Waste of Space

by Stuart Gibbs

  I was already doing it. The moon doesn’t have an atmosphere, so in the direct sunlight it’s more than four hundred degrees. Without the protective mirrored visors in our helmets, our heads would have cooked like microwave popcorn.

  Dad lowered his visor too. His face disappeared and was replaced with a warped mirror that reflected me back at myself.

  Then Dad opened the exterior air-lock door and we bounded out onto the moon.

  Since the sun was out, the entire plain of moon dust before us was lit up. Above us, the sky was pitch black, save for earth, hanging in the air by the horizon. I stopped and stared at it for a few seconds, thinking how beautiful it was—and wishing I was back there.

  Dad seemed to sense this—he was probably thinking the same thing—and so he made a blatant attempt to distract me. He bonked me on my helmet.

  “Hey!” I said, wheeling around toward him.

  He held up the baseball and said, “Go long.”

  So I did. I bounded across the lunar surface. It wasn’t easy, as the moon dust was thick and slightly adhesive, and the weight of my space suit counteracted the low lunar gravity. But it was still a joy to be playing outside at all.

  The last time I had played catch with my father had been more than eight months before. It had been our last trip back home to Hawaii before setting off for the moon. We had returned from training at the Johnson Space Center in Houston to say good-bye to family and friends, to take a few last hikes in the mountains, to surf a few last waves. It had been a bittersweet visit, knowing that we wouldn’t get to do anything like that again for three years, but at the time we’d all been very excited about heading to the moon. We were blissfully unaware of how much worse life would be at MBA than NASA had prepared us for.

  In the last eight months, I had been able to play ball inside MBA, but it wasn’t the same as doing it outdoors. And every time I did it, Nina inevitably showed up and ordered me to stop it before I hurt someone or broke something. This also happened whenever I and the other kids tried to do anything physical, like tag or hide-and-seek or blindman’s bluff. Officially, the only place approved for strenuous activity at MBA was the gymnasium, but the gym was too small to play in. Yet another reason why being a kid on the moon was lame.

  Technically, we weren’t even supposed to bring balls to the moon because of the potential for injury, but Dad had found a loophole. We were all allowed to bring a few special “personal effects” to remind us of home, so Dad had faked the signature of Sandy Koufax on the ball and claimed it was a family heirloom.

  I got forty yards across the moon and spun back to face my father.

  He tossed the ball my way. Only in the low gravity, he didn’t know his own strength. It rocketed out of his hand and sailed several stories over my head. “Oh, crap!” he exclaimed.

  I spun around and ran for the ball again. Thankfully, it wasn’t hard to track. Against the pitch-black sky, it glowed like an oncoming headlight. I charged through a small impact crater, tracking the ball as it fell, then dove for it. I snagged it out of the air and landed on my belly, carving a long furrow in the moon dust. But the ball stayed in my gloved hands. I got back to my feet and realized I was now nearly a football field away from my father. I raised the ball triumphantly for him to see.

  He gave a whoop of joy. “Way to go, Dashiell! That has to be the greatest catch in human history! It puts Willie Mays at the Polo Grounds to shame!”

  I whooped as well. Diving for the ball had been reckless and childish. I could have smashed into a moon rock and damaged my suit—and it was now so covered with moon dust, it would probably take an hour to clean. But I still felt exhilarated. “Let’s see if I can get it back to you!” I said.

  “Be careful,” Dad warned. “I didn’t even throw it that hard. If you use all your strength, you’ll send it into orbit.”

  “All right.” I gave the ball a light flick, the same way I might have chucked it across our yard back in Hawaii. Sure enough, it flew all the way back to Dad—and then some. It shot over his head, ricocheted off the air-lock door, and plopped into the moon dust at his feet.

  “Okay,” Dad said. “I think we’ve got the hang of this. Let’s see how far we can go. I’ll bet we can easily set the record for the farthest game of catch of all time.”

  I took a few steps backward and Dad tossed the ball to me. Now that he had a better idea of how to throw in the low gravity, he was much more on target. I caught the ball, took a few more steps backward, and winged it back to him. We kept on like that for a few more minutes, until the distance between us was nearly two football fields. Definitely a record. And yet we still weren’t even throwing that hard.

  The only thing that kept us from going any farther was that it was now getting hard to see each other. My father was only a little dot on the horizon. He had to alert me as to when he was throwing the ball so I would know it was coming. If I lost it in the field of moon dust around me, we’d never find it again—and the closest sporting goods store was 250,000 miles away.

  And yet I kept finding my attention drawn to the earth hanging in the sky above me.

  I desperately wanted to go home.

  I hadn’t taken a breath of fresh air in eight months. I hadn’t gone on a hike, or ridden a bike, or seen an animal that wasn’t part of a lab experiment. Almost every bit of food I’d eaten had been dehydrated, irradiated, thermostabilized, and reduced to little cubes of gunk; I was dying for a taste of ice cream, or fresh salmon, or a salad.

  I missed water most of all.

  I hadn’t expected that, but it was true. I had never realized how much I took water for granted until I barely had any. I missed standing under a warm shower. (On the moon, we had to clean ourselves with a cold, measly trickle of water—and we only got to do that once every few weeks.) I missed swimming in the ocean. I missed being able to open the tap and drink water that had recently fallen from the sky, instead of water that had been consumed, urinated out, and recycled two thousand times already. I missed every single thing about rainstorms: the feel of the drops on my body, the rumble of thunder, the shimmer of a rainbow, the smell after the rains had passed. That had all been missing from my life for the past eight months.

  Except for one, all-too-brief moment.

  A month before, with the help of an alien named Zan Perfonic, I had mentally traveled to earth to see my best friend, Riley Bock. For approximately two seconds, I had the experience of standing on Hapuna Beach in Hawaii. It wasn’t like I was merely watching it on a screen; it was as though I was actually there. I could feel the ocean breeze on my skin and the cool wet sand beneath my feet; I could smell the salt in the air; I could sense the warmth of the setting sun and the earth all around me.

  And then I lost contact.

  I know, I sound like a lunatic. Like all the time cooped up on the moon drove me insane and made me start hallucinating.

  But I wasn’t crazy. Zan was real. She had first approached me two months earlier. Originally, she had been in contact with Dr. Holtz, but after he was murdered, she reached out to me, hoping to continue her contact with the human race. I was the only person she spoke to, and she did it through thought alone. She could project herself into my mind and communicate with me through some sort of highly advanced intergalactic ESP. (This cut down on the need to spend several hundred millennia flying between planets to talk face-to-face. It also allowed me to speak to her in private, which was good, because she wanted to keep our contact a secret.) I had no idea how she did it. In fact, I had no idea how I’d done it myself. I had been desperately trying to replicate the experience ever since, but without any luck. Zan tried to explain the process to me many times, but I couldn’t even begin to understand what she was talking about.

  In a way, being back on earth for two seconds was even worse than having been removed from it altogether. My moments there reminded me of what I was missing and left me desperate for more. It was like tasting the tiniest morsel of chocolate and then being told I couldn
’t have any more for the next two and a half years. And my inability to get back again—or even grasp how it had happened at all—was insanely frustrating.

  Staring up at the blue planet now, all I could think was how wonderful it would be to be submerged in all that water.

  “Dash! Heads up!”

  Startled by my father’s cry, I snapped back to attention to find the baseball hurtling right at me. While I’d been distracted, Dad had launched a pinpoint throw to me. I didn’t even have enough time to react. The ball clonked me right in the face shield. I staggered backward, stumbled over a moon rock, and fell on my butt.

  Dad burst into laughter. “What happened?” he asked. “Did you just zone out for a bit?”

  “I guess.” I staggered back to my feet and found the ball in a pile of moon dust a few feet away.

  “Were you looking at the earth?” Dad asked, sounding a lot more serious all of a sudden.

  “Yeah,” I admitted. “I can’t believe it’ll be another twenty-eight months until we can go home. Eight hundred and sixty-eight days. Not that I’m counting.”

  Dad didn’t say anything right away. I wasn’t sure if he was feeling guilty for bringing me to the moon, or mulling over what to say next—or maybe our radio connection had simply dropped. Finally, he spoke. “About that. There’s something we need to discuss.”

  There was a sadness in his tone that unsettled me. Like he had very bad news to deliver. “What is it?” I asked.

  Before Dad could answer me, though, another voice interrupted our conversation. It was Nina Stack, and she was angry. “Stephen and Dashiell! What are you doing out there?”

  Rather than be cowed by her, Dad answered cheerfully, knowing it would annoy her. “Good morning, Nina! Dash and I were just conducting some scientific research on the physics of spherical projectiles launched on the lunar surface.”

  Nina didn’t think this was funny. But then again, Nina didn’t think anything was funny. “Do you have any idea how many safety protocols you are violating by being out there?” she asked.

  “Seventeen?” Dad ventured.

  “Seventy-six,” Nina corrected. “I want you back in here ASAP.”

  “C’mon, Nina, be a sport,” Dad pleaded. “It’s Dashiell’s birthday. And we’re not doing anything dangerous. . . .”

  “Any foray onto the lunar surface is dangerous,” Nina told us. “You two should know that better than anyone. With everything else that’s going on here right now, the last thing I need is for another disaster to crop up.”

  I wondered what Nina meant by “everything else that’s going on here right now.” But I didn’t have a chance to ask.

  “Can you give us another ten minutes?” Dad asked.

  “No! I’m watching you right now. If I don’t see you head back here this very moment, I will cite you for insubordination.” Nina spoke like she was scolding a kindergartner, rather than talking to one of the world’s foremost geologic scientists.

  “You’d do that?” Dad asked. “After everything I’ve done for you?” Even though it sounded like Dad was teasing, I knew there was more to it than that. Nina had broken some rules herself at MBA recently—far more serious than the ones we were breaking—and she could have been relieved of her duty for it. Although Nina had reported her actions to NASA, Dad, Mom, and the other Moonies had issued statements in support of her, claiming there had been extenuating circumstances, and Nina had been allowed to keep her position as commander.

  “What’s your point?” Nina asked coldly.

  “I would like to let my son spend another ten minutes on the surface of the moon for his birthday,” Dad replied.

  “It’s okay, Dad,” I said, not wanting my father to get in trouble. “We can go back—”

  “No,” Dad said firmly. “You have been a model citizen at our base for the last eight months—even when other people haven’t.” This last part was obviously directed at Nina. “You deserve this. In fact, you deserve a hell of a lot more than this. So I think the least Nina can do is—”

  He didn’t get to finish the sentence. From the other end of the radio came a shrill, terrified scream.

  Even though it was diluted over the radio, it still made me jump.

  The scream wasn’t from Nina. It was too distant, like it had come from someone else far away inside MBA. I couldn’t tell who had screamed—or even whether they were male or female—but one thing was clear:

  Someone back at Moon Base Alpha was in serious trouble.

  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)

  PROBABILITY OF CONTACT

  Over the last few decades, it has become evident that there are a vast number of planets in our galaxy. Virtually every other star we have aimed a telescope at has a planet that orbits it, if not multiple planets. Granted the majority of these are not conducive to life, but since there are more than 100 billion stars in our galaxy alone,I if even only a fraction of a percent have a habitable planet around them, then there would still be hundreds of millions of planets capable of supporting life. It stands to reason, then, that there could be millions of planets out there where intelligent life has evolved, and certainly some of them may be far ahead of us technologically, possessing the ability and desire to travel to planets such as ours. Therefore, it is not so much a question of if we will ever have contact with intelligent life from another planet—but when.

  This manual has been designed to facilitate such a landmark event. NASA’s Department of Extraterrestrial Affairs (DEXA) has been planning for this eventuality for decades, assembling an incredible staff of astronomers, astrobiologists, linguists, doctors, engineers, and military specialists who are all working together to ensure that when the date of alien contact arrives, everything will proceed without a hitch.

  * * *

  I. And 100 billion galaxies in the universe

  2

  SPACE MADNESS

  Lunar day 252

  Still awfully freaking early in the morning

  “Who was that?” Dad asked over the radio, sounding worried.

  Instead of answering, Nina told us, “Come back right now. That’s an order.” Then she was gone.

  Obviously, we were no longer her number one priority.

  “Dash . . . ,” Dad began. I could hear the sadness in his voice. He obviously felt bad about cutting off our catch.

  “I’m on my way back,” I told him. Goofing around on the lunar surface didn’t seem right if someone was in trouble.

  I bounded back toward MBA as quickly as I could, concerned about what might be happening. NASA had assured us that life on the moon would be as safe as life on earth, but like so many other promises the agency had made, that hadn’t turned out to be true. Dr. Holtz had been murdered, Nina had almost died when her space helmet broke, and Kira and I had nearly been killed by a meteorite shower—and that didn’t include the dangers of rocket explosions, malfunctions in the base’s life-support systems, or dozens of other potentially deadly issues. Life on the moon was basically long stretches of boredom punctuated by quick bursts of terror.

  Dad and I entered the air lock, shut the outer door, depressurized the inner chamber, and clambered out of our suits. Normally, we would have cleaned the moon dust off them right away, but since this was a potential emergency, we left them piled on the air-lock floor and slipped back into the base.

  Even though it was extremely early in the morning, MBA was now buzzing with activity like a stirred-up anthill. Our fellow Moonies, wakened by the scream, were drowsily staggering out of their residences, rubbing sleep from their eyes and trying to figure out what was going on.

  There were two levels of residences at MBA. The upper one exited onto a catwalk that overlooked the air-lock staging area, so we could see everyone on both levels as they emerged. Upstairs, Dr. Ilina Brahmaputra-Marquez, our astrop
hysicist, was advising her children, Cesar, Roddy, and Inez, to stay in their room while she investigated the situation—although her husband, Dr. Timothy Marquez, our base psychiatrist, looked more nervous than any of his children. (Back on earth, Dr. Marquez had written a bestselling book on psychiatry, but as my parents often pointed out, that didn’t actually mean he was a good psychiatrist.) Next door to them, Kira Howard, the only girl my age at MBA, wasn’t getting any instruction at all from her father. As usual, Dr. Howard’s mind seemed to be somewhere else. He was constantly thinking of new ways to improve life at MBA—and since so many aspects of our lives needed improving, he was always getting distracted, even in the midst of a possible crisis.

  Downstairs, Dr. Iwanyi, one of our astronomers, had emerged from his room without his family, which probably meant his wife, Dr. Goldstein, our botanist, and their seven-year-old son Kamoze, were still asleep or had opted to stay in the room. Meanwhile, Dr. Daphne Merritt, our roboticist, looked like she wished she were still in bed. Normally, Daphne was joyful and chipper, but now she seemed groggy and grumpy. Drs. Kim and Alvarez, our geologist and water-extraction specialist respectively, were struggling to put on their robes and slippers, while Dr. Janke, the Peruvian astrobiologist, was engaged in urgent conversation with Dr. Balnikov, the hulking Russian astrophysicist.

  Meanwhile, Chang Kowalski had already leaped into action. In addition to being our geochemist and resident genius, Chang was also in far better shape than anyone else at MBA. On earth he’d been an extreme athlete; now he still worked out in the gym up to four hours a day. Although Chang lived on the first floor, he had already scaled the steps to the second-floor catwalk.

  He was racing toward the Sjobergs’ tourist suite—which led me to believe that the terrified scream had come from there.

  I suddenly didn’t feel quite so concerned anymore.

  Up to that moment, I had been worried that something bad had happened to someone I liked. However, I hated the Sjobergs. I hated them even more than I hated using the space toilet, which was really saying something. They were a family of trillionaires who’d coughed up a ton of money to be the first space tourists, and they were the worst people I’d ever met in my life. I wasn’t the only one at MBA who felt that way; everyone else despised them too. Lars and Sonja, the parents, were amoral, abusive, and downright nasty. Patton and Lily, their sixteen-year-old twins, were brutal and mean. In addition to their general awfulness, the Sjobergs had recently sabotaged the base’s robotics system to bolster their own investment in a rival lunar-tourism business. As punishment, Nina had taken away all their ComLink privileges, so they could no longer communicate with earth. Since this removed the few things that had given them pleasure—contact with friends, movie and book downloads, access to virtual-reality games—the Sjobergs were miserable. But rather than apologize and make amends, they had responded by becoming even more obnoxious than before.