Dinosaur Boy Saves Mars

by Cory Putman Oakes

“What is this?” I heard myself ask, as Venetio snorted with laughter from the floor.

  “Oh, you mean the Bruno eggs?”

  “The what?”

  “Brunos,” my grandfather explained patiently, “are a species of lizard native to the underground caves of Mars. What? You didn’t think there’d be chicken eggs here, did you?”

  Razer No More

  My grandfather was right. By the time I had eaten the Nutri Nugget (which, to my relief, tasted more like chocolate than Venetio had led me to believe) and woken up Elliot and Sylvie, there were ten Martians in the living room.

  They were all surrounding one lone, blue figure. At first, I thought it was Venetio. But then I saw him lurking unhappily in the far corner of the room.

  The other blue figure raised its hand and gave me a small, almost shy wave.

  “Ms. Helen!” Elliot and I both exclaimed at once.

  “Oh, that’s right!” my grandfather exclaimed. “I forgot you guys already know Helen Tombaugh.”

  “Hello, Sawyer,” she said, shaking my hand warmly. I smiled in return, trying to cover up my shock at seeing her without makeup. She was as blue as Venetio. And she was here. I was used to seeing Ms. Helen sitting, more or less permanently, behind her desk in the frigidly cold front office of our school. She always wore sleeveless shirts and had a large fan blowing directly in her face. But now she was standing upright. And wearing a black bodysuit like Venetio’s.

  “What are you doing here?” Sylvie asked her suspiciously.

  “I’m here for the summit,” Ms. Helen answered. “I took a leave of absence from my office job at your school in order to represent Pluto. May I introduce Chancellor Fontana, my Martian escort?”

  A Martian woman with hair that was curly and poufy like Sylvie’s, but extremely blond, stuck her pinkish hand out for me to shake.

  “Pleasure to meet you, Sawyer,” she said. “I’m Claire Fontana, temporary Chancellor in Charge of Martian-Human Affairs.”

  “Temporary?” I asked, wondering why the title sounded so familiar.

  When I remembered, I swallowed hastily. That was Sylvie’s dad’s job. This woman must be filling in for him.

  “Oh,” I said, looking down at the floor.

  The other Martians were all chancellors in charge of this or that. They all introduced themselves except for one particularly short and bald Martian who hung back. He waited until everyone else was done talking, then stepped forward and smiled at Sylvie.

  “Coach Kepler,” Sylvie said, not smiling in return.

  “Hello, Sylvia,” the coach said, and only then did I realize that his bright-red jacket had Razers written down both sleeves. “I’m here to formally offer you a place on the Red Razers.”

  He reached into one of the pockets in his jacket and pulled out a red piece of cloth. With a showy flourish, he shook it out so that we could see that it was a red soccer jersey.

  It had Juarez and 22 written on it in glittery, silver letters.

  The Martians standing around us, including Chancellor Fontana, all burst into applause.

  “Thank you,” Sylvie said tonelessly over the din. “But I decline.”

  “What?” Elliot exclaimed.

  “What?” the coach exclaimed, sounding more angry than shocked.

  “I’m retired,” Sylvie explained.

  “I told you,” Ms. Helen mumbled, a ghost of a smile on her lips.

  “Ms. Juarez…” the coach began, and the hand holding the red jersey dropped to his side like a flag at half-mast. “Sylvia. This is a key moment for the Razers. A seminal moment in the history of intergalactic sports! Your planet needs you. I beg you to reconsider.”

  “Sorry,” Sylvie said. Her face was carefully expressionless, but I could see her fingers angrily twisting the sleeves of her oversized sweatshirt. “I’m not here to play. I’m here to visit my father. Have you seen him?”

  The coach took a step back and exchanged a look with the Martian standing nearest to him. Suddenly, nobody in the room seemed able to look Sylvie in the eye.

  “Uh, no, as a matter of fact I haven’t seen him. Not recently,” the coach said finally, addressing the lamp several feet to Sylvie’s left.

  “Well then, I suggest you come back when you have,” Sylvie said. “You want me to play? Then find my father. Until you do that, I have nothing further to say to you. Understand?”

  • • •

  The Martians and Ms. Helen retreated to one corner of the living room to talk among themselves. My grandfather pulled Sylvie and me out of earshot.

  “Sylvie,” he said sternly, “I realize that Venetio blew the initial plan by telling everyone you had returned to Mars. But we still intended to stay under the radar and search for your father quietly. What you’ve just done—”

  “What I’ve just done,” Sylvie retorted, “is get an entire planet looking for my father. If they want me to play, they’ll find him. Now, if anybody needs me, I’ll be in my room.”

  She turned on her heel to stomp away, but my grandfather caught her arm before she could take a step.

  “Oh, no you don’t. Chancellor Fontana and Ms. Helen have set up a tour for you guys, and you’re all going.”

  “A tour?” I asked, ears perking. “Of Mars?”

  “Not all of Mars, just the downtown area around the apartment. But it’ll be a perfect opportunity for you to take the short-range scanner out of the apartment and see if Sylvie’s dad is nearby.”

  As he spoke, he slapped the scanner onto my wrist like a watch and pulled my long-sleeved T-shirt down to hide it.

  Sylvie held up a finger.

  “Number one, I highly doubt a secret laboratory is hidden somewhere downtown. Number two,” she continued, throwing up another finger, “I was born here. I don’t need a tour.”

  My grandfather held up two fingers of his own.

  “Number one, if you’re right about the lab not being downtown, then we’re going to need the long-range scanner to find it. Which is currently broken. And, number two, I can’t fix it with all of these people hanging around the apartment. So be a good little celebrity, go on your tour, and leave me in peace.”

  Sylvie rolled her eyes and then walked dramatically toward the front door.

  “I’ll be waiting in the hallway,” she announced loudly for the benefit of the crowd on the other side of the living room. “I’m so excited about the tour!”

  The door slammed behind her.

  A few seconds later, Venetio bolted out after her, his wrist monitor beeping like mad.

  Mars Central

  Coach Kepler and most of the other Martians begged off, so the tour ended up consisting of me, Elliot, Sylvie, Venetio, Ms. Helen, Chancellor Fontana, and a few Martian police officers in black outfits and face shields.

  “I gave tours for a living before I got the chancellor job,” Chancellor Fontana chirped excitedly, as we rode the elevator down to street level. “I can tell you everything you’d like to know about our charming planet!”

  “How long have you been a chancellor?” I asked her. I suspected it couldn’t be long, since she had taken over Mr. Juarez’s job.

  It wasn’t.

  “Two weeks,” she said cheerfully.

  I peeked down at the scanner, trying to make it look like I was just checking a really oversized watch. The screen had the outline of a map on it, kind of like GPS. My grandfather had explained that if the scanner picked up Mr. Juarez’s DNA signature, it would appear on the map as a red dot. There should also be a beeping sound.

  Nothing so far.

  I covered up the scanner again, just as the elevator dinged and we all followed Chancellor Fontana through the lobby and out onto the streets of Mars.

  • • •

  When Sylvie had first told me that Martians live beneath the surface, I had pict
ured a world where herds of tiny Martians wandered around a dark network of caves and tunnels. There was dirt. Lots of dirt. Everyone was sort of grubby and mole-like, blinking at each other in the dim, faintly red light.

  The actual Martian world was pretty much the opposite of that.

  First of all, it was light. Really light. Everything around us was made out of metal or glass, just like Sylvie’s apartment building. And it was all extremely clean, like someone had just come along and given everything in sight a good scrubbing. So my first impression of Mars was that it was quite shiny.

  It was easy to forget that we were underground. The caverns that made up Mars Central (which most people just seemed to call “Central”) were big enough that the buildings around us were as tall as any skyscrapers you’d see in an Earth city. It was only when you looked straight up that you could tell there was actually a metal roof up there with a simulated sky projected onto it.

  “Central is roughly the size of New York City on Earth,” said Chancellor Fontana, facing us and walking backward as she talked with the effortlessness of a trained tour guide. “We have a similar population density and many of the same challenges that come with so many people living in such close proximity.”

  Her words made my heart sink. It had been hard enough to picture finding Sylvie’s dad in a maze of dark, underground caves. But how were we possibly going to find him in a city the size of New York?

  I snuck another peek at the scanner: no red dot yet.

  Chancellor Fontana went on to discuss the light. It was artificially created and in perfect synch with the light on the planet’s surface. So when the sun went down on the surface, the light beneath the surface dimmed as well. Which explained how I had seen the sunrise from Sylvie’s guest room that morning. There was even manufactured moonlight that corresponded to the phases of Mars’s two moons, Phobos and Deimos.

  “No stars though,” Sylvie told us. “You have to go to one of the observatories if you want to see stars.”

  The streets were crowded with pedestrians. Most of the people we passed were Martians, of course. But I also noticed a fair number of blue-skinned Plutonians, all sticking close to their Martian escorts. There were a few tall, thin Jupiterians and a smattering of other folks who I couldn’t immediately place. They must have been from other planets. Some were in tight-fitting space suits like Venetio and Ms. Helen. But most people wore loose, flowy things, like robes or roomy pants.

  A lot of the people around us recognized Sylvie. Chancellor Fontana kept us going at a brisk pace, and stern looks from the Martian police officers kept people from getting too close. But there were lots of cries of “Sylvia!” and “Fear the Red!” I thought I heard a few yells of “Dinosaur Kid!” and “Hey, Dino Boy!” but I couldn’t be sure.

  Sylvie cringed at each new voice and tugged the hood of her sweatshirt down over her eyes.

  “If you really want to hide, you might want to think about getting a different-colored sweatshirt,” Elliot said helpfully.

  Sylvie only glared at him.

  “Central is the most diverse city in the galaxy,” Chancellor Fontana bragged, as a gaggle of girl Martians—all wearing red, number 22, Red Razer jerseys—pointed at Sylvie and squealed. “We are truly an intergalactic city with a population representing all eight planets.”

  “Nine,” I heard Venetio mutter under his breath. “All nine planets.”

  “Even Earth?” Elliot inquired.

  Our guide paused, looking a tad embarrassed.

  “Well, we’re still working on that one. Earthlings don’t officially know of our existence yet, of course. But everyone is welcome in Central!”

  “Except Plutonians,” Venetio growled under his breath, looking down at his tracking bracelet.

  The streets and sidewalks were all made of metal. The hard surface felt weird under my feet, kind of like I was walking up the front of a stainless-steel refrigerator. It was smooth enough that it didn’t scrape against the bottom of my tail when I walked, which was nice. But the hard surface made my tennis balls bounce in all directions, so I ended up holding the end of my tail in my hand. I couldn’t afford to lose any tennis balls here. Finding a replacement might be tricky—I didn’t know if Martians even played tennis.

  We arrived at a large intersection where several streets came together at once. Chancellor Fontana stopped us just underneath an enormous digital screen and started saying something about the architecture of one of the buildings nearby.

  “…and the turrets are rather obviously based on the famous Trident Hall on Neptune. While the distinctive fluted columns around the entrance give the building more of a late-Venutian-Renaissance, second-period Mercurian influence…”

  I tuned her out and watched as a spiky-haired Martian in a black police uniform spoke solemnly from the depths of the large screen, first in Martian, then in English:

  The security threat level in Mars Central remains high. All Martian citizens and summit visitors are urged to keep a sharp eye out for BURPSers and to report any suspicious activity to Martian officials immediately.

  The announcement caused several Martians and at least one Jupiterian nearby to look suspiciously at Venetio.

  “He’s not a BURPSer,” Elliot informed them angrily. “He’s just a Plutonian.”

  “They don’t care,” Venetio said quietly to Elliot. “Some people just hate all Plutonians. BURPSers or not. They think we’re troublemakers.”

  “Has it ever occurred to you,” Sylvie said to him, “that if your planet stopped causing so much trouble, people would be nicer to you?”

  Venetio shrugged.

  “Maybe if people were nicer to us, we’d stop causing so much trouble.”

  Sylvie looked like she was about to respond, but she cut herself off when a new picture appeared on the screen.

  It was a short, nondescript Martian with glasses and a bad comb-over. Just a few inches to my right, Sylvie went rigid. When the English headline popped up underneath the Martian’s face, I understood why.

  MISSING: Asaph Juarez, former Chancellor in Charge of Martian-Human Affairs. Please contact the Martian Council with any relevant information.

  “That’s a good thing, isn’t it?” I said uneasily, patting Sylvie on the shoulder. “The more people who are looking for him, the better. Right?”

  Sylvie swallowed.

  “I guess so. I just…I was hoping it was all some sort of misunderstanding. That I’d get here and he’d be sitting in our kitchen with no idea anything was going on. But if the Martian Council doesn’t know where he is, that means he really is missing.”

  “We’ll find him,” I assured her. We both looked down at my wrist, even though neither of us had heard a beep. No dot yet.

  “You were probably right about the lab not being downtown,” I told her. “Once my grandfather gets the long-range scanner up and running, we’ll find your dad.”

  Sylvie nodded and a shrill beeping sound filled the air. We looked around in confusion, and it took me almost a full minute to realize that every watch on every Martian in sight had just started beeping.

  Every watch except mine.

  The Debate

  “Nug time!” exclaimed Chancellor Fontana, quieting her watch and pulling a Nutri Nugget out of her purse.

  Every Martian around us (except for Sylvie) was doing the same thing. There was a great crinkling of plastic as everyone opened their nuggets at once.

  Sylvie wrinkled her nose.

  “I can’t believe those got popular,” she sniffed. “They’re disgusting!”

  “You’re right about that,” Venetio muttered. Then he pursed his lips, looking mildly horrified that he had agreed with Sylvie about something.

  “The one I had this morning wasn’t too bad,” I admitted. And I realized, to my amazement, that my stomach had been quiet for some time. I hadn’t ev
en thought about food since shoving the nugget into my mouth that morning. Now that I did think about it, I realized that I still felt full. But in a weird, hollow sort of a way. Like I could still eat a giant meal at any moment but I just didn’t want to.

  “I have extras,” Chancellor Fontana offered, reaching into her purse again and handing me several different flavors. There was a chocolate-flavored nugget like the one I had eaten that morning. There was also a strawberry-flavored one, a root beer–flavored one, and a chocolate-peanut-butter-swirl one.

  “What are they?” Elliot asked, looking doubtfully at the packages in my hand. He had slept too late that morning to hear anything about the nuggets.

  “They’re a revelation,” Chancellor Fontana replied, licking her fingers. “Do you have any idea how much time and energy is wasted in the growing of food? To say nothing of harvesting, preparing, and then consuming elaborate meals three times every day?”

  “Of course they don’t,” Ms. Helen reminded her, taking a bite of her own nugget. “Plants and animals grow by accident on their planet, remember?”

  “Oh right,” Chancellor Fontana said. “Well, just take my word for it. You’d be amazed at how freeing it is to not have to worry about preparing food. I don’t know how we ever got along without these things! They’ve quite revolutionized Martian culture.”

  Despite Chancellor Fontana’s enthusiasm, Elliot was looking doubtfully at the brown rectangle in his hand.

  “It kind of reminds me of something,” he said, turning it around in his hands. “I’m trying to think of what…”

  “If you don’t like the texture, then I have just the thing,” Chancellor Fontana said, reaching into her purse again and handing Elliot a small bottle.

  “Nutri Juice,” Elliot read.

  “The next generation of condensed nutrition. Same thing as the nuggets, but in liquid form!” Chancellor Fontana explained, taking a quick glance around us. “Don’t let on that I gave you that. They’re not on the market yet. The plan is to reveal them for the first time during the toast after the Friendship and Goodwill Game.”