“We should get Cesar to the medical bay right away,” Dr. Brahmaputra-Marquez said.
Although he was only a teenager, Cesar was still one of the biggest Moonies. Even so, Dr. Balnikov handled him easily. He picked Cesar up, cradled him in his arms, and hustled him off with his mother. Dr. Marquez followed along. “Do you think I can help?” he asked meekly.
“I doubt it,” Dr. Brahmaputra-Marquez said. “He needs a real doctor.”
“But I am a real doctor,” Dr. Marquez protested. “You’re just an astrophysicist!”
“Then tend to Inez, for Pete’s sake,” Dr. Brahmaputra-Marquez told him. Inez Marquez was still crying, having been ignored in the uproar over Cesar. In fact, a fragment of one of the surgical gloves was still draped over her head, like a little latex yarmulke.
It occurred to me that the syringe was an important piece of evidence, but given that it was still stuck in Cesar’s leg, it seemed like bad manners to ask for it back at the moment.
In any event, my parents had now come to my side. They were terribly upset and embarrassed about how badly the surprise party had worked out.
“I am so sorry,” Mom said, hugging me tightly. “We all thought this would be a nice surprise. Your birthday hasn’t gone the way we’d hoped, and so . . .”
“We didn’t mean to frighten you like that,” Dad put in.
“It’s all right,” I said. “Really. I’m sorry I ruined everything.”
Close by, Dr. Howard was comforting Kira as well, one of his rare moments of emotional engagement. He wasn’t hugging her, though. They were just talking things through.
“It’s not ruined,” Mom assured me. “We only got off on the wrong foot. But we still put together a wonderful birthday meal for you.”
It turned out they had. At least, they had put together the best birthday meal possible, given that it was made almost entirely of space food.
First and foremost, Dr. Goldstein had harvested everything that remained from the greenhouse. When the produce was divvied up, it didn’t amount to very much per person: six pea pods, five cherry tomatoes, three strawberries, a few slices of cucumber, and a smattering of bell pepper. But it still was much more fresh food than any of us had eaten in months.
Then all the kids were allowed to pick whatever we wanted to eat from the food storage. Since NASA had sent a year’s worth of space food per person and we weren’t about to haul it all back, there was plenty for everyone. (True, the rest would be left in storage in case MBA got going again, as it had a shelf life of five hundred years, but certainly no one was going to need it for a while.) I didn’t have a favorite food so much as foods I didn’t hate quite as much as the others, but once again, it made a difference. I opted for two servings of shrimp cocktail.
Finally, there was cake and ice cream. Or cakelike substance sprinkled with globules of freeze-dried, gelatin-coated milk solids. Since we weren’t allowed to have open flames, we couldn’t have any candles, so Mom and Violet had made candle cut-outs. But I appreciated the effort everyone had gone to. For a little while, I actually forgot about the threat of our diminishing oxygen supply and being blackmailed to track down Lars Sjoberg’s killer.
Chang arrived not far into dinner and joined the party. If he was still upset at Nina, he didn’t show it. Nina and the Sjobergs never showed, but that was probably for the best.
All in all, it was the best meal I’d had at MBA in a long time.
At least until Dr. Brahmaputra-Marquez returned from the medical bay. She came directly to where I was sitting with my family, Kira, and Dr. Howard. We were all having a good time, polishing off our desserts. Dr. Howard was even engaged for once, discussing an idea he’d had to improve the quality of space ice cream by amping up the viscosity in the compression process (or something like that; I was having trouble understanding it) while Violet was wrapping up her fifth rendition of “Happy Birthday,” this time in pig latin.
“I’m sorry to interrupt the party,” Dr. Brahmaputra-Marquez said. “But I have some questions about that syringe.”
“Is Cesar all right?” Mom asked.
“It appears so,” Dr. Brahmaputra-Marquez replied. “There was very little poison in the syringe to begin with—although it was cyanide. Not enough ended up in Cesar’s leg to be dangerous, but we still gave him the full complement of antidotes, just to be safe. We also gave Cesar a mild sedative. He has a slight fear of needles.”
“Really?” Kira said, with mock sincerity. “I didn’t notice.”
I observed Dr. Balnikov, across the room, returning from the medical bay himself. He sat down at a table with Chang, Dr. Merritt, and Dr. Janke. He and Chang both put on a show of simply being coworkers, not betraying the slightest hint of their relationship.
I also noticed Dr. Marquez was glaring at his wife. Possibly he was unhappy that she had come directly to us and not to her own family. Or maybe he was still smarting from her insult about his medical abilities earlier. Or maybe things were just strained in their relationship.
“Anyhow,” Dr. Brahmaputra-Marquez said, “I need some clarity on where the syringe came from. You said the killer planted it on Chang?”
“Yes,” I said. “They left it in his room. To make it look like he’d tried to poison Lars.”
“And how did you get it?” Dr. Brahmaputra-Marquez asked.
“Chang gave it to us to give to Nina,” I explained.
Dr. Brahmaputra-Marquez glanced across the mess at Chang, then lowered her voice. “Then how do you know for sure that it was planted in Chang’s room?”
Violet gave a gasp of surprise. “You think Chang could be the mmmmpphhtthhh?” She didn’t get the last word out, because Mom had slapped her hand over Violet’s mouth before she could announce it to the entire mess hall.
“Sorry, sweetie,” Mom told her. “But you have to watch what you say out loud in front of everyone. If Dr. Brahmaputra-Marquez thinks Chang might be the killer, that’s our secret. Understand?”
Violet nodded that she did. So Mom took her hand off Violet’s mouth.
Violet immediately announced, way too loud, “I wasn’t going to say Dr. B thought Chang was the killer. I was only going to say that she mmmmpphhtthhh.” This time it was Dad who slapped his hand over her mouth.
We all glanced furtively over toward Chang to see if he’d heard. And since we all did it at the same time, it wasn’t very furtive at all.
Chang had heard, of course. He gave Dr. Brahmaputra-Marquez a nice, mock-friendly wave, which made Dr. Brahmaputra-Marquez shrink in embarrassment.
“Perhaps you shouldn’t have brought this up in front of Violet,” Dad told her pointedly.
“Or at our son’s birthday dinner,” Mom added, even more pointedly.
“I’m sorry,” Dr. Brahmaputra-Marquez apologized, “but this is important. Chang has a big grudge against Lars Sjoberg and the intelligence to create cyanide—”
“Honestly, that describes almost every person on this base,” Dr. Howard observed. “Including myself.”
“Chang is also known to have a temper,” Dr. Brahmaputra-Marquez went on. “He and Lars have come to blows on many occasions.”
“I guess that’s why the killer framed him, then,” Kira said. “If I was going to frame anyone for murdering Lars, I’d pick Chang too.”
Dr. Brahmaputra-Marquez gave her a wary look. “How can you be so sure he was framed? If the syringe was in his room, that seems like a lot of evidence against him.”
It seemed to me that Dr. Brahmaputra-Marquez was pressing us quite hard to admit that Chang might be guilty. However, instead of making me question Chang, her insistence made me grow suspicious of Dr. Brahmaputra-Marquez herself. I wondered if she had been the one who put the syringe in Chang’s room, and now she was panicking because it hadn’t implicated him as strongly as she’d hoped.
Or maybe she was trying to protect someone else in her family. Perhaps Dr. Marquez had been behind the attempted murder: As a doctor, even a bad one, he proba
bly knew something about cyanide. And I could imagine him making the lame attempt to frame Chang.
Or maybe Roddy had done it. If anyone in that family knew how to get past the computer systems and unlock Chang’s door, it was Roddy. Roddy didn’t have as big a grudge against Lars as he did against Patton, who’d bullied him relentlessly at MBA, but . . .
Once again, it occurred to me that Lars Sjoberg might not have been the definite target for the poison. Yes, he was the only one who ever ate NASA lutefisk, but perhaps not everyone knew that. The killer might have been targeting Patton Sjoberg instead. Or Lily. Or Sonja. After all, the lutefisk was a Swedish delicacy, and the Sjobergs were the only Swedes at MBA.
If Roddy had been targeting Lars—or Patton—it made sense that he might have gotten the dosage for the poison wrong. After all, Roddy was only a kid. Maybe he underestimated how much he would need for a man as big as Lars. Or maybe he simply didn’t make enough.
I suddenly felt guilty for considering Roddy as a murderer. After all, he was my age. It didn’t make sense that a kid would have done something so horrible. But then, nothing about this case made sense. I found myself growing annoyed at Nina for dragging me into the investigation—and at Dr. Brahmaputra-Marquez for bringing it up again in the middle of my birthday dinner.
To my side, Kira was finishing up her defense of why Chang had obviously been framed, which had probably been a recitation of all Chang’s reasons. (I’d been too distracted with my own thoughts to pay attention to it.) She must have done a good job, because everyone else at the table appeared convinced—except Dr. Brahmaputra-Marquez.
“Consider this,” Dr. Brahmaputra-Marquez proposed. “What if Chang was the killer, so to deflect attention from himself, he faked a lousy job of framing himself?”
“Ilina,” Dr. Howard said, “don’t take this the wrong way, but that’s an idiotic theory.”
Dr. Howard wasn’t that adept at interpersonal relationships.
Dr. Brahmaputra-Marquez recoiled, offended. “How am I not supposed to take that the wrong way?”
Dr. Howard didn’t even bother to respond to this. Instead he said, “Chang isn’t any more of a suspect than anyone else here. Placing the murder weapon in his own room would be far more likely to draw attention to himself, rather than deflect it, as evidenced by the fact that we are discussing his possible guilt right now. Ergo, framing himself—or simply keeping the syringe at all—would be moronic. And Chang is not moronic.”
“Fine,” Dr. Brahmaputra-Marquez said bitterly. “If you’re so smart, why don’t you tell me who poisoned Lars Sjoberg?”
“To be honest, I haven’t given it much thought,” Dr. Howard said.
“You haven’t?” Violet asked, surprised. Dad had finally removed his hand from her mouth. “I’ve been thinking about it plenty.”
“Really?” Mom asked, unable to hide her amusement.
“Yes,” Violet said. “I think Sonja Sjoberg did it.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Because she’s mean,” Violet said. “Mean mean mean mean mean. The meanest person I’ve ever met. She even has a mean face. Like this.” Violet scrunched her face up into what was actually a decent imitation of Sonja’s permanent scowl. “Also, she hates her husband.”
This last bit caught everyone at the table by surprise.
“How do you know that?” Dad asked.
“Well,” Violet explained, “one day Inez and I were pretending to be unicorns on the catwalk outside the Sjobergs’ room, and I heard Sonja screaming something in Swedish over and over and over at Lars. It was like ‘ya haw-tar day’ but more Swedishy. And Inez and I were wondering what it meant. So I asked the base computer to translate it, and the base computer said she was saying, ‘I hate you.’ ”
We all looked to one another, impressed.
“That’s some good detective work,” Dr. Brahmaputra-Marquez said.
“Duh,” Violet replied. “I’m a good detective. I helped find Nina when she went missing.”
“You did,” I admitted.
“I’m not surprised Sonja hates him,” Kira said. “Everyone says she only married Lars for his money.”
“Who’s ‘everyone’?” Dad asked.
“Everyone,” Kira repeated. “Like all the gossip sites and shows and everything. I mean, the guy looks like a toad. And Sonja was a model. She used to be beautiful before she let all those doctors mess up her face. So she probably never even liked the guy. Only it didn’t matter, because they had fifteen houses and each one of them was enormous, so they probably never even had to see each other. But then Lars booked this trip up here, and instead of it turning out to be amazing, Sonja ended up cooped up in a tiny room with Lars and their dimwit kids for three months. Maybe she couldn’t take it anymore.”
“I’ve heard many times that money is the number one motive for murder,” Mom said. “With Lars gone, Sonja inherits billions.”
“If I had billions of dollars, I’d give it all away to charity,” Violet pronounced. “Although I’d build myself a castle first. And a safari park. And genetically engineer a unicorn.”
“Oooh!” Dr. Brahmaputra-Marquez cooed. “That’s a great idea! Unicorns are beautiful.”
This struck me as odd. It wasn’t unusual for Violet to say something like this, but Dr. Brahmaputra-Marquez didn’t strike me as the unicorn type.
“They are,” Violet agreed. “Did you know that they poop rainbows?”
That seemed odd as well, even for Violet. Although, now that she had mentioned it, I couldn’t get the image of unicorns pooping rainbows out of my head. It was as though I had lost control of some part of my mind.
It seemed to be affecting my vision, too. Because Violet’s skin had changed color slightly. She was looking a little more blue than usual.
So was Dr. Brahmaputra-Marquez. It was hard to tell, given her dark skin, but there was definitely something bluish around her lips.
“Oh my God,” Mom gasped. She suddenly seemed extremely concerned, as did Dad. Both of them were checking their pulses.
At the next table over, Dr. Marquez suddenly squawked in alarm. “Inez? What’s wrong?”
Inez was slumping at his side and babbling incoherently.
“We’re getting hypoxic,” Dad announced. “The oxygen levels must be dropping.”
At which point alarms went off throughout MBA. Then the voice of the base computer rang out through the halls, informing us that there was a major emergency. The oxygen system was severely compromised.
We all needed to evacuate immediately.
Excerpt from The Official NASA Procedures for Contact with Intelligent Extraterrestrial Life © National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Department of Extraterrestrial Affairs, 2029 (Classification Level AAA)
MILITARY PRESENCE
Sadly, we cannot rule out the possibility, no matter how disturbing, that IEL will come here for hostile reasons rather than peaceful ones. Thus, any response to their arrival mandates the activation of US armed forces. DEXA has worked at length with the US military to form an IEL Action Plan (IELAP), which will be initiated immediately upon the first sign of primary contact. Rest assured, the military’s presence will only be a precautionary measure, rather than an aggressive one. The IELAP clearly states that the military is to respond only with defensive action, and therefore cannot attack, assault, strike, or provoke the IEL (or their craft) in any way without provocation.I
* * *
I. For further details, anyone with level AAA security clearance is allowed to consult the official IEL Action Plan.
17
CRISIS MODE
Lunar day 252
T minus ten minutes to emergency evacuation
We had all rehearsed evacuation procedures many times. NASA mandated that we had to do it once a month, and Nina occasionally threw in a bonus fake emergency just to keep us on our toes.
We never really evacuated, as that was considered too dangerous, but we at least went through th
e motions so we would know where to go and what to do and what everyone’s job was.
Unfortunately, there’d been no way to completely prep for an actual emergency, because the circumstances of an actual emergency were very different. We always knew that the rehearsals were rehearsals, and that if we screwed up, we wouldn’t die. But now it was real, and that created a very different mind-set. No matter how much we had practiced not panicking, most of us were now on the edge of panic. And to make matters worse, since our oxygen levels were already low, none of us were thinking as clearly as we should have been.
Some people, like Mom and Dad and Chang, appeared to be thinking more clearly than others, but they were working at it, almost willing themselves to fight off hypoxia long enough to function.
Others, like Dr. Brahmaputra-Marquez, succumbed too quickly. She was laughing giddily and talking to an imaginary kangaroo.
To my surprise, Dr. Marquez turned out to be one of the competent people. Seeing that his wife was in trouble forced him to step up his game. He tended to Dr. Brahmaputra-Marquez while also helping Roddy and Inez. Inez was probably doing the worst of anyone, but at least she was still conscious and able to follow directions.
Cesar Marquez may have been the calmest of everyone—although that was probably the result of the sedative his mother had given him. He emerged from the medical bay looking serene and well-rested (although possibly a bit spaced out). “We’re evacuating?” he asked. “Cool. Sounds like fun.”
The first order of business was to get oxygen. Emergency canisters of it were bolted to the walls throughout MBA, the same way that fire extinguishers are everywhere in buildings back on earth. Those adults who still had their faculties grabbed the canisters as quickly as they could . . . while still taking care not to go too quickly. Anyone who moved too fast would increase their heart rate and breathing speed, which would only make them more hypoxic.
The canisters all had transparent face masks to fit over the user’s nose and mouth, and these were connected to the oxygen supply by tubes. They looked very much like the face masks that drop down on an airplane if the cabin depressurizes. The procedures for using them were the same as on an airplane as well: Mom, Dad, and Chang each took a few breaths off their canisters first, making sure that their minds were thinking straight before turning their attention to helping everyone else.