Shanghaied to the Moon Read online

  The words come from a place of stone inside him. I nod.

  “Good.” He lets go. “Know how to use the toilet?”

  Nod. I tuck my legs, float up near the ceiling. “You know a lot for a kid who claims he’s never been to space before.”

  “Because I’m studying—”

  “Drop the act, will you?”

  “Act? What act?”

  “I know who you are … Stewart Edward Hale.”

  9

  MISSION TIME

  T plus 03:22:09

  MY scalp goes prickly. The Counselor thought it was really important that I never told this guy my name. Is he a stalker? Was he planning to kidnap me all along? My voice almost catches as I ask, “How do you know who I am?”

  “Talked to the janitor at the TransHub. So tell me,” he goes on, frowning, “why did you lie about having been in space before? People value experience. Remember that, next job interview.”

  Why is this guy always coming at me from a strange and distant planet? “I didn’t lie! I’ve tried everything to make Dad take me off planet. And if he had taken me, I would never have given you a second thought.”

  “I could have sworn—” A flash of puzzlement, then his face ices over. “My mistake. Dismissed.”

  A little push on the ceiling sends me feetfirst through the hatch into middeck. I’m just as eager to disappear as he is to see me go. That was a pretty rotten thing to say to him, but hey, so what? He deserves to be confronted with the hard truth. He keeps doing it to me.

  I’m not thrilled about confronting the toilet, though. I drift slowly toward it. Space toilets can be tricky. At least I’m a boy. It’s even trickier for girls.

  There are handles and footholds so you can keep your bum well anchored to the seat. Air suction replaces the pull of gravity. To pee you use a special tube that looks just like a vacuum cleaner hose. I wiggle my feet into the straps, then flip the switch. The motor even sounds like a vacuum cleaner. That’s a little nerve-wracking. I test the suction against my palm.

  “Hey kid!” His yell almost startles the tube out of my hand. “Bring some Gunk and Squirt when you come back. You’ll find it in the bag.”

  I finish up and switch off the horrible noise.

  The duffel rests in a back corner, pinned near the deck by a twisted locker door. As I glide over to it, my feet rotate toward the ceiling. I catch the zipper, drag it open with my momentum, bump to a stop against the lockers. Hovering, I check out the contents. A huge number of squeeze bottles, labeled whiskey, are clustered in the folds of a heavy blanket.

  Enough alcohol here to fuel a small rocket!

  Under the blanket are packets, some full of squishy green stuff that looks like pureed spinach, others translucent and watery. Gunk and Squirt. Emergency rations. I tasted samples at the museum. Yuck!

  Pushing aside the packets, my fingers brush canvas. Nothing else? He can’t carry everything in that jacket. I rummage toward one end, then the other, find something square-edged hidden by the blanket: a stack of thin folders. They’re trussed together with a bit of old fuel hose that still smells of hydrazine. The covers are real leather, though, fine and smooth. Ten in all, identical. Sandwiched in the middle is something else, much thicker. Looks like a book.

  I cock an ear toward flight deck. Clicks. A beep. He’s busy.

  A tweak on the hose sets the stack floating free. It spins slowly in front of my face. A cube, about the size of the bread maker I used for the jack-in-the-box. Something glitters on the bottom. I clutch the stack, rotate it. In gold letters, the words: Pilot Achievement Award. Beneath the words, the insignia of Alldrives Space Systems Corporation is embossed into the leather.

  Awards? For piloting? From Alldrives?

  I can’t believe it. It must’ve been long ago. He sure is a screwup now! He didn’t rip those insignias off. I bet he was drummed out of the service. For drinking on duty. For incompetence.

  A trip to the Moon shouldn’t be this dangerous.

  Someone’s got to rescue me.

  But no one’s even looking. They think I’m dead.

  Tears start. I don’t try to stop them. Everything goes blurry as the tears puddle deeper and deeper over my eyeballs. They don’t run like on Earth. I blink. Two tiny wet blobs pop into the air in front of my nose. Nearly cross-eyed, I watch them undulate as if something inside is struggling to escape. Slowly, the tears quiet into perfect spheres.

  My eyes stare, helplessly wide wide open, unseeing. I circle my arm over them, creating a comfortable darkness. My face feels puffy. Bloat. My body’s adjusting to zero-g.

  Head hurts. Not my cheek, though. His soda icing idea worked.

  I can’t go back to flight deck. Can’t deal with his craziness anymore. Easier just to stretch out and make a bed on the thin, stale air. No pressure anywhere on my body—no mattress under me or covers over. The lack of normal sensation brings home a fact I lost track of in all this craziness: I’m in zero-g!

  And on my way to the Moon!

  And he said I’d get to fly this thing. Piece of junk, but it does have a real rocket motor. Real thrusters.

  My dream come true …

  Too bad it’s turned out to be a nightmare.

  10

  MISSION TIME

  T plus 09:45:10

  WHAT do you think? Mom asks.

  A Tyrannosaurus looms above me. “Too many teeth.”

  Mom takes my hand. “Well, you braved the terrors of the Paleozoic. Reward time.”

  “Rockets!”

  We turn a corner into a dead-end corridor. There’s a red door at the end. Something’s wrong. This isn’t the way to the rocket room.

  “Stop, Mom.” Mom starts running toward the door. It opens. Smoke pours out. “No, Mom, no!”

  I try to run after her, but I can’t move. My legs and arms thrash, rub against something slick and confining.

  “Hey! Kid! Hey! Wake up!”

  The old spacer’s voice is a splash of cold water. My eyes pop open—floor under my head; feet lost in the light.

  “Easy! It’s just a sock!”

  Sock. Sleep restraint.

  I stop struggling and pull my chin in against my throat. I’m Velcroed to the wall, my body hidden in the white cocoon of the sock. He’s in the corner, head and shoulders poking through the ceiling hatch. Both of us are upside down, but that would only matter on Earth. I come fully awake into the cheerless zero-g reality of middeck.

  “How’d I get in this?”

  “Couldn’t wake you. Couldn’t leave you drifting around, either.”

  So he tucked me in. Nice of him. Then it dawns on me—I was completely vulnerable! Yanking an arm out, I pull at the Velcro seam. The sock peels open. I’m still in all my clothes, even my sneakers. Tucking my legs toward my chest, I roll out of the sock. My brain swims.

  “Ugh.”

  Grabbing at a hand strap, I park myself on the floor. The room spins. My head is stuffy, like I’ve been standing on it for hours. But that’s only an illusion. No real up and down in zero-g. My mouth tastes of cotton. Teeth feel sleep-slimed. No toothbrush.

  “How long have I been asleep?”

  “About six hours.”

  “Six hours! What time is it?”

  “Planetside, about eighteen hundred hours, EST.”

  Six o’clock in the evening. It’s hard to believe only nine hours have passed since I ran away from Mrs. Phillips. It’s still my birthday. The party was supposed to start around now. They must know what happened with the Counselor; they’ve probably even heard the news about the PLV by now. Mark. Dad. Everyone.

  The old spacer’s head and shoulders dip through the hatch. A hand reaches into middeck, shoots something my way. “Take those with as much water as you can drink.”

  I catch the small packet. It contains three aspirin-sizeds yellow pills. “What are they?”

  “For the space sickness. Get rid of bloat. Chase away hallucinations.”

  “Oh.” Guess I was sc
reaming out loud again.

  “Don’t worry about it, kid. Happens to some people.” He looks at a clipboard, flips a couple pages. Paper! He’s actually using printouts.

  “Don’t you even have a FlexyPad to write on?”

  “Too vulnerable to snooping.”

  He’s careful. Like an OmniLink, FlexyPads are network active and locatable. We’re very alone out here.

  “Take a half hour for breakfast. Then one hour of exercise.”

  I have to exercise to keep up my muscle tone. They say a day in zero-g is like spending two days flat on your back in bed. Muscles start going slack right away. Even after a few days in orbit, the early astronauts could barely walk when they returned.

  He flips a page. “Then one hour of training. After that, you go on watch and I sleep.”

  “Training? For what?”

  “Let’s keep that a surprise—for your birthday.”

  He starts to drift away. “Wait a minute. I never told you today’s my birthday.”

  “Know your name, kid. You can find out a lot about a person once you know that.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Fred,” he says and disappears into flight deck.

  Fred. Right. I don’t believe him for a minute. Where’s the duffel? Casting a glance around middeck, I see it neatly lashed to the locker wall. Might be some answers in there. I’ll take another look when he’s asleep.

  Right now I need that water. Can’t let dehydration get a grip on me. The way this guy likes to throw me off balance, I’ll need a clear head to outsmart him.

  The water dispenser is on the wall opposite the toilet. I lean in its direction and push off, brake to a stop in front of it with a light touch of fingers against the wall. A dozen sip tubes bristle the faceplate. One is labeled “Stewart.” The other actually says “Fred.”

  I tug the length of tubing out, flip the seal open, and take a tiny sip, expecting stale and brackish water. But it’s cold and clean tasting. I gulp down a gallon, at least! A person dehydrates fast in space. That’s why he wanted me to drink a lot with the pills.

  I finger the hard pills. Wish I could be sure they’d only keep away the scary parts—like that red door. I would love not to see that again, but the early part with the dinosaur … that seemed more like a memory than a squiggle.

  Unsure whether to take the pills or not, I slip them into my pants pocket. Ouch! The folded paper corner of the Space Academy Camp application jabs a cuticle. No way I’ll make it to the Moon before Dad leaves. He’ll start back to Earth as soon as he hears the news, won’t he? We’ll pass like ships in the night. Unless I could get him a message somehow.

  The intercom sputters. “Forgot to mention, kid. Try the cocoa. It’s good. Twenty minutes until exercise time.”

  I check out the galley next to the water dispenser. The only item in the drinks section is cocoa. A food rack holds packets of Gunk and Squirt.

  He’s been busy. Clipboards. Schedules. A regular Mr. Efficiency. Pulled his act together? Doesn’t matter. He’s only half the danger. How many mistakes did the NavComp make while I was asleep? What might go pop next?

  I reach for the cocoa button. The intercom speaker catches my eye—radio! Everything’s happened so fast, it never crossed my mind to look for a radio. But there’s got to be one. When he’s asleep, I’ll find it, get a message off. With any luck, maybe Dad’s ship could intercept us. Even if it can’t, at least they’ll know I’m not dead.

  They must have the news by now. Were they swarmed by reporters, like after Mom crashed?

  FATHER DRIVES SON TO SUICIDAL LENGTHS TO FULFILL SPACEFLIGHT DREAM.

  Suddenly, the mesh of the intercom speaker expands, the holes grow dark and menacing. Oh no! A squiggly. Not here … not with him … not in space! But there’s nothing to stop it and I fall into …

  A microphone practically up my nose. I can see every dark dimple in the wire mesh. The reporter is asking how it feels to know your mom saved all those people.

  My dead mom.

  Lips squeeze tight, refusing to answer him. I grow small, smaller. Fall into one of the tiny dimples in the microphone …

  … and come back on middeck.

  Whoa! Catch myself up short, about to pitch over toward the deck. My lips are pressed tight together, locked in that refusal to talk to the reporter.

  The scar throbs in time to my accelerated pulse.

  Remembering!

  I’ve never remembered such a vivid detail about the crash before! It’s what I’ve always wanted, but it was horrible …

  I press my hand over the pills in my pocket. The plastic crinkles. If I’m going to start falling into microphone dimples, I may have to take them. But what if it’s something good next time, something with Mom like the tree house, or the science museum?

  Guess I’ll wait and see.

  11

  MISSION TIME

  T plus 11:01:11

  MIDDECK smells like a sewer. I used the toilet right after breakfast, before exercising. That was a mistake. The suction is supposed to keep the toilet from stinking. I don’t know why I thought it would work right on this tub.

  I’m pacing the workout to keep my breathing shallow and to favor my hand. The scar is really tender today. Usually I don’t mind exercising, but between the stink and this primitive machine, sticking to the program hasn’t been easy. There isn’t even a 3-Vid hookup!

  The intercom sputters. “Fifteen more minutes, kid. Pick up that pace, you’re slacking off again.”

  That’s the third time he’s gotten on my case. I thrust my legs once more, then freeze. The tension springs twang from that final burst of angry power. Exercise is important, but I’m not going to jump every time this guy says so.

  I pop the seat belt and twist myself out of the stupid machine. It’s like a spider’s web with all the bars and cables and springs. After forty-five minutes in its clutches, I feel like a stuck bug. I toe the control switch. The machine collapses into its storage compartment under the floor, restoring a little room to move around in middeck.

  The clatter sounds my defiance. What will he do?

  There’s a rip of Velcro from flight deck. He flows through the floor hatch, his body gently rotating like a lazy mobile. A toe flick against the wall gives him a perfect glide path for the air lock. He hauls the hatch open without even a wince. He hasn’t cursed once since we’ve been in zero-g. Must feel like a bird who’s had a broken wing returning to the sky.

  “Come on.” He ducks into the tunnel. A moment later, another hatch clatters. Looks like I’m going to find out what’s in that canister in the cargo bay.

  I thrust off, correct my course with a little touch on the air lock hatch, and glide through the middle chamber into the opposite tunnel. But he’s still half in the tunnel. I make a hasty grab at a handhold and jerk to a stop face-to-face with the soles of his shoes. He’s changed his street shoes for Velcro booties. I need to do that, then I could get a solid grip on the carpeted walls as easily as he does.

  I hear the buzz and snap of lights coming on, then he floats into the canister, unblocking the tunnel. Sweet air flows over me. Through the round portal I see a hammock of fine mesh shock webbing slung the length of the canister. The webbing bulges in the middle, hiding something the size of a refrigerator.

  The canister itself is a long, narrow cylinder about the size of a classroom. Two light strips line the sides. Attached to the curving wall near the middle is a control console and, next to it, an anchor boom.

  I slip in and breathe deep. Sweet! I reach to close the hatch, but he grabs the handle, stopping me.

  “Never seal all personnel on the wrong side of an air lock, kid. Something happens, jams the hatch, you’re trapped away from the controls.”

  “I didn’t know.”

  “Now you do.”

  He glides to the control console opposite the bulge in the shock webbing, then swivels the anchor boom out. Parting the web, he attaches the boom to whatever’s
inside. Coming back to the forward wall, he unhooks the end of the webbing, then launches himself to the far side. As he flies past the thing, he strips off the webbing with a bullfighter’s flourish to unveil a tiny ship. It looks like a turkey baster with tentacles.

  “A squid! I can’t believe it. Where do you find this stuff?”

  “Flea markets.”

  “Yeah, right, and this was owned by a little old lady who only flew it to Mars once a year.”

  “She’s all yours now, kid. Happy birthday!”

  “You didn’t get that for me! You didn’t even know me until yesterday.”

  “True. But I had someone like you in mind. Loosen up. Check her out. Santa never left you anything like this little beauty.”

  “It’s just a robot. What am I supposed to do with it?”

  “Not anymore. Take a closer look.”

  I’m almost afraid to, but I push off, angling out over the squid. The ascent stage is an elongated teardrop shape. The descent stage bulges around a big rocket nozzle and has long, thin landing struts sweeping backward like tentacles, giving these ships their nicknames—squids. Officially, they were known as AMDs—automated mining drones—and were used for sampling asteroids in the belt.

  This one’s been modified. There’s a window near the nose. The robotic drilling arm is gone, replaced by two tubes like you might use to send a big poster through the mail. A large oval opening has been cut into the side. I catch the rim of it with my foot, flip, and poke my head inside. It looks like a miniature cockpit. He’s turned this into a lunar lander! It’s rigged to fly, with just enough empty space for a midget or one short kid …

  I pull my head out quick. “You want me to land this on the Moon?”

  “You’re the backup. I’ll fly her down on remote.”

  “And hit the Moon as hard as we hit the dock? No way!”

  “Still think you’re better than me?” He’s floating near the simulation control console, arms and legs crossed like a Buddha. His ponytail sticks straight out from his head, like a stub of whisk broom. “Get in.”

  He yanks a flat screen monitor from the console and drifts toward the squid trailing control cables like the tail of a kite.