Space Case

  “Me?” Roddy gulped. “I didn’t have anything to do with this! Dash is the one you want!” And then, even though I’d just come to his aid, the weasel scurried out of the rec room, leaving me on my own with the Nordic nightmares.

  Neither Patton nor Lily went after him. Instead they both marched toward me.

  “You break my tooth,” Patton said, “I break your head.”

  I stared at them, unable to believe things had come to this. The Sjobergs were doing their best to look menacing, but with blood trickling from Lily’s nose and smeared over Patton’s broken teeth, they both looked even stranger than usual.

  You see, Patton and Lily are virtually the only pure white people my age I’ve ever met. Everyone else I know is a blend. Me and Violet for example (black mom, white dad). Or the Brahmaputra-Marquez family (Indian mom, Latino dad). Or Kira (Asian mom, black dad). Or Riley Bock, back on earth (Korean-Italian mom, Irish–Sri Lankan–Peruvian-Choctaw dad). The Sjobergs, however, are pure northern European Caucasian stock, with blond hair and blue eyes and skin so pale it looks like the belly of a fish. Mom and Dad have some friends like that from their generation, and my grandparents say it was pretty common when they were young, and I’ve been told that back when my great-grandparents were kids, people of different races couldn’t even marry each other in America. I know that’s true, but it still seems impossible.

  Every kid I’d ever known was some shade of brown. So to me, on a normal day, the snow-white Sjobergs were strange. Now, with their sneering, blood-smeared faces, they looked like things from one of Roddy’s intergalactic virtual reality games.

  I held out my hands, signaling Patton and Lily to calm down. “Hold on now. Can we talk about this?”

  To my surprise, the Sjobergs stopped right in front of me. “Sure,” Patton said. “Let’s talk.”

  “Really?” I asked. “Okay. Look, I’m very sorry you got hurt—”

  I almost didn’t see Lily’s fist coming. The Sjobergs hadn’t stopped out of any sense of kindness. They’d only done it so I’d let my guard down. Plus I was focused on Patton, thinking that if anyone threw a punch, it’d be him. While Lily looked gentler, however, she could be just as nasty.

  I ducked to the side. Lily’s knuckles grazed my ear. She sailed past me, and instead of connecting with my face, her fist slammed into the doorjamb. Lily howled in pain.

  Patton dove for me. I sprang out of his way, once again sailing higher than I would have on earth, and landed in the hall, where I took off, bounding as fast as I could. Patton tumbled to the floor, but quickly righted himself and came after me. Lily followed us, cradling her wounded fist, yelling, “Get him, Patton! Smash his stupid face in!”

  You can’t really run in low gravity. Running requires keeping your feet on the ground, which is impossible to do when every step sends you flying through the air. Patton and I were still trying, though, which meant we ended up looking ridiculous, pinwheeling our legs in the air like cartoon characters that had just run off a cliff. Patton actually had the advantage, though; because he was bigger, he hit the ground more, which meant he was closing the gap on me.

  We reached the main air lock. Even now, more than an hour after the Raptor’s arrival, the adults were still hard at work unloading the rocket. The outdoor crew had delivered a new load of cargo to the air lock and other people were moving it into the station. The staging area was full of shrink-wrapped bales of new supplies: dehydrated food packets, robot replacement parts, medical supplies, sanitary wipes, toilet paper, and the highly anticipated fresh fruit and vegetables. Half a dozen adults were shuttling the cargo about.

  Dr. Janke stepped right in my path, holding a huge block of food.

  It was three feet square, the kind of thing you’d normally see on a forklift. On earth it would have probably weighed two hundred pounds. On the moon it was less than forty, so Dr. Janke could lift it by himself. Still, because it was so big, it nearly blocked the entire hall.

  I didn’t have time to stop.

  But I could go over it. In low gravity, you can run along walls. You can’t do it for long, but I didn’t have to. I sprang up, hit the wall with my feet, and charged a few steps, clearing the bale before dropping to the floor again.

  Behind me Patton—whose brain was more dense than his muscles—tried to stop instead. But his inertia carried him forward, and he slammed right into the bale. His legs went out from under him, he landed flat on his back—and then the huge bale, knocked free from Dr. Janke’s hands, landed right on top of him. There was a sickening crunch, followed by a scream of disgust from Patton.

  All the adults rushed to his aid, lifting the crate off him. I’d thought the crunch might have come from Patton’s nose breaking; instead it turned out to be three cartons of fresh eggs cracking on his head. By the time Patton wriggled free, the smashed yolks had already oozed through the shrink-wrap, coating his head in yellow goo. A bag of dried coconut had also burst open on impact, and the shavings were now stuck in the eggs, making Patton look like a mangy poodle.

  The adults gasped in horror. Not because of how Patton appeared—but because we’d just lost our only fresh eggs. And a good bit of coconut.

  Patton staggered to his feet, blinded by the raw egg that had oozed into his eyes. “Dash!” he bellowed. “I’m gonna kill you!”

  I tried to slip away before he regained his sight, only to feel a sudden viselike grip on my arm. “What have you done?” Nina demanded.

  “Me?” I asked. “I didn’t do anything! You heard Patton. He was trying to kill me!”

  “I was not!” Patton blubbered in his defense. Since he couldn’t see Nina, he mistakenly faced the wrong way, delivering his argument to a wall. “First that little freak breaks my tooth! Then he does this!”

  Lily hurried to her brother’s side. “Look at him, Nina! He’s covered in egg!”

  “He started this!” I argued. “I was only defending myself!”

  Nina spun me around to face her. “You’re on probation as of this moment.”

  “Only me?” I asked. “Why isn’t Patton in trouble too?”

  “Because your parents didn’t shell out half a billion dollars to come here,” Dr. Janke muttered.

  Everyone else laughed, except Nina. Instead she grew even angrier and directed it at me. “I thought my orders were clear. Anyone who doesn’t have cargo duty is to stay out of this area so things like this don’t happen.” She stabbed a finger at the mess on the floor. “So I’m going to give you another order, Dashiell. And I expect you to follow it this time. Go to my quarters. Now.”

  I had no choice but to obey. I slunk back through the staging area, feeling everyone’s eyes on me. I got the sense they all knew I wasn’t really to blame, but no one wanted to get on Nina’s bad side—or the Sjobergs’—by sticking up for me at the moment. Only Patton seemed pleased. “Sucks to be you,” he chuckled as I passed him.

  “At least I don’t look like an omelet,” I shot back.

  Patton stopped laughing. “You’d better watch your back,” he growled.

  “I’ll be up there soon,” Nina told me. “Right after I take care of the mess you’ve made.”

  I didn’t bother to look back. I continued past the air lock, then climbed the stairs to Nina’s residence. Once I got there, however, I found her door was locked. I had no choice but to sit on the catwalk and wait. Below me everyone in the staging area went back to their business.

  At the end of the hall, behind them all, I caught a glimpse of Zan Perfonic by the science pod. She shot a quick glance in my direction. I couldn’t quite read it from that distance, but I got the idea she was trying to comfort me somehow.

  I still felt lousy, though. I’d failed miserably at my first assignment. I’d gone to ask for Roddy’s help hacking into the computer and had ended up on probation. Of course, that wasn’t entirely my fault. I hoped Roddy might come by, looking to thank me for helping him out, but there was no sign of him. I figured he was probably in the mess hall,
waiting for fresh food to arrive.

  “Hey,” Kira said.

  I glanced toward her voice. She was standing in the doorway of her residence. It was only a few feet away, but it was far enough so that Nina, who was still in the staging area, couldn’t see her.

  “What was all that about?” she asked.

  “The Sjobergs were picking on Roddy Marquez,” I reported. “I tried to help him and they came after me instead.”

  “They’re the tourists?”

  “Yeah. You’ll learn to hate them soon enough.”

  Kira laughed. “That was nice of you, standing up for Roddy.”

  I shrugged, not feeling like getting into the reasons why I’d stood up for Roddy. For the moment I wanted to look like a good guy. “I guess.”

  “So . . . is he going to hack the computer for you?”

  I spun toward Kira, surprised. She instantly turned away, her cheeks flushing red, as though embarrassed she’d made a mistake. “How did you . . . ?” I began.

  “I didn’t mean to overhear,” Kira said quickly. “Really. I was trying to nap like I said I was going to. Only . . . the wall between your room and ours isn’t very thick. I could hear your conversation through it.”

  I frowned, concerned. It had never occurred to me that anyone could hear through our walls. Kira’s room had been empty the whole time my family had been at MBA—and Nina had never said anything. Although it now occurred to me that Nina had been heading to her room that morning right before I told my parents I thought Dr. Holtz had been murdered. If Nina had been eavesdropping on us, that would explain how she’d known about my suspicions. “How much did you hear?”

  “Not everything,” Kira admitted. “I was trying not to listen. Honest. In fact I could only hear you. Maybe you were closer to that wall than the other person. . . .”

  “I was,” I said, feeling relieved. Kira hadn’t heard Zan at all.

  “But a few parts came through anyway,” Kira went on.

  “Which parts?” I asked.

  “That Dr. Holtz’s death wasn’t an accident. And that you need to hack the computer to get some evidence.”

  I glanced back toward the staging area. Thankfully, no one was close enough to overhear us. In fact no one was even looking our way. They were busily moving cargo while Nina supervised cleanup of the eggs. “Please don’t tell anyone,” I pleaded.

  “Oh, I won’t,” Kira said quickly. “Under one condition.”

  I looked back toward her. “What’s that?”

  “You let me help.”

  Excerpt from The Official Residents’ Guide to Moon Base Alpha, © 2040 by National Aeronautics and Space Administration:

  VIDEO LOGS

  As a lunarnaut, you will serve as an ambassador between MBA and earth. Your selection as one of the lucky few to live on the moon has no doubt already brought you plenty of attention, and as you serve at MBA, millions of earthlings will be eager to hear what you are doing. To that end, it is required that each lunarnaut keep a video log to update his or her fans as to the goings-on at MBA. It is suggested that this be done once a week at minimum (although you are certainly free to update yours far more often!).

  Have fun with this. Don’t merely give a dull recitation of the week’s events. Instead, spice it up! Let your fans get to see the real you. Tell stories, show off your low-gravity juggling skills, or do karaoke. As long as it’s fun to watch, we don’t care what you do!I

  * * *

  I. With a few exceptions. Lunarnauts are prohibited from insulting, disparaging, slandering, or otherwise saying negative things about MBA or any of its inhabitants.

  UNEXPECTED HELP

  Lunar day 188

  Afternoon

  “I knew Dr. Holtz,” Kira told me. “Back on earth. He and my father worked on some projects together. They told us about his death as we were landing. They said it was an accident, that he made an unauthorized moonwalk—but that doesn’t sound right to me.”

  I ran my fingers through my hair, worried. Nina had warned me not to tell people Dr. Holtz had been murdered—and I’d already done it. Of course, it wasn’t exactly my fault. How was I supposed to know the lousy lunar contractors had made the walls too thin? But still, if Nina found out about this, on top of all the other things she was upset at me about . . . for all I knew, she’d sentence me to remain on the moon until I was sixty. “Look,” I said. “I’m not really supposed to be investigating this at all. . . .”

  “Who were you talking to in your room, then?” Kira asked. “I got the idea it was someone in security.”

  “It’s hard to explain.” From where I sat on the catwalk, I was still visible to everyone down by the air lock—including Nina—so I faced forward, away from Kira, and templed my fingers in front of my mouth, trying to give the impression that I wasn’t talking to anyone at all.

  “But it was an adult, right?”

  “Er . . . right.”

  “So then, you’ve been asked to do it. It’s not like we’d be snooping around on our own.”

  “Well, we’d still be in trouble if we got caught.”

  “Let’s not get caught, then.” Kira grinned.

  “I’m serious,” I told her. “You just got here. You don’t want to get off on the wrong foot with Nina.”

  “I’ll be careful. I can handle this. I’ve done worse.”

  I was about to ask, “Like what?” but before I could, down in the staging area, Nina turned toward me—as though she had sensed I was talking about her. She couldn’t see Kira—but the sight of me simply sitting on the catwalk was enough to get her angry. “I told you to wait in my office!” she yelled.

  “It’s locked!” I called back.

  Nina scowled and kept staring at me.

  Kira took a step back, making sure she was out of Nina’s eye line, then mused, “I wonder if she had something to do with Dr. Holtz’s death. It’s kind of suspicious, ordering everyone not to investigate a murder, isn’t it?”

  I started to deny this, but then thought about it. I put my hand over my mouth, trying to look thoughtful as I covered my lips. “You’re right. It is.”

  “So let me help, then. I’m pretty good with computers myself.”

  “Can you hack?”

  “Yeah, a bit. What do you need?”

  “The security tapes of Dr. Holtz going out the air lock this morning.”

  Kira frowned. “Oh. That’s not going to be easy.”

  “I know. I’m not sure if even Roddy can do it.”

  In the staging area, Nina started heading my way.

  “Nina’s coming!” I warned. “Better go before she sees you.”

  Kira didn’t question this. She quickly ducked back into her room. “I’ll see what I can get you.” There was a gleam of excitement in her eye as she closed the door.

  Nina reached the base of the stairs. If Kira had been a half second slower, Nina would have seen her. Instead Nina only saw me, sitting by myself. She came up the steps to the catwalk. I hopped to my feet to meet her.

  “Who were you talking to?” Nina asked.

  Apparently, covering my mouth with my hand hadn’t fooled her. “Violet,” I lied, pointing down to the rec room. “She was down there. She came out into the hall and wanted to know where our parents were. I told her and she went back in.”

  Nina cased both levels of the hallway, trying to determine if I was lying. The halls were empty; there was no one else around for her to presume I’d been talking to.

  Nina shifted her attention back to me. “I want you to go into your room and stay there. You’re grounded until I say otherwise.”

  “What?”  I asked. “You can’t do that! You’re not my mom!”

  “At this base I have the authority to delegate any punishment I see fit. I gave you a direct order to stay out of the staging area and you disobeyed it.”

  “What was I supposed to do? Let the Sjobergs beat me up?”

  “Do you know how difficult it was to requisition thos
e eggs?” Nina demanded. “NASA didn’t want to send them. I spent hours working every angle I could. They were going to be a treat for everyone up here. A special reward for their hard work. And now that’s not going to happen. Every last egg is broken, and after this disaster NASA will never agree to ship any more. Which means it will be three years until I taste a fresh egg again!”

  Oh, I thought, so that’s what all this is about. For all her posturing that I had disobeyed orders, Nina was really upset that she’d lost her precious eggs. Sure, she was claiming she’d requested them for everyone, but she wouldn’t have spent hours on it unless she’d really wanted them herself. I understood where she was coming from, though. We all have our own food obsessions at MBA. You have no idea what you’ll really miss until you get here. Personally, I’d have thought I would want ice cream more than anything else. But now that I’m on the moon, for some reason I always find myself craving picante sauce. I couldn’t imagine what would happen if a jar had been shipped up for me and then ended up broken. I might have been desperate enough to lick everything up off the floor.

  And yet I was still ticked off that I was getting punished for this—while the Sjobergs were getting off scot-free because they were rich. “What am I supposed to do in my room all day?” I asked.

  “You haven’t updated your video log in over a week,” Nina told me. “Start with that.”

  “That’ll only take five minutes,” I protested.

  “No,” Nina said, “I want you to take your time with this. Think about it very carefully. Don’t say one word about Dr. Holtz’s death being suspicious—”

  “You mean, I can’t say anything about his death?”

  “You’re welcome to talk about it. In fact, I encourage you to. The public knows about the death by now and they’re eager to hear what we all have to say. So tell them what a great man Dr. Holtz was. Let them know you’re upset he’s gone. But do not, under any circumstances, even hint that there might have been foul play. I’m going to review your video before you post it, and if I don’t like it, I’ll have you do it again. So don’t take this lightly. No crazy stories about moondragons or finding hoards of green cheese today. Is that clear?”