by Stuart Gibbs
“I’m well aware of the difficulties this case presents,” Nina said, sounding annoyed at me. “If it was easy to solve, do you think I’d be asking a twelve-year-old for help?”
“I’m thirteen,” I reminded her.
“Congratulations,” Nina said coldly. “If you learn anything important, I want you to tell me about it immediately. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Now could you please get to work before I have another dead body to deal with?”
With that, she turned her attention to the computer on her desk, signaling that our conversation was finished.
I got up off the InflatiCube, walked out the door, and went to hunt for the murderer.
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)
SIGNAL ASSESSMENT
The primary directive for any radio transmission detected from IEL is to determine what is trying to be communicated. It is presumed that such signals will fall into one of two categories:
1) Communication not intended for humanity, which we have intercepted.
2) Communication that is intended for humanity. This can further be broken down into two categories:
a) Friendly communication
b) Threats
It is imperative to determine which of these forms of communication we are dealing with as quickly as possible. Type 1 communication might be exceptionally hard to translate, as it is not intended for us, whereas type 2 communication will theoretically be constructed in some manner that we can interpret, most likely via mathematics, as mathematics are universal.
5
ANGRY SWEDE
Lunar day 252
A slightly more reasonable hour of the morning
Instead of beginning the investigation immediately, I went back to bed. Yes, there was a killer on the loose, but everyone else Nina wanted me to investigate had gone back to sleep, I was exhausted, and it was my birthday. I wasn’t particularly worried about the murderer bumping off other people in the few hours it would take me to rest up for the investigation. Lars Sjoberg seemed to be the prime target; the killer had made a concerted effort to get him and no one else.
My father wasn’t in his sleep pod. I figured he must still be down in the medical bay, helping Chang take care of Lars. Dad wasn’t a doctor, but he had taken emergency medical training in preparation for coming to MBA. (All the adults had done this, but Dad had performed better on it than most—including Dr. Marquez.)
Mom and Violet were both crammed into my mother’s sleep pod, which probably meant that Violet had experienced trouble getting back to sleep. She had nightmares sometimes, and the revelation that Lars Sjoberg had been poisoned wouldn’t have helped that much. Thankfully, Violet seemed to be having a good dream at the moment. I heard her murmuring happily in her sleep, “Welcome to Atlantis. I am the dolphin queen.”
Unfortunately, I had trouble getting back to sleep myself. Even though I was tired, I found myself plagued with questions about Lars’s poisoning. If there wasn’t supposed to be any cyanide at MBA, how had the killer gotten ahold of it? If they could have done the actual poisoning months before, how was I supposed to find any clues to who might have done it? And since everyone at MBA hated Lars, how was I supposed to narrow down the list of suspects? When I thought about it, I couldn’t even rule out the members of Lars’s own family. Sonja, Lily, and Patton were all vile people, and they probably had the biggest motive of all for bumping off Lars: his fortune. But there were plenty of other possible murderers to consider.
Finally, there was the question that bothered me most of all: If I did get close to the killer in my investigation, would they come after me to protect their identity? It had happened before. For a while, I toyed with the idea of merely telling Nina that I was investigating, but not doing anything. After all, Nina, Chang, and my father were on the case already. If the killer managed to slip through their fingers and take out Lars, well . . . would that really be such a bad thing?
I ultimately decided to investigate, though. For a few reasons.
1) I might get in trouble for disobeying an order from Nina.
2) Letting someone get killed—even Lars Sjoberg—was wrong.
3) I didn’t like the idea of there being another murderer loose at MBA. Even if they were only targeting Lars for now, what was to say that, if they got away with it, they wouldn’t decide to go after more people who had rubbed them the wrong way?
So instead of dropping off to sleep, I tossed and turned. It didn’t help that my sleep pod was cramped and my thin inflatable mattress pad smelled worse than lutefisk. While I was lying there, I tried projecting myself to earth via my thoughts, hoping to repeat the experience of going to Hapuna Beach. I had been trying to do this several times a day for the past month, with no success.
It didn’t work this time either. I tried concentrating as hard as I could, then clearing my mind and thinking as little as possible, then blatantly wishing myself there. But I still remained at Moon Base Alpha.
So now, in addition to being concerned about the potential murder, I was also frustrated.
It was a long time before exhaustion finally won out and I drifted off to sleep.
I was out for a whole fifteen minutes before Violet woke me up.
In her defense, she was trying to be nice. She was singing “Happy Birthday” to me in Spanish, which she had recently learned in school. She wound up with a big finish at the top of her lungs and then exclaimed, “Feliz cumpleaños, big brother!”
“You couldn’t have waited another hour to sing that?” I asked grumpily.
“Nope!” Violet proclaimed. “And I have a present for you!”
“Is it a trip back to earth?” I asked.
“I can’t tell you what it is. It’s a secret.”
“Sorry for the early alarm,” Mom told me. She was digging clothes for Violet out of our one bureau. “I kept her at bay for as long as I could. And besides, it was almost time for you to get up anyhow. You have school today.”
That didn’t make my morning any better. “Ugh,” I groaned. “We don’t get a pass for having an emergency in the middle of the night?”
“No,” Mom replied, then added conspiratorially, “I don’t think NASA even knows about last night’s events.”
“Get up get up get up!” Violet urged. “You have to open your present!”
“All right. Keep your pajamas on.” I slipped back out of my pod and dropped to the floor.
“Ta-da!” Violet held up a small present. We didn’t have any wrapping paper at MBA—or much paper at all. Most of our reading material was electronic to cut down on the weight of our supplies. So the present had been wrapped in a few pages from our MBA residents’ guide.
“Thanks,” I said, taking the present from her.
“It’s candy!” Violet announced, unable to keep her own secret any longer.
“Really?” I unwrapped the present to find that it was, indeed, a package of Skittles. Which wasn’t a bad present at all.
Sure, back on earth a bag of candy would have been no big deal. But in the gastronomic desert that was MBA, any flavor at all was a cause for celebration. Hard candy was one of the few things that actually transferred well to space, although it still wasn’t easy to come by, given that the closest grocery store was 250,000 miles away. Getting NASA to ship it up on a rocket would have taken quite a bit of advance planning.
“Thanks,” I said again, giving Violet a hug. “This is awesome.”
“Can I have some?” Violet asked.
“Now?” I asked. “We just got up.”
“You just got up,” Violet informed me. “I’ve been up for fifteen whole minutes.”
“No candy until after dinner,” Mom said, then gave me a wink behind Violet’s back. Apparently, my birthday afforded me special candy privileges. Then M
om tossed Violet her clothes. “You haven’t even had breakfast, kiddo. Get dressed.”
Violet shrugged off her Squirrel Force pajamas and pulled her clothes on. I was already wearing mine. I had slept in them. Due to the lack of dirt, clothes didn’t get very soiled in space, and due to the lack of washing machines at MBA, we were basically supposed to wear the same things over and over until they wore out.
While Violet was getting dressed, I spoke to my mother. “Thanks for the candy.”
“That’s not from us,” she said. “It was all your sister’s idea.”
“But you arranged for delivery. . . .”
“Because Violet insisted on it. She thought this all up two months ago. Our present was the trip outside, which didn’t last nearly as long as we’d hoped it would.”
“It was amazing anyhow,” I assured her. “Is Dad still down with Lars?”
Mom glanced at Violet, not wanting to discuss this in front of her, then lowered her voice. “He was there until around four in the morning. Then he went to clean off your space suits before anyone noticed them in the air lock. And after that, it was too late to go back to bed, so he just went to work in the science pod. He says the poisoning was an accident. A package of Lars’s lutefisk got contaminated somehow.”
Mom was telling me the fake story. Which meant that either Dad had given her the fake story as Nina had ordered him to—or Dad had disobeyed Nina’s orders and told Mom the truth, but Mom was now lying to keep the truth from me.
Either way, Mom obviously didn’t know I knew what had really happened.
“I’m dressed!” Violet announced, then did a twirl to prove that she did, in fact, have her clothes on. “Let’s get breakfast! I’m starving!” She grabbed Mom’s hand and dragged her out the door.
I snuck one Skittle from the bag, then tucked it into my mouth before following my family.
I was a big believer in savoring any decent food I got for as long as possible. On the rare occasions we got something special to eat at MBA—fresh fruit, a piece of candy, anything that hadn’t been dehydrated—we had to make it last. If I had merely chewed up my Skittle, it would have been gone in less than a minute. Tucked into my lip, it might last half an hour. I knew the flavor had been completely fabricated in a lab in New Jersey, but I didn’t care. It was delicious. A thousand times better than a dehydrated-and-reconstituted birthday cake would have been.
Outside our residence, things appeared to have returned to normal. From the catwalk I could see the other Moonies up and about. Dr. Goldstein and Dr. Iwanyi were heading into the mess hall with Kamoze. Dr. Janke was fiddling with something in the science pod. Dr. Howard was standing by the air lock, staring off into the distance, possibly thinking about something important—but just as likely zoning out.
Kira Howard was quietly slinking into the rec room, as though trying not to disturb whoever was inside.
This was completely lost on Violet. “Hi, Kira!” she yelled.
Kira spun around, shushed her, then continued into the rec room.
“Let’s see what she’s up to!” Violet announced, and then went down the stairs as fast as she could. She didn’t exactly run, because stairs are hard to manage in low gravity, even after eight months of practice, but she did her best.
“Violet!” Mom shouted after her. “What about breakfast?”
“Not hungry!” Violet called back, even though she had announced she was starving only a minute before.
“I’ll get her,” I said, then hurried down the stairs after her.
“I’m going to go see your father,” Mom called after me. “I’ll meet you in the mess hall.”
I probably could have caught Violet before she reached the bottom of the stairs, but I really wanted to know what Kira was up to as well. So I let my sister have a little room to run, and chased her toward the rec room.
I didn’t quite make it there, though. I was about to enter it when I heard shouting from the medical bay. The door was closed, but whoever was shouting was loud enough to be heard from where I stood. It wasn’t quite clear enough for me to make out who was doing the shouting, though.
Dr. Daphne Merritt walked past, her nose buried in an electronic manual. Whatever it was must have been awfully important, because normally Dr. Merritt would stop to talk, but today she barely gave me a glance. She also didn’t seem interested in the shouting, which made me think that it had probably been going on for so long that it had become background noise.
I was interested in it, though, so I crept closer to the medical bay. Once I was directly outside the door, I could hear clearly enough to tell who was making all the racket inside:
Sonja Sjoberg.
That shouldn’t have surprised me. If anyone was shouting at MBA, it was usually Lars or Sonja. Both operated under the misconception that the best way to get people to do something was to yell at them. Maybe that worked when they were home and surrounded by servants, but at MBA it generally made people not want to help them. However, the Sjobergs had completely failed to grasp this. Instead they just tended to shout louder.
“Lars needs to go back to earth!” Sonja was yelling. “And he needs to go back now! His health is at risk!”
“Not anymore,” a second, much quieter voice answered. Nina Stack. “His condition has stabilized. Within a few hours he’ll be back to normal.”
“Back to normal?” Sonja shouted. “Someone tried to kill him! And they could try again, at any time! If that’s not a risk to his life, I don’t know what is!”
Obviously, Sonja had discovered the truth about what had happened. Or maybe she’d guessed it.
“We are working as hard as we can to find out who is behind this,” Nina said.
Sonja gave a derisive snort, as though she didn’t believe this. “Your own residents’ guide states that if someone’s health is at risk, then NASA is required to immediately send a rocket to bring them back to earth. Well I can’t think of any greater risk to someone’s health than having someone want to murder them!”
I had to admit, Sonja had a point. If we didn’t catch the killer, there weren’t many ways to protect Lars short of removing him from MBA altogether.
Only Nina didn’t see it that way. “The rockets are reserved for medical emergencies only. This is a personal issue.”
“A personal issue?” Sonja screamed. “He was poisoned! And for all we know, all his lutefisk could be poisoned!”
“Then I’d recommend not eating any more lutefisk. I can’t requisition an emergency rocket for Lars at this time.”
“Don’t lie to me. If anyone else on this base had been poisoned, a rocket would already be on its way.”
“Not only is that false, but I resent your implication. This is not my choice. I didn’t say that I wouldn’t requisition a rocket. I said I can’t do it right now.”
“Of course you can. You’re the moon-base commander.”
“That has nothing to do with it. But I assure you, it’s not necessary anyhow. Whoever has done this to Lars will be caught.”
“This is not—” Sonja began.
Nina quickly cut her off. “The longer you keep me here, the longer it will take to find the killer. So if you’ll excuse me, we’ve wasted enough time as it is.” Her footsteps started toward the door.
I hurried away. I didn’t think Nina would want to discover that, instead of investigating anyone else, I was eavesdropping on her. And anyhow, if she saw me, she would want to know what I had found out, and I didn’t want to admit that I had gone back to bed.
I ducked into the rec room and flattened myself up against the wall so Nina wouldn’t see me. I heard the medical-bay door open and Nina storm through the base.
Why couldn’t Nina requisition an emergency rocket? I wondered. Was that true, or was she merely making excuses so she wouldn’t have to do it? Mounting a rescue mission would be expensive—launching a rocket cost billions of dollars—so it certainly wasn’t something to take lightly. Only I had gotten the sense that
Nina wasn’t lying, which worried me. Was there a problem with the rockets back on earth? Or the launch facility? And if so, what would happen if we really had an emergency?
I could feel my heart rate rise as I thought about this, so I took some deep breaths and tried to calm down. There probably wasn’t any issue with the rockets, I told myself. Nina was only lying to Sonja. There was no crisis . . . besides the attempted murder of her husband, of course.
As it was, I had plenty of other things to focus on.
Like what Kira Howard was up to in the rec room.
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)
PHYSICAL MANIFESTATION
While the likelihood of an actual physical appearance of IEL on earthI without previous radio contact is regarded as highly unlikely, it cannot be ruled out. Therefore, NASA is constantly monitoring outer space in the immediate vicinity of our planet.II Should incoming IEL be detected, highly trained professionals will instantly be mobilized to ensure that, if they are not the primary contact with IEL, they will certainly be the secondary contact. Any untrained earthlings who might make primary contact with IEL are to immediately be placed under quarantine. (For more on this, please turn to the Quarantine section of this manual.)
* * *
I. Or, as the case may be, the airspace and atmosphere around earth.
II. Due to budgetary considerations and the enormity of space, NASA is unable to monitor the entire vicinity around earth all at once, but our scientists are doing their best.
6
RENEGADE UNICORNS
Lunar day 252
Breakfast time
In addition to Kira and Violet, Roddy Marquez was also in the rec room. This was no surprise. Roddy used the virtual-reality system every chance he got. It wasn’t even rare to find him there before breakfast. Since school took place in the rec room, Roddy often got up early to score a few veeyar hours beforehand. He had a pair of hologoggles strapped over his eyes and sensogloves on his hands. Based on his movements, it appeared that he was playing a first-person shooter game. While the same moves probably looked cool inside the game, outside it Roddy looked bizarre, like a person who had found a snake in his pants.