Young Writers Society

Ellipse stood by the button that would lower the cargo bay door, holding three fingers up in front of her face and pinning Tejal with a hard glare. “Come on!” she hissed. “You are one of the only earthlings to ever understand the gato language, and you cannot pick up five phrases in Global Gliss?”

“Understanding and speaking are two very different things,” Tejal hissed back.

Sighing in frustration, Ellipse ran her fingers through her hair and tugged. “Global Gliss follows a Germanic language structure! How hard can this possibly be?”

“I don’t think verb return in a yes-or-no question response is a Germanic structure!”

Oh right. That came from Mandarin. Ellipse waved a hand, dismissing Tejal’s accusation, and held up three fingers again. “Whatever. Just give me the response.”

In a slow, though decent imitation of Ellipse’s accent, Tejal fired back the line. Ellipse switched to one finger, and he recited something else.

“Good,” she whispered. “Just say what I tell you to say, and remember if the officer asks anything beyond what I taught you, I will accuse them of harassment.”

“Right,” Tejal said. He winced for a moment, and then smoothed his face into a bland, straight-ahead stare.

Ellipse slammed the button for the bay door and cupped a hand to her mouth to sing. “Focci! We are opening up! Get down here!”

She heard a large whump vibrate through the bay ceiling, and then several seconds later, Focci’s spiny tailfin poked through the hatch at the back of the room. As he shimmied down the rope, Ellipse tapped her foot, impatient. It would not do to keep the customs officer waiting.

Once Focci dropped to the floor, Ellipse pivoted to face the bottom of the loading ramp, where a frowny woman in pressed, navy blue overalls waited for the crew. The officer gripped a plastic clipboard with the Independent Titan insignia carved into the back, and her overalls had shoulder marks with the same white, swirly oval pattern poorly patched on.

Maybe Independent Titan would be able to afford better uniforms if they taxed the citizens in addition to the corporations.

“Hallo!” Ellipse called, when the ramp finished lowering. She started down, with Tejal at her side and Focci a few paces behind, and held up her rebel passport. Before she committed to speaking in Global Gliss, she glanced back at Tejal to make sure he was following her instructions.

He wore a pained expression that walked a fine line between total-concentration and dazed-beyond-all-help, which was probably a result of the effort it took to keep himself from falling down the ramp while also trying to look totally aloof. For now, Ellipse could let his acting pass.

“Passport,” the officer said, right as Ellipse stepped off the ramp.

She deposited her papers in the woman’s free hand and crossed her arms as the officer checked the photo inside. “My bangs grew out,” Ellipse offered in Global Gliss. In her periphery, she noticed Tejal looking up at her, eyes expectant, but with his mouth turned in an unimpressed frown. Perfect.

After a moment, the officer handed back Ellipse’s passport and gestured at Tejal. “And your other crew members?”

“Siren back there,” Ellipse said, jerking a thumb back towards the ship, and then she waved at Tejal. “He’s an unregistered Titan kid. Got injured out of system and couldn’t come back. It was a pain the behind managing the ship without him.”

The officer gave Tejal a quick once-over. “Name?” she asked. She had turned to face him, so it would be weird at this point for Ellipse to answer.

Instead, she crossed her arms again, leaving four fingers up above her left elbow, positioned so that Tejal would be able to see.

“Tejal Virk,” he said.

The officer squinted. “And will you be registering yourself as a Titan citizen soon?”

Ellipse took three fingers from her arm, and Tejal replied with a yes.

By some miracle, that sated the officer, and she turned back to Ellipse. “Your ship ID lists three members, yourself included. If any others are found, they will be considered stowaways unless you declare them now.”

Ellipse shook her head and smiled. “It’s just us three.”

“Right.” The officer flipped to a different page on her clipboard and peered up into the ship’s cargo bay. “It looks like you’re carrying alcohol, so the cargo will undergo a tampering check once you’ve delivered it.”

“Got it,” Ellipse replied.

“And uh… that’s it,” the officer said. She flipped to the front of her papers, handed back Ellipse’s passport, and gave a short, likely involuntary bow. “You’re free to proceed.”

Once the woman disappeared into the hallway beyond the dock’s doors, Ellipse let out a sigh. “Thank goodness she only asked you two questions,” she said in English.

“That felt weirdly short,” Tejal said. He rolled himself forward a meter or so before pausing and looking between the door and the small, orange crane folded in the far corner of the room. “Are we unloading first?”

Ellipse shrugged. “We can do it later. Our deadline is not for several hours, and you probably want to see Andra, right?” She absolutely did not want to see Andra, but all she had to do to avoid that was stay hidden. “Plus then we can wash your new clothes while we take care of the cargo.”

For a split second, Tejal allowed himself to grin, but then he smoothed his face over, as if pretending that he was not actually interested in star-spotting. Rolling her eyes, Ellipse tucked her passport into her pockets and turned to Focci.

“Did you finish reprogramming Mouthbot’s default settings?” she sang.

“Mhmm. All of the Global Gliss functions are off.”

Everything was set then. Matching Focci’s slow pace, Ellipse caught up with Tejal, and together they left the dock and headed for the nearest elevator.

Hub Titan was set up in three rings, which each spun independently in order to keep gravity constant between levels. The outer ring housed the majority of the cargo ships—both standard and trans-atmospheric of all sizes, and its interior was left raw, with metal pipes and concrete slabs out in the open. Spaced at irregular intervals were giant plastic tubs that cut through the height of the ring, and occasionally, the shadow of a ship would pass through.

Several docks away from the Conics, Ellipse and the boys waited for the next elevator up. Several other earthlings waited with them, all crowded around the door.

“Hub Titan has no cross-station elevators like the fold monitor,” Ellipse explained in English. One of the people standing nearby shot the trio a suspicious glance, but looked away upon realizing that they had a siren in their party.  Most interspecies translators could only translate from English, so it was not uncommon to hear English spoken to aliens.  “The elevators here are controlled by a computer system which ensures that each elevators are only in use when the rings line up, and that artificial gravity feels constant through both the ascent and descent.”

Tejal let out a breathy laugh. “So no weird gravity messes like what happened when we met?”

“Nope.”

“Thank god. I get to experience a normal elevator for once.”

After several minutes of waiting, and a short, smooth elevator ride, Ellipse followed the boys out into the open room that made up the inner ring.

Though the three levels were referred to as rings, the inner ring was actually only a disk. And because the levels rotated along an exterior track, the view from one end of the disk to the other was unobscured. Ellipse could look up and see the floor on the other side.

Shops and restaurants lined the sides of the center walkway, their typically straight signs and ceilings bowed to fit the severe curvature of the floor. The multi-species chain that Ellipse and her crew were delivering to was located a few doors away, though no shipments came up to this level; the outer ring had an internal delivery center for items that ended their journeys here.

Ellipse tapped Tejal’s shoulder and pointed up and to the left. “I see a sportswear store over there,” she said, before moving to point lower. “And that neon yellow sign is for a Titan-made brand for young people.”

“And I’m going to assume,” Tejal cut in, pointing to the right, about halfway up the circle, “that crowd is where Andra is going to show up.”

“Uh, yes,” Ellipse agreed. She grimaced and tried to ignore the queasy flipping of her stomach. “That would be my guess.” A sign for a different Titan-made brand glittered near the Andra crowd, so maybe Ellipse could hide in there.

“Let’s go then.” Tejal rolled himself to the right, and Focci followed, and Ellipse had no choice but to trail after them.