Space Case

by Stuart Gibbs

  The landscape around me suddenly vanished and a new one appeared. Now I found myself standing next to Roddy inside the Sistine Chapel. Words flashed across Michelangelo’s famous painting on the ceiling: PREPARE FOR INVASION.

  I turned to Roddy, stunned. “We’re fighting aliens inside the Vatican?”

  “Yeah,” he said with a grin. “Malicious Freeps. Flesh-eating slugs from Neptune. This is gonna be awesome!”

  The slurping sound of something large and viscous came from the galleries ahead. Three eyeballs on turquoise stalks poked around the corner, then narrowed angrily upon spotting us.

  Even though the enemy was fake, I felt a very real wave of fear. My fingers tensed on the virtual triggers.

  Before the attack could come, however, the image froze. I thought it was a glitch at first, the whole game locking up, but then noticed that Roddy was still moving beside me.

  “What the . . . ?” he asked.

  “Dashiell and Rodrigo!” Nina’s voice boomed throughout the chapel, echoing off the walls. “I thought I’d made it clear that all ComLinks were to remain open.”

  Roddy gulped, far more frightened by Nina than by the entire army of flesh-eating Freeps. “I didn’t hear about that,” he lied. “Sorry. Logging off now.” His avatar vanished a second later.

  “Logging off,” I echoed.

  “Wait one second, Dashiell,” Nina told me. “I want you to come see me. Right now.”

  “Where?”

  “I’m in my quarters. Don’t dillydally. This is urgent.”

  “Okay,” I said, then logged out of the game. The Sistine Chapel vanished and all I could see was black.

  I pried the hologoggles off my face and blinked in the fluorescent light of the rec room. I always find switching from the virtual world to the real one a little disorienting. The virtual world is so overstimulating that sometimes real life feels strangely unnatural afterward. Veeyars refer to this readjustment as “the letdown.”

  Roddy was still sitting on the cube next to me, frowning at his goggles. “That’s just great,” he muttered. “What are we supposed to do now?”

  “I have some books you could borrow.”

  “Books?” Roddy snorted with disgust. “Big whoop.”

  I started for the door.

  “Where are you going?” Roddy asked.

  “Nina wants to see me.”

  “Oooh,” Roddy taunted, “you’re in trouuuuuble! What’d you do wrong?”

  “Nothing,” I said.

  “C’mon,” Roddy told me. “Holtz just bit the big one. It’s a major crisis—and Nina wants to see you smack in the middle of it? She’s not inviting you over for tea. You’re definitely up a creek.”

  “I’m not,” I said, though the truth was, I didn’t believe that myself. As I headed out the door, I had the disturbing feeling that Roddy was right. I was in trouble. I just didn’t know why yet.

  Excerpt from The Official Residents’ Guide to Moon Base Alpha, © 2040 by National Aeronautics and Space Administration:

  GOVERNMENT

  According to the International Lunar Treaty of 2036, no country from earth may stake a territorial claim to any part of the moon. Thus, the moon has no official government. Instead, all lunarnauts are technically residents of their sovereign nations, and the laws of each base are dictated by the nations that built them. MBA is therefore governed by the laws of the United States of America.

  The system for governing MBA was modeled after the successful system at McMurdo Station, the American scientific outpost in Antarctica. The moon-base commander (or MBC) serves as the de facto mayor, handling all issues to the best of his or her ability. The MBC’s decisions should be regarded as the final say in all conflicts and disputes. In the unlikely event that an issue arises that is beyond the capacity of the MBC, then it can be appealed to the city government of Houston, Texas, home of NASA Lunar Command at the Johnson Space Center.

  It should be stated, however, that the residents of MBA have all been carefully selected for friendliness and compatibility, and thus there ought to be a minimum of conflict—if there are even any conflicts at all!

  VEILED THREATS

  Lunar day 188

  Midmorning

  Even though the moon base isn’t big, there are still a lot of places I’m not allowed inside. Many areas are restricted for security or maintenance reasons, while others are merely off-limits to kids. I’m not even supposed to enter the science pod or the greenhouse without an adult (although I do, on occasion, because that’s a stupid rule). And, of course, I’d never been to the solar arrays or the lunar rover garage, because you have to go outside to get there, and for a kid, that’s simply out of the question.

  Nina’s quarters were another place I’d never been, even though she lives right next door to me. My route there took me right back through the air lock staging area, then up the metal stairs to the catwalk.

  Nina answered the door the moment I knocked on it. She ushered me inside, locked the door, then glanced at her smartwatch. “I thought I told you to get here quickly.”

  It had been maybe two minutes since I’d talked to her. “I came as fast as I could. I had to log out of the ComLink.”

  Nina gave an annoyed sigh, then pointed to an InflatiCube for me to sit on. It might as well have been an order, so I sat. As usual, the cube made a loud, embarrassing sound beneath my bottom.

  “What was so urgent that you had to disobey my order about using the Link?” Nina demanded.

  “Roddy’s dad asked me to check on him. But Roddy was already jacked in and wouldn’t log off, so I had to log in myself.”

  Nina rolled her eyes at this, but moved on. She had bigger fish to fry. “From now on, when I give an order, you follow it. No exceptions. Understand?”

  I nodded, then took in the room. To my surprise, Nina’s quarters were significantly larger than my family’s, even though she had the place to herself. However, hers also had to serve as an office. On earth she probably would have had a massive, imposing desk and several couches. Here, due to the difficulty of getting any sort of furniture to the moon, she had the same InflatiCubes as everyone else and a spindly desk she’d probably had to assemble herself. Still, it was the only desk at MBA, which made it impressive enough.

  There was also an actual window. It faced south, the same way my window would have—if I’d had one. I’d never had the chance to look this direction. While much of MBA is surrounded by ugly man-made things like solar arrays and evaporators, there was nothing but moon outside Nina’s window. The dust close to the base was tracked up, but beyond that I could see parts of the lunar surface still in their pristine, prehuman condition. A small crater sat on the horizon, gleaming in the sun. Since there’s no atmosphere on the moon to diffuse the sun’s light, the sky was dark and filled with stars. It was the most beautiful thing I’d seen in months.

  “Why don’t you think Dr. Holtz’s death was an accident?” Nina asked me.

  I swung back to face her, startled by the question and how abruptly she’d asked it. “How’d you know that?”

  “I’m the base commander, Dashiell. It’s my job to know what’s going on here.”

  I knew from her stone-cold expression that I wasn’t going to get any more out of her than that. I wasn’t upset about it, though. In fact, I was relieved that someone was asking questions about the death. So I opened up and told the whole story of my late-night run to the bathroom and how I’d overheard Dr. Holtz there.

  Nina kept her eyes locked on me the whole time. She didn’t show a trace of surprise or shock—or any other emotion, for that matter. She was in full Nina the Machina mode.

  When I finished, she asked, “Did anyone else besides you hear this conversation?”

  “I don’t think so,” I said. “I was the only other person in the bathroom. Why?”

  “I’d just like some confirmation.”

  “Why?” I repeated. “Don’t you believe me?”

  “Look, I’m s
ure you think you heard Dr. Holtz say those things.”

  “I know I heard them.”

  “It was late,” Nina went on. “You were tired. You were embarrassed about breaking the toilet.”

  “I didn’t break it! It just broke.”

  “Whatever the case, you were nervous and exhausted. You were hiding in the stall, so maybe you couldn’t hear the conversation as well as you thought.”

  “Could you check the security cameras?” I asked. There are cameras in all public spaces at MBA. We’d been told they were there for our safety—to monitor our health and the integrity of the base—although Roddy always claimed the real reason for them was to spy on us. “They must have recorded Dr. Holtz’s conversation. You can hear it for yourself.”

  Nina shook her head. “I can’t. There aren’t any camera feeds in the bathrooms. For privacy. And besides, the cameras we have don’t record sound.”

  “Oh.” Normally, the news that I wasn’t being filmed during my most private moments would have been pleasing. But now it meant there was no way to back up what I’d witnessed. “Would the phone call have been recorded somewhere? Because if you tracked that down . . .”

  “I’m not going to do that, Dashiell.”

  I blinked in surprise. “But it would prove that I’m telling the truth.”

  “I have enough going on here right now,” Nina said coldly. “I’m not about to start digging through the call logs—”

  “Well, I’m sure you could ask someone else to do it. I could even help out.”

  Nina rubbed her temples, as though she had a bad headache. “You don’t understand. What I mean is, I’m not about to start conducting an investigation. Dr. Holtz wasn’t murdered. And I need you to stop saying that he was.”

  I sat back on my InflatiCube, stunned. The plastic squeaked loudly under me, sounding like a hippopotamus passing gas. “Do you have proof he wasn’t murdered?”

  “Yes. I have video of him walking out the air lock by himself.”

  “That doesn’t mean no one forced him to do it.”

  “How?” Nina demanded.

  “I don’t know,” I admitted. “But this just doesn’t make sense.”

  “Accidental deaths never do. But they happen all the time. I don’t know why Dr. Holtz went out the air lock solo. I truly wish he hadn’t. I know you liked him a lot. Everyone here did. We’re all upset.”

  Nina didn’t look upset to me, though. She looked exactly the same as she always did.

  “I’m not making this up because I’m having trouble dealing with what happened,” I said. “I know what I heard.”

  “I doubt that very much,” Nina told me. I started to protest, but she cut me off. “I don’t want to sound callous here, but Dr. Holtz’s actions this morning have caused NASA and me a great deal of trouble. There are plenty of politicians back on earth who aren’t fans of this base. They think it’s a colossal waste of money and are looking for any excuse to shut it down. And now our leading authority on the effects of space travel on the human mind and body—the very man who assured all these politicians that this place was perfectly safe—has just done something reckless and died as a result. I can assure you, that isn’t going over very well in Washington.”

  I tried to hide my surprise; Roddy had been right about all this. “Then why not investigate? Then you could prove Dr. Holtz wasn’t being reckless!”

  “And prove that we’ve got a murderer up here instead?” Nina demanded. “That’d be even worse!”

  “But if you don’t investigate, then the murderer gets away with it,” I argued. “And they’re still up here with all of us.”

  “There is no murderer!” Nina shouted. For a moment she seemed as surprised as I was that she’d lost control of her emotions. Then she took a deep breath and calmed herself down. “I was only being rhetorical. The point is, this event is a serious problem for MBA. It is a crisis from a political, personal, and public-relations stance. Plus we have the social ramifications to deal with.” Nina began listing points on her fingers. “Do we do an autopsy? How do we deal with Dr. Holtz’s children and grandchildren back on earth? Do we return the body there, or do we keep it here? And if we keep it here, what do we do with it? I have my hands full right now. The last thing I need is some kid running around like Chicken Little, telling everyone there’s a murderer on the loose.”

  I met Nina’s stare. She was definitely angry now. Most of her face was as stony as usual, but her eyes told the story. They were blazing hot enough to melt steel. I didn’t know if she was angry at Dr. Holtz for putting her into this situation or at me for making it worse—or a little of both—but I knew I shouldn’t push my luck. If Nina wanted to punish me, she had the authority. She could probably ship me back to earth if she wanted—or worse, force me to stay at MBA even longer than I was supposed to. So I backed down. “I understand,” I said.

  “Good,” Nina told me. “Now then, not only are you forbidden from talking about this anymore, but you are also not to e-mail anyone about it, video log about it, or communicate it to anyone here or on earth in any way. If you have a problem with that—if you really need to talk to someone—I’ve already contacted Dr. Marquez. He’s willing to schedule some extra sessions with you.”

  “You mean psychiatric sessions?” I asked warily.

  “It’s nothing to be ashamed of,” Nina said. “Living here can be stressful—and Dr. Holtz’s death has added an extra layer of stress on top of that. Dr. Marquez will be seeing lots of base residents more than usual over the next few days.”

  Before I could say anything else, there was a soft ping from the public-address speakers in Nina’s room. The soothing female voice of the base computer came on. “Attention all base residents. The supply rocket is en route. Touchdown estimated in sixty minutes.”

  I stiffened in surprise. With everything that had happened, I’d completely forgotten—once again—that the rocket was coming in that morning.

  Nina checked her watch, then snapped to her feet. “I’m afraid our time is up. I have a great deal to do in the next hour.” She came around from behind her desk, took me by the arm, and led me toward the door.

  I didn’t resist. Spending time with Nina was no fun at all; it felt like being in a cage with a snake. Before I knew it, I was out on the catwalk and Nina was locking the door behind me.

  In the hall below, my fellow Moonies were now scurrying about, prepping for the rocket. Since I’m only a kid, I didn’t have an assigned task. So I headed for the shower. My encounter with Nina had left me feeling grimy. Or maybe it was the fact that I hadn’t bathed in more than a week. Whatever the case, it was a good time to get clean. There is only one shower on base and, for the moment most everyone else was busy. Plus, once the rocket arrived, there’d be a lot of other people who wanted to use it.

  The shower is a three-foot-wide metal tube wedged between the men’s and women’s bathrooms. You can enter it from either side—though you have to remember to lock the doors once you’re in it. It’s pretty lame compared to a shower on earth: a thin stream of warm water drizzles on you, and you can’t even use soap or shampoo because it all gets recycled back into the reservoir. But it’s better than nothing.

  Roddy was in the men’s room, seated in the first stall. I could tell it was him because he was singing out loud to himself: an old tune from my grandparents’ time called “I’m Too Sexy.” It isn’t exactly rare to find Roddy on the toilet. He doesn’t seem to hate the device nearly as much as I do, and he often gets distracted by the SlimScreen on the stall door for up to half an hour. This can be a problem in a place where there are only three toilets for each gender, one of which is often broken.

  I slipped past Roddy quietly. I wasn’t trying to avoid him, exactly. I simply prefer not to have conversations in the bathroom. Roddy, however, has no such concerns. In fact he seems to enjoy having discussions while seated on the throne.

  “That you, Dash?” he asked.

  I stifled a groan. �
�Yeah.”

  “Thought I recognized your shoes. What are you doing in here?”

  “I thought I’d play a little ice hockey,” I said sarcastically. “It’s the bathroom, Roddy. What do you think I’m doing in here?”

  “I meant what are you doing: number one or number two?”

  I groaned again. “Really?”

  “Okay,” Roddy said. “I’ll guess. Number two.”

  “Actually, I’m gonna shower.” I pulled my shirt off over my head.

  “Want to know what I’m doing?” Roddy asked.

  “Not really.”

  “I’m playing Raid on Titan.”

  “Here?” I asked. “You’re playing a virtual-reality game in the can?”

  “Not yet, but I’m about to. I’ve just about got the access figured out. Nina thinks she can kick me off the main ComLink? I’ll show her.”

  “You do that,” I said, doing my best to sound like I meant it. I wasn’t sure how playing a virtual-reality game on a communal toilet showed anyone anything except how addicted to virtual reality you were.

  “Want to jack in?” Roddy asked.

  “I’ll pass.” I kicked off my shoes.

  “Your loss,” Roddy told me. “I’ve got a game saved on level upsilon where I’ve procured a Whipsaw WarpFighter with prion eliminators. You can be my secondary. I’m gonna SynBlast the Heisenbok Ice Fields.”

  “I don’t even know what any of that means. Besides, I’ve got some other stuff to do before the rocket gets here.”

  “Like what?”

  I didn’t answer right away, in part because I didn’t really have other stuff to do—and in part because I’d just thought of something. Rather than hop in the shower, I opened the toilet stall closest to me and glanced at the SlimScreen. It was turned off. As I’d expected, there was a tiny black nub in the center of it. A nanocamera. These are standard for all SlimScreens. Normally, it’s hidden by the video projection when the screen’s on. I asked, “Roddy, are the SlimScreen nanos here wired to record?”