
The machine dings.
“Done,” Amy says. “Now we need a sample to test.” She opens a small refrigerator door and pulls out sample cups of blood. I read the labels one by one: RAJ GUPTA, JULIANA ROBERTSON, SHIPBORN FEMALE, SHIPBORN DOCTOR.
“They didn’t even bother with Lorin and Kit’s names,” I say bitterly.
Amy ducks her head. “I’m sorry,” she says.
She tests Lorin’s blood first. “We know she was wearing a med patch, so it’d make sense for the results to test positive for Phydus,” she says. We wait for the machine to finish analyzing her blood, then read the results together.
“That’s a lot of Phydus,” I say, staring at the report. “One med patch wouldn’t make her have that much.”
Amy frowns. “That much Phydus would . . . ”
“It would kill her,” I say.