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  contents

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  1: EVIL PLUMBING

  2: RED ALERT

  3: BLOODTHIRSTY GELATIN

  4: VEILED THREATS

  5: NEWBIES

  6: SECRET MISSION

  7: SPACE JERKS

  8: UNEXPECTED HELP

  9: FRESH MEAT

  10: LAST WORDS

  11: SPACE MADNESS

  12: PREHISTORIC MOTIVATION

  13: POSSIBLE SUSPECTS

  14: PSYCHIATRIC EVALUATION

  15: IMPOSSIBLE TRAVEL

  16: SKULLDUGGERY

  17: MOONWALK

  18: BAD ROBOT

  19: CORRUPTED EVIDENCE

  20: IRRATIONAL FEAR

  21: MIND-BLOWING DISCOVERY

  For my grandparents, Rose and Ralph and Annie and Herman

  acknowledgments

  This book wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for my good friend Garrett Reisman, who used to be an astronaut and is now the human spaceflight program manager at SpaceX. I’ve always been thrilled by space travel (back when I was thirteen, I wrote to NASA volunteering to be the first teenager in space) but having a friend who has actually done it is the next best thing to doing it yourself. Over the years, Garrett has given me an incredible window into the present and future of space travel, inviting me and my family to space shuttle launches, videoconferencing with me from the International Space Station (where he showed off his infamous “zero gravity juggling”), and, of course, letting me try the space toilet simulator at the Johnson Space Center. Those experiences inspired this book—as well as my son, Dashiell, who spent many days of his young life dressed as an astronaut. Even though Garrett is insanely busy these days, he was always available to answer any questions I had about what life would be like in space. (However, I should point out that my lead character’s views on moon colonization are fictional; they are not the opinions of Garrett or anyone else at NASA or SpaceX.)

  I am also indebted to Leah Ilan for teaching me about sign language, Tim Delaney and Danny Eisenberg for doing a tremendous amount of research, Kristin Ostby for her excellent editing, and Jennifer Joel, my extraordinary agent, for first suggesting that space might be a great location for a middle grade series. Finally, huge thanks to my dear friend and fellow science fiend Scott Lew, who went to superhuman lengths to give me some really excellent notes on this book.

  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 (12)

  Violet Gibson (6)

  Residence 3

  Dr. Maxwell Howard, lunar-engineering specialist

  Kira Howard (12)

  (Note: The Howards are not due to arrive until Mission 6. This residence will remain empty until then.)

  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

  Dr. Ronald Holtz, base physician

  Lower floor:

  Residence 8

  Garth Grisan, maintenance specialist

  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

  (Note: Not due to arrive until Mission 6. This residence will remain empty until then.)

  Residence 14

  Dr. Viktor Balnikov, astrophysicist

  (Note: Not due to arrive until Mission 6. This residence will remain empty until then.)

  Residence 15

  Chen-Patucket residence

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

  Dr. Seth Patucket, astrobiologist

  Holly Patucket (13)

  (Note: Not due to arrive until Mission 8. This residence will be used as housing for temporary base workers until then.)

  Excerpt from The Official Residents’ Guide to Moon Base Alpha, © 2040 by National Aeronautics and Space Administration:

  WELCOME TO MOON BASE ALPHA!

  Congratulations on your selection as a resident of the first permanent extraterrestrial human habitat! To ease your transition from earth, Moon Base Alpha (referred to from here on as “MBA”) has been designed to feel as comfortable and familiar as any residence on our home planet. Our engineers and designers have spared no expense to provide all MBA residents—or “lunarnauts”—with everything they need for a relaxing, pleasurable existence.

  However, life on the moon will not be without challenges. There are obviously many differences between this residence and one on earth—many of which you may be pleasantly surprised by! To that end, please take the necessary time to read this helpful, informative manual in its entirety, as it will likely answer any questions you have about your new home (and perhaps a few questions you hadn’t even thought to ask yet)!

  Once again, congratulations on your selection. Welcome to the moon. Enjoy your new home!

  EVIL PLUMBING

  Earth year 2041

  Lunar day 188

  Smack in the middle of the night

  Let’s get something straight, right off the bat: Everything the movies have ever taught you about space travel is garbage.

  Giant spacecraft that are as comfortable as floating cruise ships? Complete fantasy. Warp-speed travel? Never going to happen. Holodecks? Terraforming? Beaming up? Don’t count on any of it.

  Life in outer space sucks. Trust me, I know.

  My name is Dashiell Gibson. I’m twelve years old and I live on the moon.

  On Moon Base Alpha, to be exact.

  You know this, of course. Everyone on earth knows this, unless they’ve been living in the Amazon rain forest for the last few years, and since there’s barely anything left of the Amazon rain forest, I’m guessing that’s unlikely.

  Moon Base Alpha—along with everyone who lives on it—has been the subject of an absolutely staggering amount of hype: The first human outpost in space! The first people to live on a celestial body besides earth! A glorious first step in mankind’s ultimate colonization of the galaxy!

  The government fed my family all that baloney
as well, back when they recruited my parents. And I admit, I completely fell for it. We all did. The recruiters made everything sound so amazing: Moon Base Alpha would have all the comforts of earth—and more. We’d go down in history as one of the first families to live in space. We’d be the newest breed of pioneers, pushing the limits of human achievement.

  Like I said: garbage.

  Living in Moon Base Alpha is like living in a giant tin can built by government contractors. It’s as comfortable as an oil refinery. You can’t go outside, the food is horrible, it’s always cold—and the toilets might as well be medieval torture devices.

  Ever notice how, in all the science-fiction movies and TV shows you’ve ever seen—Star Wars and Battlestar Galactica and all 142 versions of Star Trek—no one ever goes to the bathroom? That’s not because, in the future, everyone has figured out how to metabolize their own feces. It’s because going to the bathroom in space is a complete pain in the butt. Literally.

  At least the moon-base toilet is better than the one on the spaceship we took here. In zero gravity, you have to take extreme precautions to ensure that whatever comes out of your body doesn’t fly up into your face. (There’s an old saying in zero-g space travel: If you ever see a piece of chocolate floating around the cabin, don’t eat it. It’s probably not chocolate.) However, using the toilet on Moon Base Alpha is no picnic. If I’d known how exceptionally complicated and disgusting it would be, I never would have agreed to leave earth.

  It was because of one of those evil toilets that I wound up involved in far more trouble and danger than I ever could have imagined.

  * * *

  Now, before you get the idea that I’m some whiny, ungrateful kid who just likes to complain and wouldn’t be happy anywhere . . . I’m not. Before my family made the awful decision to come live on the moon, I was happy as any kid you’ve ever met. Happier, maybe. We lived on the Big Island of Hawaii, which was awesome. Mom worked at the W. M. Keck Observatory, which runs the telescopes on the peak of Mauna Kea. Although the scopes are thirteen thousand feet up, they’re managed remotely from the town of Waimea, which meant we could live down by the beach. So my childhood was pretty idyllic. I had lots of friends. I did well in school and played on every sports team. I surfed every weekend—and when I did, there were usually dolphins in the waves with me.

  Then the government came calling.

  See, my parents have a very unique set of skills. Mom is a lunar geologist who wrote some landmark papers about the moon and the consistency of its mantle and core. Dad is a mining engineer with a specialty in environmentally sound mineral extraction. And one of the major reasons for the moon base is to explore the possibility of mining precious metals there.

  Separately, Mom and Dad would each have been solid candidates for Moon Base Alpha. Together, they were an impossible combination to beat. Space is limited on the moon. With them, NASA got two scientists without having to send two separate families. So they wanted my folks badly. We got the full-court press. Politicians called us. The chairman of NASA came to visit. We were all flown to Washington, DC, first class for lunch with the vice president. And every last one of them lied to our faces about how great it would be to live on the moon.

  They made it sound like MBA was going to be incredible. Like our lives there would be nonstop thrills and amazement. Imagine hearing that you’ve just won a free three-year stay in the most luxurious hotel in the most insane location imaginable. Oh, and you get to be famous, too. Not flash-in-the-pan, one-hit-wonder, reality-TV famous. Have-kids-learn-about-you-in-school-a-hundred-years-from-now famous. We were going to be lumped in with the greatest explorers of all time, maybe even score our own chapter in the history books: Columbus. Magellan. Neil Armstrong. The Harris-Gibson Family of Moon Base Alpha.

  It all sounded too good to pass up. So we said yes.

  We spent the next year training—but then, you know that. All the families who were headed for MBA became celebrities right off the bat. (NASA tried to get everyone to refer to us as lunarnauts, but the public ended up calling us “Moonies” instead.) The whole world watched all our preparations for life on the moon, our multiple aborted launch attempts, and finally our successful blastoff into space and our triumphant arrival at our new home. And now that we’re on the moon, millions of people are still following our lives via webcams and ComLinks and beam-feeds.

  And yet, despite all that, you earthlings never get to see the whole story. Instead you see the edited and sanitized version. There’s too much at stake to allow anything else through. We Moonies are barred from broadcasting, texting, or transmitting anything to the public that might be “detrimental to the success of Moon Base Alpha.” (And if we try, NASA has censors who’ll delete it before it goes public.) We can’t complain about the toilets or the food or the malfunctioning equipment. We can’t mention that anything has ever gone wrong. We have to constantly present a positive face to the public, even when there is nothing to be positive about.

  Which is why no one on earth has ever heard about the murder.

  * * *

  I only got involved because I had to use the space toilet at two fifteen in the morning. On the moon this is a major endeavor, because we don’t have a toilet in our private living quarters. (Something else the government neglected to mention when talking up the moon base.) Space toilets cost more than thirty million bucks a piece. So instead of springing for one for each family, the moon-base designers only bought six and placed them all in the communal bathrooms, three for the girls and three for the guys.

  The living quarters are all in one section of the base, but the geniuses who designed MBA put the bathrooms on the opposite side. The “logical” explanation for this was that the bathrooms would be closer to the work and dining areas, where we—in theory—would spend most of our awake time. Unfortunately, this means that when the urge to purge strikes in the middle of the night, you have to get dressed, leave your quarters, cross the base, use the complicated toilet, and then head back again. It can take fifteen minutes—or more if the toilet jams, which happens far more often than anyone predicted. Everyone at MBA loathes the entire process.

  Sometimes I can resist the call of nature and go back to sleep, but on that night I knew it was useless. I’d had chicken parmigiana for dinner. Sort of. Like all our meals, it was a shrink-wrapped block of precooked food that had been irradiated, thermostabilized, dehydrated, and compacted, which meant it didn’t taste anything like chicken parm back home. In fairness, a few space foods are actually pretty good—shrimp cocktail and chocolate pudding, for example—but for the most part they all taste like wet sawdust. Some of the other moon kids and I once did a blind taste test of three theoretically different space foods: beef stroganoff, blueberry pancakes, and chicken tikka masala. No one was able to tell the difference.

  While almost everything tastes the same going in, though, it all has drastically different effects on my digestive tract. Chicken parm is the worst. It had sent me racing to the john in the middle of the night twice before, so I had avoided it like the plague ever since. But on that night, I screwed up.

  All the meals don’t merely taste alike. They also look alike. Once you’ve irradiated, thermostabilized, dehydrated, and compacted a meal, it doesn’t look like food anymore; it looks like toy blocks. For this reason, the meals all have identification stickers to tell them apart, but the stickers often come off. (And sometimes things just get labeled wrong.) I had rehydrated what I thought was beef teriyaki for dinner, but due to the blandness I was halfway through it before I realized my mistake. By then it was too late. I chucked the remnants in the trash compactor—a flagrant violation of the moon base’s food-conservation directives—and hoped for the best.

  Instead I found myself running for the toilets at two fifteen. My bowels were rumbling so loudly I was surprised they didn’t wake everyone else at MBA.

  Actually, what I really did was bound for the toilets. The moon’s gravity is only one-sixth that of earth’
s. Zero gravity, which we experienced on the spaceship, could be fun, but one-sixth gravity is disorienting. For the first few days at MBA, everyone essentially had to learn how to walk again and spent a lot of time crashing into walls. We eventually got the hang of it, though we still made mistakes at times. I covered a dozen feet with each leap as I hurried through the base, doing my best not to wipe out en route.

  At first glance, the men’s bathroom looks like any normal communal bathroom on earth: tiled floor, three stalls, even a bit of graffiti on the walls. (For a good time, call Princess Leia.) However, there are no sinks. And no urinals. And the toilets look as though some sadistic plumber mated a vacuum cleaner with an octopus.

  The big problem with going to the bathroom on the moon is the scarcity of water. NASA found some ice near the north pole, but it’s difficult to extract and there isn’t much of it, which means every last drop of H2O we have is incredibly precious. Therefore, you don’t flush your poop at MBA. Instead you essentially do your business in a plastic bag, which is then hermetically sealed, dehydrated, and sucked into a composter. As for pee, you have to use a suction hose, which whisks everything away to a processor that filters out the impurities and sends the rest back into the main reservoir tank.

  Yes, we drink our own urine in space. They left that out of Star Trek too.

  The sitting-on-the-toilet part of the process usually takes about five minutes, but thanks to the chicken parm, I was there for the long haul that night. Thankfully, there was a SlimScreen monitor on the inside of the stall door so I could catch up on the latest news from earth. (In game two of the World Series, the Charlotte Gladiators had beaten the Vegas Mustangs 6–3.) Once I was done, I hit the evacuate button.