“As in, a vacuum cleaner?” Song-Ye asked.
“Pretty much,” Dr. Romero said. “You also have to use foot loops, handles, and straps to keep yourself in place or you might drift in unwanted directions. When you’re in position, you activate the air suction to carry away waste. At the front of the toilet there’s a suction hose for liquids. And there are specialized adapter funnels—one for women and one for men.”
“Right now, uh, I think I can hold it a while longer,” Dyl said.
Romero finished analyzing the patients’ blood work and shook her head in surprise to discover that each of the four sick members of the satellite team had fallen ill with the food poisoning known as Salmonella.
Once Dr. Romero discovered what had caused the illness, she could better treat the Sat team members. “In the body, the Salmonella bacteria produces a poisonous byproduct, a toxin that makes patients extremely sick. They’ll recover just fine,” she said, to everyone’s relief. “But they’ll need a few days of rest before they’re back to full health. What I don’t understand is how it could have gotten into four separate food packs like that … unless there’s something wrong with our preservation systems, but that doesn’t seem possible.”
More importantly, she was worried about a continuing outbreak. “Before we eat again, we’ll have to test each of the packages to make sure the rest of our food supply is safe.”
“Is that something we can help with?” Song-Ye asked.
Romero looked at her patients and let out a sigh. “Absolutely. If any other parts of our food supply are contaminated, it would be a complete disaster for the ISSC. We’re already at a minimal active crew complement—in fact, if we didn’t have you cadets to help, I don’t know how we’d finish even our basic work.”
Dyl and Song-Ye spent hours testing small samples from the food packets in the Mess module. After careful analysis, they found two more contaminated with Salmonella. Dr. Romero quickly sealed away those packets so no one else would get sick.
The patients looked at the packages with accusing glares. Lifchez groaned and didn’t even want to read the labels.
“At least we’ve verified the safety of the other meals. We can have lunch now,” Dyl said.
Song-Ye remained concerned. “That doesn’t explain how they got contaminated in the first place, though.”
After an exhausting day, the Star Challengers were assigned a sleep shift. Ansari showed them to an empty set of compartments in the repressurized Hab 1. “This will be your home sweet home, for as long as you stay here.” She let them each choose their own private area.
“Everyone has a personal sleep station, a small compartment where you can get some privacy. Sleep stations are rather compact, but each one has a desk and lamp, nets to stow your clothes in, and a sleeping bag.”
“So we get to go camping in space?” King said. He was an Eagle Scout, after all.
“I’ll make s’mores,” Dyl offered.
“The bags are sleep restraints more than anything else,” Ansari said. “Just cloth with a stiff pad on the back. They keep you from floating around and hitting the walls while you sleep. When it’s time for bed, you just shut your door and zip yourselves in for a good night’s rest. Actually, it’s not as easy to get used to sleeping in microgravity as you might think. We supply eye masks and earplugs, but it’s still a strange sensation.”
“As long as no one tries to spin me around in a chair, I’ll deal with it,” Song-Ye muttered.
“Living in space doesn’t take much physical effort,” Dr. Romero said the following day. “So we have to exercise to stay healthy. It’s my job to keep track of the mass, bone density, and muscle tone of everyone on this space station. I require every member of the crew to put in at least two hours a day in the fitness module while they’re stationed here in orbit. Otherwise their muscles and bones would deteriorate in microgravity.”
Dyl wiggled his legs, enjoying the freedom of movement. “How hard can it be to run or ride a bike up here?”
She pointed out a magnetic treadmill. “That’s called a ‘colbert,’ after the one on the original International Space Station. You wear straps and restraints to keep yourself secure against the equipment while you exercise. Between resistance exercises, the colbert, and the stationary bicycle, the crew stays pretty fit.” She looked at the two of them. “Have you noticed any physiological differences in yourselves since you arrived?”
“My head feels all stuffed up,” Dyl said. “And I have a runny nose.” He had also noticed within the first few hours of their being aboard the ISSC that all of his friends’ eyes looked swollen, their faces rounder. “Song-Ye is looking pretty plump in the face. Maybe she ate too much yesterday,” he teased.
She shot back, “Listen to Mr. Puffy Cheeks, pfft!”
Romero nodded. “Perfectly normal. Gravity isn’t keeping your body’s fluids where they would normally be. In microgravity, your heart doesn’t have to work as hard to circulate blood, so your body doesn’t need as much fluid. In the next few days, you’ll pee away what you don’t need, and then you’ll feel normal.”
After Dr. Romero had adjusted the colbert, Song-Ye tried out the treadmill.
“Being in space for a long time can cause physiological problems for humans,” Dr. Romero continued. “Space programs have been studying the effects since the first orbital flights, and then extended stays aboard the Soviet Mir space station, SkyLab, and the original International Space Station. One of the ISSC’s most important areas of research is to learn how humans can live for long periods of time in space.”
Dyl shook his head. “I have a feeling the Kylarn don’t want us to feel welcome out here for an extended stay.”
***
Twelve
“Well, I know why I volunteered for this task,” King said, raising an eyebrow at Mira before staring down at the electronic star charts. They were working together in the observatory module. “I’m an amateur astronomer, and I worked with Dr. Wu before on his charts. It’s already interesting to me. The question is: What are you doing here?” It was a friendly query, not a challenge.
Mira moistened her lips and thought for a moment. King was sure the girl would give him the brush-off, but she surprised him. “I could claim that I like astronomy, too, but you’d see through that right away, so there’s no point. For now, let’s just say I have an interest in … heavenly bodies.” Her lips curled into a teasing smile, and her eyes locked with his.
King took a quick breath of surprise. Was she flirting with him? The tune of an old song, “Can’t Take My Eyes off of You” flashed through his mind, and he quickly decided against humming it. “So, we have that in common, then,” he teased her back.
Just then, Dr. d’Almeida glided in. “Dr. Wu’s message this morning requested that you go over the images that he sent, Cadet King. Did you find the charts?”
“Yes, Ma’am, I believe we have them all,” King said, pointing down at the screen. “It’s hard to believe that it takes days or weeks to make each of these sky survey pictures. When I worked with Dr. Wu on the Moon, we used video images, but we used printed ones, too, for the blink test.”
Dr. d’Almeida chuckled. “Dr. Wu is a brilliant astronomer, and he has some eccentricities. One of them is that he enjoys the feel of real paper in his hands. But as you can probably guess, dealing with hardcopy is impractical on the space station.”
“Clearly,” Mira said. “You can’t even use paperweights to keep things in place.”
“There are other ways, of course,” d’Almeida said. “We have vacuum display boards, with tiny pinholes that draw in small amounts of air to keep lightweight objects in place.”
“Huh,” King mused, “like a reverse air-hockey table.”
D’Almeida didn’t seem to hear him. She continued. “Or magnetized sheets, or a tacky backing.”
“Like sticky notes,” Mira observed.
“But using the display screen is by far the simplest method. You can still do
the blink test on screen, of course.” D’Almeida touched the display table and flicked a finger back and forth. The projected deep-sky image changed from one starfield to another and back again. “But if you two have this in hand, I can get back to my other work in the observatory dome. Sometimes a real astronomer needs to look at the stars with her own eyes.” With that, Dr. d’Almeida pushed off and zoomed to the far end of the module and the telescope enclosure, all the while singing softly in a foreign language. Apparently, she wasn’t used to having other people in the module with her.
“Portuguese folk song,” Mira pointed out. She lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “Maybe Wu isn’t the only eccentric astronomer.”
“Huh,” King said with a smile. “Well, we all have a few things that make us different. Besides, some of us happen to think that a little bit of music makes the day go better.” He started humming “Whistle While You Work” and flicked a finger on the display screen to switch back and forth between two images. He saw no important changes and switched to another pair of images, then another, then another. He settled into a rhythm, and after a few minutes Mira took over, switching from image to image.
“It seems like a pointless exercise, doesn’t it?” she said. “They all look pretty much the same—a bunch of light dots on black.”
King kept his eyes glued to the screen, alert for any differences. If one tiny star moved while the rest of the points remained the same, it would pop out like a jumping flea. “I can understand why Wu thinks it’s important, but with the Kylarn threat, I guess looking for asteroids and comets has been put on the back burner.”
At the moment, the station’s crew, as well as most people on Earth, were particularly anxious to see the upcoming results of the surveillance probe, Recon-1, which had been launched before the Star Challengers arrived at the ISSC. The spy probe would capture images of the alien base on the far side of the Moon; it was due to arrive and send back its first pictures later that day. King wasn’t surprised that tedious asteroid searches received little fanfare.… On the other hand, they all had to wait a few hours until Recon-1 arrived at its destination. He wanted to do this for Dr. Wu in the meantime.
Bending over the screens, he spotted a flicker of change between one image and another. “There! Like that.”
“I didn’t see anything,” Mira said. He wasn’t sure she had even looked.
He flicked the image back, pointed to a spot, then switched to the original starfield again, pointing to another place. “See that? The dot moved.”
“If you say so.” Her voice sounded cool and distant.
“Take my word for it, we’re making progress.”
***
Thirteen
No one had gotten a glimpse of the Kylarn outpost on the far side of the Moon since JJ’s previous mission to the future, when King, Major Fox, and she had discovered the bizarre alien military base being built in secret. After the destruction of Moonbase Magellan, Earth’s space programs—now with the support of countless governments—had scrambled to put together a probe in order to get a snapshot of what the Kylarn were doing over there.
The private International Collaborative Space Agency, or ICSA, had relied on old technology in its space programs for years, and they simply had nothing ready that could serve as a spy probe to the Moon. It had taken most of a year, but finally the pieces were coming together.
“We know the Kylarn have been watching us, but until today we had no way to watch them back,” Stationmaster Ansari said. “Now we have our own probe.”
Inside Central, JJ waited with King, Tony, and the mysterious Mira. Dyl and Song-Ye were still helping Dr. Romero take care of the sick crewmembers in Medical.
“Even with the whole Sat team laid up with Salmonella, we need to find some way to launch the Eye in the Sky monitoring satellite—and soon,” Mira pointed out. “Eve trained with the team, so I can help.”
Ansari considered. “That’s possible, Cadet. But for today, let’s see what Recon-1 can show us.”
The Russian pilot gave a gruff snort. “Eye in the Sky will keep watch from a safe distance, but my probe will go right to the alien base! We’ll see how their secret outpost has changed over the past year.” Bronsky had an almost fatherly attitude toward Recon-1, since he had built it himself, converting the battered old Halley for one last mission.
Bronsky had been the pilot of the supply ship that traveled from the ISSC to the Moon and back, delivering food and equipment, exchanging personnel. On its previous routine flight, the ship had passed over the far side of the Moon, where the Russian pilot was the first to spot the alien complex. When the Halley tried to make contact, the Kylarn had opened fire, forcing a crash landing from which Bronsky and his copilot had narrowly escaped with their lives. The discovery of the outpost stirred up the aliens, though, and they had destroyed Moonbase Magellan. The crewmembers barely made it back home in the repaired supply ship.
Afterward, the Halley had been decommissioned, too damaged to haul passengers again. It was Bronsky himself, working with satellite team members Lifchez and Major Rodgers, who had refitted the old spacecraft and turned it into an automated ship packed with observation devices: Recon-1. Today, the probe would reach its destination after a slow, stealthy journey.
“What’s the difference between the probe and the Eye in the Sky satellite?” Tony asked.
“What’s the difference?” Bronsky said, sounding offended. “What is the difference?” He shook his head.
“Eye in the Sky will be launched to an orbital stable point between Earth and Moon. It will keep watch from afar, but my Recon-1 is a real spy! It sneaks right up to the alien base and shows us what they are really doing!”
“Unless the Kylarn see it first,” JJ said. “Won’t they just shoot it down? They’ve already proved they don’t like to be spied on.”
The Russian frowned. “That is a possibility, but we have taken precautions. My probe was launched from this station and drifted on course to the Moon, completely silent. Maybe the aliens will not notice.”
Stationmaster Ansari said, “Both the Recon-1 probe and the monitoring satellite are vital for collecting information. The more data we have, the better our chances against the aliens.”
uRecon-1 has entered lunar orbit,” Pi reported from his station. “Radio silence will last close to an hour.” JJ knew that while Recon-1 orbited above the location of the Kylarn base on the lunar far side, the Moon itself would block all signals. But all the while, the probe would silently take images of what it saw.
Watching Pi at his station, she wondered if Dyl would ever get to take a turn as the Communications Officer for the ISSC, as he had at the lunar base. For now, her brother seemed content to help Song-Ye and Dr. Romero.
The Russian captain clapped his big hands together. “Soon enough we will learn what our alien friends have been up to.”
“If they were our friends, we wouldn’t have to be so worried about them,” King remarked.
Ansari floated near the control screens, her dark eyebrows drawn together. “Recon-1 will approach in low-power mode, no transmissions. Passive recording only while it’s in radio silence, but once it comes back into range after going around the Moon, the probe will transmit its data in a burst.”
Colonel Fox had sent an all-systems-go approval from CMC, and everyone on the space station and on the ground waited eagerly for the first images. JJ and Tony crowded together near one of the screens, while King and Mira floated in front of another screen. JJ found that she was holding her breath and let out a long exhale.
It was a very long hour.
Mira continued to watch intently. “The Kylarn won’t simply be biding their time and waiting for us. We should see significant changes from the old images.”
“Or maybe they just packed up and went home,” Tony said.
“Not much chance of that,” JJ muttered. She thought for the thousandth time, If only Earth had spent more time looking outward at the space nei
ghborhood, the Kylarn would never have caught us by surprise.… We would have been ready!
“The probe is due to exit from the Moon’s radio shadow soon,” Pi said. “We’ll receive the first images in a few minutes.”
Bronsky waved a triumphant arm so hard that he lost his hold on the wall and drifted about until he bumped into something that he could use to nudge himself back to a handhold. “And they said Halley would never fly again after we returned!” He let out a snort of indignation.
A tense hush filled Central. JJ wondered if they would ever see the probe again, or if the aliens had destroyed Recon-1 as soon as it tried to take secret surveillance images. They would find out in a few seconds. The chronometer ticked down.
“There it is!” JJ was the first to shout as she watched the monitor. A blip appeared at the edge of the Moon, orbiting around from the far side. “The Kylarn didn’t destroy it!”
“Recon-1 is now in contact, activating its broad-bandwidth burst transmission,” Pi reported, his voice raised with excitement. “First signals coming in.”
JJ knew that the probe had recorded a wealth of images and then raced away from the alien base. Now that Recon-1 had emerged from radio silence and reestablished contact, the computers onboard were sending a fast transmission, like a quarterback throwing a football.
“Receiving infrared images.…” Pi said, grinning. “Radar images … ultraviolet.”
The visual data flowing across the screens painted a remarkable picture—the view that Recon-1 had recorded half an hour ago as it tiptoed over the alien outpost. Every second, each image, gave them more information that could be used to fight the invaders.
As the screen resolved itself in the wide-angle camera shots, JJ gasped. Previously, the size of the alien outpost had been awesome—now it was three times as large! The Kylarn base had grown into a nightmarish amusement park of domes and tubes, mine shafts, alien rail cars, and robotic walkers that scurried about like metallic termites. She could see factories and glowing lights, strange geometric towers that climbed higher than the crater walls and connected to one another with wires and conduits.
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