Spaced Out

by Stuart Gibbs

  “I won’t be gone long this time,” Zan said. “I promise. But right now I’m a complication you don’t need.”

  With that, she vanished.

  I turned my full attention to Violet, feeling even more frustrated now. She was climbing out of her sleep pod. Her hair looked like she’d been asleep for a while; it was tousled like cotton candy. But she seemed too chipper to have woken up only a minute or two before. I wondered how much of my conversation she’d heard.

  She looked around the room, searching for whoever I’d been talking to. “Where are they?” she asked.

  “What were you doing in here?” I shot back, trying to change the subject.

  “Hiding from you. You were mean to me before, so I came in here because I didn’t want anyone to find me. But then I fell asleep. And then you came in and woke me up with your shouting.” Violet picked up an InflatiCube and looked under it, as if maybe I’d been talking to a very tiny person who could hide under it. Or a hyperintelligent insect. “Where’d they go?”

  “How long were you listening to me after you woke up?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” Violet replied. “I can’t tell time. And besides, I don’t even have a watch.”

  “Well, guess.”

  Violet screwed up her face in thought. “Four hours.”

  “You’re right,” I sighed. “You can’t tell time.”

  Violet stared at me thoughtfully. “Do you have an imaginary friend?”

  My gut reaction was to deny this, because it was dumb for a twelve-year-old to have an imaginary friend. But then I realized I didn’t have a better explanation. “Yes. I do. I was just talking to her.”

  “What’s her name?”

  “Zan Perfonic.”

  Violet snorted with laughter. “That’s silly.”

  I shrugged. “That’s her name.”

  “Not her name! It’s silly that you have an imaginary friend! You’re twelve!”

  “There aren’t that many other kids here to hang out with.”

  “It’s still silly. Having imaginary friends is weird.”

  “You have an imaginary friend!” I exclaimed.

  Violet looked at me curiously. “No, I don’t.”

  “Yes, you do. You were talking about her this morning!” I tried to remember the name. “DooDah? The talking manatee?”

  “DeeDah,” Violet corrected, like I was the crazy one. “She’s a space walrus. And she’s not imaginary.”

  I rolled my eyes. “You think there’s really a space walrus living in the women’s bathroom here?” I turned toward the door, done with this conversation. “And you say I’m silly. . . .”

  “I don’t really know what she is,” Violet told me. “I haven’t seen her. But I heard her and she sounds like a walrus.”

  I stopped by the door and spun around to face Violet again. “What do you mean, you heard her?”

  “I was in the bathroom and I heard a walrus.”

  “When?”

  “This morning. I got up early because I had to poop and when I was in the bathroom I heard her.”

  “Have you ever heard DeeDah before?”

  “Nope. This was the first time.”

  I had a sudden flash of inspiration. Some things that had baffled me all day were starting to make sense. I grabbed Violet’s hand and led her out the door. “What did she sound like?”

  “I told you! A walrus! Where are we going?”

  “To the bathroom.”

  “Why? Do you have to poop?”

  “I want you to show me where you were when you heard DeeDah.”

  “You can’t go into the girls’ room! You’re a boy!”

  I led Violet down the staircase into the staging area. “Violet, I need you to think about this. Tell me exactly what you heard in the bathroom. Can you make the noise the walrus did?”

  “I think so. It kind of went like this.” Violet lowered her voice as low as she could and bellowed, “Mmmmmeeeelllllllppppp.”

  We were passing the control room. Chang was at the computer, keeping tabs on everyone outside. He laughed at Violet’s noise and said, “What are you up to now?”

  “Dash wants to go into the girls’ room to talk to DeeDah!” Violet exclaimed.

  Chang laughed again, not taking her seriously.

  It occurred to me that this was everyone’s standard reaction to things Violet said.

  I shoved through the door into the girls’ bathroom and led Violet inside. I probably should have sent Violet inside first to see if anyone was using it, but I was too distracted. “Was that the only noise you heard DeeDah make?” I asked.

  “No,” Violet said.

  “Hey!” a voice shouted from one of the toilet stalls. Just my luck, it was Lily Sjoberg. “Boys aren’t allowed in here!”

  “That’s what I told him!” Violet reported,

  “It’s an emergency,” I explained.

  “Then use the men’s room!” Lily shouted. “I don’t want you stinking everything up in here!”

  “Calm down,” I told her. “It’s not that kind of emergency.” Then I looked at Violet and asked, “What else did DeeDah do?”

  “Well, she made the noise a lot. Mmmmeeeeeellllllpppppp. Mmmmmeeeeelllllppppp. And so I said, ‘Who is this?’ and she said, ‘DeeDah.’ ”

  “This doesn’t sound like an emergency!” Lily shouted from the stall. “Get out of the girls’ room, you pervert!”

  “Can you just give me one minute?” I asked. “It’s important.”

  “No!” Lily shouted back. “I don’t want you lurking around in here listening to me on the toilet.”

  “Lily,” I said, “believe me, the last thing in the world I want to do is to listen to you on the toilet.”

  “Me too,” Violet agreed. “You toot like an elephant.”

  “That does it!” Lily announced. “If you don’t get out of here right now, I’m going to scream!”

  I lost it. I could have stepped out of the bathroom and let Lily have her peace, but it was an emergency. I was doing something important, and I’d had it with the Sjobergs bullying everyone on the moon base every chance they got. “No,” I warned. “You’re going to keep your mouth shut. If you so much as make another peep in there, I’m going to take one of the suction hoses from that toilet and cram it onto your face so hard that it sucks your brain out through your nose!”

  To my surprise, I sounded pretty scary. Maybe it was because we were in the bathroom and my voice was echoing a lot. Maybe it was because I was so angry, I really was scary.

  When Lily spoke again, she sounded pretty frightened. “You wouldn’t.”

  “Don’t test me,” I growled. “It wouldn’t be that hard. Your brain isn’t that big. So just shut up for one minute and I’ll be out of here.”

  “Okay,” Lily said meekly.

  I returned my attention to Violet once again. She was smiling at me. “Wow,” she said. “You’re tough.”

  “Where did the voice you heard come from?” I asked her.

  “From the toilet,” Violet said.

  “Really?” I asked. “Think hard.”

  Violet did. She made a show of it, scrunching up her face. “It was the toilet,” she said definitively.

  “Show me,” I said.

  Violet entered the second stall and sat on the toilet there. “I was actually on that toilet,” she informed me, pointing to the first one, “but we can’t use it because Lily’s pooping there.”

  Lily make a weak sigh in response.

  “But I was sitting like this when I heard the noise, and it came from right down there.” Violet pointed into the toilet bowl.

  I looked at her finger, jabbing downward. “You’re sure? Could it have maybe come from under the toilet?”

  Violet scrunched up her face again. “Maybe.”

  “Like, from under the floor?”

  “I guess.”

  I knelt before Violet, looking right into her eyes. “Is it possible that you might not have h
eard this walrus perfectly? Because she was under the floor. Do you think that maybe instead of saying ‘DeeDah,’ she said ‘Nina’?”

  Violet’s mouth dropped open in understanding, which was all the answer I needed. Then she grew defensive. “It sounded like ‘DeeDah’! And it was really hard to hear her!”

  “It’s okay,” I said. “You’re not in trouble. In fact, you may have saved the day.”

  Violet brightened in excitement. “Really? I’m a hero?”

  “You’re a hero,” I agreed. “It’s the rest of us who screwed up.” I led her back out of the stall, racing out the door. “Thanks, Lily. We’re done.”

  “You can go back to pooping now!” Violet informed her.

  I dragged Violet right across the hall and into the control room and told Chang, “I think I know where Nina is.”

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

  WORK AREAS

  Sometimes, it may be easy to forget that MBA isn’t merely a living space; it is also a working science laboratory. As such, there are many potentially dangerous items within its walls: flammable, poisonous, or unstable chemicals; potentially infectious organisms; lasers; etc. Even the telescopes can be dangerous if caution is not exercised around them. And other workspaces may have their dangers as well. To that end, all lunarnauts ought to stay clear of each other’s workspaces—and everyone should take steps to ensure that their work remains at their workspace and doesn’t end up in the living areas. If you encounter something that you believe belongs in one of the workstations, don’t touch it. Find the proper expert and report it to them so that they, or someone else suitably trained, can handle said object.

  BIG REVELATION

  Lunar day 217

  Late afternoon

  Chang immediately stopped what he was doing and looked to me expectantly.

  “Where?” he asked.

  “Under the girls’ bathroom!” Violet announced.

  Chang frowned. “Violet, this is no time for jokes.”

  “She’s not joking,” I said. “I think she talked to Nina in there this morning. Only she didn’t realize who it was.”

  “I thought it was a walrus in the toilet,” Violet explained.

  Chang looked at her quizzically. “Why would there be a walrus in the toilet in the moon base?”

  “Because there’s water in the toilet,” Violet told him. “And walruses like the water. Duh.”

  “Violet heard Nina calling for help,” I said. “But it was probably hard to hear her down through the floor, so it didn’t sound like ‘help.’ ”

  “It sounded like ‘Mmmmmmeeeeeelllllllpppppp,’ ” Violet added.

  “And then Violet asked who it was and she said, ‘Nina,’ ” I continued. “Only Violet misunderstood and thought she said, ‘DeeDah.’ ”

  “And then I told her who I was,” Violet said. “And she said to tell someone she was down there.”

  “So why didn’t you?” Chang asked.

  “I did,” Violet said pointedly. “I told lots of people there was a walrus in the bathroom. Mom and Dad and Dr. Marquez and Dr. Janke and Dr. Balnikov and Inez and Roddy.” She gave me a hard stare. “I even told you.”

  “You did,” I admitted, then looked to Chang. “None of us took her seriously.”

  “Oh,” Chang said. “But how could she be under the bathroom? I’ve checked the blueprints a dozen times. There’s nothing under the floors here. The base sits directly on the lunar surface.”

  “But what’s under the lunar surface?” I asked.

  Chang gave me a curious look. “What do you mean?”

  “The blueprints only show the base itself,” I explained. “They don’t show what it was built on. Back when we were in the operations pod for Moon Base Beta, Mom told me that they had a similar pod for the construction of this base. Well, where was it?”

  Chang’s mouth fell open. “Oh my God,” he gasped. He immediately turned to the computer screen and demanded, “Computer, do we have an image of the lunar surface here before MBA was built?”

  “Certainly,” the computer replied. “Loading it now.”

  A high-resolution satellite photo of the lunar surface appeared on the screen, huge swaths of gray dust marked by occasional islands of dark rock.

  “Now mark the outline of where MBA is located,” Chang ordered.

  “It would be my pleasure,” the computer said. The connected octagons of MBA appeared on the photo. At the top of the larger one, directly below where the bathrooms and the air-lock staging area were, there was a long streak of dark rock.

  “Is that a lava tube?” I asked.

  “It’s the lava tube,” Chang corrected. “The one where the operations pod was.” He snapped to his feet and hurried out of the control room, making a beeline for the girls’ room.

  Violet and I followed him.

  “If I recall correctly, this wasn’t originally the planned site for MBA,” Chang explained. “I wasn’t involved at that point, so I don’t know for sure, but I think it was supposed to be close by. Only once the operations team got here, they found there was some sort of problem with the original site and that it was more structurally sound to put MBA here, right above where they were living.”

  “So the pod itself is still down there?” I asked.

  “There wouldn’t be any point in removing it.” Chang led us back into the girls’ room.

  I could still see Lily Sjoberg’s ankles underneath the door of the first toilet stall.

  “Hi, Lily!” Violet called. “We’re back!”

  “Oh no,” Lily groaned.

  “Are you almost done?” Violet asked. “You’ve been in here forever!”

  I asked Chang, “Do you really think the pod’s life-support systems are still working?”

  “I wouldn’t have expected it,” Chang replied, “but they must be if Nina’s down there.”

  “Hey!” Lily cried. “There’s not supposed to be any men in the women’s room! What is going on here today?”

  “Sorry,” Chang told her. “It’s an emergency.”

  “Another one?” Lily grumped. “What’s a girl have to do to get a little peace around here?”

  “Nina!” Chang shouted at the floor. “Can you hear me? It’s Chang!”

  “Hi, Nina!” Violet yelled. “This is Violet! I’m here too!”

  There was no response.

  “Nina!” Chang yelled again. “Are you there? Please respond!”

  Nothing.

  “Maybe she left,” Violet said.

  “No,” Chang said, looking worried. “There’s nowhere else she could go. But whatever life-support system is down there wasn’t designed to be working this long. If Nina’s oxygen has run low, she might be in an unresponsive state.”

  “Like what?” Violet asked. “Texas?”

  “Er . . . no,” I explained. “Chang means that Nina might have gone to sleep.”

  “Oh,” Violet said, seeming pleased with this answer.

  I was worried, though. If Nina was running low on oxygen, she was probably unconscious. Or in a coma. Whichever one, it wasn’t good.

  Then suddenly, there was a noise from below us. A slow, rhythmic clanking of metal on metal. There were three clanks close together, followed by three spaced farther apart, followed by three close together again.

  “Sounds like the toilet’s acting up,” Violet said.

  “No,” Chang told her happily. “That’s Morse code. Three short, three long, three short. SOS! That’s Nina! She’s alive!” He turned back to the floor and yelled, “We hear you, Nina! Sit tight! We’re coming!”

  The clanking shifted and became a simple rhythm. Bang bang bang bang bang.

  “That means she heard us,” Chang reported, then led us back out of the bathroom.

  “Bye-bye, Lily!” Violet called.

  Once we were out the door
, Chang turned to me and said, “Your suit’s still in the air lock, right?”

  “Yes.” There had been no time to clean and remove it.

  “Good,” Chang said. “Get in there and suit up. I’ll join you in a minute.”

  “Suit up for what?” I gulped.

  “The rescue mission,” Chang told me.

  My heart began to race. It seemed as though I started sweating in an instant. “Why me?”

  “Because Nina is in desperate circumstances and we need to move fast.” Chang opened a storage unit and pulled out a helmet repair kit and a backup oxygen tank. “I wouldn’t take you out there if I thought I didn’t have to, but I have to get Nina now, it’s too dangerous to solo, no other adults are around, and I trust you with my life. Okay?”

  “Okay,” I said. I wasn’t in any hurry to head back outside, but Chang’s faith in me was heartening. I turned to Violet and told her, “You did good work.”

  “I know,” she said.

  “Sorry I got upset at you earlier. You were only trying to cheer me up and I was a jerk.”

  “You were.”

  “I’ll be back soon,” I said, hoping that was true. Then I gave her a hug and headed for the air lock.

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

  LACK OF VIGILANCE

  In the very unlikely event that something does go wrong at MBA, resulting in injury, problems can be compounded if other lunarnauts don’t attend to the situation quickly. So be alert and vigilant at all times. Memorize the emergency drills and practice them with regularity. Familiarize yourself with basic medical procedures. And if anything strikes you as strange, unusual, or potentially dangerous, don’t keep it to yourself. Report it to the moon-base commander immediately.

  RACING THE CLOCK

  Lunar day 217

  Late afternoon

  Two minutes later, I was back on the surface of the moon.

  Chang had gathered the emergency equipment and rushed me through suiting up. Now we were heading clockwise around the base as quickly as we could go.

  I was terrified. I feared I was going to get plugged by a falling piece of space junk, or that the patch on my space suit might fail, or that a thousand other things might go wrong.