by Stuart Gibbs
“It’s no big deal,” Dr. Goldstein urged. “Soon enough, all of us will be back on earth again with as many strawberries as we can eat.”
There was a beautiful, perfectly ripe strawberry lying atop the pile of plants. I couldn’t resist it anymore. I picked it up, relishing even the feel of it, then held it up to my nose and inhaled. It smelled incredible.
And it tasted even better.
I had to turn my back to the greenhouse windows so no one would see that I was getting special treatment. My first bite was small, but loaded with flavor. I had forgotten how amazing food could taste.
“When was the last time you checked to make sure the apple seeds were here?” I asked.
Dr. Goldstein grew a bit flustered, as though this question made her uncomfortable. “I honestly don’t know. Like I said, it never occurred to me that anyone might take them. The fruits, definitely. But not the seeds. Someone might have taken them as much as two months ago.”
“Which was before you put the sensor on the greenhouse door.”
“Yes.”
Which meant that pretty much anyone on the base could have stolen the seeds and not been noticed. Assuming they had planned the crime well ahead of time.
“What about more recently?” I asked. “Since you’ve been monitoring the door, have you seen anyone sneak in here?”
“Oh, Dashiell, I’ve seen practically everyone on this base sneak in here.”
I almost gagged on my next small bite of strawberry in surprise. “Everyone?”
“This is a very special place at Moon Base Alpha. It might not be very much like earth, but it’s the closest thing we have. Quite often, when it’s late at night, and someone thinks they’re the only one awake, they’ll come in here. Usually on the way back from the bathroom.”
I thought back to the feeling I’d had when I’d first entered the greenhouse earlier that day. If I had known about that sensation before, I probably would have been sneaking into the greenhouse every chance I got.
“Did you ever notice anyone doing anything suspicious?” I asked.
“Well, quite a few people snuck a little something to eat.”
“Really? Who?”
“Again, pretty much everyone. Even Nina has raided this place. And your own parents.”
“They did?”
“They came together. And they only took a cherry tomato between them. I’m sure they thought no one would miss it. But I know every single fruit and vegetable in this place.”
“You didn’t see anyone fiddling around with the seeds?”
“No, but I did see some people who came in here and didn’t eat anything.”
“Like who?”
Dr. Goldstein looked out the windows warily, as though worried someone might be watching us. No one was, though. Even so, she still lowered her voice. “Dr. Janke and Dr. Brahmaputra-Marquez both did.”
“Together?”
“No, at separate times. More than a week apart, in fact. And both spent quite some time in here. Now, they may have simply been enjoying the sensation of being in this room, but then, they might have swiped the seeds as well.”
I wasn’t aware of either Dr. Janke or Dr. Brahmaputra-Marquez having a major grudge against Lars, but then, like everyone else at MBA, they probably hated the man. I wondered if that would be enough to drive someone to murder, especially in a place where tensions were running high and oxygen was running low.
In addition, Dr. Brahmaputra-Marquez definitely had issues with Patton and Lily, who had been terrible to Roddy. I wondered if, perhaps, she’d poisoned the lutefisk to take out one of them, not realizing that Lars was the only one who ate it.
“And then there’s Lily Sjoberg,” Dr. Goldstein said.
“She came in here and didn’t eat anything?”
“Yes. Unlike her brother. That pig Patton has gobbled up so much of my food that I’ve had to get Nina to intervene.”
“How so?”
“She told Lars that if Patton ate anything else in here without permission, she’d put Patton in charge of acquiring the human fertilizer from the composter. That seems to have done the trick. But as for Lily . . . She comes in here quite a lot, late at night, and just sits among the plants.”
That didn’t sound much like Lily to me, but then, even though I’d been cooped up with Lily at MBA for several months, I had to admit I didn’t know much about her at all. She had never wanted much to do with me and had barely spoken to me unless she had to. So maybe she had come into the greenhouse simply to experience the wonders of life.
Or maybe she had it in for her father.
“And there’s Chang.”
“Chang?”
“Yes. He was rooting around in here for a few minutes about a week ago. I figured he must have been looking for something to eat, but when I checked in the morning, not a single fruit or vegetable was missing.”
“And you’re sure you would have noticed?”
“This isn’t a very big greenhouse, and I’m in it at least eight hours a day. I know every last edible morsel in here.”
Through the wall I heard a commotion in the rec room. People were starting to raise their voices, though it was too muffled for me to make out who was speaking, or what they were saying. I figured it was probably someone yelling at Roddy for hogging the veeyar system again.
I took one last bite of strawberry, wondering about Chang.
Chang had been poking around in the greenhouse. Now the apple seeds had gone missing. And if anyone was smart enough to know how to make cyanide from apple seeds, it was Chang.
Chang had been rummaging through the food storage the night before. Shortly afterward, Lars Sjoberg had been poisoned.
In the rec room, the voices were getting louder and angrier. I could now make two of them out: Patton and Lily Sjoberg. I did my best to ignore them. If Roddy had run afoul of the Sjoberg twins again, that was his problem. I had wound up in too much trouble defending him against them before.
And besides, I had other things to think about:
No one had a grudge against Lars Sjoberg like Chang Kowalski. As much as I hated to think that Chang might have poisoned Lars, he was an awfully good suspect.
Therefore, it made sense that someone ought to search his room for evidence. And thanks to Nina, that person was me.
There was a shriek from the rec room. A shriek I knew all too well. The Sjobergs weren’t picking on Roddy.
They were picking on Violet.
Chang’s room would have to wait. I had to face the Sjobergs first.
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)
POTENTIAL HOSTILITY
There is much debate about whether any IEL that purposefully makes contact with earth will come in peace, but for our own safety, the possibility of hostile alien contact should certainly not be ruled out.I Anyone present for contact with IEL must remain constantly vigilant and on guard. At the same time, it is important to not appear outwardly hostile to any IEL. Weapons, while recommended, should remain sheathed or holstered. And given the likely intelligence of any IEL that initiates communication with us and/or travels to our planet, it must be assumed that they have weaponry that is far more advanced than ours. In fact, their weapons may not even look like weapons, so be alert and attuned to any potential danger at all times.
In addition, the IEL itself might be dangerous, armed with biological weapons such as venom or razor-sharp teeth—or perhaps something we can’t even imagine yet. Should the IEL behave in any way that appears hostile or threatening (e.g., growling, tensing up, bristling, or merely exuding an aura of menace), it might be best to keep your guard up.
* * *
I. Unfortunately, there are some factions within our government who believe that the only reasons for IEL to approach our planet would be hostile ones, but it is the belief o
f NASA that all intelligent life should be presumed peaceful until proven otherwise.
13
PLAN B
Lunar day 252
T minus 19.5 hours to evacuation
When I entered the rec room, things were bad. Violet was cowering in a corner, defiantly holding a set of hologoggles, while Patton advanced on her menacingly. Patton’s face was as red as his father’s had been, and there was rage in his eyes.
Kira was yelling at Patton to leave Violet alone, while Lily was cheering him on. Kira looked terrified. Lily looked disturbingly excited, like a spectator at a dogfight.
“Patton!” I yelled. “Stop!”
Patton froze in his tracks and whirled toward me. The blood drained from his face in fright. He instantly went from red to white, like he’d been bleached. He’d apparently been so angry with Violet that he’d forgotten all about the space snakes.
“Don’t call the snakes on me!” he pleaded, then pointed accusingly at Violet. “She started it! She kicked me!”
“He deserved it!” Violet argued. “Kira and I were in here, playing Unicorn Fantasy, and then they came in and tried to boot us off!”
“We asked nicely,” Patton protested.
“Like heck you did,” Kira said, then looked to me. “They tried to take the goggles right off us. Violet was only defending herself.”
“Yeah, you big jerk!” Violet screamed at Patton. “I hate you!”
Patton seethed with rage and spun toward Violet, his fists clenched.
“Don’t you dare touch her!” I yelled. It surprised me how forceful I sounded.
Patton backed down, torn between his anger at Violet and his fear of me.
However, Lily Sjoberg grew even more excited, as though she had been anticipating this moment. “Or what?” she asked me tauntingly. “Are you going to call your space snakes on us?”
“Lily . . . ,” Patton said weakly. “Don’t . . .”
“Oh, give it a rest, you moron,” Lily told him. “There’s no such thing as space snakes.”
“Yes, there is!” Violet said. “And if you don’t back off, Dash will call one here and it will swallow you whole and then barf up your bones.”
She was probably trying to be helpful, but her threat made the space snakes sound even more ridiculous than usual. If anything, this encouraged Lily.
“All right, then,” she said confidently. “Call them, Dashiell. I’m not afraid of them.” She came toward me, smiling cruelly, enjoying this. I thought back to what I had just learned about her, how she snuck into the greenhouse at night to sit among the plants. Even if she was the kind of person who took time to contemplate the wonders of life now and then, she was still a bad person. She was cruel and mean and as big a bully as her brother. Bigger, maybe.
I looked around the room, hoping Zan might make a sudden appearance. Maybe she could present herself to Lily as something even more hideous than what she’d shown Patton, scaring the pee out of her, too, and then the Sjobergs would finally leave the rest of us alone once and for all.
Only Zan didn’t show herself. We were on our own.
“You should be afraid of them,” I said, although the threat sounded hollow, even to me. “Don’t tempt me.”
“You mean I shouldn’t try to hurt you?” Lily continued toward me, her wicked smile growing bigger. “Even though you cost us our ComLink privileges. . . .”
“I didn’t cost you those,” I protested. “You’re the ones who broke the rules here.”
“And you’re the one who ratted us out to Nina!” Lily snapped. “The whole time we’ve been at this base, you have been constantly causing trouble for us.”
“Me?” I asked, backing away. “You’ve been bullying me and everyone else since you got here!”
“Because everyone here has been horrible to us,” Lily said. “But you . . . You have been the worst. You even tricked my poor brother into believing in these stupid snakes. He’s been a wreck because of you!” Lily’s eyes narrowed into little angry slits. “So now I think I am going to tempt you. Because I need to prove to Patton once and for all that you’re a liar and a fool.”
“My brother isn’t a liar!” Violet shouted. “Show them, Dashiell! Call those snakes!”
I glanced outside the rec room, looking for an adult or two who might be walking past, someone who could come to my aid. To my dismay, the only adult I could see was Sonja Sjoberg, and Sonja wasn’t going to be any help at all. Instead she was standing in the doorway, watching everything transpire with glee, her overinflated lips curled into a frightening grin.
Just my luck. Normally, I couldn’t do anything at MBA without an adult stumbling onto me, and now when I needed one, there was no one to be seen but the dragon queen.
Lily was now looming over me. She was a head taller than me and built like her brother, big and broad-shouldered. I had never considered fighting a girl, but I figured that Lily could probably wipe the floor with me. “What do I have to do to see these snakes?” she taunted. “This?” She poked me hard in the chest with a sharpened fingernail.
Patton cringed, as though Lily had made the worst mistake of her life.
But of course, no snakes appeared. Because I couldn’t conjure them up. All I could do was make a final desperate bluff. “Trust me, Lily, you really don’t want to do this.”
“Oh, I do,” she said. “I really do want to see them. What if I do this?” She shoved me backward with an open palm.
“Lily! Stop!” Kira yelled.
But Lily kept on coming. She was grinning broadly now, pleased that she’d called my bluff. Behind her, even Patton seemed to grasp what was going on.
“Hey!” he growled. “There aren’t any snakes, are there? You tricked me!”
“Of course he tricked you, you idiot!” Lily shouted. “The snakes don’t exist. This twerp can’t defend himself against us. Which means it’s payback time.”
Now Patton grinned cruelly as well. His hands clenched into fists and he stormed toward me. It seemed that he’d spent the last month building up hatred for me, and now it was all about to come flooding out.
“No!” Kira yelled. “Patton! Don’t!”
I tried to run, but Lily was already on me. She grabbed my arm hard enough to bruise it and held me there.
Out in the hallway, Sonja Sjoberg was watching intently, enjoying every second of this.
Patton was almost on top of me, fire in his eyes.
So I resorted to plan B. Maybe no adults were going to come to my rescue. And maybe Zan wasn’t, either. But Lily had been wrong about one thing: I still had ways to defend myself. I had figured there was a good chance my space-snake bluff wasn’t going to hold up, so before leaving the greenhouse, I had swiped something in case of emergency:
Two bags of grade-A Moon Base Alpha human excrement.
They were crammed into the pockets of my cargo shorts. I whipped out one of the opaque white packets and held it up, clutching the plastic zipper like the pin on a grenade. “Don’t make me use this,” I warned.
Patton paused long enough to read the label. Unfortunately, he had no idea what “excrement”’ meant. Instead of being concerned, he laughed. “Oooh. Excrement,” he taunted. “I’m soooo scared.” And then he lunged at me.
So I had no choice but to rip the bag open and cram it in his face.
Now Patton discovered what excrement was.
Since the poop had had most of the water sucked out of it, it didn’t splatter all over him. Instead it was more like a thick wad of extremely disgusting dirt. It smeared his pale face brown and got into his eyes and his nose. And since Patton was laughing as he attacked, the biggest portion of it went straight into his mouth.
He reared back, screaming in disgust. Or trying to scream in disgust. It was hard to scream with a mouth full of dehydrated human feces. Instead of words, he could only make guttural screeches. Then he collapsed to his knees, gagging and retching.
Lily Sjoberg had released my arm to give her bro
ther the chance to pummel me. Now, she reached for me again, determined to avenge his honor. I quickly skirted away from her.
“You’re dead!” she yelled at me, slashing with her nails. “I’m going to kill you!”
“Dash, shut her up, will you?” Kira asked.
“Gladly,” I said, then pulled a second packet of excrement from my other pocket and tore it open.
Lily’s eyes went wide as she realized I was more prepared than she’d expected. But instead of backing off, she slashed at me again.
I dodged her and then slammed the second bag into her face.
Lily might have been a little bit smarter than Patton, but she still hadn’t been smart enough to keep her mouth closed while attacking me. In fact, she’d had hers open quite wide, as she’d been screaming some sort of Swedish war cry. The moment she got a mouthful of space poop, however, she abandoned her attack and dropped to the floor beside her brother. Now both Sjobergs were gagging and retching in unison.
Violet burst into laughter. “You guys just ate excrement! And excrement is poop! So you ate poop! Serves you right!”
A banshee wail echoed through the room. It was so unearthly, for a moment I thought we might be under alien attack, but then I realized it was coming from Sonja Sjoberg. She was staring in horror at her children as they writhed on the floor, spitting and hacking up poop. Then she turned on me. Her wail became more of a shriek and she charged.
I didn’t have any more bags of excrement.
I didn’t need them, though. Sonja had only taken a few steps when Kira lashed out a foot and tripped her. In the low gravity, Sonja went flying. I dove out of the way as she soared past me and smacked face-first into the wall. There was a faint crunch, and then she grabbed her face, howling. It appeared that her surgically sculpted nose had been broken. “My nose!” she cried. “My nose!” Although due to the damage, it sounded more like “By doze! By doze!”
Violet kept on laughing. “This is way better than Unicorn Fantasy,” she announced.