“Maybe not. It seems quite complicated at times. Which is part of what I am trying to understand. The potential of this—and of all the good things in humans—is amazing. If you were to harness all this, rather than your destructive instincts, you might be able to do more incredible things than any other civilization we’ve encountered.”
“Really?”
“I believe so.”
“So why don’t you all come to us, then? Make contact. Help us do good instead of bad.”
“That isn’t my decision to make. But what I learn from you will hopefully go a long way to influencing that decision.”
“Hopefully?”
“There’s one last thing you should know. In truth, most intelligent life in the universe has written you off already. They did it long ago, when they first observed you. They haven’t seen what I have. They haven’t tried to. In fact, they are unaware of this mission at all. Because it shouldn’t be happening.”
I swallowed hard, growing worried. “You mean, you don’t have permission to be here?”
“Not exactly. I am not working alone, but . . . the group I’m with is only a small faction, fighting for what we believe is right.”
“Like the rebels from Star Wars?”
Zan smiled. “I suppose you could say that.”
“Are you fighting some sort of evil empire?”
“No. Evil is one of those things that seems to be uniquely human. We don’t have anything like Darth Vader. Or Adolf Hitler. Or Lars Sjoberg. But we do have a sense of right and wrong. And there are many who would say that what I am doing right now is wrong.”
“Why?”
“Because humanity is thought to be beyond saving—and any attempt to help you will only result in the disaster I mentioned before.”
I closed my eyes, trying to make sense of everything. The idea that humanity’s fate was hanging in the balance—and that I was possibly the only thing that might tip the scale in our favor—was overwhelming. I immediately regretted hounding Zan to tell me the truth—or that I’d ever met her in the first place. I wished that she’d chosen someone besides me, that I was freed from any responsibility, that I had never been selected to come to Moon Base Alpha at all.
“Dashiell?” Zan asked. “Are you okay?”
I didn’t answer her. In fact, I was quite sure I didn’t have to. I could feel her inside my brain, pushing against my thoughts, trying to make sense of things. But I could barely make sense of things myself; I was confused by a dozen different emotions. The only thing I knew for sure was that I missed earth terribly. I wanted to be off the moon, back home, breathing fresh air under a bright blue sky. I wanted to be on a beach in Hawaii, feeling the sand between my toes and the cool rush of water as it came in from the sea. I wanted to see animals. I wanted to smell flowers. I wanted to be surrounded by life. I wanted to see my friends.
“Dashiell?” Zan asked. It felt like she was forcing herself into my mind harder now.
And then, suddenly, all the emotions I was feeling combined into a sensation I’d never experienced before. For a moment, it felt like I was being pulled through something, although I couldn’t say what, and I had the sense that I had suddenly traveled very far, very fast, in a mere fraction of a second.
And then I felt an honest-to-God breeze on my face.
I opened my eyes.
I was on Hapuna Beach in Hawaii, with the water lapping around my feet. The sun was close to setting, making the ocean shimmer and turning the clouds pink.
Riley Bock was standing right in front of me, holding a surfboard and staring at me with complete and total astonishment. “Dash?” she gasped. “How’d you get back here?”
I tried to answer, but couldn’t. Something was tugging me back. There was a blinding flash of light that forced me to close my eyes again.
When I opened them once more, I was right back in the medical bay on Moon Base Alpha. Hawaii—and the rest of earth—was 238,000 miles away.
I felt completely exhausted, and yet exhilarated, too.
“What happened?” I asked.
“You know how I travel here from my planet by thinking myself here?” Zan asked.
“Yes.”
Zan smiled, her blue eyes gleaming with excitement, and said, “I think you just did it.”
STUART GIBBS is the author of the FunJungle, Spy School, and Moon Base Alpha series. He has also written the screenplays for movies like See Spot Run and Repli-Kate; worked on a whole bunch of animated films; developed TV shows for Nickelodeon, Disney Channel, ABC, and Fox; and researched capybaras (the world’s largest rodents). He has always been a science fanatic and once wrote to NASA volunteering to be the first teenager in space. (They rejected him—but then, they rejected everyone else, too.) He lives with his wife and children in Los Angeles.
Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers
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Simon & Schuster
New York
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Visit us at KIDS.SimonandSchuster.com
authors.simonandschuster.com/Stuart-Gibbs
Also by Stuart Gibbs
The FunJungle series
Belly Up
Poached
Big Game
The Spy School series
Spy School
Spy Camp
Evil Spy School
The Moon Base Alpha series
Space Case
The Last Musketeer
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SIMON & SCHUSTER BOOKS FOR YOUNG READERS
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2016 by Stuart Gibbs
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Book design and principal jacket illustration by Lucy Ruth Cummins
Map art by Ryan Thompson
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Gibbs, Stuart, 1969– author.
Spaced out / Stuart Gibbs.—First edition.
pages cm
Summary: In 2041 twelve-year-old Dashiell Gibson is a resident of Moon Base Alpha, and at the moment he is faced with a number of problems: coping with the nasty Sjoberg twins, finding out how the commander of the base has managed to disappear from a facility no bigger than a soccer field, and dealing with the alien Zan who communicates with him telepathically from afar—and who is hiding a secret which may threaten the whole Earth.
ISBN 978-1-4814-2336-6 (hardcover)—ISBN 978-1-4814-2338-0 (eBook)
1. Space colonies—Juvenile fiction. 2. Extraterrestrial beings—Juvenile fiction.
br /> 3. Human-alien encounters—Juvenile fiction. 4. Telepathy—Juvenile fiction.
5. Secrecy—Juvenile fiction. 6. Moon—Juvenile fiction. [1. Mystery and detective stories. 2. Space colonies—Fiction. 3. Extraterrestrial beings—Fiction. 4. Human-alien encounters—Fiction. 5. Telepathy—Fiction. 6. Secrets—Fiction. 7. Moon—Fiction.
8. Science fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.G339236Sl 2016
813.6—dc23
[Fic]
2015004025
Stuart Gibbs, Spaced Out
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