Waste of Space Read online

  contents

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  1: ILLEGAL BASEBALL

  2: SPACE MADNESS

  3: RIDICULOUSLY INTELLIGENT LIFE

  4: BAD LUTEFISK

  5: ANGRY SWEDE

  6: RENEGADE UNICORNS

  7: SEEDS OF DOOM

  8: BAD NEWS

  9: SYSTEM FAILURE

  10: SERIOUS GAPS IN INTELLECT

  11: STRONG ACCUSATIONS

  12: HONEST-TO-GOD FOOD

  13: PLAN B

  14: ILLEGAL ENTRY

  15: RATIONAL ARGUMENTS

  16: FREEZE-DRIED MILK SOLIDS

  17: CRISIS MODE

  18: IMMINENT SUFFOCATION

  19: FACE-OFF

  20: THE GIFT

  21: NOT-SO-FOND FAREWELL

  EPILOGUE PART ONE: TRANSMISSION

  EPILOGUE PART TWO: FAR-FLUNG DESTINATION

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  For the real Violet,

  the best daughter in the universe

  acknowledgments

  I know that I have already thanked Garrett Reisman on this page in the previous two Moon Base Alpha books, but I’m doing it again. An ex-astronaut and the current director of human space flight operations at SpaceX, Garrett has always given me a great window into what space travel is actually like—and he’s incredibly funny as well. Without Garrett there would never have been an MBA. I would also like to thank Matthew Golombek for his exceptional tour of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and his insights into the future of space exploration.

  Additional thanks to Simone Francis, Garrett’s better half; my amazing editors, Kristin Ostby, who got this whole MBA ball rolling, and Liz Kossnar, who has taken up the helm; my publisher, Justin Chanda, who has always been amazingly supportive; my incredible cover designer, Lucy Ruth Cummins; my exceptional agent, Jennifer Joel, to whom I owe my entire career as a middle-grade writer; my brilliant researchers, Emma Soren and Nate McLeod; and, of course, my family.

  My parents, Ronald and Jane Gibbs, fostered a love of science and writing in me. My father was always happy to bring me to the hospital where he did research and taught the doctors of tomorrow, while my mother was willing to do things like drive me all the way across the city at night when I was a young boy so we could see Halley’s Comet. And huge thanks to my wife, Suzanne, and my children, Dashiell and Violet. Though we say it every night, it seems appropriate to do it here as well: I love you to the moon and back, infinity and beyond.

  Moon Base Alpha Resident Directory

  Upper floor:

  Residence 1 (base commander’s quarters and office)

  Nina Stack, moon-base commander

  Residence 2

  Harris-Gibson residence

  Dr. Rose Harris, lunar geologist

  Dr. Stephen Gibson, mining specialist

  Dashiell Gibson (13)

  Violet Gibson (6)

  Residence 3

  Howard residence

  Dr. Maxwell Howard, lunar engineering specialist for Moon Base Beta

  Kira Howard (12)

  Residence 4

  Brahmaputra-Marquez residence

  Dr. Ilina Brahmaputra-Marquez, astrophysicist

  Dr. Timothy Marquez, psychiatrist

  Cesar Marquez (16)

  Rodrigo Marquez (13)

  Inez Marquez (7)

  Tourist Suite

  currently occupied by the Sjoberg family:

  Lars Sjoberg, industrialist

  Sonja Sjoberg, his wife

  Patton Sjoberg (16)

  Lily Sjoberg (16)

  Residence 5 reserved for temporary base residents (female)

  Residence 6 reserved for temporary base residents (male)

  Residence 7

  Former residence of Dr. Ronald Holtz. Currently reserved for new moon-base physician. (Note: selection still in process. Not due to arrive until Mission 8.)

  Lower floor:

  Residence 8

  Former residence of Garth Grisan. Reserved for new moon-base maintenance specialist. (Note: selection still in process. Not due to arrive until Mission 8.)

  Residence 9

  Dr. Wilbur Janke, astrobiologist

  Residence 10

  Dr. Daphne Merritt, base roboticist

  Residence 11

  Dr. Chang Kowalski, geochemist

  Residence 12

  Goldstein-Iwanyi residence

  Dr. Shari Goldstein, lunar agriculture specialist

  Dr. Mfuzi Iwanyi, astronomer

  Kamoze Iwanyi (7)

  Residence 13

  Kim-Alvarez residence

  Dr. Jennifer Kim, seismic geologist

  Dr. Shenzu Alvarez, water-extraction specialist

  Residence 14

  Dr. Viktor Balnikov, astrophysicist

  Residence 15

  Chen-Patucket residence

  Dr. Jasmine Chen, senior engineering coordinator for Moon Base Beta

  Dr. Seth Patucket, astrobiologist

  Holly Patucket (13)

  (Note: Arrival has been pushed back until Mission 9. This residence will be used as housing for temporary base workers until then.)

  THE OFFICIAL NASA PROCEDURES FOR CONTACT WITH INTELLIGENT EXTRATERRESTRIAL LIFE

  WARNING:

  The documents contained within this dossier are highly classified. Only government employees with level AAA security clearance are allowed to read them. If you do not have level AAA security clearance, it is a felony to read, scan, or even peruse the following pages, punishable by a minimum of five years in a federal penitentiary. If you have the appropriate clearance and believe that contact with intelligent extraterrestrial life has taken place—or is imminent—then break the seal and continue reading.

  1

  ILLEGAL BASEBALL

  Earth year 2041

  Lunar day 252

  Really freaking early in the morning

  For my thirteenth birthday, my father gave me the greatest present I could have ever hoped for: He took me outside to play catch.

  Now, before you start thinking that my father was the biggest cheapskate on earth, there are a few things you need to know:

  For starters, my father couldn’t have been the biggest cheapskate on earth, because we didn’t live on earth. We lived on the moon.

  We were some of the first lunar colonists. Along with a handful of other scientists and their children, we lived at Moon Base Alpha, the first human settlement in outer space. When NASA had recruited us, they had made it sound like MBA would be the most exciting, amazing, incredible place in the universe.

  It wasn’t.

  It turned out, living on the moon was far more difficult than anyone had predicted. But as hard as it was for the adults, it was even worse being a kid there. Not only did we have to deal with the same lousy dehydrated food and cramped sleeping spaces and sadistic toilets as the adults, but there were a host of other problems for kids.

  Like making friends. There were other kids at MBA, but I hadn’t been given any choice in selecting them. I was just stuck with them, and the only other boy my age, Roddy Marquez, wasn’t much fun to hang out with. You know how, on earth, parents will sometimes drag you to their friends’ house for the night and ask you to hang with their friends’ kid, even though they know the two of you don’t really get along? Well, imagine that, instead of going over to their friends’ house for one night, you’ve gone over for three years. And you can’t leave.

  That was another problem with being a kid on the moon: You couldn’t go outside and play. Ever. Leaving Moon Base Alpha was extremely dangerous. There were a hundred ways you could die on the lunar surface; we had already lost one person out there and nearly lost another. For this reason, NASA forbade children from ever going outdoors, meaning that we were sup
posed to spend our whole time on the moon inside a building smaller than your standard Motel 6.

  Despite it being against the rules, I had experienced the dangers of the surface myself. I had been outside on the moon four times: once while walking to MBA from the rocket that had brought me there and three times due to emergencies. I had nearly died on two of those excursions, which was a 50 percent near-death-experience rate. The same as flipping a coin. Not great odds.

  And yet I still desperately wanted to go back outside again.

  I was going nuts cooped up inside Moon Base Alpha. So were all the other kids. Even my six-year-old sister, Violet, who was normally as cheerful as an animated cartoon chipmunk, was starting to go stir-crazy. After eight months on the moon, she had watched every episode of her favorite TV show a thousand times and was constantly hounding Mom and Dad to let her go outside and play.

  To which they’d inevitably have to reply, “You can’t.”

  “Whyyyyyy nooooooooot?” Violet would whine. “I’m bored inside. There’s nothing to do on the moon.”

  “That’s not true,” my parents would tell her. “You could play a game. Or read a book. There are thousands of books we could upload.”

  “I want to ride my bike,” Violet would say.

  “Your bicycle is back on earth.”

  “Then I want to go out in a lunar rover. Dash got to go out in a lunar rover.”

  “That was an emergency. And Dash was almost killed by a meteorite shower.”

  “At least he got to have some excitement. I never get to almost die. I never get to do anything. I hate this stupid base!”

  At this point my parents would get a little flummoxed. Ideally, they should have argued that “hate” was a strong word and that the base wasn’t stupid, but the fact was, neither of them was a big fan of MBA. I think both of them were feeling really guilty about having volunteered our family for service on the moon. Which would also explain why Dad ended up waking me at two a.m. on my birthday to play catch.

  “Dash,” he whispered, shaking me lightly. “I have a surprise for you.”

  I sat up groggily on my inflatable mattress and promptly bonked my head on the low ceiling of my sleep pod. Even after eight months at MBA, I still hadn’t gotten used to the fact that our sleeping areas were as tiny as coffins. I glanced at my watch and groaned. “Dad, it’s the middle of the night . . .”

  “I know.”

  “. . . on my birthday.”

  “Sorry. It’s just that this is the only time I can take you outside without Nina noticing us.”

  “Outside?!” I exclaimed. “What for?”

  “Shh!” he warned. “I thought you’d like to try out some extreme low-gravity sports.”

  I blinked at my father in the darkness, trying to figure out if this was a bad joke or a good dream. “It’s illegal for me to go outside.”

  “I figured we could make an exception for your birthday. What do you say?”

  I was out of my sleep pod before he could even finish the sentence, yanking on a T-shirt and shorts over the boxers I’d slept in. “What about meteors?”

  “They shouldn’t be an issue. I’ve run a dozen atmospheric scans. No known clouds of potential meteors or space debris are anywhere within two hundred thousand miles. But we’ll stay close to base anyhow, just in case.”

  “Okay.” I knew that, should a meteorite hit me directly, it wouldn’t matter how close to base I was; I’d be dead. But the risk of that was nonexistent if the skies were clear. Dad wouldn’t have taken the chance if he didn’t think it was safe. “And Nina . . . ?”

  “Asleep. She was on the ComLink with earth until two hours ago, but I haven’t heard a peep out of her since then.”

  Nina Stack was the moon-base commander. She was tough as nails and had the emotional range of a blender. (For this reason, all the kids called her Nina the Machina.) Her quarters were right next to ours, and the walls were thin; if you pressed your ear against one, you could hear everything in the next room. So if Dad said Nina was asleep, she was probably asleep.

  “Won’t opening the air lock trigger some sort of alert?” I asked.

  “Normally, yes. But Chang showed me how to hack the system.” Chang Kowalski was my father’s closest friend at MBA and the smartest person I had ever met; if anyone knew how to hack the system, it was him.

  “C’mon,” Dad urged. “Before we wake your sister.”

  Since he hadn’t mentioned Mom, I glanced toward her sleep pod. She was awake, peering out of it, looking a little jealous that Dad was getting to go with me, rather than her. “Happy birthday,” she whispered. “Have fun out there.”

  “Thanks, Mom.”

  She gave me a bittersweet smile. “I can’t believe I have a teenager. I’m old.”

  “You don’t look old,” Dad told her. “You look the same as the day I met you.”

  “That’s just the low gravity. Wait until you see me back on earth.”

  “You’ll look even better there, I promise.” Dad gave Mom a kiss (which I averted my eyes from), then grabbed our baseball and led me out the door.

  It took another fifteen minutes for us to get outside. Space suits are difficult to put on, and you don’t want to make a mistake. Otherwise you could freeze to death. Or suffocate as your oxygen leaks out. Or both. All of which were things we obviously wanted to avoid. So Dad and I took great care suiting up, then double-, triple-, and quadruple-checked each other.

  “How’s the suit feel?” Dad asked me. With our helmets on, we were now using radios to communicate, even though we were standing right next to each other.

  “All right, I guess,” I reported. “Seems a little tighter in the shoulders than it was last time I went out.”

  “Really?” Dad asked, surprised. And then understanding flooded his face. “Oh my gosh,” he sighed. “Of course.”

  “What is it?”

  “You’ve grown.”

  I would have smacked my forehead if I hadn’t been wearing a space helmet. Over the past few weeks, I’d begun a growth spurt. It was only an inch so far, but still, that had very different repercussions on the moon than on earth. The few T-shirts I had brought were getting tighter and shorter on me, so we’d had to ask NASA to send new ones on the next supply rocket. The same applied to the single pair of sneakers I had brought; in the meantime, I’d had to slit the tips off with a paring knife to make room for my toes. And as for my space suit . . .

  Everyone on the moon had a suit specifically designed for them and no one else. Many parts of mine, like my helmet, had been sculpted specifically to my own personal measurements, meaning that someone significantly bigger or smaller than me wouldn’t be able to use it. However, it appeared that NASA—which had only made space suits for adults until recently—had forgotten something very important about kids: We grew. And in the significantly lower gravity of the moon, there was a chance we might grow even faster than we did on earth. Meaning that, after being on the moon for three years, our suits might not fit us anymore.

  Of course, I hadn’t thought about this myself, and apparently no one else had either until that moment.

  “Do you think it’s still safe for me to wear it?” I asked.

  “Yes,” Dad said reassuringly. “You haven’t grown that much. But I wonder if your sister’s still fits her. She’s sprouted a bit since we got here, and she hasn’t tried her suit on in eight months. She ought to, though. And all the other kids should too.”

  “Especially Roddy,” I said, meaning Rodrigo Marquez, the only other boy on base my age. The one I was stuck on the moon with. “I don’t think he’s any taller, but he’s definitely rounder than when we got here.”

  Roddy was the only person who had actually gained weight at MBA. He was one of the few Moonies who actually found space food appetizing and he had staunchly avoided the two hours of exercise a day we were required to do to combat low-gravity bone and muscle loss. There was a decent chance that, once we got back to earth and its strong
er gravity, Roddy wouldn’t have the strength to stand up.

  Dad didn’t say anything in response, though. A cloud of worry had formed over his face.

  “Dad?” I asked. “Is something wrong?”

  “Hmm?” He turned back to me, then seemed to snap back to the present. He gave me a smile, but I could tell it was forced. “No, I was just thinking about the suits. Remind me to make sure we test your sister’s on her, first thing tomorrow.”

  “First thing?” I asked. “We’re not leaving here for another two and a half years. If we’re lucky.”

  “Still, there could always been an emergency and we might have to evacuate.” While that was true, I got the sense something else was on my father’s mind. Before I could press the issue, though, he said, “Looks like we’re good to go. Let’s get out there before someone comes along and sees us.”

  With that, he picked up the baseball, opened the interior door of the air lock and stepped inside. I followed him.

  I was quivering with excitement.

  I had expected to be more nervous after my previous life-threatening trips onto the surface, but those had been very different. Each of those times, I had been in a rush, and lives had been on the line. This time I was going outside simply to have fun. And my father was with me, which made a big difference.

  Honestly, the whole point of going to the moon is to walk around on the surface. For as long as people have dreamed of going there, the dreams have never been about being cooped up in a moon base. The dreams have been about being making boot prints in moon dust that will last forever, climbing mountains that no human has ever climbed, and staring up into the sky and seeing our home planet in the distance. All anyone remembers about humanity’s first visit to the moon is the two and a half hours Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin spent on the surface, not the additional nineteen hours they spent in the lunar module.

  The air-lock chamber depressurized, and then a green light lit up by the outer door, indicating that it was okay to head outside.

  “Sun’s out,” Dad said. “Lower your visor.”