Galaxy's Most Wanted

by John Kloepfer

  Dedication

  For Nonny

  Contents

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Acknowledgments

  Back Ads

  About the Author and Illustrator

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  The darkness swept in as another day of summer camp came to a close. It had been a fairly ordinary day, but this was no ordinary sleepover camp. Northwest Horizons was the best STEM camp in America—science, technology, engineering, and math. The kids who attended Northwest Horizons all had one thing in common. They all dreamed of being the next big thing—making groundbreaking discoveries, starting their own companies, and one day becoming billionaires. Most would probably wind up as kooky college professors; however, there was always someone who might make it big. And at this particular camp, there were at least a few who could do it.

  Kevin Brewer was one such camper. He was interested in everything: physics, biology, and chemistry. Plus, he was good at math. Kevin particularly loved robotics, making machines move on their own and one day maybe even think on their own. But right now Kevin’s only concern was winning the Invention Convention, the most prestigious competition at science camp, and beating Alexander Russ, his nemesis four years and counting.

  There was no way Kevin was going to come in second this year, as he had every single other summer, because this year the winners of the NWH Invention Convention received the best prize ever: an automatic spot in the International Science Competition in Honolulu. The winning team would get to fly to Hawaii and compete against kids from all over the world. And if they won first place, they got to ride into outer space on a NASA shuttle with real astronauts.

  Kevin stood at the edge of the woods dressed in dark jeans and a black hoodie, trying to blend in with the night. Curfew was less than an hour away. He had to make this quick.

  “Ready?” Kevin asked, turning to three of his close friends—Warner Reed, Tara Swift, and TJ Boyd—each of them wearing similar all-black camouflage.

  Tara Swift peered over the top of Kevin’s head, her thick black-rimmed eyeglasses teetering on the edge of her nose. Tara was slightly taller than Kevin and the other boys, and she wore her dark, curly hair pulled up into pigtails. Aside from Warner, Kevin’s best friend, Tara was Kevin’s favorite person at camp. Not only was she supersmart and great at building things out of next to nothing, but she was also pretty cool just to hang out with. “Are you sure this is a good idea?” she asked him.

  “No, it’s not,” said Warner. “This is pointless!” Despite the fact that Warner was one of the smartest kids at camp, he didn’t care much about science and definitely not about the Invention Convention. All he really wanted to do was play video games, read comic books, and watch horror movies. The only reason he said he came to camp was because his parents wanted him out of the house, but Kevin knew that deep down, Warner really did like it here.

  “Come on, guys,” said Kevin. “The Invention Convention’s less than a week away, and we’ve got diddly-squat.”

  Up until now, they had spent almost the entire summer trying to design a computer program that could do a person’s homework, but when they asked it to write an essay on photosynthesis, all they got was a rambling five hundred words on the history of photography and the electronic synthesizer. TJ attempted to reprogram the software, but in the end it was more frustrating to use the homework machine than it was to do the actual homework assignment. Kevin knew they’d need something better than an A+ paper to beat Alexander anyway.

  “Kevin,” Warner said, sighing in defeat. “You’ve been coming to this nerd camp longer than anyone. You should know by now that Alexander Russ is never going to lose, so why don’t we just build a baking-soda volcano and call it a day?”

  Kevin took a deep breath. “We can’t give up. If we can just figure out what Alexander and his chumps are working on, we might have a real chance of taking them down.” Besides being a jerk, and rubbing his winning streak in Kevin’s face, Alexander was a liar and a cheat. Alexander’s father owned a successful technology company, and he had no problem “helping” his only son win the Invention Convention every year. A little too much help, if Kevin had anything to say about it.

  TJ nodded his head in agreement. He wasn’t much of a talker. Word around the campfire was that he’d damaged his voice box in a botched robotics experiment, but Kevin knew that was only gossip. He had gone to school with TJ since the first grade. He’d always been pretty quiet, although he would speak up in class when he had to. But when he showed up at camp, he kept completely and utterly mum. The truth was that nobody knew why TJ had suddenly decided to stop talking except for TJ, and he wasn’t telling.

  “Okay dum-dums,” Tara said, staring into the forest’s black depths. “If we’re gonna do this, let’s do it. Who’s going first?” She tapped her nose and said, “Not it.” Quickly, Warner and TJ touched the tips of their noses before Kevin even knew what was happening. “Kevin’s it,” they all jinxed each other. Kevin didn’t much care, though. He wanted to be first.

  “Okay, follow me,” Kevin whispered, waving them along as he crept into the dark woods. A warm breeze rustled the leaves and a lone owl hooted from the treetops as Kevin and his friends approached a clearing in the middle of the forest.

  Kevin snuck behind an evergreen and hid out of sight. Warner, TJ, and Tara spread out and took cover behind trees of their own. Kevin was trying hard to breathe quietly in and out. He could hear his own heartbeat thumping in his chest. Slowly, he peered out around the tree trunk.

  There they were.

  Two figures were lit up in a soft glowing light. Kevin recognized the silhouettes as Luke and Dante, Alexander’s teammates. Behind them a saucer-shaped vessel levitated three, and then five, and then ten feet off the ground.

  Someone was riding it. Dirt and leaves spiraled upward as a whoosh of air blasted out from underneath.

  Kevin made eye contact with Warner, whose eyes bulged with amazement. Warner pointed toward the saucer and mouthed the word: Awesomeness.

  So this was what they were up against. Alexander’s team, the Vainglorious Math Nerds, had built a freakin’ hovercraft. Kevin’s stomach churned with the beginnings of an ulcer.

  The hovercraft descended, carrying the VMN’s pint-size leader, and powered down with a mechanical sigh. Alexander the Great jumped to the ground from his high-tech chariot, hooting and high-fiving his teammates. The three boys proceeded to bump chests and howl like wild orangutans.

  This was going to be tougher than Kevin had thought. He signaled his team to head back so they could regroup, and TJ, Tara, and then Warner crept away silently, disappearing into the shadows. Kevin was about to tiptoe off, too, when his footstep startled a nearby squirrel. In a flash, the skittish fur ball bolted up into the treetops in a loud flurry of leaves.

  Uh-oh. Kevin gasped and his chest tightened.

  Alexander swung his flashlight toward the noise. “Who goes there?” he called out with the authority of a king.

  Kevin stood stone-still behind the tree. His pulse quickened as the voices drew closer. Their high-beam flashlights cut through the darkness like lightsabers.

  Kevin sucked in his belly and held his breath as long as he dared, then exhaled soundlessly.

  “Who’s they-er?” Luke called out in a p
layful yet sinister tone.

  Kevin wanted to run, but couldn’t find the guts to move. They were way too close. Three against one. He didn’t like the odds.

  “Come out, come out, whoever you are . . . ,” Dante sang.

  “It’s ‘come out, wherever you are,’” Alexander corrected him. “Not whoever, stupid.”

  “But we don’t know who it is, either,” said Dante.

  Alexander flicked his teammate’s earlobe hard, and Kevin took off running.

  “There! Get him!” Alexander yelled as he whipped his head around and tagged Kevin with his flashlight. “The little snoop’s getting away!”

  Kevin had a nice head start, but when it came to running, he had only one gear, and that was slow. Luke and Dante charged through the pinewoods and were gaining on him fast.

  Kevin faked right and broke left, pushing through a low-hanging tree branch as if it were a turnstile. Thwack! The branch snapped back, nailing Luke in the gut as Kevin sprinted off. Luke doubled over and fell to the ground, tripping up Dante, who flew face-first into a pricker bush.

  “Yow!” Dante’s painful yelps echoed into the treetops.

  Kevin raced out of the forest, heading back to his cabin. He rounded the lake, glittering peacefully in the moonlight, and slowed his pace once he was in the clear. He stopped behind a bunkhouse and looked over his shoulder. Still nobody in sight. Kevin wheezed, trying to catch his breath. He reached into his camp-issued fanny pack and pulled out his inhaler.

  Kevin closed his eyes, about to take a puff, when he felt a pudgy hand come down on his shoulder.

  “Hey, Kevo,” Alexander said, snatching the inhaler out of Kevin’s grasp. “You don’t mind if I call you Kevo, do you, Kevo?”

  “Give it back,” Kevin wheezed. “I need it!” The asthma burned in Kevin’s chest, making him feel as though he were sucking in air through a narrow straw.

  “You think you can just spy on my team and get away with it?” Alexander tossed the inhaler from one hand to the other with a glint of evil in his eyes.

  Kevin lunged forward, but Alexander dodged his swiping arms and spun out of reach. The alpha nerd danced around, taunting Kevin. “Ooh, I’m Kevin,” he said. “And I don’t breathe good.”

  Kevin could hear Tara and Warner both calling his name from the woods, but he couldn’t yell back. Kevin lunged at Alexander again, this time pushing him hard enough to make him stumble backward. A gooey squish sounded underneath the bully’s foot, and Alexander’s eyes went bright and fierce, his nostrils flaring as he sniffed what was now on the bottom of his shoe.

  “You got goose poop on my shoe!” Alexander roared.

  “I can’t breathe!” Kevin tried to shout, but his voice came out only in a squeaky whisper.

  “Hey!” a girl’s voice yelled from behind them as Tara stuck her head around the corner of the cabin. “Give him the inhaler, Alexander! You’re gonna give him brain damage!”

  “Like anyone would notice.” Alexander laughed at his own smart remark.

  “Give it back, dorkweed.” Warner appeared from the edge of the woods. “Or you can kiss your precious late-night Snickers stash good-bye,” he threatened. It was a well-known fact among the campers that Warner was the man to see about a two a.m. sugar craving. They paid top dollar for access to Warner’s junk-food supply, and Alexander was no different.

  “You wouldn’t dare cut me off,” Alexander sneered. “I’m your best customer.”

  “Oh, but I would,” Warner said, cracking his knuckles. “Now hand over the inhaler.”

  Alexander narrowed his eyes, staring at Kevin, Warner, and Tara. “All right,” he said with a smirk, and then proceeded to scrape the goose poop off the sole of his sneaker with the mouthpiece of Kevin’s inhaler. “New flavor,” he cackled, tossing it at Kevin’s feet. “Just for you, Kevo. . . .”

  “You little—” Warner charged after Alexander, who darted back to his own cabin, almost tripping over his own feet.

  Tara jumped in front of Warner and held him back. “Don’t do it, Warner. He’s not worth it!”

  Kevin dropped to his knees and grabbed the inhaler off the ground in a hurry. He wiped it off as best as he could on his T-shirt, and then shook it, bracing himself for the wretched flavor. He had no choice. His friends all watched in horror as he took a quick puff, holding the medicine in his lungs. Kevin gagged and coughed. The taste was terrible, but at least the asthma attack was over.

  “Thanks, man,” said Kevin to Warner once he could breathe again.

  “Please,” Warner replied as he helped Kevin to his feet. “I eat nerds like him for breakfast.” He pulled out a box of Nerds candy and poured an avalanche of red pebbles into his mouth.

  Kevin walked up the steps of the cabin, where he, Warner, and TJ were all bunking in the same room for the summer, and stomped straight to the bathroom to rinse out his mouth. The bunkhouse was split up into five separate bedrooms, which each housed three to four campers at a time. There was a single room for the counselor and a large bathroom, and they all shared a common room off the hallway.

  When Kevin returned from the bathroom, Bailey, their counselor, was talking to Warner, TJ, and Tara in the common room. Bailey was tall and skinny with a pointy nose and a shaggy blond mop of hair, which he was constantly pushing out of his eyes. Kevin always wondered why their counselor didn’t just get himself a haircut.

  “Hey, Kev,” Bailey said, flicking his blond locks. “Everything okay?”

  “Uh-huh,” Kevin lied, still tasting the rancid flavor on his tongue. He knew he should have told on Alexander, but Kevin was no tattletale.

  Bailey looked at his watch. “Almost time for bed, guys,” he said. “Tara, you should get going back to your bunk.”

  “Wait, we need to have a quick team meeting first,” Kevin said. “Secret IC stuff,” he added, sensing that their counselor might try and stick around.

  Bailey looked at the time again and furrowed his eyebrows. “Okay, but make it quick. You only have about ten minutes,” he said, and then left them alone to talk.

  “Dude,” Warner said as the team gathered on the couch. “Alexander really crossed a line. That was the nastiest thing I’ve ever seen.”

  “You’re telling me,” Kevin said. “That was the grossest thing I’ve ever tasted!”

  “Alexander,” Tara grumbled, looking at Kevin. “He’s got to be stopped. We have to take him down at the convention.”

  “That hovercraft he’s got is gonna be tough to beat, but we just have to think bigger than him,” Kevin said, and TJ nodded enthusiastically.

  “If I’m in, it’s to teach that twerp a lesson,” Warner said, flipping open an issue of his favorite comic book.

  “Well, we better think fast.” Tara yawned. “I need to get back before I get in trouble.”

  “Okay, okay,” said Kevin. “What about—no, not that,” he thought out loud. “Or how about a—nah, that’s no good either!” His mind was reeling. All they needed was one great idea, but he couldn’t think of a single thing better than Alexander’s hovercraft. He gritted his teeth and growled involuntarily while TJ just sat there silently, scratching his head.

  The crickets chirping outside rose in volume as Warner crunched some more Nerds and read his comic. Kevin glared at his buddy, a little annoyed that he wasn’t helping. A few moments later, Warner abruptly closed the cover and looked up with a satisfied smirk on his face. “Brainstorm,” he said.

  “That’s what we’re doing,” Tara snapped with her chin resting on her fist.

  “No, dummy!” Warner said, now holding up the comic book and pointing to the title, which read “Brainstorm by Max Greyson.” “Take a look at this,” he said, and flipped to a page in the middle that showed a drawing of some futuristic-looking high-tech gizmo.

  “What the heck is that?” asked Kevin.

  “That, my friend,” said Warner, “is a galactascope.”

  “What’s a galactascope?” Tara sounded skeptical.

 
“Well, Tara,” Warner began. “A galactascope is—well, it’s basically an instant messenger across the entire galaxy.”

  “But that’s impossible,” Kevin argued.

  “Because you can’t send messages faster than the speed of light. It totally violates Einstein’s theory of relativity,” Tara piped in.

  “She’s right, Warner.” Kevin shrugged. “This has to be real science, not some half-baked comic-book mumbo jumbo.”

  “Guys, I’m serious,” Warner said. “I can’t believe I hadn’t thought of this already. This is the real thing. The author, Max Greyson, was abducted by aliens at the age of twenty-three. Like, way back in the eighties. He’s ancient now. But he went from being a simple-minded police officer to a cult comic-book author in the years following his abduction. There’s even been speculation that the devices described in his work are actual alien technology that was downloaded into his brain.”

  “Ha!” Tara scoffed. “What a load of hooey!”

  “Just take a look. It’s all here.” Warner handed Kevin the comic.

  Kevin studied the description from the captions, squinting his eyes at the illustrations. TJ leaned over Kevin’s shoulder, checking out the diagram and blueprints laid out on the comic book’s glossy pages.

  When Kevin broke the galactascope down into its basic parts, he saw that it could actually be built. They could probably even get most of the stuff they needed from the scrap room down at the robotics workshop. There’s no way it’s gonna work, though, he thought. It violated almost every law of physics. But if they were going to have any chance of claiming first prize, then that’s exactly what needed to happen.

  Kevin looked up from the comic book. “Okay, let’s do it.”

  Kevin woke to the sound of the breakfast bell dinging in the distance. He wiped crusts of sleep from the corners of his eyes, put on his glasses, and took a double puff of his inhaler. He dropped down from the top bunk and scanned the room. Warner hadn’t even made it to bed. He slept soundly on the floor surrounded by half-empty bags of chips spilling every which way. At least two dozen open DVDs were splayed out in front of him, and there were candy wrappers all over the place, mostly Kit Kats, Kevin and Warner’s favorite candy bar.