Spaced Out

by Stuart Gibbs

“There are aliens watching us,” Roddy was saying. “It’s been proven.”

  “You’re such a dork,” Cesar said, smacking Roddy on the back of the head again.

  “Stop hitting me!” Roddy snapped.

  “I’m not doing it,” Cesar taunted. “Aliens have taken control of my body.” He smacked Roddy once more. “There! They did it again!”

  “I hate you!” Roddy screamed, then attacked his brother. The two of them crashed to the floor and rolled around, pounding on each other.

  “Boys, stop it!” their mother cried. “You’re embarrassing yourselves in front of the entire moon base!”

  Mom wasn’t paying any attention to them at all, though. Instead she was staring at the rock in Dr. Kim’s hand. “Is that a moon rock, Jennifer?” she asked.

  “Er . . . yes,” Dr. Kim said shyly. “It’s from Nina’s room.”

  “What are you doing with it?” Mom asked.

  “I . . . uh . . . I thought I’d analyze the chemical makeup of it,” Dr. Kim said. “I figured that if I could determine that, then I could narrow down where the rocks had come from and pinpoint where Nina might have gone to get them.”

  Mom broke into a big smile. “That’s a great idea!”

  “Really?” Dr. Kim asked, still looking embarrassed. “Thanks.”

  Cesar and Roddy tumbled past them. Cesar ended up on top of Roddy and then smashed his brother’s face into the floor. “Admit you’re a loser and I’ll let you go,” he said.

  Roddy yelled something in response, but with his lips planted on the floor, it sounded like “Mnewsupth.”

  “What was that?” Cesar released his grip, letting Roddy raise his head.

  “You suck!” Roddy yelled, and Cesar promptly smashed his face back into the floor again.

  Their mother looked to their father, exasperated. “Will you please do something to stop this?”

  Dr. Marquez shrugged helplessly. “They’re teenage boys in a confined space with limited options to exert their natural aggression. In such a scenario, conflicts are inevitable.”

  Dr. Brahmaputra-Marquez glared at her husband like she now wanted to hit him in the face.

  Mom led Dr. Kim away from the Marquez family, where it was slightly quieter. I followed them, along with Dad, Violet, and Kira.

  “What did you find?” Mom asked.

  “Not surprisingly, it’s a breccia,” Dr. Kim replied.

  “What’s a breccia?” Violet interrupted.

  “It’s a rock that’s composed of broken bits of other rocks,” Mom explained to her. “Then they all get fused together by heat. Almost every rock we’ve found in the lunar crust is a breccia.”

  “And like most of the other rocks,” Dr. Kim went on, “this one has high concentrations of olivine, pyroxene, and plagioclase feldspar. However, it also has significant amounts of armalcolite.”

  “What’s armored coal light?” Violet asked.

  Mom turned to her, smiling. “Armalcolite. It’s a mineral that was discovered by the Apollo Eleven mission, the first time men landed on the moon. In fact, it’s named after the members of that mission: Armstrong, Al drin, and Col  lins. Armalcolite. Since then, it’s been found on earth, but in only trace amounts.” She turned back to Dr. Kim. “And it’s somewhat rare on the moon as well, correct?”

  “In many places,” Dr. Kim confirmed. “But there are also occasional rock extrusions that have a good amount of it.”

  “Where’s the closest extrusion?” Kira asked.

  “Right outside the secondary air lock.” Dr. Kim pointed toward the far side of the base, where the emergency backup air lock was located. “We’re practically on top of it.”

  We couldn’t see the backup air lock from where we were, so we all started walking that way, leaving the staging area and the scrapping Marquez boys behind. Roddy had managed to launch a counteroffensive, somehow wriggling out from Cesar’s grasp, so now both Marquez boys were writhing around on the floor again. Dr. Brahmaputra-Marquez finally lost it and screamed at them, “I’ve had it, you two! Stop this foolishness right now or you’re grounded!”

  “Big deal,” Cesar muttered. “Living here is like being permanently grounded anyhow.”

  “I’ll take away your ComLink privileges for a month!” his mother yelled.

  Cesar and Roddy instantly stopped fighting. “That’s not fair!” Roddy whined. “He started this, not me!”

  We passed the greenhouse. As I’d suspected, Dr. Goldstein was inside it, though she seemed even more distraught over her plants than I’d imagined. But then, the Sjobergs had swept through like a swarm of locusts. They’d even devoured the tomatoes and strawberries that weren’t ripe yet.

  My parents both paused at the sight of this. “What happened to the food?” Mom gasped.

  It occurred to me that, with all the excitement of the broken helmets and the meteorite shower, I’d never had the chance to tell my parents about the Sjobergs’ latest misbehavior.

  “The Sjobergs ate it all!” Violet announced.

  Dad immediately turned bright red with anger. “When?”

  “Right after you went out on the moon,” Violet told him. “They ate it all up like a bunch of jerks. And then they told Patton to beat Dash up!”

  My mother turned to me, her eyes full of concern. “Did he hurt you?”

  “He tried to,” Kira said, before I could answer the question myself. “He practically strangled him.”

  “But Dash fought him off!” Violet announced proudly. “He scared Patton so bad he made pee in his pants!”

  My father stared up at the door of the Sjobergs’ residence. I’d never seen him so angry in my entire life. “Those lousy pigs,” he growled. “It’s time someone put them all in their place.” He started toward the stairs, looking ready to pound them all into pieces.

  I stepped into his path. “Dad, it’s okay. I’m fine. Right now, we need to find Nina.”

  Dad blinked. He seemed to have forgotten all about Nina in his rage. He calmed slightly, but he was obviously still angry. “All right,” he said. “But once we find her, I’m taking care of this.” He kept his gaze locked on the Sjobergs’ door as we headed into the gymnasium.

  The emergency backup air lock was set in the gymnasium wall beyond all the workout machines. Through the windows set in the doors, we could see a lump of black rock poking up through the moon dust.

  “Is that the extrusion?” I asked.

  “The top of it,” Dr. Kim said. “It goes far down below the dust.”

  “And you think all the rocks in Nina’s room came from there?” Kira asked.

  “I can’t say that for sure.” Dr. Kim lowered her eyes, as though she was ashamed. “I haven’t had a chance to test all of them.”

  “But assuming they’re all like this,” Dad pressed, “it’d make sense that’s where Nina would have gone for them?”

  “Yes,” Dr. Kim replied. “It’s certainly the richest amount of armalcolite anywhere around this base.”

  Mom said, “And it makes sense that if Nina was collecting moon rocks to sell, she’d get ones with as much armalcolite as possible. It’d be easier to guarantee that they were from the moon rather than from earth.”

  “So given that,” Dad said, “Nina wouldn’t have had a reason to range far from the base at all. She would have only circled around the base to there.”

  I pressed up against the glass, looking at the lump of rock. There were thousands of boot prints all around it. “But Nina obviously didn’t go there, right? I mean, she’s not there now. And someone searched that area, didn’t they?”

  “Doctors Goldstein and Iwanyi,” Dr. Kim replied. “And as far as I know, they didn’t see any sign of Nina.”

  “I don’t see any sign of her either,” Violet said, pressed up against the window beside me. “Maybe she beamed up to a spaceship! Like on Star Trek.”

  “That’s made up,” I told her. “We can’t really do it.”

  “Yes, we can,” Violet snap
ped. “I saw it on TV.”

  I started to argue, but Mom caught my arm and signaled that this wasn’t the time.

  Then she looked to Dr. Kim. “Are there any other extrusions nearby that contain large amounts of armalcolite?”

  “There’s a few small seams north of the base,” Dr. Kim replied. “But they’re a good walk from here. It doesn’t make sense that Nina would go all the way to them when she had so much of it so close by.”

  “We ought to target searches on them anyhow,” Dad said. “Maybe Nina didn’t know there was such a load of it right near us.”

  “Do you have the coordinates for the other locations?” Mom asked Dr. Kim.

  “I can get them,” Dr. Kim replied.

  “Then let’s do it,” Mom said.

  The adults all filed out of the gymnasium to take care of that, but Kira, Violet, and I stayed behind, looking at the lump of rock outside the air-lock windows.

  “Do you think Nina really went to those other rocks?” Kira asked.

  “No,” I replied.

  “Mom and Dad do,” Violet said pointedly.

  “Maybe,” I said. “Or maybe they’ve run out of other ideas. Not that I have any.” I pressed my forehead against the glass, feeling frustrated. “Something’s just not right about all of this.”

  “Yeah,” Kira agreed. “First Nina vanishes. Then the Sjobergs start plotting something. Then we nearly get killed by satellite debris. It’s like this whole place suddenly got a ton of bad karma.”

  “You know what you should do when you’re upset?” Violet asked. “Turn that frown upside down!”

  “That won’t solve all these problems,” I told her.

  “Want to hear a joke?” Violet asked. “Knock knock!”

  “Cut it out, Violet.”

  “You’re not supposed to say, ‘Cut it out.’ You’re supposed to say, ‘Who’s there?’ ”

  “I mean it, Violet. Cut it out.”

  “Knock knock.”

  “Just quit it!” I snapped. “You can be so annoying sometimes!”

  The smile faded from Violet’s face. Her lower lip quivered. Then she raced out of the gymnasium, crying at the top of her lungs.

  I slumped against the emergency air lock and looked to Kira. “You’re so lucky you’re an only child.”

  “You’re lucky to have a little sister like that,” Kira said pointedly. “She was only trying to cheer you up.”

  “I know, but . . . she just doesn’t understand that sometimes, things can be serious. All this stuff’s going wrong here and she’s telling knock-knock jokes.”

  “Maybe she’s scared and that’s how she deals with it. She’s only six.”

  I frowned, realizing Kira was probably right. Which made me feel ashamed about the way I’d treated my sister. I hadn’t behaved any better than the Marquez boys. Worse, probably. “I guess I should apologize.” I sighed, then headed back out of the gym, looking for Violet. Kira tailed me.

  We followed the sounds of sobbing, but they didn’t lead to Violet. They were coming from Dr. Goldstein, who was still sitting in the greenhouse, mourning the loss of her tomatoes. Violet was nowhere to be seen. For a moment, I worried that she had disappeared the same way Nina had, but then decided this wasn’t likely. When Violet got upset, she usually found someplace to hide. She’d done it plenty of times before; once, we’d found her tucked away in the storage cabinets in the science pod.

  We continued our search, rounding the greenhouse toward the air-lock staging area.

  There was no longer a crowd around the air lock. Dr. Brahmaputra-Marquez had finally broken up Cesar and Roddy’s fight and dragged them to their residence. I could hear her chewing them out angrily through their flimsy door, halfway across the base. “There is a crisis going on here,” she was yelling, “and you two are behaving like a couple of nitwits!”

  The only people in the staging area now were Chang and Dr. Howard. They’d finally made it back from MBB and were emerging from the air lock.

  Kira threw her arms around her father and gave him a big hug. She’d put on a good face before, but it was now evident that she’d been worried about him being out on the surface so long. “You’re back!” she exclaimed. “Are you okay?”

  “We’re fine,” Dr. Howard replied, hugging her back. “It was actually quite pleasant.”

  “Pleasant?” Kira repeated.

  “I’ve never had such a long walk on the surface,” Dr. Howard explained.

  “Did you see Violet come through here just now?” I asked.

  “No,” Chang replied. “But we’ve been busy unsuiting in the air lock. Do you know where Lars Sjoberg is?”

  “In his suite, I think,” I answered.

  “Thanks.” Chang started up the stairs to the upper level of residences. I now realized he looked just as angry as my father had about the Sjobergs earlier. His brow was furrowed and his muscles were tensed.

  Mom raced out of the control room. “Chang! Hold on! We’ve made some progress on where Nina might be.”

  Chang didn’t stop. “Great. Get to work on it. Meanwhile, I’m gonna get some answers out of Lars.”

  “About what?” Mom asked.

  “Everything,” Chang said. “Between his kids messing with our computers and this video they released, they’re up to something. And for all we know, it connects to Nina. So I’m going to find out what it is.”

  “You’re not going to hurt him, are you?” Mom asked.

  “The idea had crossed my mind,” Chang told her. “I talked to Daphne on the way back. She told me about the Sjobergs’ run on the greenhouse.”

  Mom turned to Dad, who’d exited the control room behind her. “Stephen, stop him!”

  “Why?” Dad asked. “I want him to beat the snot out of Lars Sjoberg.”

  Mom shot Dad an annoyed look.

  “He told his son to beat up Dashiell!” Dad said defensively.

  “The last thing we need right now is two idiots sending each other to the medical bay,” Mom replied.

  Chang was almost to the door of the Sjobergs’ suite.

  “Wait!” I yelled.

  I was surprised that I’d done it—and done it loud enough to stop Chang in his tracks. He paused right outside the door and asked, “What?”

  “I think I know another way to find out what they’re up to,” I said.

  Excerpt from The Official Residents’ Guide to Moon Base Alpha, “Appendix A: Potential Health and Safety Hazards,” © 2040 by National Aeronautics and Space Administration

  MENTAL DETERIORATION

  While living at MBA will doubtlessly be an amazing experience, it may also have the potential to cause stress, depression, or other mental strain. Please be alert to your own mental condition—as well as that of those around you—for any signs of trouble. If you are experiencing any mental issues, please seek the aid of the moon-base psychiatrist immediately, and rest assured that any issues you report will be handled in secret with no social repercussions. Should you feel that the MBA psychiatrist is not fully able or capable of dealing with your needs, arrangements can be made to talk to additional mental specialists at NASA via ComLink.

  Do not in any way neglect your mental health needs. There is no shame in admitting to having problems. The real shame is in ignoring them.

  HYPOTHETICAL SPACE SNAKES

  Lunar day 217

  Midafternoon

  The problem was, I couldn’t really explain my plan to everyone else. There was no way to do it. All I could say was, “Just give me a chance to talk to the Sjobergs.”

  “And what if they tell Patton to hurt you again?” Chang asked.

  “Then you can break down the door and beat the crap out of all of them,” I replied. “And you’ll be able to tell NASA that you were doing it to protect me.”

  Chang considered that, then nodded. “I can deal with that.”

  “Hold on,” Mom said. “You’re okay with the possibility that my son might get hurt?”

 
; “I’m not going to get hurt,” I told her.

  “Right. Because I’ll be there to protect him,” Chang said.

  “No,” I corrected, “because Patton’s not going to hurt me. I promise. Not after last time.”

  “What happened last time?” Mom asked.

  “Dash scared Patton bad,” Kira said. “He actually peed himself.”

  “How?” Dad asked.

  “Sometimes bullies crack when you stand up to them,” I replied.

  Mom and Dad never came around to the plan, but there wasn’t time to argue. Nina was still missing, and if the Sjobergs were connected to her disappearance, we had to find out. Finally, after Chang swore he would wait right outside the Sjobergs’ door, ready to burst in at the slightest sign of trouble, my parents gave in. After all, there was still plenty of work to do in the search for Nina. They reluctantly returned to the control room to plot a new search grid with Daphne and Dr. Kim while Chang walked me to the Sjobergs’ suite.

  He pounded his huge fist on the door and demanded, “It’s Chang. I need to talk to you.”

  “Go away,” Lars said through the door. “We have nothing to say to you.” He spoke in his normal, disdainful voice, rather than the pleasant one he’d used for his TV interview.

  Chang’s anger flared, but he did his best to keep it in check. “Lars, I’m not asking you to open this door. I’m ordering you to do it as the interim moon-base commander. If you don’t open it, I have the right to kick it open. I’ve already done it once today, so I know it’s not that hard. And then you’ll have a busted door on your suite that you can’t shut or lock until NASA can send up repairs for it, which might be another few months.”

  There was an annoyed grunt on the other side of the door, followed by some whispered words in Swedish: the Sjobergs quietly discussing the situation with one another.

  Chang pounded on the door again. “I’m losing patience out here! You’ve got five seconds and then I knock this thing off its hinges.”

  “All right,” Lars grumbled. “Keep your pants on. I’m coming.” A second later, he opened the door a crack and glared through it. “What is the meaning of this?”

  Chang quickly shifted his weight into the door, knocking it open with such force that it clonked Lars in the forehead and sent him sailing backward into Sonja. I stepped into the room behind him.