Waste of Space

  I actually said “put it back,” but Violet didn’t hear that part. And neither did anyone else. My radio went dead as my attacker killed that, too. And then they shoved me down on top of Violet.

  My helmet slammed into the ground. Luckily, there were no moon rocks to break the face plate, but I ended up facedown in a pile of moon dust, which clung to the glass and practically blinded me.

  “Warning,” the voice in my suit announced. “You have approximately two minutes and thirty seconds to repair your oxygen hose or return to the base.” A graphic showing my rapidly depleting oxygen supply appeared on the heads-up display inside the helmet.

  So, basically, worst-case scenario. Two minutes and thirty seconds was very little time to get back to the base, enter the air lock, and repressurize it, especially when someone else was doing their best to make sure I died on the lunar surface. I tried to scramble to my feet anyhow, but they shoved me right back down again.

  I struggled against them, wondering how I had managed to end up in yet another life-or-death situation, wishing that I had never left the moon base, wanting desperately to be safely back inside . . .

  And then, suddenly, I was. There was a flash and the strange sensation of being pulled through something, and then I was standing inside the air lock, without my space suit, safe as could be.

  Only, when I looked through the air-lock window, I could see that everyone else was still out on the surface—including someone lying on their stomach, who I realized was actually me.

  I had transmitted myself via thought again, only this time I had done it without Zan’s help, and I hadn’t projected to someone like Riley. I had simply projected myself—or my mind—to exactly where I wanted to be: the safety of the air lock. In the heat and desperation of the moment, I had managed to pull off the trick of traveling via thought once again.

  Unfortunately, my body was still dying back on the lunar surface. So I didn’t have time to savor the moment. Or even focus on how I’d done it.

  I thought myself back into my own body, which was far easier to do. Once I stopped trying so hard to think myself away, it was as though my mind homed right back in on where it was supposed to be. One second I was in the air lock. The next I was back in my space suit, two minutes from death.

  I fought to survive. I heaved myself up to my knees. My attacker tried to shove me back down again, but adrenaline was now surging through me. I braced against their attack, then swiveled toward MBA. The air-lock door was probably forty-five seconds away, and it would take another minute to repressurize inside. Then I’d have fifteen seconds to unlock my helmet. . . .

  Only my attacker was still between me and the air lock.

  Since I was on my knees, they loomed over me. And since their reflective visor was down, I couldn’t see their face. I had no idea who they were, or what they were thinking. It was like facing a robot, rather than a human being.

  In the warped mirror of their visor, I saw myself, kneeling helplessly before them.

  But there was other movement as well. Behind me, Violet was struggling to her feet, probably having an adrenaline surge of her own. I couldn’t quite make out what Violet was doing, but she seemed to be reaching for my oxygen hose.

  My attacker turned slightly, noticing Violet. And then they lunged for her as well.

  “No!” I screamed. Without my radio connection, I was the only one who heard it. My voice echoed in my helmet.

  I reached for my attacker, but they easily brushed past me, heading for Violet.

  “Warning,” the computer said. “Ninety seconds left.”

  Violet tried to run from our attacker, making the mistake of turning her back on the enemy. Now her fragile network of life-sustaining hoses and other equipment was exposed. The attacker grabbed her oxygen hose and tugged on it.

  It didn’t come free, but I figured another good yank would do the trick. And if Violet lost her oxygen supply, she probably wouldn’t have the ability or mental calm to make it to safety.

  My own oxygen was going fast, but I wasn’t about to let someone take down my sister, too. I staggered to my feet, determined to defend Violet to my last breath.

  Only, before I could attack, someone else did it for me.

  Another Moonie suddenly raced into view and body-slammed Violet’s attacker. Once again, due to the reflective visor, I had no idea who our savior was. Both Moonies went flying due to the impact. They sailed ten feet and then tumbled across the lunar surface, plowing through the moon dust.

  Violet’s oxygen hose was still attached. She was safe.

  “Warning,” my suit computer said. “Sixty seconds left.”

  I turned back toward the air lock, wondering how long I could hold my breath. And worried that if I saved myself, I would be leaving my savior at the mercy of the killer.

  Something tugged at the back of my suit. For a brief, terrifying moment, I feared a second killer had attacked, but then I realized that I could no longer see Violet, and it must be her behind me. There was a metallic click, followed by a sudden whoosh of air.

  “Crisis averted,” the computerized voice announced. “Your oxygen hose has been properly reconnected. Please exercise caution: Your oxygen level is now only at forty-two percent.”

  The heads-up display changed. My oxygen level was revealed to be decent, and I was shown a nice little smiley-face emoji, as well, to indicate that I was no longer about to die.

  Violet might have only been six, but she had obviously been paying attention to the safety checks. She had just saved my life.

  “Thanks, little sister,” I said, forgetting that she couldn’t hear me, because my radio was still unplugged.

  I didn’t have time for her to fix that, though. Whoever had saved me was still fighting whoever had tried to kill me.

  The problem was, I wasn’t sure who was who. I had lost track of which was my attacker and which was the one who had come to my rescue. In their space suits, they appeared exactly the same. The two of them were wrestling on the lunar surface, so covered with moon dust that they looked like they’d been dipped in batter. They were rolling over each other and pounding on each other.

  By now the other Moonies had realized what was going on. They were coming our way, moving as fast as they could, which wasn’t fast enough.

  I bounded toward the fighting Moonies.

  And then Zan suddenly flickered into view. She appeared in her usual human form—although, since she didn’t need a space suit, she was simply standing on the lunar surface, which looked almost as odd as her jellyfish form would have been.

  There was a look of shock and astonishment on her face. She seemed horrified that we humans were trying to kill one another yet again. “Dashiell!” she cried. “Are you all right?”

  “Yes.”

  “And Violet, too?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is there anything I can do?”

  “Keep an eye on Violet. Make sure she’s doing okay.”

  “All right.” Zan vanished from my sight, perhaps worried that she’d be a distraction otherwise.

  Ahead of me, the other two Moonies were still fighting each other. One seemed to have gotten the upper hand, however, sitting on the chest of the other, who was laid out flat on the ground. The one on top grabbed a large moon rock and raised it above their head, ready to smash it down on the other’s glass face plate.

  I figured that was probably my attacker. Anyone willing to smash the face plate of another Moonie was a pretty bad person.

  I dove at them, driving my shoulder into the attacker, knocking them to the lunar surface. I lost my balance and went down with them, plowing back into the moon dust.

  Unfortunately, they didn’t let go of the rock. Instead they thumped me on the helmet with it.

  “Warning,” my suit computer said. “A blow to the structural integrity of your helmet has been detected—”

  The attacker thumped me again.

  “Warning,” my suit computer repeated. “A blow
to the structural integrity—”

  “I know!” I shouted. “Shut up! I get it!”

  There was another thump on the helmet, but this one wasn’t as hard, as though the attacker had been interrupted in the middle of it.

  I struggled to my hands and knees to find a lot more Moonies around us. In fact, it appeared that almost everyone from MBA had joined the party now. Three were restraining the Moonies who had been fighting, while others were still racing over to help intervene.

  My attacker, who still had the rock in their hands, was now being pinned to the lunar surface by two Moonies. Again, I had no idea who anyone was due to the visors, but given that one of the Moonies who had come to the rescue was several inches taller than anyone else, I figured it was Dr. Balnikov.

  He looked at me in a way that, even with our faces hidden from view, seemed to indicate that he was talking to me.

  I did my best to convey that I couldn’t hear anything and pointed to the back of my suit, signaling that my radio was shot.

  Another Moonie slipped around behind me. A few seconds later, there was a crackle as my radio came back on.

  I could immediately hear Violet talking to Zan on channel 17. “That was scary,” my sister was saying. “Like really really scary.”

  “It’s over now,” I assured her. “We’re safe.” Then I flipped to channel 1, which was the basic channel for communication, and was instantly overwhelmed by a flood of voices. Everyone was talking at once.

  “Be quiet!” Dr. Balnikov roared. He sounded like he might start knocking people around if they didn’t listen.

  Everyone immediately fell silent.

  “That’s better,” Dr. Balnikov said, then pointed at me. “Who are you?”

  “Dashiell.”

  There were a few hushed gasps over the radio. People seemed surprised that I was the one who had been attacked.

  “Are you all right?” Dr. Balnikov asked me.

  “Yes.”

  “Good.” Dr. Balnikov shifted his attention to the person who had saved me. “And who are you?”

  “Cesar Marquez.”

  This time I gasped a little. Cesar had never struck me as the type who would go out of his way to hand someone else a napkin, let alone risk his life for them.

  One of the other Moonies burst from the crowd and threw their arms around Cesar protectively. “Are you all right?” she asked. It was Dr. Brahmaputra-Marquez.

  “Sure, Mom. I’m fine.”

  Dr. Balnikov now turned his attention to my attacker. “Who are you?” he demanded.

  There was no answer. The Moonie simply lay on the ground beneath Dr. Balnikov. They didn’t speak. They didn’t move. Dr. Balnikov might as well have been talking to a department-store mannequin.

  “Who are you?” Dr. Balnikov demanded once again.

  The Moonie didn’t respond.

  Dr. Balnikov grunted angrily, then yanked the Moonie to their feet. He did it with such ease, it appeared that the Moonie weighed nothing at all. Dr. Balnikov planted the Moonie on the ground so hard that their boots sank several inches into the moon dust. Then he reached to the back of their helmet and flipped a switch.

  My attacker’s mirrored visor sprang up, revealing their identity.

  Lily Sjoberg.

  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)

  ALIEN ABDUCTIONS

  Although the idea of being abducted from earth by IEL is most likely the fantasy of Hollywood movies, it cannot be ruled out completely. There is a chance (however slight) that the first contact with IEL will be via humans who have been physically removed from earth. Therefore, anyone you encounter who claims to have been the victim of an alien abduction must be taken seriously until proven otherwise.I They ought to be quarantined, closely examined, and carefully interviewed to assess the veracity of their story.

  If you happen to be the one who is abducted, be gracious and accommodating to your hosts, try to remember everything you can, and contact DEXA immediately upon your return to earth.

  * * *

  I. Within reason. If someone claiming to have been abducted is obviously a raving lunatic (and there are many such people), then their story can probably be discounted without expending the time or energy of further analysis.

  19

  FACE-OFF

  Lunar day 252

  T minus 11 hours to evacuation

  It took another two and a half hours to repair the base oxygen system and another thirty minutes to confirm that it was safe to allow everyone back inside MBA once again. During that time, we had little to do but wait on the lunar surface.

  Since more than half my oxygen was gone, I didn’t want to exert myself too much and burn through the rest of it. I also didn’t want to turn my back on anyone. Dr. Balnikov was keeping a very close eye on Lily Sjoberg, but that didn’t mean someone else might not take a crack at me.

  Lars was one of the few Moonies who hadn’t witnessed at least some of Lily’s attack on me. Most everyone had missed the beginning of it, where she unplugged my oxygen hose, but they had seen what the fight had devolved into. However, Lars had been on the other side of the base; in his haste to evacuate MBA, he had abandoned his own children and raced off to the emergency backup air lock. Now, Lars tracked me down and spent much of our remaining time on the lunar surface shouting at me. I think he might have been accusing me of starting the fight and of possibly even trying to kill Lily, but I don’t know for sure because I switched off my radio three seconds into his tirade so I didn’t have to listen to him. Lars didn’t notice. Instead he continued gesticulating angrily for another hour, until he had screamed so much that his own oxygen supply dropped to dangerous levels and he had to stay silent simply to keep from asphyxiating.

  To conserve my own energy, I sat by the air-lock door. It occurred to me that I was squandering some of the last, precious time I had on the lunar surface, and that I should have been off exploring the moon or at least enjoying the feel of wandering around on a foreign celestial body while I could still do it. But I was too exhausted, physically and mentally. It had been a very long day, and, frankly, there wasn’t too much to see around MBA anyhow. It was the one part of the entire lunar surface that had been polluted by humans, and thus it looked more like an industrial wasteland than a pristine moonscape.

  Meanwhile, Kira and Violet were relishing every moment of their time outside. If Violet was upset at all by our ordeal, she didn’t show it. But then, Violet hadn’t been out of MBA since we’d arrived, so it was possible that the excitement of this trumped any other emotions. First the girls made history by being the first humans to do cartwheels on the moon, and then they attempted several other gymnastic moves as well, with varying results. After that, they tromped off to a nearby patch of virgin moon dust and made the first human footprints there. I thought about radioing them and telling them to stay close to base, but I could still keep an eye on them from where I was, and I figured Violet deserved some fun after our near-death experience.

  Once we were given the all clear to come back inside, I was allowed to enter first due to my depleted oxygen supply. The other kids—Violet, Kamoze, Inez, Kira, Roddy, and Cesar—were also given priority status.

  After a normal trip onto the surface, we would have spent at least fifteen minutes in the air lock, trying to vacuum the moon dust off our suits before returning them to storage. However, there were too many other people waiting to come in behind us. Plus, keeping MBA free of moon dust wasn’t such a big priority anymore, seeing as half of us were scheduled to evacuate the next day. So we passed through the air lock as quickly as possible, then removed our suits in the staging area instead, getting moon dust all over the nice, sterile moon-base floor.

  Mom was waiting for us anxiously in the staging area. She had heard almost immediately over the radio that Lily Sjoberg had t
ried to kill Violet and me, but she hadn’t been able to come to comfort us because of the urgency of the repair work on the oxygen system. Now she looked exhausted and racked by guilt. She wrapped her arms around both of us tightly and sobbed, “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.”

  “Why are you sorry?” Violet asked innocently. “You didn’t do anything. Lily Sjoberg did.”

  “I’m sorry you had to go through that at all,” Mom explained.

  “We weren’t in that much danger,” Violet said reassuringly. “Well, Dash kind of was, but I saved him.”

  “You did,” I said, tousling her hair.

  Violet then told Mom everything that had happened. In truth I knew Violet had been a lot more scared than she was letting on. When she got frightened, she had a habit of overstating her bravery. On our rocket to the moon, she had been so scared during liftoff that her hands had gone cold, but she later insisted that she hadn’t been scared one bit and that the ride had been a hundred times better than any roller coaster on earth.

  While she chattered to Mom, I noticed Cesar Marquez close by, trying to figure out how to unlatch his helmet from his suit. I wandered over to him. “Thanks for helping Violet out there.”

  Cesar shrugged. “I saw someone picking on a kid and thought it wasn’t cool. I had no idea it was Lily. I figured it was someone psycho, like Patton or Dr. Goldstein.”

  “Dr. Goldstein?” I repeated, surprised by this accusation.

  “Yeah. She’s so weird, always working with her plants.”

  “Well, she is a botanist. . . .”

  “She talks to them.”

  “Lots of people do that. And it especially makes sense here. It gives them carbon dioxide.”

  “Carbon what?” Cesar asked dully.

  “It’s what plants take in to make oxygen. . . .”

  “Whatever,” Cesar said, already seeming bored by the conversation. “I still can’t believe it was Lily.” He shuddered. “I can’t believe I fought a girl.” He tried to yank his helmet off without unlatching it first, which was impossible.