A Daring Rescue by Space Pirates (The Oldest Earthling Book 2) by Rob Favre

Author:Rob Favre [Favre, Rob]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Seventh Planet Books
Published: 2018-04-29T22:00:00+00:00

In the movies, when a spaceship comes back to Earth from wherever, they always show it soaring past Saturn or Jupiter. They do this because it makes for a beautiful shot and because it’s a quick way to let you know how close the ship is to Earth. When you’re really traveling through space, even inside the solar system, what you mostly see is empty space. Five days ago, we had spotted Neptune, far away off to the left, a blue dot just a little bigger and brighter than the surrounding stars. Apart from that, the only sign we were getting closer was that the Sun was getting a little bigger. Travelling at full interstellar speed, we could have gotten from Neptune to Earth in a couple of hours, but we had to start slowing down a long time before we got there, or we’d just zoom past it. It felt like eternity. It was hard to believe that after so many years, and two long, long trips, I was finally going to be back on Earth. And there was nothing to do but wait.

I was washing out my sludge bowl and trying to decide if I was tired enough to go to bed when Mustard shouted into the silence. “Dudes! We’re here! Earth orbit achieved! High five!”

Normally I ignored him when he said that, partly because high fives are lame, partly because they’re even lamer if you say “high five” out loud, but mostly because it’s just weird and unsatisfying to try to slap a squirming pink tentacle. But he had gotten us here, and I was excited. I did my best.

“Can we see it?” I asked. I had to admit I was a little worried that he might have brought us to some other random place in the galaxy, or that someone had built a giant Swedish meatball in space and named it “Urth” and he’d just brought us to see that. I held my breath while the floor beneath my feet dissolved into transparency.

Sitting below us, like a blue and white marble on a table of black velvet, was Earth.

We were really, finally here.

We were looking at the southern Atlantic Ocean, South America and Africa holding it in place like bookends, and if they weren’t exactly the same shape as I remembered, or quite as green as I remembered, I didn’t care. We were back.

I could feel Renay standing behind me. I looked back at her. She was staring down through the floor too.

“So. That is the Earth?” She sounded skeptical. Maybe disappointed.

“That’s it.”

“It is much smaller than I expected.”

I wondered what this was like for her. She’d only ever seen one planet in her life, but growing up on the Heifer, she’d heard so many stories, passed down from grandfather to grandchild, about Earth and the people who’d lived there. To Renay this must have felt like looking down at Mount Olympus, or Middle Earth, or Super Mario World. When you take something mythical and make it real, it’s always going to be disappointing.

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