Please Don't Tell My Parents I Blew Up the Moon

by Richard Roberts

  This was the most beautiful, perfect example of mad science I’d ever heard of. Someone had uncovered a physical process science wouldn’t understand for centuries, and jury rigged a system for using it with very low tech. The ‘charged aetheric fluid’ could be anything. It didn’t matter.

  Remmy’s complaint was that the ‘fluid’ wasn’t ‘charged.’ The system fed in one end and out the other. They were batteries, right? It was like jumpstarting a car.

  And Remmy had already told me how to do that.

  I reached into the top of the machine. Vera, the darling, held my shoulders tight, bracing me as I twisted the break point gear around so it attached back to the rotor, not the main engine.

  Remmy grabbed my arm with both of hers, tugging on me and shaking her head with a look of bug-eyed horror. I could feel a faint vibration through my arm as her mouth moved, but what she was yelling I didn’t know.

  Specifically, anyway. In general, I knew. She was warning me not to set off the self-destruct. I nodded as reassuringly as I could and waved her away.

  Very slowly, very reluctantly, she let go. I lined up the gear, so the power coming in one side would just push back into the other.

  For awhile, nothing happened. The whole system was practically dead.

  ‘Practically’ was the word I was counting on.

  I stared up at the dark shape of the giant rotor. It didn’t look like it was moving, until it blocked a star it hadn’t blocked before. Then another. Was it… yes. Now I could see it moving, if barely.

  This was working. Okay, I might not have much time. I had to jam open the escapements. I beckoned at Remmy and her box, but when she didn’t understand, I pulled lose one of the melted gears and wedged it into place.

  Remmy was one brave eleven year old. White faced in terror, sure I’d just started a bomb that would kill us all, she figured out what I was doing and pulled wrenches out of her box, wedging open the other stops with me.

  Down at the bottom of the two intact tubes, clamps hooked into pipes, power lines of some kind. Didn’t know how they worked, didn’t care. I twisted them free. Then I took the clamps off the top.

  The rotor above us now glowed as it spun. Vera had let go of my shoulders. My feet pushed against the deck by themselves. That thing up there produced fake gravity as well as power. Jeebers. If I could bring one of these back for Dad, he might forgive me for being a supervillain just because of the good it would do modern science.

  The rotor above didn’t just glow. Lightning danced around the back edges of the propeller blades, the same lightning that spewed from the jets of Remmy’s flying saucer. Those blades kept spinning faster, and as they sped up, the lightning produced a longer trail.

  Some of that lightning flickered around the gear I’d used to turn the rotor shaft back on itself. At the sight of it, Remmy shrank back, arms wrapped around herself.

  Good sign. This baby was preparing to blow, which meant it was ready.

  Just a guess, but touching that gear right now was probably a great way to lose a hand. Fortunately, I had the one, the only, the universe’s ultimate recycling Machine, which ate energy of all kinds and laughed! The Machine came off my wrist easily, and woke up without any urging. It still had a bit of juice from the last repair job. Reaching into the engine, I clamped its jaws against the gear and twisted it back around until it lined up with the main engine. Then I jumped back as soon as the gears I was leaning on moved.

  There they went. Some of them spun awfully fast. They didn’t actually touch, but the gears all turned each other anyway, with lightning sparking in the spaces. We were definitely way past the speed the escapements were designed to allow.

  One more step. Grabbing hold of one of the mysterious clamps with my Machine, I jammed it into place over a fluid tube’s cap.

  The lightning stopped. The gears kept turning, but all the sparks stopped. Instead, light flickered in blobs inside the tube, settling into a dim glow.

  The gears slowed, but didn’t stop. I yanked the props out of the escapements, and they hooked into place. Click by click, they slowed the main rotor.

  Remmy pulled out the last wrench, dropping it onto the deck and grabbing me by the shoulders. She shook me back and forth, yelling something I couldn’t hear, but definitely looking happy. Pushing me out of the way, she got down on her knees, pulled up one of the clamps lying by the base of the engine, and hooked it onto the now glowing tube.

  The deck vibrated, just for a moment. Wind blew past me, then stopped. Everything was still cold as ice, and I was pretty sure we didn’t have atmosphere, but for an eyeblink there, I’d felt something.

  Remmy pried up her toolbox and clomped across the deck to a cabinet the size of a small shack. It had grilled speakers up top. No, not speakers, vents. Pulling out one of her wrenches, she began twisting open bolts holding a panel closed.

  I tried to twist open another using the Machine, and nearly sprained my elbow. Criminy, Remmy was strong. When the bolt didn’t budge, the Machine misinterpreted my desires and bit it off. Oops. Well, that got it free.

  Pulling the panel open, Remmy pointed at what looked a lot like a bullet hole in the metal. Then she pointed at the machine inside. This one I seriously could not make heads or tails of. It had tanks. It had bellows. It had grills. It had hoses. I, at least, could kinda sorta follow how the gears connected power to some of these items.

  Most of the parts on the bottom half of the machine churn and spun and rocked. About halfway up, that stopped.

  Remmy leaned in, squinting at the mess of parts. Vera shined a helpful flashlight.

  Suddenly, Remmy reared back and waved her arms excitedly. Yanking open her toolbox, she pulled out a little lever, kind of like a bicycle jack, but with a dial. She wedged it against a couple of parts, wrapped her elbow around mine, and twisted the dial.

  The top half of the machine lurched into motion, and I nearly got blown off my feet by the explosion of wind. Only Remmy holding onto my arm and the casing of the machine kept me in place. Vera, caught off guard, went tumbling. Of course, she could fly, so no big.

  Everything felt different. Warm. Well, cold still crept up through the deck into my boots, but I was surrounded by warm air, in what could be bright daylight coming from the rotor above us, standing on my own two feet in roughly normal gravity.

  Remmy struggled with the seals on her spacesuit. I didn’t get involved, because I didn’t know how. The helmet came off, hitting the deck with a loud clonk, and Remmy squealed, “We did it! We did it! We did it! How did you know how to do that?”

  I pried the bat thing off my neck, and with a shudder of revulsion at its squishiness, stuffed it back in my pocket. “I have a superpower.” Although this hadn’t felt like my superpower. At all. “Anyway, so do you, right? No kid our age could kludge that together.” I pointed at the atmosphere generator.

  An atmosphere generator, and a power system I’d never heard even speculated about. Jupiter was mad science central. I was going to like this place!

  Remmy rolled her eyes so dramatically, her head rolled with them. “I’m glad someone noticed. I swear my brother thinks he’s humoring me, letting me wear these goggles.”

  Then she grinned at me, hugely. I grinned back. I couldn’t help it. We linked arms, and laughed as loudly as we could, “HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!”

  Approaching footsteps thumped on the deck. It was nice to be able to hear again! We turned around to see Calvin and Juno racing towards us. Juno practically floated. Maybe her real superpower was super-grace.

  Remmy held out her arms. Calvin grabbed one of her hands, and grabbed one of mine. Dropping down to one knee, he looked me in the eyes. “You did it. Bad Penny, this changes everything. We have a home again. A free home, where we can plant grass and trees, and live for ourselves, never having to worry about air or heat.” Behind him, Juno laid her hand on his shoulder.

  His voice had sounded thick and faintly hoarse, like he just might cry from joy. Remmy correcte
d him much more practically, “You’re jumping the gun a little, big brother. We got the basics working, but other than that, there’s just maybe enough power to get the lights and sub-deck heaters functioning. We’re going to need water and mulch to keep the atmosphere running, and we’re still out two tubes of charged aetheric fluid.”

  Calvin ruffled her bangs, making Remmy’s giant pigtails bounce. “Bad Penny just worked a miracle. I know you can do this now that she’s here.”

  Juno stepped up next to Calvin, her glowing eyes looking down at me. “The Jovians tell me that we have barely scratched the surface of what Bad Penny and her friends can do. They may look like children, but they are something much more.”

  Calvin’s eyes gleamed, and he inclined his head to Vera, and to the Red Herring behind me. “If she can tame a Conqueror drone and free a meat puppet, she can do anything.”

  I giggled. Giggling isn’t normally my thing, but getting praised for fixing a space station justified a giggle or two.

  For bonus points, it sounded like he’d just made peace with Vera and Juliet.

  Claire’s hands took hold of my shoulder and Remmy’s from behind. It couldn’t be anybody but Claire. Her skin seemed to glow as she turned up the juice to charm Calvin and Juno, or maybe that was just how I felt having my friends with me at a moment like this.

  Beaming her dimpled smile at Calvin and Juno, Claire said, “It looks like two geniuses make a miracle. You both must be exhausted. Go help Miss Fawkes out of that suit and take a break, Bad Penny.”

  Grinning, I was about to protest that I wasn’t tired at all. Then I looked past Claire at Remmy. Remmy was not grinning. Oops. Yeah, she definitely had a bad case of Patronizing Sibling.

  I jerked my head at her. “Come on. This place is huge. If we can find the parts you need downstairs, I’m going to show your brother my super laziness power, and let you fix everything else.”

  Remmy’s pursed-lipped scowl softened into mere blankness. “Yeah, alright. Nobody’s explored this place since the invasion.”

  Relieved that Claire had saved me from my own thoughtlessness, I tugged on Remmy’s arm, helping her walk in those massive magnetic boots. A big square hole looked like the staircases down into the subways back home. I headed that way.

  ay put a fuming Remmy back on her feet when we reached the bottom of the stairs.

  Okay, the adults aren’t watching. Now you can take it off,” I said.

  She gave me a glare, but it wasn’t convincing at all. We both knew she couldn’t possibly have gotten down the steps in giant magnetic boots. When she gave up blaming me, she jerked a thumb at Ray. “What about him?”

  “What about him? You’re fully dressed under there, right?” The ruffles of her shirt collar peeking out of the suit’s collar were a pretty good hint.

  Her chin jutted out stubbornly. “So?”

  Actually, she had me there. It was the principle of the thing.

  I started to give Ray a look, but he held up his hand in anticipation. With a long, pained sigh, he lied, “Only because she’s too young for me,” and turned to face a stone wall.

  I hadn’t expected stone walls.

  Remmy had one more objection. “What about the goat?”

  I looked over at Juliet, sitting demurely with her knees folded on the steps, drawing Remmy’s spacesuit and labeling the parts with a remarkably skilled hand, especially since she had one less finger to hold the pencil. I returned my strategically unhelpful stare to Remmy. “You’re going to have to get used to Juliet.”

  Remmy groaned in frustration, sounding happier already, and spent a few minutes prying herself out of a pile of leather, fabric, and metal I couldn’t have stood up in.

  That gave me time to consider the stone walls again. Going by flooring, the whole station was actually made of metal, but someone had done their best to pretend it wasn’t. Only this central area by the stairs even had a metal floor. Fancy hexagonal cobblestones lined most of the huge, central thoroughfare. Open rooms had wood-lined walls, and they were big rooms. Claustrophobia was not going to be a problem. The only acknowledgment in the construction were a few metal bulkhead hatches at major intersections.

  Oh, and the place was a mess. Yikes. Benches, clothing, boxes, furniture of all kinds, and a whole lot of paper lay strewn everywhere. A potted plant lay by the foot of the stairs, melted into green goo. Everything was damp, as a flood of warm air fought with the abyssal chill of metal abandoned for years in the blackness of space. It was a good thing that all of us had nice, thick shoes.

  Well, except Juliet, but… Juliet.

  Leaving her spacesuit in a heap, Remmy headed down one hallway. The rest of us followed, since we didn’t even know what we were looking for

  The solution was clear. I asked, “What are we looking for?”

  “The aetheric fluid condenser,” she answered unhelpfully. Downright impatiently.

  “Which is…?” Ray pressed.

  Remmy stopped in the middle of the hallway, and squinted back at us skeptically. “You don’t use aetheric fluid condensers on Earth?”

  I shook my head. “We don’t even have the technology. We use electricity for everything.”

  Remmy put a hand on one hip, tilting her head―which was really obvious, with her gigantically long pigtails hanging down. “Huh. I guess the old cog heads weren’t lying. Well, we’re looking for a big machine near the bottom of the colony, right in the center. The rotor shaft runs straight to it. Nobody, but nobody knows how to make the stuff. Only the automatons even know how to run the machines.”

  Pulling her big wrench out, Remmy laid it over her shoulder and finished smugly, “So it’s a good thing I figured out how to kludge together an automaton override.”

  This conversation was putting Remmy in a way better mood, so I nudged some more. “We don’t have automatons, either. I’m guessing that’s not the same thing as a robot.”

  She snorted in disgust, picking her way over a busted up street vendor stall. “Robots obey humans. Automatons expect humans to obey. The one we’re after won’t make fluid for us willingly, and it will fight when I try to install the override.”

  Ray lifted the same broken wooden stall above my head for me to step under, pretending it was as light as a feather for him. With exaggerated blandness, he offered, “Let me hold this for you.”

  Grunting in mock frustration, Remmy complained, “He’s just exactly like my brother.”

  “I think mad scientists attract a certain kind of boy,” I answered with airy cynicism. It was tempting to wink at Ray, but this ‘no flirting’ rule had to cover us both.

  She snickered, and hopped ahead, jumping with both feet over bits of wreckage.

  That gave me a minute to look around. We’d passed a dozen shops. Broken windows, tumbled-down stalls, scattered odds and ends as random as teakettles and inkwells—this central hallway had been a marketplace once. I walked across a fallen wooden board reading ‘FONTAINE’S’ in fancy cursive script. Which store had it belonged to? I had no way to tell.

  No, wait. It came from that shop over there. The board ended in a mass of char, and a similar line of char burned through the pretty wooden façade into the metal bulkhead underneath. The remaining bits of window had melted edges.

  Heat rays. Conquerors had been here.

  The lower edge of another store’s window had fused into a lumpy mass, stained black and smeared from condensation. The Conquerors had made a special point of burning something completely.

  If Remmy noticed any of this, she showed no sign. Instead, she shouted, “Ah ha!” and beckoned us over to an open metal hatch.

  That led us into a wide stairwell, wood-paneled and carpeted, although the carpet crunched under our feet. It hadn’t entirely unfrozen.

  Ray touched my elbow, and pointed up at the ceiling. Glass tubes, with occasional brass bindings, ran in rows. “Pneumatic tubes.”

  Glee filled me at the sight. “Oh, wow.”

  He pointed a thumb
behind us. “One of the shops sold typewriters. They are remarkably resistant to explosive decompression.”

  “Inkwells. No ballpoint pens, and no electricity,” I added to the tech level evidence file.

  The hand that had caught my elbow curled around it, a light touch that I was very, very aware of. It took me a moment to notice him gesture at the walls. “Instead, we have those. You’re the Dark Princess of Science. How do you think they work?”

  He really hadn’t seemed to notice he was holding my arm at all. I tried to focus on the topic of discussion instead.

  Ray indicated a frosted glass plate on the wall, a squashed dome. Plates like it lit the stairway, letting off a strong white light very like sunlight. My goggles gave me a little protection from bright lights, and I could squint through the glare and make out a slowly turning round shape behind the glass. A gear.

  I made a ‘pfft’ noise. “Like I would know. Some kind of energy that conducts through circular motion.”

  Ray’s smile settled down to merely curious, instead of his usual playful grin. “They call it aetheric. A quantum machine on a macro scale? Turning subatomic forces into energy, perhaps harvesting the Higgs Field?”

  I gave him a lopsided squint, leaning away a little. “Kinda dangerous, isn’t that? Straight from energy to entropy, do not pass go? Meanwhile, you’re eating the fabric of the universe and jamming the basic forces that keep mass together?”

  Ray craned his head back, staring up at the ceiling, and theoretically past the ceiling towards the giant rotor above. “You get dangerous static when you run it too fast, correct?”

  Hmmm. This got scarier the more I thought about it. “And it’s inefficient. Lots of heat and light, which they take advantage of because blackness of space. They’re really burning up the universe.”

  Ray squeezed reassuringly, which not only did not make me less tense, it sent a shiver right up me―and this was him being a total gentleman! He really, seriously did not seem to notice. There wasn’t a hint of a leer. “The universe is large. This is a drop in the ocean, except the ocean is bigger than Jupiter. I admire how they handled the most important inefficiency. There is no artificial gravity. The rotor pushes us away. The bottom of the colony is curved so that no one notices the awkward angles they stand at around the edge.”