by Adam Holt
Once focused, Sunjay researched harder than either of us. After I told him it was a repair mission for a space station, he wanted to know which one. He figured out some amazing stuff, too. “See, there are live cameras on every space station in the solar system. There are three stations orbiting Earth, two around Mars, one around Venus, and one even circles the Sun.” He showed us live cam views from all of them. The station around Venus circled so quickly that you could get dizzy watching the surface of the planet whiz by. It was a sunrise and sunset every 45 minutes.
“But the problem is there’s no problem,” he said. “All the cameras work. None of the space stations are missing. There’s nothing to fix, so what makes you think it’s a space station repair mission?”
“I just overheard some things,” I explained. I didn’t tell them about all of my spying efforts.
We also read the crew profiles together. I knew them pretty well, everyone except Lincoln Sawyer. We spent some time reading his public profile on the Space Alliance website. It was written for younger kids, so it read like this:
LINCOLN SAWYER, ASTRONAUT-CLASS ANDROID
FABRICATED ON: DECEMBER 4, 2065
PURPOSE: SAWYER IS THE SPACE ALLIANCE’S FIRST FIELD-TESTED ANDROID. HE WILL SERVE AS SHIP’S DOCTOR AND SPACEWALK ASSISTANT ON THE UPCOMING MISSION TO THE MOON.
FUN FACTS: SAWYER IS QUALIFIED AS A SURGEON, BUT HIS HANDS ARE REGISTERED AS LETHAL WEAPONS! HE IS TRAINED IN MARTIAL ARTS. HE ENJOYS AMERICAN HISTORY—DO YOU SEE WHY HE CHOSE HIS NAME? SAWYER ALSO HAS UNLIMITED MEMORY, SO REMEMBER, FOLKS, IF YOU MEET THIS ANDROID, HE WILL NEVER FORGET YOU.
“Dude!” Sunjay did a roundhouse kick. “Unlimited memory! Martial arts! And he’s going to be the ship’s doctor. I’ve always wanted to meet a real android!”
“An android is a robot that looks and acts like a human,” said Little Bacon, straightening his floppy hat, but Sunjay ignored him.
“Maybe Sawyer will teach us some skills,” said Sunjay, chopping at the air.
“He’ll be pretty busy, Sunjay. He does sound smart—kind of tough, too. Have you ever met him, Tully?”
“No, never,” I said.
It was my first reaction, and it was a lie. Why had I lied? It wasn’t like I needed to hide some big secret, but I thought, Hey, they don’t need to know every little detail. I didn’t tell them about my weird Harper Device dream. Why tell them about my run-in with Sawyer or the trip to Hangar Two? It would just get complicated. A few secrets won’t kill us.
Despite our best efforts, one intruder interrupted our planning sessions, and it was unstoppable. A tropical storm. A few days after the Harper Device arrived in Houston, a tropical depression formed in the Gulf of Mexico. At first it headed toward Florida, but then the storm strengthened and headed straight for the Texas Gulf Coast. To everyone’s surprise, the tropical storm reached Houston and then suddenly paused right over the Space Alliance Center, just a few miles from our house. We were in the eye of the storm. Of course, the eye of a hurricane is completely still with no rain and sunny skies. Our house is so close to the space center that we enjoyed perfect weather while the rest of the city was flooded and thrashed. Then, just like the storm at the hangar, the tropical storm vanished into thin air.
The rain still impacted us though. Our creek flooded the far end of the street. The Tirelli’s house bordered the creek, so the flood ruined their carpet and made their house smell like old socks. My dad, Dr. Chakravorty, and Mr. Tirelli hauled the carpet outside. Poor Tabitha, I thought. Her brothers smelled bad enough. My dad looked at the moldy carpet and shook his head. I knew what was on his mind.
After that, Dad did seem snoopier than usual. He popped in a number of times to find us sprawled out in Mission Control watching Star Wars. He even watched a few scenes with us before heading back to the office again. He knew most of Han Solo’s lines. I think he was glad I had company.
I was glad I had company, too. We finally found a few possible hiding spots on The Adversity. Most of them were in the cargo hold. Only one problem—it was frigid in there. We would need to bring coats, hats, gloves, food, water, etc. It was the best option we had found so far, but it would look suspicious if I packed my ski jacket for a trip to Florida. We also needed to know more about the mission, so I sent Little Bacon on another recon mission to dad’s study. This time he found out they were planning a cover-up for the mission. Details would be announced soon.
Dad spent more and more time in his study. I couldn’t help but feel resentment toward him. He may have guessed at my resentment, but he did nothing about it. Tabitha said I needed to act depressed.
“Why?”
“So he takes pity on you.”
“How?”
“I’ll show you.”
She gave me some basic lessons in looking depressed, and they paid off with my dad. I picked at my food when he took me to restaurants or tried to talk to me about sports or school. I slouched, sighed often, and crinkled my forehead to look worried. When he asked me how I felt, I said fine. “If you shut him down, he’ll get worried. Just don’t talk to him very much.”
I learned how to talk to Tabitha though. She was a pretty good listener as long as I wasn’t trying to win an argument with her and didn’t stare at her. There was something about her smile that made me feel at ease. I had to ignore how pretty she was though. That wasn’t easy, but she was teaching me how to act. Sunjay would study maps of The Adversity while we did our acting lessons. Then all of the sudden he would fire off a question, like, “Hey, why is the sky blue if space is black?” Or he’d say, “You know, I think space might be scarier than we think.”
“I think you’re right, Sunjay,” Tabitha told him. “Did you know that a paint chip flying through space can break a 3-inch thick window? I guess that makes sense if it’s flying toward you at 15,000 miles per hour.”
“Whoa,” Sunjay said, “why do they even use paint?”
I could sense he was scared. I interjected. “You know what’s cool, Sunjay? This one astronomer said he thinks there are a million other civilizations on other planets. A million. Maybe we’ll bump into one of them in space.”
I actually hadn’t considered it at all.
The day finally came when my dad told me what I already knew: he was going back to space. “Let’s take a walk,” he told me. “Leave your holo-phone in the house, okay?” We headed out the door, down the driveway and into the thick summer air. He didn’t say anything until we were past the houses and on the dark, wooded stretch of road that led from our subdivision to a park. Luckily, the floodwater had receded. It was dusk and the crickets were chirping.
I rehearsed this moment in the mirror for a few weeks, working on my surprised and angry faces. I even rehearsed with Tabitha. I didn’t expect to deliver my performance on the move though.
“Tully, I have some news you might not like,” he said, looking down the street into the twilight.
“Then why don’t you save it for some other day?“ I mumbled.
“You don’t really want me to do that, son.”
“What do you know about what I want?” I shot back. That was part of the act. Tabitha told me I should get defensive and mad.
“You’re right. I don’t always know what you want. Somehow I think you know what I’m going to say. The Space Alliance needs me to fly another mission,” he said.
“Yeah, really? Well, that stinks. I don’t want to go back to Alaska.” I felt a lump in my throat that stopped me from talking. It didn’t matter if I was acting or not. This felt bad either way.
“I don’t want to go on this mission, but they need me,” he continued. “I haven’t told you everything about the Harper Device. Much of it is confidential. That’s why we’re talking outside, why you had to leave your holophone behind. If someone wanted to overhear our conversation, it wouldn’t be hard to turn that phone into an eavesdropping device.” He stopped and faced me. “First, you have to promise me you won’t share what I’m going to tell you with anot
her living soul. Can you do that?”
“Uh, yeah,” I said. “I guess.”
He shook his head. Not good enough.
“Yes, I promise that I will not share this with another living soul.”
“Very good,” he said, resuming the walk. “The mission objective is clear. We’ve lost contact with a space station. We need to find out what happened. I will lead a small crew to assess the damage and repair the space station.
“I also have my own objective, and this is where I need your promise. When I found the Device, I didn’t know what to do with it. Everyone wanted to bring it back to Earth for research, but something told me that was a bad idea. The Alliance thought it was a great idea. From what they saw, the Harper Device might have unlimited energy. New investments started coming in faster than they could believe. I got caught up in all the excitement and told them we would bring it home.”
“Uh, okay,” I said. “So what’s your objective?”
“No, give me a moment. It turns out I was right. The research hasn’t produced many results, but that won’t stop researchers from trying even when things get dangerous. They see all the amazing potential of the discovery, but it blinds them to the dangers. Yes, the Device is dangerous. We only have to look down the street at the Tirelli’s house to see that. So the Device produced a tropical storm. What’s next—a hurricane, an earthquake, a tsunami? It’s only going to get worse. So I’ve convinced Gallant Trackman of the danger. Fortunately he agreed with me, and he is a very influential man.”
He paused for a minute. I knew what he was about to say, but tried to act confused. “What does all this mean, dad?”
“We are taking the Harper Device with us on this mission. We are supposed to drop it off at Moon Base Tranquility.”
“Well, great then! Send the Device to the Moon, but why do you have to go? Why does it have to be the great Commander Harper on this mission?” I asked in an angry whisper. “You—you could have died last time out there! Left me alone in the wilderness!” He doesn’t have to go! I don’t have to go either. We can stay here. I can convince him. All this crazy planning, we don’t have to do any of it, I thought. Maybe I can actually convince him to change his mind. “Dad, don’t leave. Somebody else can go. You’re famous enough, aren’t you?”
“Famous?” There was a red glint in his blue eyes. “You should know me better than that. I don’t care about fame. I care about you.”
“Then don’t leave me.” I grabbed his arm, and he put his hand on mine.
“Nobody else can do what must be done,” he explained, looking up to the sky.
“Repair a space station and drop the Harper Device on the Moon? Any commander could do that. You’re not the only commander in the Alliance.”
“Do you want to know my objective then?”
“Yes!”
“I’m not taking it to the Moon. I’m hiding it somewhere else.”
I gasped. I already heard so much from all my eavesdropping that I thought I knew everything. I certainly didn’t know this.
“What? Why?”
“Because some power is better left unused.”
“Won’t you get in trouble?”
“Yes, I could get in big trouble, but sometimes you have to break the rules to do the right thing. I don’t mind breaking a few rules to save a lot of lives—or a planet.”
That was just strange enough to shut me up. Save the planet? Was the Harper Device that powerful or that bad? The crickets chirped and a dog barked in someone’s backyard. I kept thinking about his words. “To break the rules to do the right thing,” he said. It was hard to understand. I imagined someone shouting “Guilty!” and putting my dad behind bars.
“So you may save the planet, but they may throw you in jail.”
“If they catch me, son, and I don’t think they will. Your old man is sneakier than that.”
Ha! Well, I was sneaky, too, and I also had an objective—to get on board his ship. Maybe I had to break some rules to do the right thing, too.
Knowing his purpose gave me another objective in space. We might help my dad hide the Device, and that would make the world a safer place. He looked over at me a few times on the walk home, and I wanted to look back and say, “It’s okay. Go save the world!” But I couldn’t. I had to keep up my act.
We headed back to house. Then, unexpectedly, he started talking again.
“Oh!” he added. “I can tell you some other interesting news. We need to distract the media. We don’t want them to know the Harper Device is on the mission. You’ve heard about the orangutan that knows sign language, right? He’s from the San Diego Zoo.”
“You mean Scrubbles?”
“That’s his name.” He told me that Scrubbles would be part of their “cover,” along with an unnamed pop star. This pop star apparently wanted to write the first album in space.
“Ugh,” he rubbed his eyes, “I thought things were bad enough, but musicians in space? And a primate? I wish you could come along to see it. We could monkey around in space together.”
“Yeah, just what I always wanted to do, sneak into space,” I said, trying to hide my surprise. However, he gave me an idea. That was the moment I knew how I could sneak on board The Adversity.
That night I thought about our conversation. My dad had good reasons to fly the mission. He thought he was saving the world. If I was in his shoes, I might do the same thing. I guess we both had a lot of nerve. His secrets were safe with me, but I had some secrets of my own.
SUNJAY IN LOVE, ME IN PAIN
The next day I perfected my lonely, only child look, keeping my eyes on the ground and answering all my dad’s questions with “yes,” “no,” or “whatever.” He must have felt bad about breaking the news to me. To lighten the mood he took Sunjay, Tabitha, and I to the flight press conference. Tabitha’s acting lessons were paying off.
“Oh, I hope we can see your launch, too, Commander!” said Tabitha on our ride to Space Alliance Headquarters. “I need to get out of the house for a while. It still smells pretty gross from the flood.”
“Sure, Tabitha. You and Sunjay have been keeping Tully entertained,” my dad said. “I probably owe you one.”
Before the press conference, The Space Alliance rolled The Adversity out of Hangar One. It was like watching a killer whale slowly swim past you in the ocean, with its black belly and white topside—except the ship was a hundred times the size of a killer whale and much bigger than the old Space Shuttles from the late 20th century. Its nose emerged first with two sets of windows: a Flight Deck and an Observation Deck. Next came the wings and the middle of the ship, where the crew cabins and the cargo hold were. After that, the wings broadened at the body of the ship. They kept experiments and a space lab in that section. Finally we saw the massive engines that launched the whole thing into space. It was hard to imagine those big, dark engines coming alive with fire. It was equally hard to imagine getting on board, but that’s what we planned to do.
In front of The Adversity there stood a stage that looked small by comparison. Sunlight shined off the windows and onto the stage where my dad sat with his crew. We had front row seats by the press who were snapping pictures and filming. The “Return of Commander Harper” was a big deal in itself, but the excitement increased when the Alliance released the details. “Moon, Monkeys, and Music!” a banner read above the stage. An Alliance spokesman told the crowd that the mission had three goals. “It’s a pretty standard mission,” the spokesman said, “just dropping off some supplies at Moon Base Tranquility. But it’s also an excited time. It has been one hundred years since Neil Armstrong walked on the Moon.”
The second announcement was that Scrubbles the Orangutan would be a passenger. Primates hadn’t flown in space since the early days of space flight. Back then, NASA used them to see what might happen to astronauts in space. “Primates made it into space before people,” my dad explained. “Some of the them survived, but many died because of accidents like parachute failur
e. This mission will show how far we’ve come,” explained my dad. “Scrubbles will have a great life on board Adversity. He’s even worked on his vocabulary for the trip. He knows Moon, stars, sun, gravity, and liftoff.” When my dad said those words, Scrubbles signed them. The media thought that was pretty cute, I guess. Scrubbles would perform experiments and practice his sign language with one of the astronauts. He sat on stage with his trainer, who was busily combing his hair. When my dad finished his brief speech, Scrubbles shrugged off his trainer and saluted my dad. The salute went viral. Who can resist a patriotic primate?
The third announcement was the big surprise—one of the world’s biggest pop stars would be on board for this mission. She burst through the “Moon, Monkeys, and Music!” banner singing her latest hit, “Star Trance.” She wore a dress shaped like The Adversity itself, with giant wings and sparks flying off the fringes.
“Oh, my gosh. Is this really happening?” asked Sunjay, grabbing his hair and pulling it out to the sides. “Is that really her?”
Yes, it was her. Queen Envy.
Sunjay’s eyes almost popped out of his head he was so excited. I was also surprised but definitely not star-struck. Queen Envy was a bit of a maniac to me. She finished her song and took a bow. She flicked her glittering eyelashes and announced her new album’s title: Starboy in Love.
With all the hype about Scrubbles and Queen Envy, there were very few questions about the actual purpose of the mission. It was a genius way to distract the media, I guess. No one asked any tough questions. No one mentioned the Harper Device or the hurricane, even with my Dad sitting right there on stage. I think that’s the only reason he—or the Alliance—could bear to watch Queen Envy strutting around on stage in front of The Adversity and blowing kissing to Scrubbles, who didn’t seem too impressed with her performance. Neither were Tabitha and I.
Sunjay, on the other hand, took about a thousand pictures of himself with Queen Envy in the background. Later that night at Mission Control he made one of his photos the desktop background of the LiveWall. Tabitha and I drew horns and a goatee on Queen Envy when he wasn’t looking. He just scowled and examined his maps. “She’ll write songs about me,” he said.
