Being a prisoner wasn’t that bad, not for the most part. Mainly, it was kinda dull. At first, Kaylee poked around, looking for ways to escape, but the ceiling, floor and three of the walls were just solid rock, while the fourth wall was really thick—plaster or something—and the door was real solid too. So there wasn’t much to be done that way.

They hadn’t left her anything to do, that was the problem. For a while, she played with the beads, putting them on and twirling them around like she was a companion or a fancy lady or something. But then she realized that they were probably prayer beads, and she felt kind of bad for being disrespectful to them like that.

She tried shouting through the door at the people who’d taken her, a couple named Jinny and Wadi. They seemed like nice people, basically: they were real concerned that Kaylee not be worried about getting hurt. Wadi told Kaylee that he didn’t think she had kidnapped anybody—“We only took you because we know they won’t leave without you,” he said. But they were kind of down on the rest of her crew, saying that somebody else on the ship could be a bad person and not listening when Kaylee explained how impossible that was.

Also they didn’t want to give Kaylee anything to do; Wadi was real impressed with her know-how, but the downside of that was that he felt like if they gave her something, even something to read, she’d figure out a way to use it to escape. Kaylee heard them argue about it, but Wadi must have won that one because they never even opened the door.

Then there were a bunch of voices, people who sounded pretty angry. Kaylee could hear them getting more and more worked up, and that was when she began to really kind of get scared. But they didn’t come for her or nothing, everyone left instead. Except for Jinny, who told Kaylee not to worry, that they was gonna find Annelore right quick and then they’d let Kaylee out.

Jinny wasn’t too eager to talk to Kaylee after that, so she got real bored. Then there was a big bustle, with people s