by Stuart Gibbs
I started toward Nina’s residence again. Kira bounded after me. “Whoa! You seriously shouldn’t tell Nina about this yet.”
“Why not?” I demanded.
Kira gave Cesar a wary glance. Obviously, she didn’t feel comfortable discussing this in front of him. So she lied to throw him off track. “Like Cesar said, she’s not going to care. And besides, we all have to get to school. Class is about to start.” She looked to Cesar. “Didn’t you promise that you were going to get Inez and Kamoze there?”
“Maybe,” Cesar said. There was a decent chance he would have blown this off—Cesar wasn’t very good about getting himself to school on time—but then Lily and Patton Sjoberg came around the far side of the greenhouse, heading for the mess.
I was surprised to see them up and about. They should have been awake at this time most days, since they were supposed to go to school with us, but the Sjobergs often skipped their classes, arguing that they were on vacation—and besides, they didn’t really have to learn anything, because they were going to inherit a huge fortune no matter what. But today, in addition to their general hatred of school and early mornings, their father had nearly died. That seemed like a better excuse than usual to skip school.
Patton looked haggard, like he hadn’t been able to go back to sleep, while Lily looked surprisingly put-together. She had her hair done up and makeup on, and she beamed when she saw Cesar. (Another thing that I—and everyone else at MBA—knew due to our thin walls was that Lily had a big crush on Cesar.) “Good morning!” she crooned, like it was a totally normal day. “How’s it going, Cesar?”
“Okay,” Cesar said, heading back into the mess to talk to her. “How’s your dad?”
“Better,” Lily said. “He’s still a little loopy, but he’ll live.”
Patton sat down heavily at a table, glowering. He didn’t seem that pleased by the idea of his father surviving.
Then he noticed me and paled a bit. A month before, when Patton had been trying to beat me up, Zan had rescued me by appearing to him as a terrifying space snake. She had literally scared the pee out of Patton. Ever since, he had been extremely skittish around me, worried that I could summon the snake again whenever I wanted. His family insisted (correctly) that space snakes didn’t exist and thought Patton was being crazy—but since Patton had actually seen a space snake and they hadn’t, he stuck to his story, no matter how much they ridiculed him. In the meantime, I was enjoying his fear of me to the fullest. It had kept him from bullying me—or anyone else—for weeks.
I gave him a friendly little wave. Even that made him flinch in fright.
While Cesar was distracted by the Sjobergs, Kira and I slipped away. Violet followed us.
With most of the adults inside the science pod, it was a lot easier to find privacy at MBA than usual. No one was in the control room or the robotics center. The staging area by the air lock was completely empty. We stopped there, though we still took care to keep our voices low.
“What if Nina’s the one who poisoned Lars?” Kira asked.
I looked at Violet. I wasn’t thrilled about having this conversation in front of her, but now that Kira had begun it, I knew there was no other option. Violet was obviously fascinated, and any attempt to ditch her now would probably result in her throwing a fit.
“Nina asked me to help look for the killer,” I said. “Why would she do that if she was the killer?”
“To divert attention from herself,” Kira said.
“Yeah,” Violet echoed. “To revert detention from herself.”
“And this way,” Kira went on, “she could use you to help shift the blame to someone else.”
I thought about my conversation with Nina. “She did tell me to keep an eye on Chang.”
“Chang?” Violet asked, way too loud. “He would never poison anyone! He’s too nice.”
Behind Violet’s back, Kira rolled her eyes, indicating she didn’t believe Chang was such a saint. But this still didn’t change her thoughts about Nina. “There! You see? Anyone else?”
“Actually, she told me to keep an eye on everyone else.”
“Even me?” Violet asked, startled. “I wouldn’t poison anyone. Even Roddy, and he’s a jerk.”
“Everyone except you,” I corrected.
“Inez wouldn’t poison anyone either,” Violet said. “And neither would Kamoze.”
“Okay. I won’t investigate them.”
“And Mom and Dad.”
“Of course.”
“Think about it,” Kira told me, before Violet could list any more people. “Nina has as much reason to hate Lars as anyone here. More, maybe. He’s been a problem for her since the day he got here, and I know he’s threatened to destroy her career when he gets back to earth. So what if she couldn’t take it anymore? She poisons him, then sets out to pin it on Chang. Or someone else. Then she brings you in to back up her side of the story.”
I mulled that over. It wasn’t completely implausible. “How could she make me back her up?”
“She’s running the investigation, right? So she controls all the evidence. She asked you to come directly to her with anything you found out. Well, if it’s evidence against her, she can ditch it. And maybe she can even plant some evidence against someone else.”
“But Nina wouldn’t poison Lars,” Violet said. “Poisoning someone is wrong—and Nina’s the moon-base commander.”
“So?” Kira asked. “Nina has broken the rules before. Like last month, when she went missing. . . .”
“But she was manipulated into that,” I countered.
“Big deal,” Kira said. “She still did it. She’s not as straitlaced as she’d like us all to think she is. Plus, the woman came out of the military. So she’s been trained to kill people. That’s what the military does. And she’s weird. She’s one of the weirdest people here—and this place is chock-full of wackos. Think about how cold and detached she is. That’s the classic profile for a psycho killer.”
I thought about it some more. I had spent a lot more time alone with Nina than Kira had. It hadn’t been enjoyable, but I’d done it. So I’d had a bit more of a glimpse of the person beneath the icy exterior than Kira had. “I don’t think she’s a psycho killer,” I said finally.
“Fine,” Kira said, obviously annoyed I hadn’t agreed with her. “Then who do you think tried to kill Lars?”
“It could have been Chang,” I pointed out, then started ticking names off my fingers. “Or Dr. Goldstein. She was the one with access to the apple seeds, and now they’re gone. Or Dr. Iwanyi. Or Dr. Balnikov. Or pretty much anyone here. Including the whole Sjoberg family.”
“Patton and Lily?” Violet asked innocently. “But they’re Lars’s children.”
“I don’t think they like him very much,” I explained. “Patton certainly doesn’t. Lars treats him like crud. And they have more to gain from Lars’s death than anyone else here. Trillions of dollars, maybe.”
“Would Mrs. Sjoberg get that much if Lars died too?” Violet asked.
“Probably,” I said.
“Then I think she did it,” Violet proclaimed. “She’s mean and her face is all weird.”
I returned my attention to Kira. “That’s an awful lot of potential suspects.”
“It is,” Kira agreed. “But that doesn’t mean Nina didn’t do it. Which means that reporting everything you find to her is a bad idea.”
“Why?” Violet asked.
“Because keeping things to ourselves gives us an edge,” Kira explained. “If we don’t tell Nina we know about the missing seeds, then she doesn’t know we know about the missing seeds. If she knows we know, then she can get rid of the evidence that she took them. But if she doesn’t know we know, then maybe she drops her guard and then we can bust her. Understand?”
“No,” Violet said.
Kira sighed. “Then just trust me. I know what I’m talking about here. If there’s anyone we should be investigating, it’s Nina. She’s definitely been hiding som
ething lately.”
It seemed to me that everyone had been hiding something lately, but I didn’t say it. Nothing I said was going to change Kira’s mind. And there was a decent chance she was right. “What do you want to do?”
Kira put a finger to her lips, beckoned us to follow her, and started up the stairs toward Nina’s residence.
For once, Violet took the hint and stayed silent. School was about to begin, and we should have been in the rec room, but suddenly this seemed much more important than English class.
We crept up to the catwalk. Now that we were right outside Nina’s door, we could hear her and my father arguing inside much more clearly.
But Kira didn’t stop there. Instead she led us past Nina’s door and to that of our own residence.
I realized what she was up to and used my thumbprint to unlock the door. We slipped inside and headed right for our sleep pods, which were aligned along the wall to Nina’s room. We each picked one—Violet and I took our own pods, while Kira took Mom’s—then climbed inside and got as close to the wall as we could.
We could now hear Dad and Nina’s conversation almost as clearly as if we had been in Nina’s residence ourselves. Both were angry, speaking louder than they might have done otherwise. I wondered if both were assuming everyone else was in the science pod or at school.
“. . . and you have put my son’s life in danger yet again,” Dad was saying.
“He won’t end up in danger if he doesn’t do anything stupid,” Nina argued.
“You can’t guarantee that! Remember what happened to him the last time there was a murderer on the loose? Garth Grisan nearly killed him with the robot arm!”
“Last time Dashiell was investigating behind my back, sneaking around without authorization. This time I can keep an eye on him.”
“You can’t do that twenty-four hours a day! How could you even think about something like this without talking to me or his mother first?”
“As I’m sure you’re aware, I have more than enough trouble to deal with right now. So do you and Chang and every other adult here. And that was before we had another killer on the loose. Dashiell is smart, and he was available, so I utilized him.”
“You utilized him?” Dad repeated. “He’s my son, not an appliance! Can you even imagine what you would feel like if someone put a child of yours in harm’s way like this?”
“The way you risked his life with that stunt on the surface this morning?” Nina asked pointedly.
“There was virtually no risk to that. We were being careful. . . .”
“Well, I’m being just as careful with this investigation. End of story. We’ve wasted enough time as it is. We’re supposed to be on that call with everyone else and I have ten thousand things I have to take care of before ten-hundred hours tomorrow.” The sound of Nina’s footsteps could be heard, heading for the door.
Dad didn’t follow her, though. “What’s it even matter, Nina?” he asked. “With everything else that’s going on right now, is finding Lars’s killer really so important that you have to drag Dashiell into it? Is it worth putting his life at risk like this?”
“The lives of everyone on this base are already at risk,” Nina said curtly. “I’m doing everything I can to protect all of them.”
I stiffened, disturbed by this statement, and whacked my head on the ceiling of my sleep pod.
I heard the door open in Nina’s residence. She seemed to be waiting for my father to leave with her.
Kira, Violet, and I quickly clambered out of the sleep pods and ran for our own door. Without discussing it, we had all come to the same conclusion at once: There was no point in hiding the fact that we’d been eavesdropping. Whatever was going on was too important. We raced out the door, right as Dad and Nina exited Nina’s residence.
Dad and Nina both froze on the catwalk, startled by our sudden appearance.
“What’s going on?” I asked, before they could tell us we were supposed to be in school.
“Yeah,” Kira agreed. “What’s with all the secrecy?”
Nina narrowed her eyes at us angrily. It looked like she was going to chew us out.
Only Dad spoke up before she could. “The moon base is in trouble,” he said. “We need to evacuate.”
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)
SECRECY
If you are party to primary or secondary contact with IEL, it is imperative that secrecy be maintained. Once the press—and thus, the public—finds out about the existence of the IEL, the responses will be immediate and very difficult to control. Therefore, all interhuman communication will be limited to members of the primary and secondary contact teams and NASA’s Department of Extraterrestrial Affairs. No one will be allowed to contact anyone outside this circle—even family members—until the IEL can be properly assessed. Anyone who violates this directive is guilty of breaking federal law and will be immediately removed from the project and incarcerated.
9
SYSTEM FAILURE
Lunar day 252
T minus 24 hours to evacuation
“Something’s wrong with the air-recycling system,” Mom said. “It’s not providing as much oxygen for us as it should.”
Now that the cat was out of the bag, Nina had pulled her from the call with NASA in the science pod so she and Dad could break the news to Violet and me. We were all in our residence, seated on our InflatiCubes. Kira and Dr. Howard were in their residence next door.
Since none of the other kids had caught on to what was happening, they were all still in school. Although I was pretty sure their parents were going to have to tell them the truth soon. The chances of Violet keeping the secret were awfully slim.
The call with NASA, it turned out, had been about emergency procedures to shut down the moon base.
“Why isn’t the system making oxygen?” Violet asked.
“It’s making some,” Dad corrected. “Just not quite as much as it should. We don’t know why. If we did, we could fix it.”
“We’ve been trying to fix it,” Mom said. “For two weeks now.”
“And you didn’t tell us?” I failed to keep the annoyance out of my voice.
“There was a lot of debate about that,” Mom said.
“A lot,” Dad emphasized.
“But it was ultimately decided that it would be the best for all the children here if we didn’t tell them,” Mom said. “So you wouldn’t panic. Or stress out.”
“ ‘It was decided’?” I repeated. “Meaning it wasn’t your decision?”
“There was no way some families could tell their kids and others couldn’t,” Dad explained. “Because if some kids knew, they would definitely tell the other kids. And Dr. Marquez felt that children might not be able to handle this.”
“Dr. Marquez is a quack,” I said.
“He’s the moon-base psychiatrist,” Mom said sternly, although behind her back Dad made a face to indicate he agreed with me. “NASA put him here to deal with things like this, so they listened to his opinion. However . . .” She glanced at Dad, then looked back to us. “It was never something we were comfortable with.”
“The point is,” Dad said, “we spent two weeks trying everything we could to fix the system—or even to figure out what’s wrong with it. But we couldn’t, and the oxygen levels have kept dropping.”
“Not by much,” Mom said reassuringly. “Only fractions of a percentage. However, if that continues, the air here will eventually become too weak to support humans.”
“But we’re humans,” Violet said worriedly.
“We’re going to be fine.” Mom quickly moved to Violet’s InflatiCube and put an arm around her shoulders. “Once NASA realized there was potential danger, an evacuation plan was immediately put into place. Rockets have already launched from earth to get us. The first two will be here tom
orrow.”
“They’ve already launched?” I asked. “How is that possible? It wasn’t on the news. And no one texted me or anything.” I was thinking specifically of Riley Bock, who had become a space fanatic since I was selected as a Moonie. She was always begging me for the latest updates. If rockets had left for the moon, she would have mentioned it. And if she had somehow missed it, at least one of the millions of other MBA fans back on earth would have said something.
“No one back on earth knows,” Dad said. “Not unless they work for NASA. The agency has been doing everything they can to keep this secret until we all get home safely.”
“But they launched two rockets,” I said. “You’d think people would notice something like that.”
“NASA claimed they were merely satellite launches,” Mom said. “Satellites launch all the time. The people who live around the Kennedy Space Center don’t give them a second thought.”
“And they’re going to be here tomorrow?” Violet asked. Her concern over the depleted oxygen had already given way to excitement. “All of us are going home tomorrow?”
Mom and Dad didn’t answer that right away. I realized why they were hesitating. “Wait,” I said. “Only two rockets are coming? Each of those only holds eight people, and that includes the pilots.”
“Right,” Dad said. “We can’t all leave in the first wave. Some people will have to stay behind for the next two rockets.”
“For how long?” I asked.
“Another week,” Mom replied.
“So we might have to wait here?” Violet asked, growing worried again. “Without oxygen?”
Mom tightened her arm around Violet. “No. The families with young children are going to be the first to leave.”