SuperMoon

by H. A. Swain

  “Where are we?” I scan the blank white tube that goes on in two directions.

  “The HabiTrails,” she says. “They run all around the outside of the station, but no one ever uses them. Except me.”

  Up ahead I make out the shadow of an intersection where another tube branches left and right.

  I peer up at her and say, “I’m scared.”

  “I know! Those guards … and the guns and—”

  “It’s not that!” I slowly straighten up. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I’ve never been this sick. Even when the Peruvian llama flu pandemic hit and millions of people died, Castor and I didn’t get it. Do you think I’m the reason everyone is passing out?”

  Uma thinks this over, eyebrows flexed, the side of her cheek between her teeth. “Could be. Or it could be me. Could be some bacteria carried up on the Shuttle. Could be a virus that mutated here first…”

  A cloudy memory swims in my mind. A thin black snake about to strike. A woman holding my face too tight. Tell them I’m on my way. But I don’t know who she was or what she wanted. I shake the dreamlike image from my mind and ask, “What if it is me? What if I give you this sickness and then you pass out like everybody else, and…” I can’t say more because the thought of being alone on the Moon, away from Earth without Castor and Aurelia and Quasar and my mother, is too frightening to comprehend.

  “If I haven’t gotten it by now,” says Uma, “I’m probably immune.”

  I calm down a little bit. “But what are we going to do? We can’t stay in this tube forever. Eventually they’re going to look in here.”

  “I know someone who will help us.” Uma motions me forward. “Kepler’s mom, Curie. She’s one of the best immunologists on MUSC. She has her own lab. If anyone can figure out what’s going on, she can.”

  “But will she protect us?” I grab the gun off the floor.

  Uma bites her cheek again, then says, “I hope so.”

  * * *

  Since Curie didn’t answer Uma’s pings, there’s only one thing left to do. I follow her through the unmarked maze of the HabiTrail. Like a Moon gopher tunneling underground, Uma knows her way without hesitation. She leads us to another ladder, then slowly pokes her head out of the hole above. I hold my breath, hoping nobody’s up there with a shotgun, waiting for us to pop out. Uma looks down and whispers, “It’s okay,” then waves for me to climb up after her.

  We emerge into a different alcove off a different hall, although it all looks the same to me. We peek around the corner into a corridor, this one lined with closed-door labs and curtained windows instead of loading bays. I expected MUSC to be a horrible, cold, sterile space—a cross between a surgeon’s office and a prison, but it’s not. It’s beautiful and quiet here. The colors are muted and warm. Gray floors, white walls specked with blue and silver shimmering under soft lights. And there is a hush that I’ve heard only in nature. No chattering Yoobies, no constant product Streams, no nattering holos competing for attention. The only sound is me, wheezing and sniffling as we pad cautiously down the hall.

  “Where is everyone?” I whisper as we pass doors marked EARTH MATERIALS PREPARATION LAB, COLD STORAGE, GEOLOGICAL SAMPLING, STATISTICAL BIOINFORMETRICS, PATHOGEN CENTER.

  “Working,” says Uma, as if the eerie silence is nothing unusual.

  She pauses in front of a door labeled ADVANCED IMMUNOLOGY and requests permission to enter. When the door doesn’t budge, she says, “Darshan, override security,” and it immediately shlushes open.

  “Whoa,” I say. “How did you—”

  “Castor,” Uma says.

  An ache fills my chest when I hear my brother’s name. “If he were here…” My voice catches in my throat. This is the first time my brother and I have been more than a hundred miles apart in our lives, and I feel like something in me is missing. Like I’m an ExploroBot without a leg and Castor has half my mind, only he’s down on Earth and I’m up here, our connection interrupted, and I don’t know what to do without him except to follow Uma.

  Inside the lab, a tall woman sits bent like a question mark over a microscope, with both hands on the table in front of her. Her soft brown hair spills forward like a curtain, hiding her profile.

  “Curie?” Uma calls softly. “Curie, it’s Uma. I need help.” The woman doesn’t budge.

  I press my sleeve over my nose to keep from sneezing so I don’t startle her.

  Uma looks at me with trepidation, then inches closer, calling more loudly, “Curie? Curie? Can you hear me?” She doesn’t answer, so Uma touches her shoulder and the woman tumbles to the side.

  We jump and scream as the body topples, smacking the edge of the counter as it falls to the ground. We stand over her, staring at a thin trickle of blood flowing from a gash on her forehead.

  “MediBot! MediBot!” Uma shouts.

  A small yellow canister wheels out from under a counter. Uma points it toward Curie and commands, “Check vitals. Stop bleeding. Make sure she’s okay! My gad, what’s wrong with everyone?”

  We stand back, arms wrapped around each other as the MediBot gets to work. Two tentacles shoot out. One scans her body, reading vital signs. “Temperature normal. Blood pressure normal. O2 levels normal,” it announces as the other arm locates the bleeding, then sprouts additional, smaller appendages to close and bandage the wound.

  As I watch, I have another foggy memory, this time of a bot clamped on my chest, pushing something up my nose. Like a DopaHack but not. Ironic, someone said. Using your stolen tricks against you? I shake the image away, not sure if it was a dream or real.

  “Bleeding stopped,” the MediBot announces.

  “We need help. We have to find someone!” Uma’s voice escalates with alarm. “Darshan, ping my mother!”

  She waits, staring at her Lenz for several seconds, then she stamps her foot. “She’s not answering. She must be in the mines. Unless…” I see her shiver. Goose bumps crawl over her skin.

  “What is it?” I hug her tighter.

  “What if everyone on the surface is unconscious, too? What if we’re the only ones and—”

  Behind Uma, a holo screen shimmers. “Look!” I point. She whips around. “Hello!” She runs toward the holo, shouting, “Who’s there? Hello!”

  “Mom?”

  Uma stops. “Kepler?”

  A tall, lanky guy with big brown eyes and wavy blond hair laced with red shimmers in the center of the floor.

  “Uma?” he says, and reaches out. “Oh, my gad! Is that really you? What are you doing back on MUSC? Why are you in my mom’s lab?”

  Uma runs to him as if she’s going to throw her arms around him, but of course, he’s not really there. “Something horrible is happening!”

  “What? What happened? Did you get caught?” He grimaces.

  “Everybody is … they’re all…” She stops and tries to find a way to explain, but the words won’t come.

  I step forward and say, “Everyone is unconscious.”

  UMA JEMISON

  MOON UTILITARIAN SURVIVAL COLONY

  TALITHA AND I move Curie to a small couch in the corner of the lab, where we prop up her head on a pillow and cover her with a silver blanket from the emergency supply cabinet. Then Talitha curls up in a spinning chair beside Curie’s desk while I pace around the lab for ten minutes, explaining the whole story to Kepler, who’s down at a TourEsa casino on the surface with Gemini and a bunch of other kids from Cohort 54.

  “Wow, Oom, I thought my Sol was bad,” he says, arms crossed, eyes darting back and forth as he considers everything I’ve told him. “But I only ran out of money playing the VirtuSlots, and you—”

  “I know!” I drag a lab stool next to Talitha and perch on the edge of it with my feet tucked into the rung to hold me steady. “Although you’ve got to admit, it’s not exactly a surprise that my Sol trip would be a disaster!”

  “Hey!” Talitha sniffs. “What about me?”

  “Except for meeting you, of course!” I reach out and
take her hand.

  “Of course,” she says, and keeps her eyes locked on mine with the smallest glimmer of a smile that makes my stomach flutter.

  “Whoa, wait a sec,” says Kep. “Are you two…”

  I glance at him and blush. Talitha brings my knuckles to her lips and brushes them with a kiss.

  “You are?”

  I nod.

  “You get the award for best Sol trip souvenir ever,” Kepler says. He and Talitha crack up.

  “You guys! Come on,” I whisper, and cut my eyes toward Curie. “We shouldn’t be laughing. This is serious.”

  “Sorry,” Talitha croaks as her laughter turns to coughing. “It’s just the stress.” She ducks her head to catch her breath, but I see her glance at Kepler, who gives her a half grin and a thumbs-up.

  “I knew you two would like each other,” I say, secretly pleased. “But we have to do something. Your mom is unconscious! I can’t find mine! Every time Talitha sneezes, people pass out! The whole station might be compromised.”

  “First, you should swab her.” Kepler points at Talitha. “Seems like she might be the carrier.”

  “Yeah, we thought the same thing.” I rummage through Curie’s cabinets. Since I have no idea what the pathogen might be, I take one of everything: cotton swabs, centrifuge tubes, several kinds of reagent solutions, and three different kinds of prepared agar dishes.

  “But then what?” I ask. “It’ll take hours to prep and culture the samples, then I’ll have to prepare them for the microscope or put them in the sequencer to look for a DNA match, which will take more time.”

  “You have to tell Fornax,” Kep says.

  “No way!” I almost drop the supplies I’m carrying. “She’ll kill me as soon as she sees me.”

  “She’s not there,” he says. “She went down on a Shuttle yesterday to Zhongguo to buy the rights to the last rare Earth mineral mine. It was all over the MUSC Stream.”

  “Problem solved!” I say sarcastically as I set up a dozen ten-milliliter tubes in a rack plus six sets of sterile agar dishes and a handful of long cotton swabs on the countertop. I grab the back of Talitha’s chair and wheel her over. “This won’t hurt, okay?” I put on my gloves, then as gently as I can, I insert the gauzy end of a sterile swab into each of Talitha’s nostrils.

  “Ouch!” She flinches. “My nose is so sore!”

  “Probably all the sneezing and wiping.” I remove the swabs, cut off the ends, and drop them into the tubes of sterile solution, carefully voice labeling each one as I go. I swab her nose again just in case whatever’s in her prefers a different growth medium. I zigzag the new swabs over the different types of agar pads, add a reactant dye, and close and voice label the dishes.

  “You could go to Fornax’s work space,” Kep suggests as I repeat the entire process on myself in case I’m the carrier. “Do an All-Call page to find out who else is awake up there.”

  “I don’t know how to do that!” I whine as I load the tubes into a centrifuge to separate out DNA. I pop the agar dishes inside a low beam radio frequency oven to speed their cultivation time.

  “Micra would know,” Kep says.

  “Micra? Are you kidding me?” I march back and forth, ranting, “You know she hates my guts. I can’t—”

  “She’s with Fornax. Remember?” Kepler says. “She’s the CEO’s personal lapdog for the month.”

  “Yeah, but…” I stop and cross my arms. “Micra won’t accept thotz from me.”

  “But she will from me,” Kep says. “You and Talitha get to Fornax’s work space. I’ll contact Micra and tell her to find you there.”

  “But … but…” I throw my arms out to the side. “It’s bad enough being picked up by drones, nearly drowned, and chased by armed guards while watching people pass out in front of me—now I have to talk to Micra!” My heart is in my throat.

  “She can’t be that bad,” Talitha says.

  “You don’t know Micra,” both Kep and I say together. Then we look at each other and snort.

  “No laughing allowed,” Talitha teases.

  “Yeah, well, it’s definitely not funny,” I say, hands on my hips.

  “But it’s going to be okay.” Talitha stands up and puts her arm around me. “I’ll be there. Right beside you.” She sneezes, then sniffs loudly and wipes her arm beneath her red, dripping nose.

  “You poor thing!” I pull her into a hug. Even though she’s pale and bleary-eyed, being next to Talitha calms me. I feel grounded when I hold her, like we’re back in Calliope underneath the stars. “And you’re right. If we’re together, we can do anything.”

  “Blech!” says Kepler.

  “What’s wrong with you?” I ask.

  “Too much emotion,” he says.

  “You got a problem with that?” Talitha teases.

  “Nope, obviously you two are perfect for each other,” Kep says with a wink.

  * * *

  Holding hands, Talitha and I take the MediBot and walk the main corridors between the labs and Dr. Fornax’s work space.

  “Hello! Hello!” I call out. “Can anybody hear me?” But no one answers. Every time we see a body slumped on the ground, doubled over a work space, or slouched on a bench, or find a heap of people collapsed outside a Travelator capsule bank, we stop and check their vitals. And each time, it’s the same. Heartbeat strong, breathing fine, temperature normal, but no one is awake. We send the MediBot on without us to check for other injured people.

  I use Darshan’s override to get inside Fornax’s work space, where I’m greeted by the same white couch and orange zinnia on the edge of the familiar desk. The place makes my stomach churn.

  “I’ve never been in this office for a happy reason,” I whisper to Talitha.

  “Maybe you can reach your mom from here,” she suggests.

  “Good idea!” I squeeze her hand and walk around the desk then command Darshan to reveal Fornax’s work screen. To my surprise, it materializes.

  “Dang,” says Talitha. “Is there anything we can’t do up here?”

  “Wake everybody up,” I say as I search for the CEO’s direct connection to my mother down in helium mines. “Darshan, ping Persis Sarachik, chief of DrillBot repair.” Darshan pings and pings the portable holo screen mounted to my mother’s DrillBot repair station beneath the ground down below. I hold my breath, waiting for her to answer. Afraid that she won’t. But then I see her! The image from below the surface is grainy, but her voice is clear.

  “This is Commander Jemison,” she says while working on a downed DrillBot.

  “Mom?” I squeak.

  “Uma!” she shouts, and drops her tools. “Uma, is that you?” She abandons the DrillBot and leans close to her screen. “It is really you?”

  “Hi, Mommy,” I say, fighting back tears of relief. “I’ve been trying to reach you—”

  “Oh, thank gad!” She presses one hand over her heart. “Ever since your communication cut out yesterday, I’ve been worried sick and—”

  “I’m back at MUSC!”

  She whoops and hollers and tosses her arms up in the air. “Then I’m coming home right now!”

  “No!” I say. “You probably shouldn’t. There’s a—”

  “Oh, no.” She grabs the controls of her portable repair station and turns it around to head back up to the surface. “They can dock my pay or demote me, but nothing’s stopping me from seeing you.”

  “Mom, wait!” I yell. But she disappears from my screen. “What happened?” Frantically, I tell Darshan to ping her again, but nothing will go through, then a holo of Micra takes over the screen.

  “For gad’s sake, Uma, what in the name of Mars…” she snarls.

  “Who’s that?” Talitha asks, rearing back.

  “That’s Micra,” I mutter.

  “How could you cause this much trouble?” Micra snaps.

  “I didn’t CAUSE anything!” I yell at her.

  “You’re mired so deep, you’ll be lucky if you’re that food service lad
y’s assistant for your LWA!” Micra says.

  “Hey!” I shout, and charge at her with my finger pointing. “Don’t you bad-mouth Randazza Marmesh!”

  “Stop it! Come on,” Talitha says, holding me back from punching through Micra’s holo. “We need to work together.”

  “Who’s that?” Micra asks, nose in the air.

  “My name is Talitha. I’m Uma’s…” She stops and sniffles loudly, trying to hold in yet another sneeze.

  “Girlfriend!” I say, with my shoulders back and my chin up.

  Micra blinks back her surprise, then she huffs, “Only you, Uma, would bring an Earthling back from your Sol trip.”

  “Only she would be so lucky,” Talitha says as she takes my hand.

  To my surprise, for the first time ever, Micra has no comeback. She seems so much less threatening without Cassio and Alma at her side, or maybe she’s not as scary because I have Talitha by mine. Whatever it is, at that moment I realize I don’t have to fear Micra. She has no special power. She’s just another Moon girl, like me.

  “I need you to get Dr. Fornax,” I command.

  “Oh, gad.” Micra cringes. “She is NOT going to like this.”

  * * *

  As with most things, Micra’s completely right. Once I explain the situation to Dr. Fornax, she goes ballistic. Her holo, projected life-size in the center of the room, stomps around, calling me irresponsible, disloyal, and a disgrace, as if I’ve somehow caused all the problems on MUSC. With each condemnation, I shrink, wishing I would be sucked into a wormhole and spaghettized, until Talitha steps up and shouts, “Hey!”

  Dr. Fornax’s holo stops. She crosses her arms and looks Talitha up and down, then demands, “Who the hell are you, talking to me like that?”

  “Who the hell am I?” says Talitha. “Who the hell are you, talking to Uma that way?”

  “I’m the MUSC CEO,” Fornax barks.

  “And you’re damn lucky we’re here, or by the time you return, every single person in this survival colony will probably be dead! We’re the only two up here who are awake. No matter who we are, you’re going to have to work with us if you want to solve the problem, so you better be nice.”