Make You See Stars by Jocelyn Han Read Free Book Online Page A

addressed her last night before she’d fled
into the Hydroponics Experience. The journalist.
    “ Good morning to you both,” he
said with a friendly smile. “Mr . LaFleur invited me along so I could
record your journey and write about it in the Desida Telegraph.” He
turned to Tori. “Sorry I caught you at a bad time yesterday. I
wanted to do a short interview with you, because you’re the first
woman to set foot on Enceladus.”
    “ Oh! ” Tori shot him a guilty smile.
Apparently, she’d completely misjudged the situation. “Yeah. No
worries. We can talk on the way there.”
    It didn’t take long for
Mr . LaFleur
and Alen Novak to show up at the airlock, the latter of the two
carrying the suits they needed.
    Alen didn’t look her in the eyes when he
wordlessly handed her a cryo-suit, and Tori took it without
comment. If he intended to give her the silent treatment for
calling him out on his bullshit, she could do the same.
    Once inside, LaFleur and Alen
went to the control room to give detailed instructions to the pilot
flying the spacecraft. Tori’s boss had downloaded the maps
Mr . Yoruka
had provided them with onto the ship’s computer, but they couldn’t
fly by maps alone.
    “ Should we put these on right
now?” Jari asked Alen when he returned after a few minutes. He held
up his cryo-suit.
    Alen shook his head. “No need
yet. Unless you think it’s too chilly inside the ship, of course.”
    Jari chuckled.
“ No, I’m
fine, Sir. Just let me know when.”
    Tori was sitting at a separate
table talking to Ernst, the reporter. From the corner of her eye,
she saw Alen watching the two of them, giving her a dark look that
could easily pass for the criminal-Croatian version of an eye roll. Of
course, he thought she was full of it, being the only person on
board doing a press conference of some kind. Another reason for him
to hate her wealthy guts.
    And yet, he had seemed
genuinely interested in her last night.
    When Ernst packed up his
recorder equipment and left to have a chat with the pilot, Alen
approached her table.
    “ Hi,” she mumbled, shifting
uncomfortably in her seat when he sat down across from
her.
    “ Hey.” He put down his tab on the table,
clicking a few icons to open safety protocol sheets. “I’d like to
walk you through these before we land.”
    “ Uhm… don’t you need Jari
to hear this, too?” she asked.
    Alen looked up, his blue
eyes boring into hers. “You want me to call him over?”
    “ Well, wouldn’t that be
most convenient for you?”
    He sighed, his shoulders
drooping almost imperceptibly. “I guess. Hold on, I’ll get him.” Alen got up
and went over to Jari, who was studying one of the control panels
on the other side of the room.
    Tori bit her lip. What just
happened? Was he disappointed that she didn’t want to talk to him
alone? But that was ridiculous. This whole situation was. She had to get a
grip. He was here to assist LaFleur with security measures, and if
she didn’t pay attention and allowed her frayed nerves to run away
with her, she’d be the first woman to die on Enceladus.
    Her mind kept wandering when
Alen showed her and Jari how to safely put on the cryo-suits and
switch on the oxygen supply, what the warning lights on the panel
installed on their left sleeves meant, and how to use the safety
line if a surface explosion made them fly away too far. It
was very low gravity, after all.
    “ Last but not least: any samples
you take back into the ship should be sealed away in vacuum-containers
before boarding, and should not be opened under any circumstance,”
Alen finished. “Any questions?”
    Jari raised his hand. “How do
you know this much about alien environments? You almost sound
smarter than Mr. LaFleur.”
    Alen laughed. “An education
without any
distractions helps a lot,” he replied.
    “ No frat boy then, huh?” Jari
smiled hesitantly.
    Not unless you could call
prison a fraternity, Tori thought to herself. She absently listened