Chapter Five
I doddered into the escape-pod room thoroughly pleased that I was three and a half minutes late.
This was one of the slew of the rooms that had been forbidden to me, and I looked around curiously. The room had none of the luxury feel of the rest of the ship; it was little more than a plastic and metal cube. An enormous inset screen embedded in one wall glowed with a collection of graphs and charts. A few bucket seats were arranged in a circle in the middle of the room; they had a sort of oversized toddler’s car seat design to them. Nothing looked like an escape pod.
Del and Jexrah stood together beside the seats, both suited up similarly to me, and—not Meervit. Del looked at me, his eyes dark and inscrutable, and I did my best to keep my own face a mask. In my chest, though
