Young Writers Society

Ellipse collapsed onto her latest haul, skin slimy with sweat. The metal was ice-cold, and even if it did not help with the sliminess, she figured she had earned the right to rest against something chilly. After all, she was not practiced in the art of pushing metal crates up ramps.

The gato-for-parents boy rolled up next to her, keeping a safe distance from the edge of the ramp, and leaned towards her, grinning. “Wow.”

“Shut your mouth-hole, Tejal,” Ellipse grumbled.

“I moved eight of those crates a much farther distance than you did,” Tejal said, “and I’m not even breaking a sweat.”

If only the asteroid alerts caught people as well as space rocks. Ellipse shot the kid a grimace and moved to wipe her sweat off on him. “Says the boy who drove a forklift. I bet I am like ten times stronger than you.”

“I bet I could beat you at arm wrestling.”

He probably could, but Ellipse was not about to admit that. Rolling her eyes, she set off for the back of the cargo hold to let Focci know everything was ready for takeoff. Tejal, of course, followed after, his wheelchair just barely squeezing through the aisle between the crates..

“I saw that eye-roll,” he said. “Are you really eighteen? You don’t act eighteen.”

If she spoke, Ellipse would probably give something away, so she kept quiet and clambered up on top of a crate. Hopefully her silence would seem mature.

“You know, spacecraft don’t travel nearly fast enough for serious time dilation to kick in. So don’t use relativity as an excuse for the disconnect between your papers and your attitude.”

Ellipse reached up to pull herself into the ship’s living space, not looking back at Tejal. He did not deserve any acknowledgment, and Focci wanted to get out as soon as possible. Planet five was boring to look at, and the earthling food available did not include sashimi. Plus she had no idea how relativity worked; she had never needed to know that.

“Wait, wait!”

Pasting on her impatient-adult look, Ellipse turned back to Tejal and sighed, one eyebrow lifted in a silent question.

“Are you going to strap down my wheelchair before we leave gravitational pull?”

“Of course I will.” There. That sounded perfectly patronizing and adult-like. Maybe if Ellipse just shouted at Focci, brat-boy would feel more secure and shut up. She cupped her hands to her face and sang a series of notes to let Focci know that she and Tejal had loaded everything. Later, she would look up the meaning of the other earthling’s name and use that to translate it into a Siren equivalent, but for now she called him kelp-brain-earthling, which flowed off the vocal chords rather well.

Focci sang a quick set of staccatos to confirm that they were all takeoff-ready, and then added that Ellipse was more of a kelp-brain than their new friend.

“Thanks a lot, Focci,” she muttered. Scowling, she turned back to the boy and leapt down from the crates. “Now then, the siren is about to start the engines. How do I make sure your wheelchair doesn’t break when we reach gravity again?”

It was a stupid question, but thankfully Tejal did not point that out. He beamed—like, for real—and started to turn himself around. “You tie it down! Now let’s go find a good spot, shall we?”

Ten minutes later, Ellipse found herself stuck struggling to thread a rope through the spokes of Tejal’s wheelchair, all while she and the chair floated inches off the floor, constantly drifting one direction or the other. In the empty space behind her, where she and Focci and Wrecktrix had played chess for the past week, Kelp-Brain-Earthling turned somersault after somersault, a giant grin stretching across his chin. Ellipse had to wonder if Tejal just really liked zero-g, or if he was gloating over her tribulations.

“This rope is way too thick for these spaces,” she grumbled. “Why do you not use spider silk string?”

“That sounds ridiculously expensive.” Tejal paused his somersaulting and fished a coil of twine out of his pocket. “Who has the money to just casually buy spider silk?”

“It does not even come from spiders anymore,” Ellipse retorted. She squeezed the rope through two more spokes and tied a knot near the grate where she had stationed the wheelchair. “Somebody stuck a gene in an E. coli strand so that the bacteria would manufacture the spider silk polymer. It is the same material, with all original properties retained, only the production method is easier to control and manufacture en masse.”

Tejal cringed, eyes pinching shut and lips curling back. He was grossed out easily. “That’s nasty.”

“Only if you want it to be.” Gathering up the ropes that had unwound behind her, Ellipse hauled herself to the other side of the wheelchair and began tying down wheel number two. A tiny metallic click echoed from the wall near her head, and she turned to find a thumb-sized magnet stuck to the wall with a thin piece of twine tied through a hole in the middle. She looked at Tejal. “Did you make yourself a tiny magnetic grappling hook?”

He grinned, smug and lopsided, and pulled himself along the string. Ellipse could not believe she had not thought of that on her own. “Just do not use it inside of the computer room,” she said. “Focci would abandon you in space if you magnetized or hit the wrong thing.”

Tejal snorted. “First of all, that’s murder, and second, Focci actually seems to like me. I feel like I’d be forgiven.” He rested his hand on Ellipse’s shoulder, as if he were about to give her a patronizing pat, but then his grip tightened, and he yanked on his grappling hook, and Ellipse suddenly found herself knocking into the floor.

As she tried to put herself right-side-up again, Tejal let out a real laugh, one with an actual vowel sound at the end and a little bit of ab-clenching, and Ellipse scowled. Brat-boy so had not needed to shove her. She whipped her head around and narrowed her eyes.

“What the heck?” she snapped. “You cannot just go around pushing people!”

Tejal just threw his little magnet at a crate, in a direction different from the one in which he was drifting. He shivered a little, though that was probably from the trailings of laughter. “I didn’t mean to? It’s just that Newton’s Third Law of Motion is a thing, and I needed to brace myself in order to get my magnet off the wall.”

“You could have braced yourself against something other than me! The wall is literally right there.” Flailing, Ellipse managed to grab hold of the wheelchair, but that only dragged it closer to her, and not the other way around. The ropes around the wheel she had been working on unraveled. “And I thought the Newton thing was for rockets. And engines.”

“I mean, it is,” Tejal explained. He turned yet another somersault and began reeling himself in towards his magnet. “But it applies to other things too. You’re lighter than I expected, so I accidentally pushed you into the floor.”

Jerking the wheelchair back down to the grate, Ellipse frowned. “That was definitely intentional.”

“Maybe. Maybe not.” He sent her a mock salute and yanked his magnet off the crate, quickening his flight. “I’m going to go talk to Focci. Do you mind if he shows me your papers?”

Ellipse so minded, but the sooner the boy saw her passports, the sooner he would get off her back. Letting out an incoherent growl, she waved him away and turned back to the wheelchair to finish her task. Next time, Tejal was tying this thing down.