Spaced Out

by Stuart Gibbs

“Just lucky, I guess.” I helped her to her feet.

  She looked at me curiously. “What’d you do to get rid of him?”

  “I fought back.” I didn’t know what else to say. “Though you helped. You really got him good.”

  Kira grinned. “Serves him right.”

  Dr. Marquez had come down the stairs and was now approaching, still looking peeved at me. “Dashiell, I am the adult in charge of this base while all the others are gone, so I am going to ask you one more time: What did you do to Patton?”

  I glared at Dr. Marquez so hard that his step faltered. “Patton’s fine,” I told him. “But Kira’s not. Patton hurt her. As the adult in charge, maybe you ought to be concerned about that.”

  “Oh,” Dr. Marquez said thoughtfully. He appeared to have forgotten that he was a doctor. “Yes. Of course. What’s wrong, Kira?”

  Kira didn’t look pleased that I’d pawned her off on Dr. Marquez, but she seemed to understand I had a reason for it. “I banged my head on the wall when Patton threw me into it. I think I might need to have it checked out.”

  “Hmmm.” Dr. Marquez seemed to be trying to remember basic first aid. “I suppose you’re right. Come along to the medical bay with me.”

  Kira allowed Dr. Marquez to lead her away. I watched them go, still feeling angry. Angry at the entire Sjoberg family for raiding the greenhouse and trying to hurt me, and angry at Dr. Marquez for letting them get away with their horrid behavior.

  Something flickered in my vision. For a moment, I thought it was someone coming up from behind me, but then I realized it was Zan. She was having trouble appearing to me, the same way she had after trying to find Nina—only she seemed even more exhausted this time. She was barely there at all. I could see the wall right through her.

  “Are you all right?” I asked.

  “I’m tired. What I just did . . . it wasn’t easy.” Her voice was barely a whisper.

  “It was different than coming to me?”

  “Your mind is open to being approached. With Patton, I had to force my way in. His mind is more closed-off than any I’ve ever encountered.”

  “I can understand why. The guy probably has moon rocks for brains.”

  Zan smiled, then winked out of existence for a moment. When she came back, she was even more transparent than before. “I shouldn’t have done that, but . . . I didn’t know what else to do. He was really going to hurt you, wasn’t he?”

  I felt my neck, which was sore in several places where Patton had grabbed it. “Yes.”

  “For no good reason?”

  “Yes,” I repeated, feeling even more ashamed of humanity than I had when discussing our interest in money.

  Footsteps echoed in the hall behind me.

  “I have to go,” Zan said, and vanished for good.

  Cesar Marquez peered around the corner a second later—although it was hard to tell it was him at first because he was wearing the helmet for a space suit. He cased the hallway cautiously, then asked, “Have you seen some kind of giant deadly alien snake in here?”

  “No,” I said, playing dumb. “Why?”

  “Patton says he saw one.” Cesar cautiously edged around the corner, still on the lookout. He was clutching a large serving fork for self-defense. It wasn’t much of a weapon, but then there weren’t many options at MBA. “Or at least, I think that’s what he said. It was hard to understand him.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “ ’Cause he’s curled up on the floor of the greenhouse, crying like a baby.” Cesar’s voice was muffled inside his helmet. “He said a giant space snake with a million teeth just came through the floor in here and tried to eat him.”

  I did my best to stifle a smile, then pointed to the floor to show there weren’t any holes in it. “Doesn’t look like anything came through here to me.”

  Cesar stared at the floor a bit longer than he should have needed to determine that this was true. While his mother was brilliant, Cesar had missed out in the genetic lottery for brains. He pointed to the large puddle of pee Patton had left behind. “What’s that?”

  “Patton wet himself.”

  Cesar made a face of disgust. “Oh. Gross. We don’t have to recycle that, do we?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Well, I’m not doing it. Patton should. It’s his pee.” Cesar cased the hallway one more time. “Man, something sure scared him. But I don’t see any space snakes here.”

  “I guess he must have imagined it,” I said.

  “Yeah. I guess.” Cesar tossed the serving fork aside and tried to pull the space helmet off his head. This turned out to be more difficult than he’d expected. It wouldn’t come off.

  “Are you okay?” I asked.

  “No!” Cesar snapped. “Stupid helmet!” He yanked on it harder and harder, to no avail. One time, back on earth, Riley’s dog had got her head stuck in an empty pickle jar. Cesar looked almost exactly like that now.

  “Is that even your helmet?” I asked.

  “No. It’s Roddy’s.” Cesar angrily banged on the helmet with his fist, forgetting his head was inside it, and sent himself reeling into the wall.

  I shook my head in dismay, glad that Zan had left before witnessing this display of human idiocy. “Well, no wonder. Roddy’s a lot smaller than you.”

  “I didn’t have time to find one that fit!” Cesar was getting angry now. “I thought there was some kind of space snake on the loose!”

  I decided not to point out that if there had been some sort of deadly space alien at large in MBA, it could have easily attacked one of his many body parts not protected by the helmet. “Hold on,” I said. “Let me help.”

  Cesar was too busy thrashing around to hear me. He apparently hadn’t learned his lesson about banging on the helmet while wearing it, because he was now whacking it against the wall. With each smack, his head rattled around inside the helmet like a pinball, and yet he kept doing it, screaming a new curse word each time.

  “Stop that,” I said. “It’s not going to work.”

  “It will if I hit it hard enough.” Cesar reared back his head and slammed it into the wall. The helmet didn’t break, although Cesar did an impressive job of stunning himself. He staggered around drunkenly for a moment.

  Something occurred to me. I waited for Cesar to regain his balance, then asked, “Why didn’t you just get your own helmet?”

  “ ’Cause it’s broken.”

  “Since when? How?”

  “Since the other night. Patton and Lily and I were playing space football.”

  “With your space helmets on?”

  “Of course,” Cesar sneered, like I was the idiot. “You can’t play football without a helmet.”

  “We’re only supposed to use the helmets out on the surface.”

  “No duh. That’s why we played at night when no one was awake to bust us.” With all his exertion, Cesar had fogged up the inside of his space visor. I could barely see him through the mist inside.

  “And you hit your helmet hard enough to break it?” I asked.

  “Yeah.” Cesar laughed. “We were playing in the rec room. It was Patton versus Lily and I was the full-time quarterback. On this one play, after Lily and I scored, Patton sacked me in the end zone. I wasn’t ready for it. He smashed me face-first into the corner by the door and busted the glass on my face-plate thingy.”

  “You mean, the visor?”

  “Yeah! He cracked it pretty bad.” Cesar frowned as he realized something. “You better not tell anyone about this. You rat us out and we’ll come for you.”

  I stared at Cesar, amazed by his stupidity. And then I thought of something. “Is there any chance that you broke Lily’s helmet too?”

  Cesar shrugged. “Maybe. It got banged around a lot.”

  “Cesar!” I shouted, stunned he hadn’t made the connection. “Nina went outside with Lily’s helmet! If it was broken, she’s probably dead!”

  Understanding slowly dawned on Cesar. “Oh,” he said. “Oops.”<
br />
  Now an even scarier thought occurred to me. “Is there any chance you guys might have broken any of the adult helmets?”

  Behind the fogged-up visor, Cesar averted his eyes. Even though he was four years older than me, he looked like Violet when she realized she’d been caught doing something wrong. “We might have.”

  “You might have?”

  “Well, after I broke my helmet, we needed another, and none of the other kids’ helmets would fit me. . . . so we got some adult ones.”

  “You got more than one?”

  “Patton thought they fit better than ours.”

  “And you broke them?”

  “Not necessarily. We didn’t break the glass or anything. But we did play pretty hard with them.”

  “Which helmets did you use?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  I clapped my hands to the side of my head. “So they could be anyone’s out there?”

  Cesar didn’t say anything, but that was as good as a response.

  I raced for the control room. That’s where the radio was to contact the adults on the surface. If someone out there had a damaged helmet, they needed to know fast. The glass that formed the visor was a barrier between life and instant death. Perhaps it wouldn’t break right away, but if it did, the person wearing it would immediately be subjected to the extreme heat or cold of the lunar surface—not to mention being completely deprived of oxygen.

  Behind me, Cesar resumed trying to get Roddy’s helmet off his head by pounding it against the wall.

  I entered the control room. Through the wall, I could hear Patton in the greenhouse next door. While the exterior walls of MBA were extremely thick—the better to repel meteoroids—the interior ones were paper-thin. Sound carried right through them, especially sounds as loud as Patton was making. He was still wailing, terrified. “It was trying to eat me! It was licking its lips. All six of them!”

  “Stop crying this instant,” his father ordered coldly, displaying the typical lack of parental kindness that had made Patton the psychotic thug he was. “You sound like an idiot.”

  “It’s still loose in the base!” Patton cried. “If we don’t defend ourselves, it will eat us!”

  I couldn’t help myself. I hissed as loud as I could, imitating the sound of Zan’s alien creature.

  Patton heard me through the wall. “That was it!” he screamed. “It’s coming for us! We’re all gonna die!” After that, nothing he said made sense. I couldn’t understand him through his terrified sobs.

  I clapped the radio headset over my ears, doing my best to drown out Patton’s blubbering. It was replaced by the sound of all the other adults, out on the lunar surface, communicating with one another.

  Dr. Janke: “There’s no sign of Nina by the water reclamation units. Over.”

  Chang: “Roger that, Wilbur. Why don’t you swing around toward the emergency air lock? Over.”

  Dr. Iwanyi: “Dr. Goldstein and I are there now. No sign of Nina here, either. Over.”

  The main computer was displaying a map of the surrounding area and tracking all the adults on the surface through the GPS units in their suits. There were twelve blips, each marked with the name of the person it represented.

  I spoke into the microphone. There was probably some official way I was supposed to announce that I had joined the conversation, but I had no idea what it was. “Attention, everyone out on the surface. This is Dash at MBA. This is an emergency. According to Cesar Marquez, at least one of your helmets might have some damage to its visor.”

  There was a moment of chaos. I’d reached everyone at once and they all responded at the same time, a cacophony of fear, worry, and disbelief. Finally, Chang’s voice rose above it all. “This is Base Commander Kowalski. Everyone but Dashiell, I need radio silence.”

  The radio waves instantly went quiet.

  Chang said, “Dashiell, please elaborate.”

  “Cesar says that he and the Sjobergs have been playing football with the helmets at night. They cracked the visors on Cesar’s and Lily’s and then used some of the adult helmets, only he can’t remember which ones.”

  There was a general murmur of anger over the radio. Everyone couldn’t help themselves from calling Cesar and the Sjobergs morons—and worse—even though Cesar’s mother could hear everything. In fact, I was pretty sure I heard Cesar’s mother insult his intelligence as well.

  “Quiet!” Chang snapped. “I need everyone to stay silent unless I request an answer. Now then, is anyone aware of any damage to their helmet?”

  There was a moment of weighted silence as everyone checked. Then a voice said, “I think I see a crack in my visor.”

  It was my mother.

  My blood instantly went cold. I fought the urge to respond, knowing it was better to let Chang handle the situation.

  “How bad is it?” Chang asked.

  “It only appears to be a hairline fracture,” Mom replied, surprisingly calm given that her life was at stake. “But it’s definitely a crack. It must have formed since we came out on the surface. I didn’t notice it before we left.”

  I paced anxiously, silently cursing Cesar and the Sjobergs. If they’d damaged the glass, it might have looked fine until being subjected to the extreme pressure change of leaving MBA for the lunar surface.

  “I think I may have a hairline fracture too,” said another female voice. Daphne Merritt.

  “How’s yours look?” Chang asked.

  “About the same as Dr. Gibson’s,” Daphne reported. Her voice sounded much shakier than Mom’s had, as if she was trying not to panic.

  “All right then,” Chang said. “We can’t assume that anyone’s helmet is free from damage, which means we need to take emergency precautions immediately. According to my computer, some of us are too far from MBA to make heading back there a safe option.” All the adults had computers built into the fabric of the arms of their suits, so they could consult them easily. I assumed Chang’s was giving him the GPS coordinates for all the other adults, the same way the main computer was giving them to me. “Luckily, the operations pod for construction of Moon Base Beta is safe and the oxygen system is working. Dr. Howard and I will get the Gibsons with our rover and take them there. Everyone else, return to Moon Base Alpha immediately. Is that understood?”

  There was a chorus of “affirmatives.”

  When Chang spoke again, his breathing was a bit more labored, as though he was hurrying across the lunar surface as he spoke. “Dashiell, inside the main storage unit for the space suits, there is a set of spare visors for each helmet, along with a repair kit. I need you to get that and find Kira, then use the small rover and bring it to us.”

  I tensed, startled by this order. “Me?”

  Chang said, “I know it’s asking a lot, pal, but we need you to do this for us.”

  “All right.” I tried to sound calm, although my heart had begun racing.

  I was going back onto the surface of the moon.

  Excerpt from The Official Residents’ Guide to Moon Base Alpha, “Appendix A: Potential Health and Safety Hazards,” © 2040 by National Aeronautics and Space Administration

  LUNAR ROVERS

  Should you absolutely have to venture onto the lunar surface and cover long distances there, chances are you will be using a lunar rover. While these can save you a great deal of time, energy, and oxygen, remember that they are vehicles and you should use the same caution when driving them that you would using any vehicle on earth. True, their maximum speed is considerably slower than that of a car, but an accident in a rover could still be extremely dangerous, especially one in which you are thrown free or the rover flips on top of you. Therefore, when driving the rover, be alert to all potential obstacles in the immediate area, such as (but not limited to) other rovers, abrupt changes in terrain, sudden slopes, sharp volcanic rocks, and robots. Do not attempt any sort of drag racing, jumps, or other trick driving on the lunar surface. And, of course, wear your restraining seat harness at
all times.

  MOONLIGHT RIDE

  Lunar day 217

  Afternoon

  The last time I’d ventured onto the surface of the moon, I’d nearly died.

  This was because Garth Grisan had been trying to kill me. He’d used the giant robot arm to try to swat me like a bug. In the process, the glass of my own visor had cracked, and I’d come within seconds of suffocating. The thought of going back out again had terrified me ever since. For the first few nights after my near-death experience, I’d had panic dreams where I was back on the surface, racing for safety while my air ran out, after which I’d wake screaming for help in a cold sweat. The dreams had subsided since then, but I still had them every once in a while.

  My mother’s life was in danger, though. So I did my best to put aside my fears, grabbed the helmet repair kit, found Kira, suited up, and headed back onto the surface.

  “Can I drive?” Kira asked. Her voice came over my radio headset as we trudged toward the rover garage.

  “Do you know how?” I asked. I was doing my best to remain calm, to focus on my breathing and not panic.

  “Would I be asking if I didn’t know how? Of course I can drive.”

  I glanced toward her, wondering if this was true. Since self-driving cars had come along, young people didn’t need to take driving lessons. It was rare to see a car on earth that even had a steering wheel anymore. And even if that hadn’t been the case, Kira was still only twelve. “Where’d you learn?”

  “My cousins have some old ATVs on their farm. I’ve driven them before, over all kinds of terrain.”

  “Okay,” I agreed. “Sure, you can drive.”

  I was glad Chang had insisted I bring Kira along with me. Even though she’d been out on the surface with me during the robot attack, she didn’t seem to be suffering from any bad memories of it. (Then again, I’d been the one who’d almost died.) In fact, she was thrilled to be out on the surface again, freed from the confines of MBA. She was bounding along, humming cheerfully over the headset, and her high spirits lifted mine.

  The sun was out, making the lunar surface glow brightly. Meanwhile, since there was no atmosphere, the sky remained jet black above, save for the stars. It was all quite beautiful, and for a few moments, I found myself thinking how lucky I was to be one of the few people who’d ever experienced this in the entire history of mankind.