Sophia McDougall - Mars Evacuees

And indeed Carl didn’t get killed even once and popped out of the simulator at the end muttering, ‘Awesome!’ The Colonel didn’t say anything, just patted him on the back, smiling quietly and looking about fifteen years younger from sheer pride.

Then it was Gavin’s turn, and gratifyingly he wasn’t very good at it. Then it was Lilly, who was better than I had been, which was annoying.

‘Did she ever apologise to you?’ I asked.

Josephine snorted a little. ‘No.’

‘She said she was going to.’

Then the Colonel yelled, ‘JEROME,’ and charged over to where Josephine was lurking behind me. Josephine took a deep breath and accepted her fate. ‘You’d better be about to tell me I’ve gotta call EDF command and say I’ve got a kid here who’s just escaped a Morror kidnapping and spent the last week struggling her way across space to make it to my class on time. Because that’s the only reason I can think of why your Flight and Combat Theory wouldn’t be on my tablet right now.’

‘I’ve been busy with something,’ said Josephine, though she didn’t look particularly hopeful that saying this would help matters.

The Colonel stared at her coldly for a while, then said, ‘Well, you show us what happens when you don’t prepare.’

Josephine set her jaw and went and climbed into a simulator. On the screen, her Flarehawk rose lopsidedly from the ground and lumbered into the air.

She looked a little clumsy up there, but I thought there was a fair chance she might surprise the Colonel. She was always stumbling into lessons half-asleep and then revealing she already knew the whole subject backwards or working it all out on the spot.

The Flarehawk spurted backwards into the ground and burst into a cruelly well-rendered digital fireball.

Everyone laughed. I wanted to be loyal but even I couldn’t help smiling a bit.

‘Again, Jerome,’ said the Colonel into one of his Goads.

Josephine got a bit further off the ground this time, and promptly bashed into one of the other Flarehawks. They both exploded.

On her third try, being in the army got even more like a pantomime because I could see the Morror ships closing in on her and I found myself yelling, ‘THEY’RE BEHIND YOU!’ but she couldn’t hear me because the simulator was soundproofed. Josephine just kept on exploding. I mean, I honestly started wondering if she was doing it on purpose, but when she came out of the simulator and I saw her face, I didn’t think it was that funny any more.

But plenty of other people did.

‘How did you manage to torpedo yourself ?’ I couldn’t help asking. ‘ Twice? ’

Josephine made a wordless growling noise.

‘Jerome, I’d better have your Flight and Combat Theory and an essay on the importance of preparation and focus on my tablet by tomorrow,’ Colonel Cleaver said at the end. ‘Dare, you put up a damn good fight. Just keep at it and you’ll be as good as your mom.’

As we left the sim-deck Josephine loomed up behind me, as much as a small person can do that, and said darkly, ‘You never will be as good as her, you know.’

‘Thanks,’ I said. I knew she wasn’t happy, but I wasn’t in a good mood myself, despite the Colonel saying nice things to me. He had paired us up and made us fight each other one-on-one in the simulators, and Carl had killed me quite a lot.

‘Your mum loves it,’ explained Josephine. ‘You don’t.’

Gavin started making exploding noises at Josephine at lunch and after about a second’s hesitation, Lilly joined in.

‘Oh, come on, Lilly,’ I said.

‘Come on, Lilly!’ echoed Gavin in a stupid baby voice. He clasped his hands. ‘Pwease, stop being mean to my wickle fwend, Lilly, or I’ll go and tell a gwown-up !’

I stared wearily at Lilly but she just sniggered like that conversation in the Processing chamber had never happened at all. I think even my full-strength glare was a bit weakened by the strain of the flying lesson, because I couldn’t get them to stop. In fact, a few others joined in and started flicking bits of sweetcorn at us and tweaking Josephine’s hair and so on. So we cleared out of the mess room as soon as we could.

‘Let’s do something nice,’ I said.

‘Let’s get a proper scientific opinion on the flying worm-thing,’ said Josephine.

This wasn’t necessarily my idea of a stress-relieving activity, but I wasn’t going to argue. We rounded up Noel when he came out of the mess room and took him with us to the research section.

‘Why do those kids have such a problem with you?’ asked Noel, as we walked through the gardens.

‘Because I’m weird,’ replied Josephine stoically.

‘No!’ I snarled. ‘It is not because of what you’re like, it’s because of what they’re like.’ And I might have stamped my foot except that stamping looks particularly silly in low gravity.

Dr Muldoon and all the other scientists turned out to be having some kind of party. It was very, very bright in their laboratory, with UV lamps around the walls and mirrors casting a cone of light into the middle of the dome. As we sidled in, something happened in the middle of the throng of scientists and there was a lot of clapping.

‘Not now,’ said Dr Muldoon absently, when we went and pulled at her sleeve and said we had to show her something.

‘It’s important and Colonel Cleaver is making me spend the rest of the day writing an essay on being prepared and focused,’ said Josephine plaintively.

I think Dr Muldoon might already have had quite a lot of the champagne, because she said, ‘Ahhh, mean old Colonel Cleaver,’ and suddenly became quite friendly. She wandered over to a bench, swept aside a tray of peculiar algae, perched herself on the edge and sat there swinging her legs. ‘All right, what have you got?’

Josephine showed her the picture of the worm-thing, and Dr Muldoon screwed up her face and said violently, ‘Euurgh,’ which none of us thought was a very scientific sort of reaction to have.

‘Well,’ she said, ‘that’s completely hideous. What is it?’

‘That’s what we wanted to ask you,’ said Josephine.

‘It’s not hideous,’ interrupted Noel. ‘It’s interesting .’

‘Noel doesn’t think any animals are ugly,’ I explained.

Dr Muldoon frowned at him thoughtfully. ‘Not even maggots?’

‘Not even maggots,’ said Noel piously.

Dr Muldoon shrugged and drank her champagne.

‘All right, we can assume you didn’t make it, then,’ Josephine said.

‘I’d hope I’d make a handsomer class of monster than that,’ said Dr Muldoon.

‘It’s not a monster,’ protested Noel. ‘It’s an animal .’

‘Well, whatever you want to call it. We’ve engineered a few species of worm to live out there to help enrich the soil. But definitely nothing that goes grrr . That’s the main thing I’ve been working on lately.’

She pointed and we saw what the party was about. There were two men and one woman standing in the middle of all the light, also drinking champagne and looking very pleased. They were wearing sleeveless tops that revealed diamond-shaped patches of shiny, emerald-green skin all over their arms and on their shoulders. And they also looked very muscular, in a slightly weird way I couldn’t quite put my finger on.

‘Are they… photosynthesising ?’ asked Josephine, sounding awed.

Dr Muldoon grinned and nodded. ‘That and a few other enhancements. How does it feel, Angela?’ she called.

The woman spread her arms, tilting the bright-green patches to the light. ‘Lovely,’ she said.