by Melinda Metz
“I guess we’re not getting our second breakfast,” Caleb commented.
“That’s okay,” Jaden said. “She gave us something even better — a clue!”
8
“Guys, I think crumbs did get in the scrubber!” Sonja exclaimed from her station in the S.M.A.R.T.S. control center. It was about an hour after she, Caleb, Jaden, and Benjamin had started their second shift as Mission Control.
“Why? What’s happening?” Benjamin cried.
“I just took a reading on the atmosphere in the hab,” Sonja explained. “The CO2 is up. And if the amount of CO2 continues to rise at the same rate, the hab will run out of oxygen in a little more than two days and three hours.”
“They won’t have enough air to last until Monday afternoon!” Benjamin said. “We have to get them out right now.” He pulled out his cell and started to bring up Mrs. Ram’s number.
“What’s happening in the hab is just a simulation,” Jaden pointed out. “The hab will always have enough air and heat. The reading is telling us what would be happening if the scrubber damage really affected the amount of oxygen. Samuel and the others are fine.”
“But if we want to win the contest, we have to act like the simulation is real. No oxygen in the hab equals automatic failure,” Caleb said.
“You’re right,” Jaden agreed. “We need to figure this out — soon.” He clicked a few keys, and a clock appeared on one of the screens. It started ticking down from fifty-one hours.
50:59:60.
50:59:59.
50:59:58.
Jaden couldn’t take his eyes off the numbers as the seconds slipped away. With each second that went by, the colonists were closer to running out of air.
* * *
About an hour later, Caleb and Sonja were crowded around Jaden’s monitor, studying a diagram of the scrubber. They’d emailed the colonists telling them that Mission Control would come up with a fix for the machine. The first step was learning exactly how it worked.
“Okay, so the fan blows air from the hab over a bed full of pellets,” Caleb said. “Then the CO2 sticks to the pellets.” He shook his head. “I don’t get why the CO2 sticks.”
The three of them stared at the screen in silence. Benjamin wasn’t even listening. He just stared at Samuel’s vital signs on his monitor.
Sonja typed out a search. “The pellets are made from this mineral called zeolite,” she said. “Check out this drawing of its molecular structure.”
Jaden gave a low whistle. “Close up, zeolite looks like it’s filled with cages.”
“I get it,” Caleb said. “Those cages trap small molecules. Carbon dioxide sticks to the pellets in the scrubber because the molecules get caught in the holes in the zeolite.”
Sonja let out a long breath. “The scrubber has a cool design. Except the part where it isn’t working.”
“It’s got to be the fan that’s messed up, right?” Jaden said. “If crumbs get in a scrubber, they can get caught up in the fan’s motor or the axle.”
“Right, and that would slow the fan down,” Caleb answered. “If the fan isn’t spinning as fast as it should be, it won’t blow as much air over the pellets, and the pellets won’t soak up as much CO2. The scrubber is still working — just not that well.”
“So can we just have them open the scrubber up and clean the fan?” Sonja asked.
“Too risky,” Caleb said, running his fingers through his hair. “They’d have to shut down the scrubber to open it up. Who knows how long it would take them to clean the fan and get it going again. They could run out of oxygen before they finish.”
“We can figure out how to make a new fan out of stuff they have in the hab and send them instructions,” Jaden said. “Then they’ll only have to shut the scrubber down long enough to open it up and put in the new fan.”
“Are you sure we can make a fan?” Sonja asked doubtfully.
“We can do it,” Jaden said, trying to sound confident. “This isn’t any different than if we were back in our makerspace working on a project.”
“I still say we should just have them come out now,” Benjamin muttered from his station. “It’s hopeless.”
* * *
Jaden glanced at what Caleb had started calling the Clock of DOOM. Time was ticking: 46:13:32.
The Mission Control team had come up with a list of things from the hab that would make good building materials for the fan. Mrs. Ram and Mr. Leavey had gotten everything on the list from Mars Commission engineers and had dropped off the supplies.
For more than three hours, Jaden, Caleb, and Sonja had been trying to figure out how to make the replacement fan. But so far, they hadn’t come up with anything.
Jaden rubbed his scalp. Maybe he needed better blood flow to his brain. The ideas just weren’t coming. He smiled when the door opened and Mrs. Ram came in. She couldn’t help, but seeing her somehow made him feel like they could work out the problem.
“Cookies and drinks,” Mrs. Ram announced, holding up a large bag. “How’s it going?”
Caleb groaned. Sonja growled. “We’re stuck right now,” Jaden admitted. “But when we get stuck on a project in the makerspace, we eventually figure it out.”
“But with those projects, there isn’t a time limit. There isn’t —” Benjamin jerked his head back toward his monitor. “An email just came in from Samuel!”
“Read it!” Sonja urged.
Benjamin began to read aloud:
To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Maybe you were right. Maybe I should’ve traded so I didn’t have to be in the hab. Everyone is driving me crazy. Zoe won’t stop cracking her knuckles. Dylan is complaining about the food and everything else. Goo is criticizing everybody.
Plus I got an email from Mr. Pegg this morning. He told me that in order to make the sim more real, I should spend more time in the shower than we’re supposed to. We’re only allowed two minutes each to save water. But he said in a real mission, we’d all be doing annoying things, and we’d have to learn to deal.
So after breakfast I did it. Everybody is mad at me. Everybody is mad at everybody. It doesn’t even feel like we’re a team anymore. The Mads might actually win.
“I don’t care if the Mads win,” Benjamin burst out when he’d finished reading. “We need to get Samuel out of there.” He started tapping his heel against the floor.
“He didn’t say he wanted out,” Jaden said. “He sounded kind of frustrated but okay.”
“Even on a regular day, Samuel needs me around,” Benjamin declared. “You don’t know.” He glanced wildly around the room. “None of you know. It’s a twin thing.”
“It’s okay, Benjamin. I’m going to take care of this,” Mrs. Ram said firmly. “I’m calling Mr. Pegg right now. I don’t approve of him using kids in what’s basically a psychological experiment. I’ll be right back.”
“The Ram is on it, Benjamin,” Sonja said. “You don’t have to worry.”
Benjamin’s heel tapping slowed down … a little.
“Do you think Zoe could have gotten an email from Mr. Pegg too?” Jaden asked. “Benjamin said she kept cracking her knuckles. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Zoe do that. And she knows it bothers him.”
Caleb sat up straight. “Maybe all the colonists got emails. Samuel said Goo keeps criticizing everyone. Goo’s not mean like that.”
“And I don’t see Dylan complaining about food,” Sonja added. “In third grade, we used to call him Dylan the Disposal, remember? If you ever had anything in your lunch you didn’t like, Dylan would eat it.”
A few minutes later, Mrs. Ram strode back into the room. “This is so strange,” she said. “Mr. Pegg said he didn’t send emails to any of the kids on any of the teams.”
Caleb felt his guts twisting into knots. “If Mr. Pegg didn’t do it, then who did?”
9
“Samuel and the others will know the messages from Mr. Pegg are fake
s in about three minutes,” Jaden said.
As soon as Mrs. Ram had told them about the emails, Mission Control had sent out messages to all their colonists. Then Mrs. Ram had left to tell Mr. Olsen and the other team sponsors what had happened.
“Barrett is out to get our colonists,” muttered Benjamin.
“I don’t know, the Earth Firsters are looking pretty suspicious. We found a possible clue at their camp this morning,” Caleb said. He and Jaden told the others about the Crunchies in Robin’s bag.
“Could it be someone from one of the other teams?” Sonja asked. “It would be easy for them to get the other colonists’ email addresses. They’re all just the person’s name plus marscommission.com.”
Benjamin shook his head. “The competition is only between us and the Mads. The other teams don’t have any reason to mess with our colonists.”
Caleb rolled his chair over next to Jaden’s. “Do you think Benjamin could be the perp?” he whispered. “He wanted Samuel to trade so they could be on Mission Control together, and it’s freaking him out that they’re separated. Now he keeps saying we should pull him out of the hab because of the sabotage.”
Jaden’s brows drew together as he thought. “It would’ve been easy for him to put the Crunchies in Samuel’s bag,” he whispered back.
“And he could’ve easily sent the emails from his console,” Caleb said.
Jaden nodded. “I’ll start a suspect list. So far we have Barrett and that protester, Robin.” He hesitated a few seconds, then added, “And Benjamin.”
* * *
Hours later, the S.M.A.R.T.S. were still stumped. It was almost the end of their Mission Control shift, and they still hadn’t figured out who was behind the sabotage or how to make a new fan for the scrubber.
“Let’s go through the materials again,” Jaden said. He couldn’t think of anything else to do. Maybe because it was so late — after two a.m.
Sonja yawned, then started pointing at the items they’d laid out on the back table. “We have the treadmill belt. We have —”
BANG! The door flew open, loudly hitting the wall. Barrett stormed in. Kaylee was right behind him, filming with her cell.
“You’re the cheaters this time!” Barrett yelled. “I know about the emails you sent the Mads colonists, pretending to be Mr. Pegg. Very smart creating a bogus Mars Commission email account to send them from. You probably thought no one would notice that extra s in commission, but we did.”
Caleb stared at Barrett in surprise. He couldn’t believe that he and the others hadn’t noticed the fake account. They hadn’t even thought to check where the emails had been sent from!
“You tried to turn the Mads colonists against each other so we’d lose,” Barrett continued.
“We did not! That’s what you did to us!” Benjamin shot back.
“What are you talking about?” Barrett shouted. Kaylee continued to film, a little smile tugging at her lips.
Benjamin hit a few keys and brought up the email from his brother. “Look. It says right there that Samuel got an email from Mr. Pegg telling him to use too much water.”
Barrett frowned as he read the email on Benjamin’s monitor. “You guys probably sent fake emails to your own team too,” he said. “That way no one would suspect you. But your colonists must’ve known to ignore the emails.”
“I checked with the Fig Neutrons and the Kelvins after Mrs. Ram told everyone about the fake emails,” Kaylee said. “They never got any — only the Mads and S.M.A.R.T.S. colonists did. It seems like somebody’s cheating in the competition between your two teams.”
“And it’s him,” Benjamin cried, pointing at Barrett. “Once a cheater, always a cheater.”
As the two boys continued to argue, Caleb turned to Jaden. “Okay, Sherlock, what are you thinking?” he asked. Jaden was a complete Sherlock Holmes fanboy.
“Barrett could have done what he was accusing us of. He could’ve sent the emails to our team and his own team so he wouldn’t look guilty,” Jaden said, then shook his head. “But that would mean all the Mads were in on it. If they weren’t, the emails would mess up their team too. I don’t know if Barrett could have gotten all of them to agree to cheat. Most of them were really friendly on the bus.”
Caleb frowned. “And what about Benjamin? Sending emails to the Mads wouldn’t get Samuel out of the hab early. Why would he do that?”
“To make the competition fair, maybe?” Jaden suggested. “Both teams would have to deal with the same problem. He —”
Ping! Ping! One of the monitors sounded a warning, interrupting Jaden.
Benjamin gave a yelp and hit a couple keys on his computer. “The CO2 in the hab is at 0.7 percent. It’s rising even faster than we thought!”
“Huh? What’s going on?” Barrett asked.
“What’s going on is that the Crunchies you snuck into my brother’s bag broke our scrubber,” Benjamin replied. “Are you happy?”
“I didn’t —” Barrett began.
“Just get out of here,” Sonja told him.
Barrett scowled, then turned around and left without another word.
“He’s probably heading off to sabotage us more,” Benjamin muttered.
“But the Earth Firsters are still good suspects too, remember?” Jaden said.
“The Earth Firsters? Why?” Kaylee asked.
“Robin, one of the protestors, had some Cheez Crunchies,” he told her. “She could’ve put a packet in Samuel’s bag. If the Earth Firsters can mess up the simulation, it might make people think the Mars colony will fail. Mars Commission would be ruined if they can’t get investors.”
“Interesting,” Kaylee said. “I hadn’t thought of that.”
“Earth Firsters, Barrett — doesn’t really matter. Whoever the perp is, I don’t think they’re done,” Benjamin said as he turned back to his monitor. “Something else is going to happen. Maybe something even worse than the wrecked scrubber.”
“So what does the CO2 level increasing mean for your team?” Kaylee asked, turning slowly, filming each of them.
“If it keeps going up at this rate, our team only has about nineteen hours of breathable air left,” Benjamin told her. He reset the Clock of DOOM.
18:57:00.
10
Jaden, Caleb, Sonja, and Benjamin walked back into the control center Sunday morning at ten thirty. The first thing Jaden did was check the countdown clock: 10:29:03.
“How are the CO2 levels doing?” Sonja asked the late-night Mission Control group.
Antonio stood up from his console and stretched. “They stayed steady,” he replied. “And as far as we know, there wasn’t any more sabotage.”
“But we weren’t able to figure out how to make a fan from this stuff,” Destiny admitted. She and Brooke stood by the table in the back that they’d been using as their makerspace.
“Our turn,” Sonja told them. “You guys have to get some sleep.”
As the other S.M.A.R.T.S. headed for the door, Benjamin plopped down in front of his monitor. He obviously wasn’t going to help — again.
Is it because he wants us to fail? Jaden wondered. Does he want Samuel out of the hab that badly?
“How about this?” Caleb asked from where he and Sonja stood at the makerspace table. He held up one of the food packets. “The outside might make good fan blades.”
Sonja nodded. “That would work, but the blades aren’t the hard part. The hard part is building the motor that spins the blades.” She looked down at the table. So did Jaden and Caleb.
“Maybe we could —” Caleb began. He shook his head. “Never mind.”
Suddenly Sonja straightened up. Her eyes glittered with excitement. “I think — yeah, I think this could work!” She picked up a miniature flashlight made up of six LED lights attached to a 9-volt battery. She pulled off the block of lights and held up the battery. “We can use this — and this.” She grabbed some copper wire.
“By Odin’s beard, she’s going to make an elec
tromagnet!” Caleb exclaimed, using one of Thor’s favorite expressions.
Electromagnets were different than permanent magnets, like the ones used to hold stuff on a fridge. Electromagnets were created by running electric current through a wire. Lots of things were powered by electromagnets — doorbells, speakers, hard drives, and fans!
Benjamin got up from his console and walked over to the table. “That could actually work,” he said. He took the wire from Sonja and started wrapping it around his finger to make a circle of coiled wire.
He’s actually helping! Jaden thought. Good. He didn’t want Benjamin to be the perp.
“Great!” Caleb told Benjamin. “Every loop of wire will make the electromagnet stronger. And the stronger the magnet is, the faster we can make our fan spin.” It felt like they were back in the media center, teaming up to make something.
“We need a permanent magnet too,” Jaden said. He scanned the table and quickly found one.
They would tape the permanent magnet to the battery from the flashlight. Two magnets always attracted or repelled each other. The push and pull between the electromagnet and the permanent magnet would make the wire spin. Then all they’d have to do was make some blades to attach to one end of the wire, and they’d have a working fan!
* * *
Back in the hab, Zoe held the fan they’d cut out of a dehydrated food package while Dylan attached it to one end of the copper wire. They were following the instructions that had arrived from Mission Control just over an hour ago.
“I hope this works,” Goo said. “We only have about six hours and forty-five minutes of oxygen left!”
“We’re all done,” Zoe said when Dylan had finished.
“Let’s try it!” Samuel exclaimed.
He bent a paper clip to hold each end of the wire. Then he taped one clip to the positive end of the battery and one to the negative end, sending a current through the wire and creating an electromagnet.
The fan began to spin! The four colonists cheered.
“Now all we have to do is just put it inside the scrubber,” Zoe said.
