Omega City

by Diana Peterfreund

  I lunged for the page and snatched it back. And, though I hated to admit it, Eric was right. Because this is what it said:

  I find I cannot be so cruel as to destroy my greatest creation, despite the cruelty of those I trusted. Very well. For those who trust me it shall not be difficult to reach safety, for you know my heart:

  You know who I am, and the heavenly body that heralded my arrival. IX marks the spot.

  You know where I’m from, and the gifts I have left there. And even if the sun sets on this Earth, you can use it to start your journey.

  Follow the path I’ve laid for you, in the direction marked by the birth of ice.

  When you find my twin, you will find my treasure.

  Underneath that, in a different shade of pen, like it was written later, was what looked like a phone number:

  x=5906376272

  And then a line, with more numbers underneath:

  0.05=1391000

  “Are either of you planning on telling me what it says?” Savannah asked. She was still holding the dictionary open to O for omega.

  “Eric’s right.” I sighed. “More gibberish.”

  Savannah leaned over my shoulder to read. “What’s all that stuff about heavenly bodies? Hey, you said Dr. Underberg was a NASA scientist, right?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Well, that other sheet said something about the stars, and this one is all about ‘heavenly bodies’ and the sun and the Earth. Maybe Omega is some sort of space thing. A . . . moon or an asteroid or something.”

  “You know who might be able to tell us?” Eric said. “That kid at school. The one who’s obsessed with NASA?”

  “Eww,” said Savannah. “Howard Noland? He’s such a dweeb. Nobody talks to him on purpose.”

  Eric nodded. “But he knows everything there is to know about space. We have PE together and it’s the only thing he’ll talk about.”

  “Exactly,” said Savannah. “Literally the only thing. He’s our age, but he’s only in fifth. They held him back in first grade, you know, because he was such a freak.” She twirled her finger around her ears.

  Like people didn’t say that every day about my dad.

  “And we’re just as crazy if we actually encourage him on his whole space obsession. He’ll talk your ear off.”

  “If he can help me figure out what Fiona is up to, I’ll risk both my ears. I don’t know what’s going on, but someone was willing to ruin Dad’s life over this Underberg thing last year, and Fiona is definitely involved now. I can’t let anyone hurt Dad like that again.”

  Eric was staring at me. “So you don’t think we should tell Dad what we found?”

  “We can try,” I said, “but if he gets paranoid, you know what that means.”

  Eric shuddered.

  “What does it mean?” Savannah asked.

  “Best-case scenario?” my brother said. “We’re all eating packaged foods and drinking bottled water for a week. Worst-case? He takes us off the grid until things calm down.”

  “Off the grid?”

  “Camping,” I explained. “No phone, no TV, no internet, no footprints if he’s feeling especially cautious.”

  I’d never forget what Mom told Dad the morning she left the campsite. We’d done a full month of it when the scandal had first hit, and lost our mom in the deal. What would we lose if Dad started down that road again? Paper Clip? The house?

  “Okay. Let’s keep it a secret until we know if we’re dealing with anything at all. Who knows?” I forced a smile. “Maybe Eric’s right and this is all in my head.”

  But I don’t think even Eric believed that anymore.

  5

  SPACE CASE

  THE NEXT DAY, BEFORE SCHOOL STARTED, ERIC AND I MET SAVANNAH IN front of the doors. “So where’s Howard?”

  Eric pointed at a kid sitting on the stoop, his face buried in a book even thicker than most of the ones in Dad’s office. Our school wasn’t that big, but I don’t think I’d ever talked to this kid before—or even seen him. I guess he didn’t rate among Savannah’s lunchtime companions. Howard Noland had unruly black hair and wore a faded green T-shirt with frayed edges. As I watched, he sneezed, then rubbed the back of his hand across his nose.

  Savannah pursed her lips. “This is a terrible idea.”

  “You have a better one?” Eric asked her.

  “No, but let’s do it quick, before anyone catches us talking to him.”

  I was already striding toward Howard, the printouts clutched firmly in my hands.

  Savannah and Eric trotted along behind me, still arguing.

  “You might have had PE with Howard for a few months,” Savannah was saying, “but I’ve known him for years. And I’m telling you, this is not going to go well.”

  “What makes you think that?” he shot back.

  I reached him. “Hi,” I said, but he didn’t look up from his book. “Are you Howard? I’m Gillian Seagret—”

  “I know who you are,” he said, eyes still on the book. “You’re the one who doesn’t believe in the moon landing.”

  Savannah turned to Eric, her eyes flashing in triumph. “See?”

  “Point taken,” said Eric.

  “No,” I corrected Howard. Dad and I might like conspiracies, but we weren’t crackpots. “I think Apollo 11 landed on the moon. I just don’t think NASA did a live broadcast of it.” What, did this kid keep tabs of every time NASA was mentioned at school? I’d made one comment at lunch one day. . . . “They claimed there were problems with the cameras that kept Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong in the lander for a full hour after—”

  Now Howard looked up from his book, but his gaze traveled no farther than my knees. “Actually, the truth is that NASA wanted them to take a five-hour sleep period but they were too excited and wanted to go down right away—”

  “Which also doesn’t make sense if they were planning a live broadcast for prime time!” I argued. “That would have put the broadcast at four a.m. Remember, this is the America that accidentally caught Lee Harvey Oswald, the man who killed President Kennedy, getting shot on live TV earlier in the decade. Do you really think NASA wanted to risk the world watching Neil Armstrong get eaten by green moon monsters, too?”

  “Wait. There aren’t green moon monsters,” said Savannah. “Are there?”

  “They delayed the broadcast,” I stated firmly. “It’s the only rational explanation.”

  “Rational!” Howard blurted. “Do you even know the definition of that word?”

  Eric cleared his throat and stepped between us. “Anyway,” he said, glaring at me. “We were wondering, Howard, if you could help us out with a little puzzle. Gillian?” he prompted.

  I thrust the papers at Howard.

  “What is this?” he asked, drawing back from them like they might bite. “More NASA conspiracy theories?”

  “Maybe,” Eric admitted.

  “It’s a riddle,” said Savannah. “Something to do with space—stars, planets, stuff like that. Anyway, it was written by a NASA scientist and we thought if anyone in this town could figure it out, it would be you.” She batted her eyelashes at him.

  He didn’t seem to notice, probably because he still wouldn’t look any of us in the face. “Well, that’s the only rational statement you’ve made so far. Who is the NASA scientist?”

  I hesitated. If Howard was already suspicious of me because of my totally understandable concerns about the inconsistencies in the official moon landing report—which, by the way, Dad taught a whole class about if Howard ever wanted to hear the real story—what would he think if we told him that we wanted his help interpreting the diaries of a scientist NASA had fired for being crazy?

  “Aloysius Underberg,” Savannah said before I could stop her. She shot me a look and moved her hand in a hurry-up gesture.

  “Really?” Howard straightened. “It’s so hard to find stuff about him. He may have ended up disgraced, but before he started going bad, he contributed a lot to the program. It’s a s
hame they scrubbed the record. I heard someone was writing a biography about him, but I haven’t been able to find it.”

  “Our dad wrote it,” my brother offered.

  “Eric!” I warned. But Howard had focused in on him like no one else existed.

  “How much is about the space program?”

  “Seven chapters,” I said, since it was clear this was our only option. And that gave me an idea. “And you can have it . . . if you help us.” Why not? We had dozens of copies at home.

  Howard popped up off the curb and stuck out his hand—not the one he’d used to wipe his nose, thank goodness. “Deal.”

  Instead of shaking his hand, I gave him the papers.

  MUCH TO SAVANNAH’S embarrassment, Howard came to see us at lunch and told us he had a few ideas, but he needed to check some books he had at home before “presenting his findings.” I thought Sav’s eyes might roll out of her head. At first he wanted us to come home with him, but Savannah put her foot down.

  “I have things to do after school,” she’d argued.

  “What things?” I asked, and she elbowed me. “Oh. Actually, Howard, we’re going to have to go to my house to get the book first.”

  “I can come with you,” he said. Savannah shook her head vehemently.

  “No, it’s okay,” I said. “We’ll meet you at your place. It’ll save time.”

  So after school, Eric, Savannah, and I stopped off at home to pick up Dad’s book, then biked over to the address Howard had given us.

  “Are you sure doing this won’t hurt your reputation?” Eric asked Savannah.

  “No more than being seen at school with you does,” she said with a smirk.

  The Nolands lived closer to the center of town than we did, so all the streets and driveways were paved, though to judge from the antlers affixed to the grill of what I assumed was Howard’s dad’s pickup truck taking up the entire driveway, that didn’t necessarily make them city folks.

  We parked our bikes in the driveway and headed up the walk. We rang the bell out front, and a few seconds later, the door opened.

  There, on the threshold, stood Private Pizza.

  Savannah dug her nails into my arm and squealed in the back of her throat.

  “Hi,” said Eric as Private Pizza gaped at us. “Is Howard home?”

  He wasn’t dressed in his uniform, of course, just a black T-shirt and track pants. “Is this some kind of joke?”

  “Um,” I said, somehow finding my voice through the shock of seeing him and the pain Savannah was inflicting on my arm. “We’re looking for Howard Noland. Does he live here?”

  “He’s my brother,” said the guy Sav and I had tormented on our front porch once a week since Dad’s classes had started.

  Savannah seemed to be having trouble breathing. “You’re . . . Howard’s . . . omigod.”

  Private Pizza shook his head and whistled through his teeth. “The Creek Terrace Terrible Twosome, here for Howard. Does he have any idea what you two are like?”

  Eric turned to look at us. “What are you two like?”

  “You don’t want to know,” I told him under my breath. I didn’t need Eric getting any more ammunition to use against Savannah.

  Private Pizza called into the interior of the house. “Howard! You have, uh, visitors.”

  Eric entered and I stumbled after him, pulling a hyperventilating Savannah along.

  “Gillian!” she whispered to me as we headed down the hall. “He has a name for us.”

  I grunted as we passed a large recliner upholstered in camouflage print. “Not a good one.” The living room had three deer heads and a whole flock of ducks on the wall. I wondered if any were Howard’s. Or Private Pizza’s.

  We reached Howard’s room and knocked.

  “You may enter,” came the reply from inside.

  Savannah snickered behind her hands. I elbowed her.

  In comparison to the rest of the house, Howard’s bedroom looked like Tomorrowland had exploded inside. The walls were painted midnight blue and dotted with glow-in-the-dark star stickers, each carefully labeled with the name of the constellation they depicted. Models of rockets and other spacecraft lined the shelf above the bed—I recognized Sputnik, Mercury, Saturn, the lunar landing module from the Apollo missions, and the space shuttle. There was a map of the moon with all its landmarks labeled behind the desk, which was piled high with books on astronomy and NASA, and a signed photograph of Buzz Aldrin held pride of place in a frame on the nightstand. Howard was seated at the desk, the papers spread out in front of him.

  “Hi,” I said brightly. “Thanks for having us ov—”

  “Did you bring the book?” he asked, his tone brusque.

  I reached into my backpack. “Do you have answers for us?”

  “Book first. I’ve been tricked into doing work for people like you before.” He gestured in Savannah’s general direction.

  “People like us?” Savannah said. “What’s that supposed to mean?” She turned to me. “Don’t give it to him, Gillian. He doesn’t know anything.”

  I looked at Howard, who was sitting there with a bland expression on his face. Savannah could play stupid all she wanted, but I knew what he was getting at. If Sav and I didn’t have six years of best friendship between us, I might even have agreed with him.

  I shrugged and handed over the Underberg book. “Whatever. We have other copies.”

  Howard took it, spun around and carefully slid it on a shelf, then turned immediately back to the pages on his desk. “All right. So, these pages. I probably should have guessed, given the questionable reputation of Dr. Underberg at NASA, but he’s not actually talking about stars or spaceships or anything like that.”

  “His questionable reputation?” I echoed angrily. “What are you talking about?”

  “Please, Gills. You know exactly what he means,” Eric said. “Underberg was cuckoo. Even Dad thought he was a little bit nutty toward the end.”

  “And this must have been the very end,” said Savannah. “It’s the last page from his diary before he disappeared.”

  They had a point, but still, I didn’t want to work with Howard if he was going to insult Dr. Underberg at every turn. How could I trust anything he said?

  On the other hand, whatever information the page contained, Fiona clearly thought it was important. Which meant I wanted to understand it. “Then what is he talking about?”

  Howard held up the mysterious last page. “This right here? It’s not a riddle.”

  “No?”

  “It’s a treasure map.”

  6

  PLUTO IS A PLANET

  WE ALL STOOD IN SILENCE.

  “A treasure map?” Howard repeated, gesturing wildly with his arms. “A drawing or list of instructions, usually coded, that are directions to some sort of valuable object or objects hidden by the maker of the map?”

  “Well, yeah,” I said, crossing my arms over my chest. “But I don’t think you earned the book if that’s all you have to say about it. We aren’t idiots. Of course it’s a treasure map: it says ‘find my treasure’ and ‘X marks the spot.’”

  But what was the treasure? Why was it so secret that they had had Dr. Underberg killed? Why was it so valuable that Fiona was dating my dad just to find a map to it?

  “It doesn’t say that,” Howard pointed out. “Not exactly. It says he prefers IX.”

  “So what?” I snapped. “You were supposed to tell us what Omega means. That was your job.”

  “That’s a dumb job,” he said. “I’m not an encyclopedia.”

  “We did try a dictionary,” Savannah pointed out.

  Howard was silent for a second. “Omega means a lot of things in space. There’s the Omega Nebula, which is also called the Horseshoe Nebula. I have a picture of it. . . .” He shuffled around a few papers and pulled out a picture of what looked like a colorful outer-space cloud. “Because horseshoes and the Greek letter omega sort of look the same.”

  Except the cloud d
idn’t really look like a horseshoe or the letter omega. At least, not to me. “So you think he’s talking about this nebula?”

  “No. There are also a lot of stars called Omega.”

  “A lot of stars?” Savannah groaned. “Oh boy.”

  “It’s to make star identification easier. See, constellations are made up of many stars—well, stars and other bright objects. Like clusters and nebulas and—”

  Savannah looked at me as if to say, See? Okay, she had a point about Howard. This was way more than I needed to know about astronomy. It sounded like he was ready to go on all day about everything in the sky remotely connected to the word omega. Now he was talking about something called the Bayer designation.

  “—and each star in a designation is given a Greek letter, usually from brightest to dullest, though not always—”

  “Like Alpha Centauri?” Eric asked, probably more to stop Howard’s flow than anything.

  “Yeah.”

  “Is there an Omega Centauri?” I cut in. Let’s get to the point.

  “Yes. It’s a globular cluster. But that’s not what the guy in those pages you gave me is writing about.”

  I bit my lip and took a deep breath. Maybe Savannah was right. Asking Howard to talk about space was like trying to get a spoonful of water out of a hose. This wasn’t getting me anywhere, and who knew what else Fiona knew that we didn’t? Maybe she had already figured out another way to get the information on this last diary page. “So what is he talking about?”

  “Nothing in space.”

  Savannah groaned. I wanted to join her.

  “I don’t know what it is,” Howard admitted. “But I think I know how to find it.”

  Okay. That was something at least. Maybe we’d recognize . . . whatever it was when we saw it. Or we could take it to Dad and he could figure it out.

  He pointed at the concentric circles on the first diary page, where it read I prefer IX. “Look at the drawing. Nine circles around this central dot—just like the solar system. I think that by IX, he means Pluto. ‘IX’ is often a symbol for Pluto in astronomy textbooks. Look—” He stood to grab one of the big, dusty textbooks from the shelf over his desk and opened it up. Sure enough, the illustration showed a solar system model where every planet was marked with a Roman numeral: I for Mercury, II for Venus, III for Earth, and so on. “Pluto is the ninth planet, so it gets an IX.”