by Maggie Allen
“Unfortunately for us here at Young Explorers HQ, Earth is at the wrong end of its orbit. That means we Earth Explorers will have to wait our turn,” Charles reported with disappointment.
Imani had never before been so pleased she didn’t live on Earth.
“It also means our daily update will have to be cut short this time,” Rei continued in the same apologetic tone as her partner, and Imani stopped in her tracks.
“What?!” the young girl exclaimed, holding onto her headphones to make sure she heard right. It couldn’t stop now! There was so much more she needed to know!
“We’ll be filling in the remaining time with some interesting facts about rockets. What does it take for a ship to land safely?” The report carried on, and Imani groaned. Not more rocket facts! Her mom worked on the space shuttles, so she already knew way too much about rockets.
“Meanwhile, to all you Venus Explorers out there: make the most of your First Encounter Day! Send us your photos and observations at –” The broadcast faded as a little jingling sound rang in her headphones. She was getting a phone call. She could already guess who it was.
“Incoming call from: Mom.” Auto’s mechanical voice confirmed her guess, and she tapped the little pink button on her headset to answer.
“Hey, Mom,” she greeted her mother glumly.
“What’s the matter with you?” Mom’s voice sounded more surprised than concerned.
“Nothing.” Imani sighed loudly, and when her mother just waited patiently for her to continue, she went on, “Just that I was going over to Rosy’s so we could go see the alien ship landing, but I don’t know where the landing site is, and Young Explorers was no help.”
She started to walk again, but her pace was slow and dejected. She was still looking forward to seeing her friend, but now it seemed a lot less important.
“Aw, honey, I’m sorry. I’m sure they’ll be covering it on the news –” her mother began sympathetically, but Imani didn’t just want to hear about the landing. She wanted to see it!
“But, Mom, it’s happening here!” She tried not to whine, but it was hard not to, at least a little. “It’s the only cool thing that’s ever happened on Venus!”
“Imani,” Mom warned, her voice turning stern in response to being interrupted. Imani knew that tone and so stopped talking, though she was still pouting. Mom couldn’t see that, though, so it didn’t count. After a moment, her mother’s voice relaxed. “Plenty of cool things happen on Venus. You just have to know where to look.”
Imani pouted even more. Not knowing where to look was the whole problem!
“Now, did you remember to put on sun-lotion?” Mom moved on, asking the same question she asked every morning. It was one of the many problems that came with living on Venus. It was closer to the Sun than Earth was, and so extra ultraviolet protection was necessary.
Imani looked down at her arms and her smooth, dark brown skin that was still a little shiny with the strawberry-scented cream. “Yes, ma’am.”
“And bring your lunch?”
She looked behind her now, to where Auto was hanging on her back. He could work as a regular backpack as well, and he was currently keeping her lunchbox safe and cool. “Yes.”
“Then go have fun! You and Rosy are clever girls; I’m sure you’ll make the most of your day,” Mom said positively. Imani knew she was trying to cheer her up, and it might have worked if those hadn’t been the exact words Young Explorers had used when they totally let her down.
“Okay, Mom. Thanks.” Imani wasn’t entirely satisfied, but she gathered up enough enthusiasm to wish her mother a good day at work. “I love you!”
“I love you, too. I’ll be back by dinner.”
The phone call ended, and Imani was left to walk down the last street to Rosy’s house in gloomy silence. She was heartbroken. A cool thing was finally happening here, and she probably wouldn’t even get to see it! Sometimes she couldn’t stand being from Venus, despite the fact that she’d never been to any other planets. Earth sounded way cooler, judging from the way Rosy talked about it when she’d first moved here in the third grade.
She could feel the rumbling of the Sky Station’s engines through her shoes, and it reminded her that they were all just sailing through the clouds. On Earth there wouldn’t be any rumbling, because everyone could live on the ground. There was dirt, grass, and snow; birds, squirrels, and ants… There was even a gigantic ocean full of water! Even the sky was different: bright blue. Imani looked up at her own sky and frowned at the disappointing murky orange.
Yep, Earth was awesome, and Imani would bet that the T’Raji planet was even better. She knew as soon as she grew up she was going to find herself a rocket and head for the stars!
She was just coming up to the front of Rosy’s house when Auto made a chirping sound, and his mechanical voice said in warning, “Incoming: Rosa Ramos.”
“Incoming what?” she tried to say, but she was interrupted by a noise overhead.
“¡Cuidado! Look out!” Rosy shouted as she and her bright green hoverbike tumbled out of the sky. Imani had to duck to avoid being toppled over, while Rosy and her bike went flying into the nearby recycling pile. Luckily, Rosy had been wearing her matching green helmet.
“Rosy!” Imani cried out, as she rushed over to help extract her friend from the big pile of cardboard boxes and plastic containers she’d gotten buried in. “Are you okay?”
“Sí, I’m fine. But that’s more than I can say for my hoverbike.” She pulled out her slightly smoking flying bike and sighed. “No es bueno.”
Imani looked at her best friend skeptically. This wasn’t the first time Rosy had crashed her bike, but her flying skills were usually better than that, so she asked, “What’s wrong with it?”
Rosy just shrugged and pushed her bike over for Imani to inspect. “No sé. Maybe something got into the engine. Take a look at it for me?”
The question sounded innocent enough, but it was a request Imani heard almost too often. She shook her head, but took the bike anyway. “Why do I always have to fix your stuff?”
“Because you’re so good at it!” Rosy smiled appealingly.
Imani just rolled her eyes and opened the hatch to the hoverbike’s lightweight electric engine. She just peeked in when Auto’s warning sound chirped, and he pulled her away by the backpack straps. “Warning: corrosive substance.”
“Hey!” Imani yelped as she fell back on her rump. When she looked up again she saw Rosy’s concerned face and what it was that had been smoking in her bike.
“Imani! ¿Estás bien?” Rosy asked worriedly, checking to see if she was alright.
“Rosy, you have sulfuric acid in your engine!” Imani nearly shouted, and Rosy jumped.
“Uh, oops?”
“You’ve been flying through the clouds again!” Imani crossed her arms in front of her chest and glared. The huge yellow clouds that the station sailed through looked inviting, but they were full of acid and very dangerous. She knew not to fly around in them.
But Rosy smiled in a strained way that Imani knew meant she was feeling guilty, and she admitted sheepishly, “Only the little ones.”
“You know you’re not supposed to do that, Rosy! It’s dangerous!”
“I know, I’m sorry!” She sounded contrite, at least.
Imani looked back at the smoking bike and carefully removed Auto from her back and set him down in front of her. The straps that had once linked together to make a sleek and shiny backpack separated into four metal legs. Imani couldn’t handle dangerous chemicals without the proper safety equipment, but luckily, Auto was the epitome of safety equipment.
She popped off Auto’s front casing and looked into all of the gears and circuits. She often watched her mother work on machines and had even watched when Auto was built. Her mom always did her best to explain what she was doing so Imani would know how it all worked. It was important to know, her mom had said, so you can fix things, build things and solve problems. Engine
ers are great problem solvers.
“So… do you think you can fix it?” Rosy poked her head over Imani’s shoulder.
“Maybe.” Imani shrugged, tilting to the side to make room for Rosy’s round, bronze-colored cheeks and her bright green helmet. She did have an idea: “I’m going to try to get Auto to filter out the sulfur… Could you pass me that container?”
Rosy got the metal container off the side of the recycling bin while Imani quickly made changes to Auto’s filters. Sulfuric acid was made of hydrogen, sulfur, and oxygen. If she was right, Auto would be able to force a chemical reaction to capture the poisonous sulfur trioxide and release the harmless water molecules as steam. I would be almost like a magic trick.
“Commencing: sulfur extraction,” Auto’s mechanical voice chirped. Imani attached the metal container to Auto’s output valve and watched as he quickly got to work on the bike.
“How long do you think it will take?” Rosy questioned, watching the robot.
“A few minutes. Why?”
Rosy grinned, bright and wide. “Because we have work to do!”
Following that announcement, Rosy quickly dug through the little pack on her hip for her cell phone. She pulled it out with flair, snapped a picture of Imani with her phone camera, then smiled expectantly. When Imani just stared back at her with confusion, her smile slipped off.
“You did watch Young Explorers today, right?”
Imani’s own expression fell when she heard ‘Young Explorers’. She’d almost forgotten about it. Ordinarily, she would have told Rosy that of course she did; it was her favorite show.
Today, however, she wasn’t feeling so enthusiastic about it.
“Yeah,” she replied gloomily. “I listened to it on Auto’s radio. It was a big let-down.”
“¡Eso no!” Rosy shook her head, “Did you hear what they said about sending in photos?”
At Imani’s blank expression, she continued, “They’re going to start a studio here on Venus! If we take the most awesome picture of the T’Raji ship landing we could become a pair of Young Explorers youth reporters. On television. Interplanetary television!”
Rosy grasped Imani’s shoulders and bounced excitedly, “We’ll be world famous twice!”
Imani couldn’t help but giggle at her friend’s eagerness. Rosy was always looking for ways to get famous. She wanted to be a movie star or a computer programmer when she grew up, preferably both. Imani understood that, but what she didn’t understand was, “We?”
“You can be my co-reporter!” Rosy announced. “We’ll be just like Rei and Charles! Except that, since I thought of it, I get to be the most famous, okay?”
“Okay…” Imani said dubiously, “but how, exactly, are we going to take this ‘awesome picture’? We don’t even know where the ship is going to be!”
“That’s where the hovbike comes in!” Rosy said, as if that were very reassuring. Imani looked over at the bike Auto was still working on. At least the bike wasn’t smoking anymore, and it did seem to be letting off steam as Auto worked.
Rosy, meanwhile, was explaining her plan.
“We fly down to the surface, find the landing spot, wait for the ship to land, and then click!” She punctuated each point by taking a photo with her camera. “We snap some action shots!”
Imani rolled her eyes. “You do know that Venus is almost as big as Earth, right?”
Rosy seemed to have an answer for that as well, however, and she ran to the side of her house to get something. When she returned she was holding a purple helmet. “That’s where you come in. You know this planet better than I do, Señorita Venus.”
She held out the helmet, and Imani took it uncertainly. She was about to bring up that the bike wasn’t even finished being cleaned out yet, but Auto chose that exact moment to chirp.
“Sulfur extraction: complete. No damage detected.”
Imani sighed while Rosy whooped and hopped onto her bike. She watched Auto tap his way over to the chemical disposal bin, which came standard in a neighborhood populated mostly by scientists, and throw away the hazardous container. A few seconds later he returned, and Imani knelt down so Auto could climb on and become her backpack once again.
“Are you coming, amiga?” Rosy called from her waiting hoverbike.
Imani hesitated, “I don’t know…”
Being a reporter for the Young Explorers show would be a dream-come-true for Imani, but she doubted there would be anything interesting to report from Venus. She had wanted to see the ship landing, but she didn’t know how they were going to be able to find it on their own. She did know a lot about this planet and spaceships, but she wasn’t sure if it would be enough…
It was hard to make a decision when she didn’t know how it was going to turn out.
“Please?” Her best friend’s pleading voice cut through her conflicted thoughts. When Imani looked over she couldn’t help but laugh. Rosy was lying across her bike’s handlebars, reaching out to her overdramatically and proclaiming, “I need you, Imani, I need you!”
At least this would be a good opportunity to hang out with her friend. Plus, maybe her mom was right and there would be interesting things to see on Venus, though she doubted it.
“Okay, fine.” Imani relented and strapped on her helmet. It had a screen that came down and worked as an air filter so they could breathe on the planet. She climbed onto the bike behind Rosy and adjusted her skirt around herself, glad she’d decided to wear leggings today.
Before they took off Imani warned, “You better not fly into any more clouds!”
“I promise!” Rosy returned happily and then started it up. Imani held on tight as the hoverbike lifted off of the ground, and Rosy waved to her grandmother through the window.
“Adios, abuelita!” she called out. She was just about to take off when they heard her grandmother’s voice.
“Nieta, your lunch!”
Now with two lunchboxes being kept safe in Auto’s storage unit, the two girls raced toward the Sky Station’s dock. The S.S. Matumaini sailed serenely over an ocean of big yellow clouds. Since humankind built this flying city, they’d been working on clearing up all the acidic clouds in the Venusian atmosphere, though Imani couldn’t imagine how there could have been more clouds back then. Now, there were openings in the clouds big enough to fly through.
They weren’t the only ones visiting the docks today, though. The whole edge of the station was packed with people. Many of them were probably hoping that the ship landing would be close enough to see from there, and Imani saw many of her fellow classmates climbing onto the dock railing for a better look at the sky.
Imani recognized most of the station’s citizens who were there, but there were also quite a few she didn’t know. They had equipment with them and small shuttles, which made Imani think they were engineers, except she’d never seen them among her mother’s coworkers.
“Who are all those people?” Imani whispered to her friend as they flew over the crowd.
“Reporters from Earth,” Rosy replied, gripping her handlebars. “La competición.”
“Competition?” Imani echoed worriedly, noticing the large video cameras attached to the shuttles she’d seen. “I didn’t know there was going to be competition!”
Imani always got nervous in competitions.
“Don’t worry; no one knows where the ship is going to land, remember?” Rosy reasoned, “That means we have as much a chance as anyone else.”
Imani wasn’t so sure about that, but she held tightly to her friend as the other girl turned on the bike’s protective force-field and prepared for the dive.
“¡Vamos!” Rosy shouted, and raced out and over the docks, toward the planet.
“Avoid the clouds!” Imani screeched, hugging her friend even tighter.
“All right, all right!”
Once they cleared the cloud layer and saw the surface of the planet, they both gasped. It was brown and gray and huge! They flew quickly over mountains, volcanos and g
reat valleys where lava used to flow. Venus was extremely hot; it was once the hottest planet in the solar system, back when all those clouds held in the heat like a giant oven. Now, even though there were fewer clouds, it was still hot, and the air felt heavy. She was glad she’d put on sun-lotion.
Rosy was busy fiddling with the bike’s navigation system, and after a moment the screen showed a map of Venus. “All right!” she shouted energetically. “Let’s find this thing!”
Imani cheered along with her, gaining some of Rosy’s endless optimism. She almost felt sure that they would find the ship landing site in no time.
Three hours later, they were both feeling a lot less optimistic.
“This is taking for-ev-er.” Rosy whined from the front of the bike as they hovered lightly over the Akna Montes mountain ranges’ shiny metal tips. She had turned around so that she was facing Imani, her back against the navigation system and handlebars.
They had unanimously decided that it was time for a lunch break, and so Auto was sitting between them, offering the slight frosty breeze from his internal cooling device while the two girls delved into their respective lunchboxes.
“I told you Venus was big,” Imani said, biting into her peanut butter-and-raisin sandwich.
“I knew it was big, I just didn’t think it would be so… enorme!”
Imani frowned. The biggest problem was they didn’t know where to go.
The Young Explorers show could be heard faintly from her headphones as the show hosts continued to go over trivia. Imani had turned it on again, both to check for new information and to make sure the alien ship had not landed somewhere else without them. Luckily, it seemed that she ship was still on its way, but it was going to arrive soon, and it was gonna get there fast.
They had to hurry up and figure this out.
“That’s right, Charles, spaceships need a lot of level, flat space to land. They also land more easily in clear skies and mild weather,” Imani could hear the television show host say. She knew that much that already. Landing a spaceship was a lot of hard work, and the conditions had to be just right for it to go as planned. There were other concerns like the soil density, air pressure, temperature and wind speed to contend with, as well. Imani had adjusted Auto’s sensors to alert them when all of those conditions were met. There had been a few places they’d found that might have worked, but none of them seemed like the right one.
