Mike Stellar

by K. A. Holt

  I had that puzzle-piece feeling again. Something was going on, but I couldn’t quite … I ran my finger down the spines of all the books, reading their titles. My heartbeat quickened. Right there in front of me was anthology: the life works of e. e. cummings.

  I gasped and looked at the next book, and the next one, and the next one. Every single book on Dad’s shelf was an anthology of some twentieth-century poet—just like all the books had been in Mrs. H’s apartment. I sat there, stunned.

  I pulled the e. e. cummings book off the shelf and opened it. The first hundred pages or so had been ripped out, the same as with Mrs. Halebopp’s! I pulled the wadded-up pages from my pocket and spread them out on the floor in front of me. First there was the one from the frame in Mrs. H’s apartment and then there was the one I’d ripped out of the book while I was in detention.

  As I felt excitement rise from my toes, I looked at the number of the first page in Dad’s book: 261.

  I did one of those exhale-laugh things and abandoned the awkward crouch I’d been in. I sat hard on the floor. How did a page from Dad’s book get into a frame in Mrs. H’s apartment? I started yanking books off the shelf and opening them.

  Every single book was missing pages.

  Every.

  Single.

  Book.

  “What does this mean?” I kept whispering as I thumbed through the books. I couldn’t see anything weird about them—other than that they were missing pages. I sat there, stumped.

  It felt like I’d been sitting there for hours, my excitement turning to frustration. The ship would be reaching the Fold practically any minute now. Mom and Dad had disappeared—probably to begin the sabotage, I realized with a sick feeling. Evil Mrs. Halebopp was probably somehow involved, too, and I was stuck here in this stupid apartment, with these stupid books. There was nothing I could do about anything.

  I helplessly fanned through the pages of one book after another, thinking of those antique flip-books where a little cartoon of a man or a dog dances a jig as you fly through the pages. There were no cartoons in any of these books. But I did notice something weird. As I flipped, I could feel the texture of the paper changing from page to page. I stopped flipping and ran my hand over the surface of a page.

  The page felt … what was it? Bumpy? I couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary, but I could definitely feel something strange. The bumps weren’t everywhere, just here and there. I grabbed Mrs. H’s pages off the floor and felt them. They had bumps, too!

  Now things were getting interesting.

  I ripped a page from one of the books and rubbed it again and again, feeling the bumps and trying to figure out what the heck they were. It was as if someone had stabbed them with a straight pin, leaving eeny-weeny holes everywhere.

  Suddenly my brain flashed on something Larc had said—about Mrs. H. “She says she likes the way the pages feel between her fingers.” Larc’s voice echoed in my head.

  “It’s a code!” I shouted into the empty room. “It has to be! Just like on MonsterMetalMachines #732 when Preditator is taken hostage by the Extermibus! Preditator used some old thing called Morse code,” I muttered to myself. “Maybe that’s what this is.”

  I sat for what felt like forever, staring at the bumps, feeling the bumps, rubbing the pages over my face, growling into my hands…. Finally I turned each of the three ripped-out pages over and stared at the poems.

  Maybe this is all a trick to get me to read more poetry. I held the pages up one at a time and read them.

  What the …?

  In my surprise, I jumped up. My white-hot intensity had worked! I’d just seen tiny little pinpricks of light shooting through the page. Almost imperceptible, under certain letters there was definitely a tiny pinprick. The light from the ambient lamp on the wall had shone through the holes when I’d held the page up.

  “Aha!” I shouted crazily, and laughed out loud. I started trying to decipher the code.

  I smacked a button on the wall and Mom’s desk appeared. I grabbed the nearest household handheld and activated the voice-recognition application. I read out loud all the letters from Mrs. H’s page that had a pinprick underneath them.

  “ANEWMISSIONVENUSALDRINREACTIVATED UNDERCOVERTEACHERHALEBOPPHAVEINSTIGATED CONTACTWITHSPIRITNEEDHELPLOCATING SHIPTOPSECRET”

  It took only a few minutes for me to figure out the words.

  “A new mission. Venus Aldrin reactivated. Undercover teacher Halebopp. Have instigated contact with Spirit. Need help locating ship. Top-secret.”

  “Holy mother of donkeys,” I gasped. “Mrs. Halebopp is Venus Aldrin.”

  Venus Aldrin was the most decorated search-and-rescue astronaut the Project had ever employed. We’d studied her in school. In fact, I’d probably just failed that pop quiz on her. She was supposed to be retired—living anonymously in a village somewhere in the desert.

  I started opening all the books and feeling their pages. The first page of every book had pinpricks. Time stood still as I sat, decoding the messages.

  One of them said something about the Spirit confirming David Hazelwood’s presence. Another said, “Food dwindling, Aurora refuses to send S&R crew.” Another had a bit that said, “Hubble Hawking confirmed alive.”

  “Hubble’s alive!” I said.

  Another message read, “NS deep cover planned. EFE infiltration to commence 6/1.” I slapped myself on the forehead. That was why Nita hadn’t come on the trip. She was undercover with the EFEs? Then why not just contact Mom and Dad and tell them what she’d found out?

  The next book’s message said, “Aurora hand in sabotage confirmed. Her transmission of virus succeeded. Spirit not repairable.” I swallowed, wondering what the next book would tell me.

  It said, “A&M chosen. J’s assistance vital. V reached agreement with school, is on board. Operation Fight Back to commence.”

  So this confirmed it. “A&M” had to be Mom and Dad—Albert and Marie. “J” was probably Jim—Larc’s dad. And “V” was Venus. The “agreement with school” part proved that Mrs. Halebopp really was Venus Aldrin.

  I sat back, stunned. It was all starting to make sense. Venus Aldrin would have to be undercover; there was no way Aurora would have let her come back to the Project, if Aurora was preventing a search-and-rescue mission to the Spirit. Mom and Dad must have contacted her to ask for help. These books were a way for their little alliance to communicate without being discovered. Low-tech always trumps high-tech. At least that’s what Dad says.

  I laughed out loud. “No wonder Mrs. H is such a bad teacher.”

  “Ahem.” Dad was standing in the doorway, looking at me grimly.

  I jumped up, scattering books everywhere. “I can explain!” I said, rushing toward him.

  He held up his hand. “Stop.”

  “But, Dad!” I protested. “I was just trying to find out what’s going on—why you and Mom are always acting so strange. I just wanted to—”

  Dad crossed his arms over his chest. “I respect that you’re curious, Mike, but rifling through someone else’s private things is unacceptable.”

  “But, Dad! The sabotage—I found your code! I found your messages! Are we really going to try to save Hubble? Are you and Mom going after the Spirit?” My heart soared as I realized what this all would mean: No more teasing in school. No more mean looks at my family as we passed by people in town.

  “You … you did what?” Dad asked.

  “How did you find out?” I asked, giddy with the revelations. “How did you find out the Spirit wasn’t vaporized? Is that why the ship is moving to the Fold right now? Are we going to find the Spirit?”

  Mom appeared behind Dad in the doorway. “What is he talking about, Albert?”

  A faint smile grew on Dad’s face. He looked at me like he was seeing me for the first time. “Apparently our son has cracked the poem code.”

  “What?” Mom’s mouth lolled open.

  I reached down and grabbed some of the ripped-out pages, thrusting them
at Mom and Dad. “What does this part mean?” I asked excitedly. “The part about Aurora’s hand in sabotage? The virus?”

  Mom and Dad just stared at me like I had grown horns or something.

  “I mean,” I continued rapidly, “this morning Nita kept saying something about Aurora but I couldn’t understand her.”

  Mom shook her head like she was trying to clear water from her ears. “What did you just say?”

  Dad blinked a couple of times and then said, “You talked to—”

  “Yes!” I said, feeling exasperated, wanting them to start answering my questions. “I talked to Nita. I hacked into her com-bracelet this morning…. I saw her. She’s fine. But if she’s undercover with the EFEs, why wouldn’t she have just contacted you guys? Can you please tell me—?”

  “Michael Newton Stellar.” Mom’s voice was dangerously steady and she spoke through gritted teeth. “Why in Heaven’s name didn’t you tell us at once—”

  “She told me not to, Mom. She said …” I swallowed and then I spoke as quickly as I could, feeling a cold sweat break out on my palms and under my arms. “She said you and Dad were sabotaging the trip to Mars. She tried to tell me more, but the connection was so bad I couldn’t understand her very well. She said things about David Hazelwood and Aurora. And danger. And she finally shouted, ‘Mom and Dad are in on the sabotage.’”

  Mom put her hand on my shoulder.

  “Michael, honey, of course we’re in on the sabotage. We’re the ringleaders.”

  At first I thought I’d missed something.

  “Uh, what now?”

  “The sabotage,” Dad said. He shook his head. “Well, it’s a mission redirection, really. Nita’s right. We’ve been planning this for months. She’s been helping us.”

  “I’m so glad you talked to her,” Mom said. “We’ve been trying to contact her ever since we got on the ship but someone’s been blocking our transmission.”

  “But you guys are definitely the good guys, aren’t you?”

  “Yes, Mike, we’re the good guys. Now, what did Nita tell you? I don’t understand why she—”

  Mr. Shugabert’s disembodied voice interrupted and made us all jump. “Attention. You have a visitor. To let him or her enter, just say ‘Yes.’”

  We all looked at each other and shouted, “NO!” at the same time.

  A voice from outside the door stated, “Security override! Move away from the door!”

  Suddenly the door exploded open and four men burst into the room. Two of them grabbed Mom and Dad, and Mr. Shugabert reached for my arm. I wriggled away from his grasp and darted around the room, trying to evade capture.

  One man stepped into the room and watched the melee grimly. He began to recite something as the two men holding Mom and Dad steered them toward the front door.

  “You are under arrest for the planning and partial execution of a devious and illegal plot to thwart the official mission of the Project’s Sojourner Mars Expedition….”

  That was all I heard as I slipped through Mr. Shugabert’s hands and ran through the open door. Thinking quickly, I reached into my pocket and pulled out a loose grasshrinker. I hopped onto the tree outside our apartment door and smashed the grasshrinker onto the trunk, careful not to get any of the exposed juice on my hand. In a flash, the tree was half its size and I easily hopped to the lobby floor below. The tree shrunk so fast Mr. Shugabert didn’t have time to jump on after me. I had a good head start now.

  Running as fast as I could, I glanced over my shoulder and saw his dark figure scrambling down the stairs. I ran blindly, not knowing where to go. I was on a spaceship, for donkey’s sake, so the hiding places were limited.

  Suddenly Larc came from around a corner and grabbed my arm. She yoinked me back around the corner with her, keeping us out of Sugar Bear’s sight.

  She dragged me along a corridor until we popped out in the lobby, right next to the secret hallway. “We need to get down there …,” she whispered fiercely. I reached into my pocket and pulled out Mr. Shugabert’s handheld.

  “Remember this?” I asked with a smile. I turned it on and began scrolling through files.

  Larc squealed and said, “Well, find the code! Hurry!”

  I scrolled and scrolled, but it was too late. We saw Mr. Shugabert and two other guys running full speed toward us.

  “We’d better run!” Larc shouted.

  “Wait!” I said, staring at the keypad, trying to figure out what to do. “Oh, this’ll be mega cool if it works,” I said, and I punched the keypad as hard as I could.

  Nothing.

  I punched it again.

  “Come on, Mike!” Larc said, and she whipped past me.

  “Larc! Wait!” I shouted, because the keypad had started beeping. I couldn’t believe my thug approach had worked!

  But it didn’t work. The beeping degenerated into a kind of low honking, and smoke wisped out of the keypad.

  “You broke it!” screeched Larc.

  I rubbed my sore knuckles and worried that maybe Larc was right. Then all of a sudden she roughly pushed me aside.

  “Stand back!” Larc shouted.

  I saw Sugar Bear approaching rapidly and he looked really, really mad. He was barreling down on us like a train. I couldn’t look away—until I saw a glimmer out of the corner of my eye. Turning quickly, I thought I saw Larc holding up her hand as a very thin metal tube shot out of her fingertip into the keypad. Practically a millisecond later the rod shot back into her fingertip. I shook my head. Had I really just seen that? I didn’t have time to figure it out. The keypad chimed just as Mr. Shugabert growled and reached out for my arm. I threw the stolen handheld and hit him square on the nose. He snarled and grabbed for me again. I was batting his arms away and pressing Larc against the door leading to the hallway. We were cornered. Then the chime on the keypad stopped beeping and the door opened. Larc and I practically fell into the hallway and we scrambled to shut the door behind us.

  I kept stumbling as I ran. After a few seconds, the blue glow surrounded us and we ran even harder.

  There was shouting behind us and the sounds of running feet. Lots of running feet. We came to what looked like a dead end, and Larc smashed her hand into a small button and we tumbled into a circular room.

  I fell back into a padded seat that farted when I sat down. Larc was running around like a crazy woman, banging buttons and flipping switches. The shouting was getting louder by the second and so were the slapping footsteps. But then there was a loud whoosh and the door clicked shut. The low hum that had surrounded us since we’d entered the hallway became an insistent whine, increasing in pitch until I winced and had to hold my ears. The sound made me squint my eyes.

  Instinctively, I shouted, “Belt!” A harness wrapped around my shoulders and lap.

  Then the whole room around us seemed to explode. We were bathed in blue light, and the screeching sound of metal on metal made me clench my jaw. A huge thrust pushed me back into my seat and I thought of the g-forces from the shuttle trip up to the Sojourner.

  Then, as suddenly as the noise and the light and the g-forces had begun, they were gone. The only sounds were my haggard breathing and a few beeps. My peapod, a forgotten grasshrinker, and the pages from Mrs. H’s book were floating in front of me. My ears were itchy from my weightless hair dancing around them. I reached up, snatched everything from the air, and stuffed it all back into my pockets. I swallowed and patted my hair.

  “What did you just do?” I frantically asked the back of the chair in front of me. “Your finger! This pod! What did you do?”

  The chair turned and wild white hair whipped around Larc’s pale face. Her blue braces beamed at me.

  “I just thought we would hide in here—not fly away!” I looked crazily around the pod. Through the porthole next to me, I saw stars streaking by.

  Larc giggled and said, “Belt.” Her belt slid off and she hovered in front of me. With her hair whipping around and her billowing jumpsuit, she looked like a gh
ost or a fairy or something.

  “An escape pod is for escaping, Mike. It’s not called a hiding pod.”

  “But where are we going?” I asked sharply. “Belt!” I floated out of my seat and floundered my way closer to her. “The goons have my parents. We have to go back, we have to—”

  “We’re not going back,” Larc said very matter-of-factly, and she floated over to the console in front of her chair. She pointed to a screen with a blipping dot. “The course is charted, Mike.”

  “What course?” I asked.

  “The course to the Fold, silly.”

  I sputtered, “The Fold? We can’t go through the Fold in this! We don’t have a thick enough hull! Are you insane?” I had a funny feeling in my cheeks and then realized that it wasn’t my cheeks. It was my throat and stomach.

  “I’m gonna hurl,” I choked out. Larc handed me a bag. I took a few deep breaths and calmed myself without puking. I handed the empty bag back to Larc. “I need some of that stomach-settling vitamin stuff from Dad….”

  Larc looked at me and cocked her head. “You don’t know anything, do you, Mike?”

  I didn’t know if she meant about life in general, about almost barfing, or about the ship.

  “My dad told me you were in trouble. He sent me to find you and get you off the ship. He said the mission was compromised. This little trip wasn’t supposed to happen for another few days, but with your parents captured … I would have said something, but I wasn’t supposed to tell you about any of—”

  “Can you tell me now, before I have to strangle you?” I shouted.

  “Fine, fine,” Larc said, floating away from me. “You don’t have to get violent.” She took a deep breath. “Remember how we saw all those people on my monitor a few weeks ago?”

  “The blinky-dot map?”

  “No, dummy, the other thing. The actual people. In actual apartments. Talking.”