Rocket Girls: The Last Planet (5 page)

“No, not at all.”

When she thought about it, it had been a crazy thing to ask.
Hey, you, want to become an astronaut?
Still, Akane looked a little sad now that Yukari had effectively rescinded the offer.

“Hey,” Yukari said, “if you change your mind, give me a call, will you? You can just phone the Solomon Islands and ask the operator to connect you to the SSA.”

“Okay.”

“Right, time for the debriefing. Tell me everything that happened after liftoff,” Miyamoto said.

“Right.” Yukari shook her head. “Well—”

Immediately following a spaceflight, astronauts were subjected to a slew of questions. The goal was to get all the details of everything that had happened while their memories were still fresh, so that what they learned could benefit future missions. This was called debriefing.

Yukari glanced at her notes. “So around 0130, they started looping a lot and rolling.”

“They were swimming all over the place,” Matsuri added.

“Yeah, it was almost hard to watch them. They looked really tired.”

The professor found the time stamp on the telemetry graph. “It looks like they were panicking because of a drop in the concentration of diffused oxygen. The goldfish were too active. Did you notice anything different inside the aquarium?”

“I saw one or two scales sparkling at the bottom,” Matsuri said.

“Those were scales?” Yukari asked. “You have better eyes for the natural world than I do, Matsuri.”

“Um…” Akane said. “I should probably get going.”

Yukari had completely forgotten. “Oops! That’s right. We kind of took her out of school in the middle of classes.”

“Oh, is that so? Sorry to keep you so long,” the professor said.

“No, it’s been great, really. I’d love to be able to stay longer if I could—but if I leave now I might make it in time for afternoon classes.”

“Well, you’re welcome back anytime. I’ve got plenty of things I’d love to show you here.”

“Thank you so much!”

The professor smiled and handed her his card. “I’ll call a taxi for you. Don’t worry, it’s on us.” He picked up the phone.

“No, I can walk.”

“It’s farther away than you think. Don’t worry, we owe you at least this much.”

While they were standing at the front gate waiting for the taxi to arrive, Yukari spoke with Akane. “Sorry about all this. I know Nellis is really hard on people skipping class.”

“I think they’ll understand,” the other girl replied. “After all, it was for a good cause.”

“Well, I hope so.”

“And I had a really great time.”

“Just think, if you were an astronaut, every day would be like this.”

Akane chuckled nervously. Yukari joined her.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to be pushy.”

“No, I really appreciate it. Thanks for inviting me.”

The taxi arrived.

Yukari, Matsuri, and Miyamoto stood at the curb and waved goodbye.

IT WAS ALREADY
evening when debriefing was over. After a simple press conference, the two astronauts left the Space Lab by taxi.

“Hey, are you those two astronauts? Yukari and Matsuri, was it?” the driver asked.

They both nodded.

“Neat! Those your space suits? Do you always wear those?”

“No. Today is kind of…special.” Yukari explained what had happened. The driver’s face in the rearview mirror looked surprised.

“Well, it must be tough flying around up there so fast!”

“Yeah, and it’s too cramped to bring a change of clothes. That’s where we’re going now—to get new things to wear.”

“Downtown, right?”

“Yeah. If you could head into the shopping district from one of the side streets. We kind of stick out in these.”

“No problem. Leave it to me.”

“Oh, I should ask, can we use American Express for this?”

“No problem.”

The survival kit they were supplied with held a roll of U.S. ten-dollar bills and an American Express card. It wasn’t perfect, but it worked well enough in emergencies. This, Yukari had already decided, was an emergency—and buying civilian clothes in the department store counted as survival in the broadest sense of the word.

The taxi was entering the streets of downtown Yokohama. Matsuri was glued to the window, staring at the unfamiliar sights outside.

“What a busy place!”

Matsuri was practically leaning out of the car as they waited for a light to change. Yukari dragged her back inside.

“C’mon, we stand out bad enough as it is.”

“But they love us!”

Matsuri waved her hands vigorously at people on the street. A group of high school students stopped, their mouths hanging open.

“Will you knock that off?”

They were in the shopping district now.

“How’s this?” the driver asked.

“One more block. There. Right behind that building.”

They got out of the taxi, crossed over one wide street, and went straight into a boutique on the other side of the intersection. Yukari had been going there since she was in junior high. She used to stop by on her way to school.

“Hiya!”

“Hello…hey! Yukari! Long time no see! How are you?” The owner, a tall man with a touch of hair on his chin, came out. He checked the girls out from head to toe.

“I like the threads! Takes a little bit of courage to wear those in broad daylight, but I approve!”

“Well, I don’t,” Yukari said. “We basically came here straight from the Space Lab up in Sagamihara. You think you can find something for us to wear?”

“Can I ever! What are you in the mood for?”

“I was thinking maybe a simple dress with something on top—or is that not cool these days?”

“Honey, it’s all in the coordination. Just you watch and see.”

“Great, well, whatever works.”

“Leave it to me! What about shoes? I think I might have some sandals in here somewhere.”

“Great, thanks!”

The owner flitted about picking out items until Yukari was holding a miniskirt dress and a short-sleeved cardigan. For her feet, she had platinum white sandals.

“And your name is Matsuri, right? What sort of look are we aiming for here?”

“
Hoi!
I want something like that!” Matsuri said, pointing at the mannequin in the shop window.

“Showing a bit of skin in the middle, then? Perfect! That will look great on you.”

While he was gathering Matsuri’s outfit, Yukari went into the dressing room to change.

First, she had to take off the adapter ring around her neck. Between the adapter ring and her neck was a thin rubber membrane, which served to keep the air in her helmet separate from the air inside her suit. A special adhesive was used between the membrane and the skin of her neck, which made taking it off a little like peeling back a Band-Aid—painful.

The space suit was one solid piece, and in order to remove it, she had to undo the airtight fasteners from her throat all the way down to her crotch. She peeled the suit off her arms and legs like a rubber glove, leaving the outfit inside out.

The suit was made out of a miracle fabric that was airtight, pressurized, and insulated, yet it also wicked away sweat, allowing the skin to maintain its own temperature.

In a sense, the skintight space suits were like a second skin, specially adapted for space. There was no room underneath them even for underwear. The owner of the shop was right. It did take a bit of courage to wear the suits outdoors.

Yukari finished changing and left the dressing room.

The owner took a look at the space suit hanging from her arm limply like a deflated doll. “Say, you don’t think you could sell me one of those? I’d love to put it up in my shop window.”

“Well, they’re seventeen million yen a pop.”

“Yikes! For real?”

“These are actual flight models, yep. Apparently, even
that
is pretty cheap as far as space suits go. But I’m afraid I can’t sell it anyway—the design is top-secret. We’re discouraged from even taking them off when we’re not on base.”

“I see, I see,” the owner said, clearly giving up. “Well, do you think I could at least advertise that you came here? It’s not every shop in Yokohama that gets visits from astronauts. I could put up a picture of you two.”

“Sure, no problem,” Yukari said, smiling. “I could even sign the picture for you if you like.”

“Ooh, that’d be great! Thanks!”

A few moments later, Matsuri came out of the other dressing room. “
Hoi!
What do you think?”

Matsuri was wearing a bikini top with a sleeveless shirt over it and skimpy bikini bottoms under a pair of hip huggers.

“It’s practically a swimsuit—though you look completely natural in that, I’ll admit.”

“A perfect fit, if you ask me,” the owner beamed. “Now for the final touch.” He picked out a pair of sunglasses and propped them up on Matsuri’s head. “There! Splendid! Quick, let’s take a photo!”

The owner brought out a camera, had the two girls stand in one corner of the shop, and started clicking away.

They paid with the emergency credit card, and shoving their space suits in the bottom of a shopping bag, emerged onto the busy streets.

“Hey!”

“
Hoi?
”

Yukari was staring at a sign for a beauty parlor across the street. Her head started itching. “Let’s go in there.”

“A beauty salon? What do they do there?”

“We can get our hair washed and even put on a little makeup.”

“Sounds like fun!”

The two dashed into the store.

“Can I get a wash and a cut, just even the sides up. Oh, and a little foundation.”

“Absolutely,” the beautician crisply replied.

Now that’s service
, Yukari thought. There was a big difference between a beauty salon in the middle of Yokohama and the dingy shack that passed for a salon back on Maltide.

“What’s that?” Matsuri asked, looking around the shop while a hairdresser tried desperately to keep her bangs straight.

“Oh, that’s nail art,” her hairdresser told her. “You stick those on your nails. The simpler ones are stickers. For something fancier we have imitation jewels.”

“Ooh! Neat!”

Matsuri’s tribe had a tradition of painting themselves for festivals with body paint made of rendered pig fat mixed with natural pigmentation, like the local red soil. Apparently, nail art scratched Matsuri’s cultural itch in a very direct way.

“Makita, could you do her nails?” the stylist asked one of the girls standing off to the side. The store nail specialist walked over and showed Matsuri a catalog. She chose a crimson manicure with topaz rhinestones.

“You do it too, Yukari. It’s so pretty!”

Yukari frowned. She didn’t want to go overboard. “Maybe just a manicure.” Then she added, “But since we’re wearing sandals, we should do our toes too, don’t you think?”

When they were done being fussed over from head to toe—literally—Yukari felt like a new woman. They hit the street and took in the downtown air, a potent mélange of Italian food, perfume, and exhaust.

Not bad. Not bad at all.

“Time to go shopping!”

For their first stop, Yukari went into a CD store. “Let’s see, I wonder if ZIMA has a new song…hey! They’ve got a whole a new album out! Score! And didn’t Satsuki say she liked Hiroshi Itsuki? Might make a good present for her—you want something, Matsuri?”

“Sure. Anything fun?”

“Hmm. I’m guessing you’d like samba…over on that rack there.”

“Wow. There’s so many different kinds.” Matsuri grabbed two fistfuls of samba CDs, five in each hand.

Next was the bookstore. Yukari picked out five books from the world affairs section and a current slang and jargon dictionary—the kind that came with a CD-ROM.

“Maybe I should read Takashi Tachibana’s book about space. He’ll probably be dropping by for an interview one of these days. Oh, right, manga! Hey! Volume 7 of
Aoi and Ryoichi
is out! Gotta get that one—”

She glanced over at Matsuri to see her picking out some magazines from a large rack.

“
World Fishing
? You going fishing, Matsuri?”

“No, I like this fish!” she replied, pointing at the king salmon on the cover. “Very handsome.”

“Um, okay,” Yukari said. When it came to Matsuri, there was such a thing as too much information. She’d only wear herself out trying to follow her half sister’s thought processes.

For an early dinner, they went into an Italian restaurant. Yukari wolfed down a crispy pizza with a paper-thin crust and topped it off with a piece of tiramisu. It seemed like forever since she’d eaten proper food in a restaurant.

Matsuri had ordered a plate of spaghetti, drowned it in a sea of mayonnaise, ketchup, and tabasco sauce, then proceeded to cram it into her mouth. On the side she had a glass of tomato juice into which she had also poured tabasco sauce. When it came to food, Matsuri’s taste was simple: red is good.

When she was full, Yukari said, “Well now. Seeing as it’s seven o’clock, I think we should call an official end to our survival operations for the day.”

“You know,” Matsuri said between mouthfuls, “I could get used to this kind of survival.”

“You said it!”

Piling their shopping bags and space suits into a taxi, they set off toward the quiet residential district of Nogeyama. It had been ten months since Yukari had seen her home. It looked exactly the same. The front yard was simple, just a close-cropped lawn without a garden. The house itself was a three-story affair her mother had built with her own savings from her work as an architectural designer.

Her mother was the only resident now, but no lights were on. The front door was locked, and no one answered when Yukari pressed the doorbell intercom button.

“Maybe she’s on a business trip?”

There was a keypad by the door. Yukari entered her security number and the door opened. By her mother’s request, all the lighting and climate control in the house was connected to a single button in the vestibule. When Yukari pressed it, the house lit up and the air conditioning came on.

Pulling a bottle of ginger ale out of the refrigerator, Yukari threw herself down onto the sofa in the living room. “It’s true what they say,” she said, “there’s no place like home.”

She turned on the television. It was the news. They were showing an aerial shot of a very familiar-looking scene.

“…It was just time for second period classes to begin at Nellis Academy when a spacecraft suddenly landed in the school’s garden pond, causing quite a disturbance. Strangely enough, the school is none other than Yukari Morita’s alma mater…”

“Hey! We’re on!” Yukari shouted.

The news switched to the principal, standing with the school courtyard behind him.
“Yes, well, uh, I was happy to let bygones be bygones and focus our efforts on making sure everyone was okay—”

“What a doofus. He’s sweating bullets.”

The reporter was asking him about Akane now.

“Yes, well, we’re still looking into reports that a student at our school assisted the astronauts, so I, er, have no comment about that at this time.”

Yukari lifted an eyebrow. “What? He should be crowing about it to the world! A lot of taxpayer money went into that experiment she saved.”

“
Hoi
… He’s using a lot of complicated words,” Matsuri said.

“I don’t think he has any idea what he’s saying, Matsuri.”

“
Er, concerning the disfiguring of our garden, we are going to be processing a damage report and cost analysis and will be bringing that to the Solomon Space Association in hopes that proper restitution will be made—
”

Yukari shook her head. “Can you believe this guy? I mean, I feel bad for the gardening club, but boy, if we had hit anywhere else…”

“True, true.”

“Those Taliho curses get more frightening all the time.”

Yukari wasn’t the only one who had started to lend more credence to the influence that the spirits of the Taliho tribe—the people living closest to the SSA base—had on their rockets and orbiters.

Yukari’s missions had been plagued with difficulties. She wasn’t the kind to believe in bad luck, but surely the number of sheer coincidences they’d had to face was reaching a probability of zero. They might be operating at the very cutting edge of science, but with all of the things going on, Yukari couldn’t help but feel like their space program had less to do with science and more to do with the supernatural.

“I thought they made cursing our program illegal anyway. Are those villagers still doing their ceremonies?” Yukari asked.

“You’re wrong,” Matsuri said, shaking her head. “This wasn’t a Taliho curse, Yukari. This was your curse.”

“Huh?”

“You cursed that school of yours—maybe not out loud, but somewhere, deep inside your heart. You resented how they treated you. Your negative feelings summoned an evil spirit.”

Yukari guffawed. “I don’t mean to burst your bubble, Matsuri, but I’m not the curse-throwing type.”

Matsuri looked over at her and calmly asked, “You know someone else who would want to curse that school?”