“That’s enough, Sylvie,” my grandfather finally cut in. “We don’t have time for this. If you won’t agree to be his escort, we’ll have to take him home to Pluto. That will take us at least four days. I don’t want to keep your father waiting that long. But it’s up to you.”
Sylvie scowled, and it was Venetio’s turn to grin.
“Fine,” she said. “I’ll be his stupid escort. Whatever.”
The Martian official nodded and slapped matching metal bracelets on Sylvie’s and Venetio’s wrists.
“If you go farther than ten meters from your escort, an alarm will go off at Central Police Headquarters,” the official warned Venetio. “If it continues to go off for more than thirty seconds, an officer will be dispatched to deport you. There are no second chances. Got it?”
“Got it,” Venetio said. Then when the official turned away to go over another form with my grandfather, he muttered, “Way to make a guy feel welcome.”
“You’re just lucky to be here, Plutonian.” Sylvie sniffed.
“Geez, Sylvie. Why do you have to be so mean to him?” Elliot asked her.
Sylvie rolled her eyes and ignored him.
Privately, I agreed with Elliot. Venetio seemed OK. And aside from the fact that their planets’ soccer teams were rivals, I really didn’t see what Sylvie’s problem was.
• • •
The Martian official went belowdecks after that. To check that we weren’t hiding any BURPSers in the lower decks, I guess. My grandfather gathered us all together.
“As far as the Martian authorities are concerned, we’re here to refuel,” my grandfather informed us. “That usually wouldn’t take us more than a couple of hours, but I fooled around with the turborotor and a few other things. Enough so we’ll have to stay here for a few days to make repairs. Hopefully, that will give us enough time to locate Sylvie’s dad.”
“How are we going to do that?” Sylvie asked. “Can you trace the source of that transmission you found? Or find the lab some other way?”
“I have it covered,” my grandfather assured her with a wink. “But first, we need to talk about Mars. There’s a lot going on here, what with the summit and the game and everything. I don’t want us to get involved in any of that. Those things have nothing to do with us. Our goal is to find Sylvie’s father. The key to accomplishing that is for us all to keep a low profile. If we keep our heads down and don’t draw any attention to ourselves, everything will be fine. OK?”
Elliot, Sylvie, and I nodded.
“Er…” Venetio stammered, looking embarrassed.
“What?” my grandfather demanded.
“Nothing!” Venetio assured him, shoving what looked like a phone into the front pocket of his suit.
My grandfather gave him a suspicious look, but he was prevented from pursuing the matter further by the reappearance of the Martian official.
“It all looks legal, though I’d say you have some rotor damage,” he remarked.
“I was afraid of that,” my grandfather said gravely. “Can you point us in the direction of a good repair shop?”
“Sure thing,” the official said, turning to open the portal door and usher us all off the ship. “What the—”
There was a sea of faces waiting for us outside. Small, pinkish faces with perfectly round eyes, tiny mouths, and flat ears. And antennae. Everyone in sight had two bobbing antennae sticking out of the top of their heads.
I barely had time to notice that most of the Martians had bushy hair like Sylvie before there was a great roar of excitement, followed by a blinding series of flashbulbs.
For a horrible moment, I thought that the crowd and all the hubbub were about me. I felt every bit as self-conscious as I had on the first day of fifth grade, the first time I had had to face all of my classmates as a half-dinosaur. And a huge part of my brain started trying to figure out how I could melt myself right down into the floor.
But then I heard what the voices were saying:
“SYL-VI-A!” they chanted. “SYL-VI-A! SYL-VI-A!”
Twenty-Two
The five of us, plus the Customs official, stood stunned in the doorway of the ship for some time before a swarm of Martians wearing black helmets and riot gear hustled us away. I grasped the end of my tail tightly to keep it from getting stepped on as we were hurried along. Shouts of “SYL-VI-A!” and “TWENTY-TWO! TWENTY-TWO!” followed us down a hallway until we were shoved unceremoniously into a small room. Which, from the smell of things, was used to hold cleaning supplies.
Our guards shut the door behind them and left us there. We stood blinking in the dim light, trying to clear the residual echo of the flashbulbs out of our eyes.
Once we could see again, we all stared at Sylvie.
She was examining her right thumbnail, carefully not looking at any of us.
I cleared my throat.
“Um, any chance you’re going to tell us what that was all about?”
Sylvie narrowed her eyes at her thumb.
“What what was all about?” she asked innocently.
“Sylvie!” I exclaimed.
“OK, OK.” She stared harder at her thumb and then took a big deep breath.
“I guess you could say…” she started. “I mean, you wouldn’t be totally wrong if you thought… I guess I’m a little bit…famous.”
“Famous?” Elliot echoed her.
“Kinda,” she said quietly.
“Wait, you guys don’t know?” Venetio piped in. And for the first time, I glared at him. I wasn’t sure I liked this Plutonian knowing something about my friend that I didn’t.
“What’s ‘twenty-two’?” my grandfather asked with raised eyebrows.
“That was my jersey number,” she told him.
“Jersey?” I asked, and then it all came together in my head at once. “Soccer! It was you, wasn’t it?”
Sylvie just stared at me.
“In the ’14 Finals,” I explained. “You were the one who took a dive—er, I mean—got fouled. Weren’t you?”
“Sylvie? Play soccer?” Elliot asked, laughing. “No way. I don’t believe it.”
I understood his skepticism. The Sylvie we knew hated sports. And exercise. And sunlight. But that was the only thing I could think of that made sense.
Sylvie let out a deep sigh.
“OK, fine. I was on the team. And I did play in the ’14 Finals. But I wasn’t the one who got fouled.”
“She wasn’t,” Venetio cut in. “It was Tycho Brawn who took the dive.”
“But you played soccer?” Elliot exclaimed, still stuck on what he plainly considered to be the most important detail.
“Yes,” Sylvie said simply. “I played soccer. And I was awesome, OK? But I don’t play anymore.”
I felt like my brain was doing somersaults inside my skull. Even before we had found out she was a Martian (well, half-Martian), Elliot and I had always known that Sylvie was a bit…odd. And that she probably had secrets. But this…
“Why didn’t you tell us?” I demanded.
She shrugged. “You never asked.”
“That’s not something you wait to be asked!” I exclaimed, suddenly really frustrated. “Friends are supposed to tell their other friends important stuff like this!”
“Well, I didn’t know that rule until now.” Sylvie sniffed and looked sulkily at the floor.
Venetio turned to my grandfather.
“You didn’t know who she was either, sir?” he asked incredulously.
“Please stop calling me ‘sir.’ And I don’t follow soccer,” my grandfather said. Then he turned back to Sylvie. “I do wish you had said something, young lady. I’m afraid this is going to complicate the incognito plan.”
“Sorry,” said Sylvie, not sounding sorry at all. “But nobody would have even known I was back if not fo
r the big-mouthed Plutonian over there.”
Everyone’s gaze shifted over to Venetio, who raised his hands defensively.
“Admit it,” Sylvie said angrily. “You told.”
She fixed the Plutonian with a look that I had seen her mother use on uncooperative restaurant staff. It had the same effect on Venetio that it had had on the servers. He began to squirm uncomfortably and looked appealingly at my grandfather.
“I only told my mom! I called her, sir, just like you told me to. She’s a big soccer fan. I had to tell her I’d gotten a ride to Mars with Sylvia Juarez!”
“Your mother was your only call?” my grandfather growled.
“Um, well, yes, sir. But I have a feeling she may have called a few more people. Like, maybe the radio station that gave me the ticket.”
“I have a feeling you’re right,” my grandfather said, letting out a deep sigh.
The Martian police eventually returned to let us out. By then, we had all decided that we should spend the night at Sylvie’s apartment. It was nearby and conveniently empty, since Sylvie’s mom was on Earth and Sylvie’s dad was still missing.
By the time we got there, I was so tired I could barely keep my eyes open. But since this was my first time in a Martian apartment, I managed to notice (and be disappointed by) the fact that it looked pretty much like a regular Earth apartment. Sort of. Except that almost everything was made out of metal. The walls, the furniture, and even the floors were all gleaming and metallic. Between those and the large windows, which looked out over another apartment building next door, the place felt a little bit like a giant aquarium.
I went to sleep that night in camel position. But even so, I felt a bit like a hamster. Or a maybe a lizard. Or some other animal that lived in a glass cage…
• • •
The next morning, sunlight was streaming through the humongous floor-to-ceiling windows in my room.
My brain registered that as odd, since we were underground, but then my stomach called attention to itself with a warning growl. My dinosaur appetite was not something to be trifled with, and I had eaten rather lightly yesterday. Today, it seemed, my stomach was taking action to make sure that didn’t happen again.
On the other side of the bed, Elliot was still asleep. Flat on his back, with one arm thrown over his eyes. His feet were hanging so far off the end of the tiny, Martian-sized mattress that he looked like one of those melted clocks in the Salvador Dalí paintings we had studied in art.
I tiptoed out of the room so as not to wake him.
Across the hall, the door to Sylvie’s room was shut. She must still be asleep too. The heap of blankets outside her door (Venetio’s bed, since there was no actual bed within ten meters of Sylvie’s) was empty. The Plutonian at least was awake.
I found him sitting awkwardly in the middle of the kitchen.
The Juarezes’ kitchen was one of those weird, fancy, ginormous kitchens where it’s hard to find the refrigerator. I guess the fanciness made sense, considering that both of Sylvie’s parents were trained chefs. There were several rows of cabinets without any obvious way to open them and two large islands. There was also a very serious-looking stove, which my grandfather was standing in front of. He raised a spatula to me in greeting and then continued muttering to himself as he banged around several skillets.
I looked back down at Venetio. He had a plateful of eggs balanced on his lap. I gestured to the empty kitchen table on the other side of the room.
“Why—” I began.
He raised one arm in the air—the one with the tracking bracelet the Martian customs official had put on him yesterday. Then he very deliberately moved his wrist an inch farther from the door.
The bracelet emitted a high-pitched beeping sound, which made me jump. Venetio pulled his arm back and the beeping stopped.
“This is as far from her as I’m allowed to go,” he explained. Then, raising his voice and angling his head so that his words rumbled down the hallway, “So I’ll just sit on the floor! Until somebody decides to get her lazy, Martian butt out of bed!”
“Bite me, Pluto!” came an enraged voice from down the hall behind Sylvie’s door. “I’m getting my beauty rest here!”
“Good luck with that!” Venetio sneered. He shoveled a forkful of eggs into his mouth and turned his attention back to the enormous flat screen on the wall. On TV, a Martian with an enormous amount of gel in his hair was grinning broadly from behind a desk.
“Welcome to MBC-E, the Martian Broadcast Company’s English-language affiliate! Mars’s only all-English, all-the-time channel! In a moment, we’ll continue with our Big Bang Theory marathon, catching you up just in time for the big finale later this week. But first, the news.”
“Ohhh!” Venetio enthused, pumping a fist and nearly dumping his eggs onto the floor. “I love that show! We get it on Pluto too. Do you think they get Dancing with the Stars here? We’re like three seasons behind on that one.”
“They get it,” my grandfather informed him. “It came on right after American Idol this morning.”
“Weird,” I muttered, trying not to step on Venetio as I went to take a seat at the empty table. “Just weird.”
“With two days until the summit, security is at an all-time high here in Mars Central,” continued the Martian newscaster as a picture of a rotund, half-bald Martian appeared on the screen, “Chancellor Gio has assured all of us here at MBC-E that every safety precaution is being taken.”
“Chancellor Gio…is that the Martian leader?” I asked.
“Actually, Mars is run by an elected council,” my grandfather answered from behind the stove. “But they appoint chancellors to be in charge of certain areas, as well as special events. Chancellor Gio is the one in charge of the summit. Omelet?”
“Er, OK,” I said politely. My stomach had started growling again. Even though it didn’t really want an omelet.
“I know eggs aren’t usually on the herbivore menu,” my grandfather said apologetically. “Greens are pretty scarce in Mars. Hard to grow them here, you know? But I did find some mushrooms in the freezer,” he said, tipping one of the pans in my direction so I could see a pile of button mushrooms swimming around in butter and garlic. “And there was a box of these on the counter,” he added, tossing me something wrapped in plastic.
The package was small, no larger than my palm. But it was surprisingly heavy in my hand. I turned it over so I could see the label.
“Nutri Nugget,” I read. “One-third of your daily nutritional needs. Cocoa flavored.”
“They’re all the rage here,” my grandfather informed me.
Inside the package was a soft, brown, vaguely rectangular object that looked disturbingly like—
“A turd,” Venetio said through a mouthful of eggs. Swallowing, he nodded confidently to himself. “That’s what they look like. Turds. Taste like ’em too.”
I set the unopened nugget on the table in front of me.
“Maybe I’ll try the eggs.”
The Plutonian and I sat in silence, watching Martian TV, while my grandfather poured a bowl full of beaten eggs into the mushroom pan. The newscaster finished the news-news and moved on to entertainment-news. I nearly fell off my chair when a picture of Sylvie, my grandfather, Elliot, Venetio, and I standing on the gangplank of the Lost Beagle appeared on-screen.
“On the heels of the announcement that Tycho Brawn will be coming out of retirement to play in the summit’s Friendship and Goodwill Game, another famous Martian striker has returned home! That’s right, folks! Everybody’s favorite big-haired, sharp-tongued Razer is back in planet! Is she here to play? So far, all parties involved are staying tight-lipped. But check out her entourage, why don’t you? Two Earthlings, a Plutonian, and a dinosaur-Earthling hybrid! Leave it to Sylvia Juarez to arrive in style!”
My grandfather set a plate down in front of me. It
was an omelet dotted with mushrooms and some sort of white cheese. My stomach gave a displeased lurch, but my tail twitched automatically at the scent of food.
I motioned to the chair next to me, but my grandfather shook his head and set his plate on the closest kitchen island.
“I’ll stand, thanks,” he said and leaned against the countertop.
I picked up my fork and tried to look excited. But as I glanced back and forth between the plate of eggy, cheesy fungus and the partially unwrapped turd, I could think of only one thing: I would have given anything for a nice, crisp salad.
To cover up the fact that I wasn’t eating, I motioned to the other kitchen island. My grandfather had set up a temporary laboratory there. Complete with test tubes, a Bunsen burner, and a couple of gadgety things with wires sticking out in all directions.
“What’s all that?” I asked.
“That is how we’re going to find Sylvie’s dad and Sunder Labs,” my grandfather answered, spearing three mushrooms onto his fork at once. “The things with the wires are devices that track people based on their DNA signature. In theory anyway.”
“Do you know how they work?” I asked, picking up my fork and poking cautiously at my omelet.
“I should hope so. I invented them!” he snorted, with a note of pride in his voice. “Actually, they’re still in the beta-testing phase. Only the short-range one is working at the moment. I’m hoping to get the long-range scanner working by this afternoon.”
“What do we do until then?” I asked, still picking through the omelet with my fork, delaying the inevitable first bite.
“Oh, I should think you’ll be busy enough today. If I know the Martians, and I think I do, I’d say it’s about to get very crowded in here. How’s the omelet?”
Unable to avoid it any longer, I took a bite. I had intended to swallow it quickly and then tell my grandfather it was “great.” But my body absolutely refused to comply with this request. I ended up spitting the whole mouthful right back onto my plate. Eggs had never been my favorite. And these tasted like no eggs I had ever had before.
Dinosaur Boy Saves Mars Page 5