Star Power

by Cathy Hapka

  “Please stand by,” it said. But it didn’t sound like PRIMROSE anymore. The voice sounded less like Mary Poppins and more like a cowboy from the old Western movies Daddy watches sometimes.

  Wallace laughed. “Okay, we’ll stand by, pardner!”

  The computer spoke again: “I have good news and bad news.” It still sounded like a cowboy talking, but once in a while a word would come out in PRIMROSE’s voice. “The bad news is, some of my newfangled circuits were damaged by the flare.”

  Uh-oh! That did sound like bad news. I noticed that Wallace looked confused.

  “The energy from a solar flare can damage electronics and satellites,” I told him. “It even happens on Earth sometimes when there’s a big flare.”

  “Okay,” Wallace said. “So what’s the good news?”

  The computer responded: “The good news is that all entertainment and food production systems are A-OK! Hang on to your Stetsons and I’ll show ya.”

  Loud opera music poured out of the speakers. The Baby squealed with delight and waved his arms in time to the music. Then the floor changed to look like a playground, with hopscotch and four square boxes chalked in.

  The 3D printer started humming. “Maybe it’s making a ball so we can play four square,” Wallace said eagerly.

  “We don’t have time for four square!” I exclaimed. “We have to figure out how to fix this. Think like a scientist!”

  The door on one side of the cube popped open. A whole eggplant was sitting there.

  “That’s not a ball,” Wallace said. “It’s an eggplant. And it’s not even cooked! So much for the super-duper high-tech 3D printer, huh?”

  I ignored him. The probe’s computer was damaged, and that could be a disaster. I had no idea how far the solar flares had sent us into deep space. Astronaut Girl always knows what to do, but this time I was worried.

  Before I could figure out a plan, the computer spoke again: “Howdy, pardners. Cinch yourselves back in your seats because jump drive will commence in ten seconds. Ten . . . nine . . .”

  “Jump drive?” Wallace and I said at the same time.

  I’d heard of jump drive, of course. Scientists imagined it could be a way to travel faster than the speed of light. Were we really about to do that? If so, where were we going?

  “Hold on a second!” I blurted out, as I strapped the Baby back into his chair.

  But the computer was still counting: “. . . six . . . five . . . four . . .”

  Chapter 5

  JUMP DRIVE

  “. . . three . . . two . . . one!”

  BOOM! Suddenly a huge force pressed me against the back of my seat. The probe shook, and the windows showed only darkness.

  “What’s happening?” Wallace shouted.

  “Maybe since it’s damaged, the probe is taking us home,” I guessed.

  A second later, we stopped shaking. Three stars appeared outside the windows. One was very bright.

  “I don’t think it took us home,” Wallace said. “What’s a jump drive, anyway? Is it like the Beamatron on Comet Jumpers?”

  “I told you, the Beamatron is fake,” I said. “But some scientists are trying to invent stuff like jump drives. That would make it possible to travel faster than the speed of light.”

  “I know what that is,” Wallace said. “They talk about it on Comet Jumpers all the time. It’s the speed that light travels through space.”

  “That’s right,” I said, a little impressed. “The speed of light is more than six hundred million miles per hour. At the speed of light, someone could travel around the earth seven and a half times in one second.”

  “Cool, like a superhero!” Wallace pulled out his notebook and scribbled a few words.

  I looked at the stars outside. “I wonder where we landed,” I said.

  A burst of static came from the computer. Then a new voice spoke: “Bonjour, mes enfants!” it exclaimed.

  Wallace laughed. “Hey, I think PRIMROSE is speaking French now!”

  The computer started gabbing away in French. I didn’t understand most of it. But suddenly I heard a familiar word.

  “Wait, did she just say Polaris?” I blurted out.

  Wallace shrugged. “It sounded like polar bear to me.”

  “No, I think she’s talking about Polaris—that’s the North Star.” I pointed out a window. “I bet that’s where we are! See? Actually there are three stars, and Polaris is the brightest.”

  The Baby started fussing. Wallace got up and unbuckled him and Astro Cat. I stood up, too.

  “Wow, I can’t believe we’re this close to the North Star!” I exclaimed.

  “Gramps showed me how to find the North Star when I was four years old,” Wallace said. “That’s when he taught me all the constellations. The North Star is part of Ursa Minor, which means ‘little bear.’ Once Carlos and I got lost in the woods when we were camping, and we used the North Star to find our way back.”

  “I’m not sure that’s going to work this time,” I said. “We’re a lot farther from home than we were before the jump drive.”

  The Baby wasn’t paying attention to Polaris. He crawled over, patted the side of the computer, and cooed.

  “I think the Baby’s bored,” Wallace said. “Maybe PRIMROSE can make a toy.”

  The computer responded in French. Then the door opened. The eggplant was gone. Instead, soap bubbles started floating out. The probe’s interior lighting flashed like a disco ball. That made the bubbles turn rainbow colored.

  The Baby shrieked with delight. He tried to grab a large purple bubble. He missed, but Astro Cat leaped up and popped it with his claws.

  Wallace laughed and grabbed Zixtar. “Attack of the intergalactic bubble monsters!” he exclaimed. “Save us, Zixtar!”

  He made Zixtar pop a bubble with his tentacle. The Baby squealed and clapped his hands.

  I couldn’t believe they were all goofing off at a time like this. Didn’t they realize we were in big trouble? The computer wasn’t working right. We were trapped light-years from home in the year 3000. What were we going to do?

  But I’m Astronaut Girl, and Astronaut Girl never gives up.

  I looked at the computer screen that was the top of the cube. Maybe I could reprogram it and take over the jump-drive system to get us home.

  The others were still playing with the soap bubbles. I ignored them and started working on the computer. Even though there were glitches from the solar-flare damage, it was still much faster and more powerful than any computer I’d used before. I quickly found a blueprint of the entire probe. That’s when I discovered a big problem.

  “Oh no!” I cried. “It’s even worse than we thought. The computer shows that two of the heat shields are loose! It must have happened during the solar flare.”

  Wallace balanced a bubble on his nose. “What does that mean?”

  “The shields protect us from the extreme heat of stars like that.” I pointed out the window again at Polaris. “If we don’t get them fixed soon, the whole probe could turn into a giant baked potato!”

  Chapter 6

  PROBLEM SOLVING

  I had to find a way to fix those heat shields!

  “I wonder if this probe has robotic arms like the space station,” I said, waving a soap bubble out of my face. “I could probably figure out how to use them to tighten the shields.”

  Wallace looked interested. “The high-school kids in my old town built a robotic arm for the science fair last year,” he said. “It was really cool. Carlos and I talked about adding one to Zixtar’s spaceship.”

  “Great idea!” I said. “Robotic arms are super useful for fixing stuff in outer space.”

  I studied the blueprints on the computer. It didn’t take long to locate the robotic arms. Next I had to figure out how to control them.

  I searched t
he computer’s database and found the section about robotic arms. When I pressed Activate, controls popped out of the wall of the probe. Astro Cat jumped in surprise, and the Baby giggled before going back to grabbing soap bubbles. A screen dropped from the ceiling. It showed a view of the arms as they emerged from the outside shell.

  Wallace peered at the screen. “Awesome! I bet Zixtar could use those to grab an ice-alien missile right out of the air!”

  “There’s no air in space,” I said. I wasn’t really paying attention to Wallace, though. The robotic arm controls were pretty simple, but I had to focus. I could see the loose heat shields on the screen sticking up above the rest. Each was about the size of a laptop computer.

  I got to work, using the robotic arms to push the first tile gently back into place. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Wallace scribbling in his notebook. It was a little distracting, but I did my best to ignore it.

  New story idea for script—Zixtar uses robotic arms to grab ice-alien commander and hurl him into the sun. (That way his tentacles won’t freeze!)

  I heard Wallace giggling behind me. But I didn’t look over. I just needed to tighten one more screw . . .

  “Got it!” I yelled in triumph. “One down, one to go!”

  I moved the robotic arms over to the second heat shield. Three corners were loose. The first corner was easy to fix, but the second one was a little trickier. I was still adjusting the controls to tackle it when PRIMROSE suddenly started speaking in French again.

  “What’s she saying now?” Wallace asked.

  I shrugged, still focused on the heat shield. I moved the arms toward the second screw . . .

  “Hey!” Wallace sounded worried. “Is she counting in French? What if we’re going into jump drive again? Get back in your seat, hurry!”

  He was already strapping in Astro Cat and the Baby. I wanted to finish my job, but I could hear the countdown, too. I barely made it to my seat before the ship began to shake and the windows went dark.

  When the ship stopped shaking, a whole new star appeared outside the windows. “PRIMROSE, where did you take us now?” Wallace exclaimed.

  “Don’t bother, we won’t understand her anyway,” I said.

  But when PRIMROSE responded, she wasn’t speaking French anymore. Now she sounded like the weather guy on the news.

  “Forecast says, dark and starry throughout deep space, especially in the area of the star Bellatrix,” the computer said.

  “Does that mean that’s Bellatrix out there?” Wallace asked. “It looks kind of blue.”

  “It’s a really interesting star,” I told him. “It’s much hotter and larger than our sun. Plus it’s named after a woman—the name means ‘female warrior’ in Latin.”

  Wallace laughed. “A warrior star?” he said. “Maybe we should put that in our script! The sun could join Zixtar’s army . . .”

  He kept talking, but I wasn’t really listening. I wanted to get those last two screws tightened before PRIMROSE decided to take us even farther away.

  I returned to the controls. But when I tried to move the robotic arms, they didn’t respond. I tried again. Nothing happened.

  “Oh no!” I cried. “I think the robotic arms got damaged by that last jump! Now how are we going to fix the last heat shield?”

  Chapter 7

  WALLACE’S NEW IDEA

  Wallace was writing in his notebook again. I wasn’t sure he’d even heard me.

  “Wallace!” I cried. “Pay attention! This is really bad. If we don’t fix this, we can’t go home.”

  He finally looked up. “Why not? You’re a good coder, right? So just write a code to override PRIMROSE and jump us back to Earth.”

  “I can try that, I guess,” I said. “But I can’t write a code to tighten that heat shield. They all need to be working, or the probe won’t survive reentry into Earth’s atmosphere!”

  “Oh.” Now Wallace looked worried. “How do we fix it?”

  “If the robotic arms were still working, it would be easy,” I said. “So we need to fix the arms first, but that could take a while—and who knows how many more jumps the shields can survive . . .”

  “Okay, so why bother with robotic arms?” Wallace held up his hands. “We have arms—let’s just use those! No coding necessary!”

  “You mean a spacewalk?” I said.

  “Maybe,” Wallace said. “What’s that?”

  “Any time an astronaut goes outside the ship while in space, that’s a spacewalk,” I told him. “That could be really risky, especially since we could go into jump drive at any moment.”

  “True,” Wallace said. “But at least PRIMROSE always does a countdown. That gives us ten seconds of warning.”

  I thought about that. If Wallace stayed by the computer, he could radio to me as soon as the next countdown started.

  “I’m not sure ten seconds is enough time,” I said. “I would have to get back into the air lock, and—”

  Wallace frowned. “Hang on,” he interrupted. “Who says you get to do the spacewalk?”

  I was surprised. Of course I should be the one to do it! I’m Astronaut Girl!

  Before I could say that, the computer spoke again in its weather-guy voice: “Here’s what to expect for the ten seconds ahead,” it said. “Continued outside temperatures ranging between five million and negative 455 degrees Fahrenheit. Plus one hundred percent chance of jump drive in ten . . . nine . . . eight . . .”

  Chapter 8

  A BIG DECISION

  “At ease, Privates,” the computer barked when we came out of jump drive. “We’ve arrived in orbit around a blue-tinged white star known as Vega. Carry on!”

  “Hey, now PRIMROSE sounds like an army commander,” Wallace said. He made Zixtar salute with one tentacle. “Roger that, General PRIMROSE!”

  “Vega!” I exclaimed. “That’s one of the most studied stars. It was the first one other than the sun to be photographed and measured. Cool!”

  Astro Cat started wiggling in his seat. The Baby gurgled.

  “Maybe we should let them move around,” Wallace said. He got up and released the two of them.

  I stood up, too. As I did, my stomach let out a grumble.

  “I’m hungry,” I said. “Let’s get those shields fixed so we can get home for the barbecue.”

  “What’s the rush?” Wallace said. “Anyway, we still have to decide who gets to do the spacewalk.”

  I had a feeling Wallace was trying to avoid his family storytelling contest, so I decided not to argue with him. Besides, nobody could do a spacewalk until I figured out how to make it work.

  The Baby crawled over to us and tried to grab Zixtar.

  “Zixtar’s not a toy,” Wallace told the Baby. “Hey, General PRIMROSE, can’t you entertain the crew somehow?”

  “Roger that, Private,” the computer responded.

  The cube’s door opened. A bright red laser pointer dot appeared on the floor.

  Astro Cat leaped on the dot. The Baby giggled and chased him. Wallace laughed as the two of them pursued the red dot all over the floor.

  I was glad they were distracted. That gave me a chance to work on the computer.

  Wallace looked over at me. “What are you doing?” he asked.

  “I’m trying to turn off the jump drive,” I said. “But the navigation system seems totally fried. Even my coding skills might not be able to fix it.”

  “You don’t have to fix the whole navigation system,” Wallace said. “We just need more time on the next countdown so I can get back inside from my spacewalk.”

  I scowled. “Your spacewalk?” I said. “I don’t think so. But hold on—give me a second to look for the countdown programming . . .”

  It took only a few minutes to find it. There wasn’t a way to make the countdown longer. But I had another idea.
<
br />   “Maybe I can program the computer to restart as soon as the next countdown begins,” I said. “That should delay things for at least another thirty seconds.”

  Wallace looked worried. “That’s not much extra time.”

  He was right, it wasn’t. Could I get back in through the air lock in less than a minute?

  Then I realized something. My heart sank.

  “I can’t do the spacewalk,” I blurted out. “I need to be here to do the programming. You’ll have to do it.”

  Wallace gulped. “Me?”

  I couldn’t believe this was happening. I’d been dreaming about doing a spacewalk my whole life.

  But I tried not to think about that. “You’ll need to wear a space suit and helmet to let you breathe,” I told Wallace. “You can talk to me through the radio, and I’ll tell you exactly what you need to do.”

  He took a deep breath. “Can Zixtar come along as my second-in-command?”

  “Sure, I guess so,” I said. “Just make sure you attach him to your suit so he doesn’t float away. By the way, you’ll also be tethered to the probe with ropes so you can’t drift off into space.”

  “That’s good,” Wallace said with a shaky laugh.

  I could tell he was scared. “Don’t worry, Wallace,” I said. “If Commander Neutron can do a spacewalk to rescue some silly fake alien on Comet Jumpers, you can do it, too.”

  “Well, Gramps always tells me that Babe Ruth said not to let the fear of striking out hold you back,” Wallace said.

  “Who’s Babe Ruth?” I asked.

  Wallace looked shocked. “You don’t know Babe Ruth? He’s only the most famous baseball player of all time!”

  “Whatever. Let’s get you suited up,” I said.

  I helped him get into his space suit. He carefully clipped Zixtar to his belt.