Waste of Space Read online

  In the mess, Dr. Iwanyi sat at a table with Kamoze, while most of the Brahmaputra-Marquez family was at another. Only Roddy was missing, probably off making his case to Nina, as he’d threatened. None of the other adults were there; they were all at their workstations already. The entire Sjoberg family was absent as well. Lars had been released from the medical bay, and now all the Swedes were holed up in their suite, as usual.

  Mom and Dad were seated at one of the big tables, almost done eating. They obviously expected Violet and me to sit with them, so we did, and Kira joined us, as her father was nowhere to be seen.

  “Don’t tell Mom and Dad about the apple seeds,” I warned Violet on our way to the table. “It’s a secret.”

  “Okay,” Violet said, through a mouthful of blueberry muffin-like substance. She seemed very excited to have a secret with Kira and me.

  “What took you so long to get here?” Mom asked as we sat down. “You guys get lost?”

  “We can’t get lost in here, Mom,” Violet replied, missing the joke. “It’s way too small. We were playing a prank on Roddy with Kira.”

  “Oh?” Mom arched an eyebrow. “What sort of prank?”

  “We attacked him with unicorns and sparkle power!” Violet exclaimed, then launched into an explanation of what we’d done.

  While Kira helped her tell the story—leaving out the part about our investigation—I observed the greenhouse from my seat. The room was glass on two sides and stretched all the way to the top of MBA, where it had a glass roof as well. (An extremely thick, meteor-proof glass roof, for safety’s sake.) For our first six months, the greenhouse hadn’t been very green at all; the plants hadn’t been growing nearly as well as we had hoped. However, Dr. Goldstein had recently had some breakthroughs. Even though the Sjobergs had greedily raided the greenhouse four weeks earlier, the plants had rebounded nicely: There were clumps of red strawberries and quite a few cherry tomatoes on the vine. The sugar snap peas were doing particularly well. In the low lunar gravity, they had rocketed up the stay wires toward the skylight, creating a curtain of greenery along the glass. Behind it, I could see Dr. Goldstein tending to her garden.

  “Sorry our catch this morning got cut short,” Dad whispered to me. Kira and Violet were so busy telling Mom their story that he felt it was safe to say this without being overheard.

  “It’s okay,” I assured him. “Thanks for even taking me out.”

  “So you know, I took care of our space suits. Got all the dust off and moved them into the lockers.”

  “Thanks.”

  Dad hesitated a moment, as though he wasn’t completely convinced he wanted to say the next thing, but then went with it. “While I was in the air lock at four thirty in the morning, I saw you coming out of Nina’s quarters.”

  I gagged a bit on my pancakes. Partly caught off guard by Dad’s statement. Partly because I had hit a poorly rehydrated chunk of banana.

  “Want to tell me what you were doing in there?” Dad pressed.

  I glanced back at the girls. They were still telling their story. Violet was being extremely animated, acting out her part, as well as that of the Murkmoid and the unicorns. She had attracted the attention of everyone else in the mess hall.

  “Nina told me what really happened with Lars,” I confided to Dad. “That it wasn’t an accident.”

  Dad’s eyes widened in surprise, then narrowed as he realized what was going on. “Did she ask you to help investigate this?”

  “Yes,” I admitted.

  “I can’t believe she would do that,” Dad said angrily. “I know you’ve solved some crimes here, but you’re only thirteen years old—and that’s only as of today. Whoever did this is dangerous. I don’t want you getting involved. Chang and I can handle it on our . . .” Dad trailed off as he put two and two together. “Oh, crud. She suspects Chang or I might have done it.”

  “She only mentioned Chang.”

  “Well, she wouldn’t have told you that she suspects your own father. Even Nina is human enough to realize that wouldn’t go over well.”

  Violet wrapped up her story with a grand reenactment of the Murkmoid’s death, dramatically collapsing to the floor. All the Moonies in the mess hall applauded.

  I considered asking Dad if he thought Chang could have done it, but I was pretty sure he would be upset at me for even thinking it—and while I waffled on the issue, Dad got up from the table.

  “I’m going to take care of this right now,” he said, then started toward Nina’s residence.

  “Where are you going?” Mom asked, startled by Dad’s sudden departure.

  “To talk to Nina,” Dad replied, and then hurried on without an explanation.

  Violet took her seat at the table and dug into her muffin again. She seemed a bit winded from the exertion of telling her story.

  Mom’s watch pinged, signaling she had received a message. She glanced at it, then stood herself. “I have a call from earth in a few minutes,” she told us. “I need to prepare for it. Dash and Kira, can I trust you two to get Violet and yourselves to school on time?”

  “Of course,” Kira agreed. “Although, it is Dash’s birthday. Maybe letting him get to school late would be a nice present . . . ?”

  “No,” Mom said curtly. “Your teachers take a great deal of time to prepare your lessons, and if you three show up late, that’s disrespectful. So please be on time today.”

  “We will,” I said, fully intending to keep my word.

  “Hug first,” Violet announced, opening her arms wide.

  Mom hugged her tightly, then gave me a peck on the cheek and hurried off toward the science pod.

  Her behavior struck me as odd. Mom had calls with earth all the time, but she seemed unusually uptight about this one—as well as being unusually concerned about when we got to school. Quite often, when Mom was in charge of getting Violet to class, they rolled in a few minutes late, even though we only lived thirty seconds away from school.

  Still, I might not have really noticed this if it hadn’t been the latest in a string of odd behavior by adults that morning.

  Or if all the other adults in the mess hadn’t got up to leave at the exact same time.

  At the other tables, Drs. Iwanyi, Marquez, and Brahmaputra-Marquez were all saying good-bye to their children and heading off to the science pod as well, which made me think that Mom wasn’t the only one who had just received an important message. In addition, they were all very insistent that the kids had to be in school on time. Dr. Iwanyi asked Cesar Marquez to make sure Kamoze got there, then rapped on the glass of the greenhouse to get his wife’s attention and pointed to his watch. Dr. Goldstein quickly scrubbed some soil off her hands, exited the greenhouse, and headed to the science pod with her husband.

  “Do you get the sense that something strange is going on here?” I asked Kira.

  “Stranger than Lars Sjoberg being poisoned?” she replied.

  “In addition to Lars being poisoned,” I said. “Has your father been acting weird lately?”

  “My father is always acting weird.”

  “Well, weirder than usual.”

  “I honestly can’t imagine what that would be like.” Kira watched Dr. Goldstein and Dr. Iwanyi disappear into the science pod. Now that there were no more adults around, she snapped to her feet and started for the greenhouse.

  “What are you doing?” I asked, starting after her.

  “What do you think I’m doing?” Kira answered. “I’m looking for apple seeds.”

  “Yeah,” Violet chimed in, tailing us. “We’re looking for apple seeds.”

  “We’re not going to get a better chance than this,” Kira said. “All the adults are probably going to be on that call for a while.”

  Before I could even start to argue that my father didn’t want me investigating anymore, Kira already had the door open and was inside the greenhouse. Violet followed her, so I went in too.

  I hadn’t been in the greenhouse in a few weeks, as it was supposed
to be off-limits to kids. The moment I stepped inside, I was overwhelmed. There wasn’t a great deal of greenery, but I still hadn’t been around this much of it since I’d been back on earth. Everything was wonderful and intoxicating: the smell of flowers and the soil, the variety of colors in the flowers and fruits, the mere sense of being surrounded by living things. It made me realize how sterile and drab the rest of Moon Base Alpha was.

  It also made me more homesick than ever. I found myself longing for the earth, missing the great grass fields and thick rain forests of Hawaii.

  Violet and Kira seemed equally awestruck. They froze in their tracks, taking in the sights and smelling the air. “This is so cosmic!” Violet exclaimed. “It’s like being in a terrarium!”

  A sudden knocking at the glass snapped us all back to reality. Cesar Marquez was glaring at us through the window. Behind him, Kamoze and Inez were still finishing their breakfasts.

  “What are you doing in there?” Cesar demanded. “Stealing food?”

  Kira put a finger to her lips, signaling him to be quiet before the adults heard, then pointed toward the door.

  Cesar stormed inside, leaving Kamoze and Inez in the mess hall. “This food is for everyone,” he informed us. “Not just you.” He seemed completely unmoved by the experience of being around all the plants.

  “We’re not stealing it, you dodo,” Violet told him. “We’re only looking for apple seeds.”

  “I’m no dodo,” Cesar responded, then frowned in confusion. “What do you want apple seeds for?”

  “It’s a school project,” Kira lied. “We’re studying the life cycle of the apple tree.”

  “Really?” Cesar asked, now sounding upset. “I don’t get to do anything cool like that. I just have to do algebra all the time. Like that’s ever going to come in handy.”

  “Uh, Cesar?” I said. “This whole moon base wouldn’t exist without algebra.”

  “Yeah, right,” Cesar said, as if I were trying to trick him.

  Kira and Violet were now moving through the greenhouse, on the hunt for the apple seeds. Luckily, Dr. Goldstein was intensely organized. (Or perhaps MBA guidelines had stipulated an extremely organized system. Space travel often requires such anal-retentiveness.) The plants were all growing in raised beds: tables with deep pockets for soil in the top. Underneath the beds were storage units full of drawers of various sizes. Each was neatly labeled to indicate what was inside: gardening implements, fertilizer, spare parts for the irrigation system, and . . .

  “What’s excrement?” Violet asked.

  Kira, Cesar, and I all looked to the large storage unit where she was pointing. Sure enough, there was a nice, clear label on it: EXCREMENT. Cesar started laughing.

  “It’s poop,” I said.

  Cesar laughed even harder.

  “Poop?” Violet repeated. “What kind of poop?”

  “Probably ours,” Kira replied.

  Violet’s face contorted in disgust. “Ooh! Gross! Why’s it in here?”

  “To help the plants grow,” I explained. “The soil on the moon is really lousy—”

  “It’s not soil at all,” Kira interrupted, continuing to search the greenhouse. “Moon dust is really mostly silica, which is a kind of glass created by meteor impacts.”

  “It is?” Cesar asked, astonished.

  “You’ve been on the moon eight months,” Kira said. “Haven’t you learned anything about it?”

  “I know it’s old,” Cesar said defensively. “Like, millions of years old.”

  “Try billions, you nimrod,” Kira muttered under her breath.

  “Anyhow,” I said quickly, before Cesar could take offense, “plants don’t grow in silica. So we had to bring soil from earth. Only soil is really heavy. And it still needs some fertilizer. I guess Dr. Goldstein realized we were creating an awful lot of fertilizer ourselves.”

  Cesar couldn’t help himself. He opened the storage unit, then wrinkled his nose in disgust. “That psycho put all our poop in bags.”

  The rest of us peered into the storage bin. Sure enough, all of our poop was bagged. There were dozens of small opaque white plastic sacks. Each was helpfully labeled MBA HUMAN EXCREMENT and stamped with a date.

  “Dr. Goldstein didn’t bag all our poop like this,” Kira informed Cesar. “The space toilet does that.”

  “Why?” Cesar asked, still disgusted.

  “I guess so we can bring it back in here and use it on the plants,” Kira said. “And, possibly, because if it wasn’t bagged, it might contaminate the moon.”

  “Or stink,” I suggested.

  I had never seen what happened to our poop after it disappeared into the toilet. The bags were all packed full, then sealed tight (thankfully). There was a plastic zipper built into each, similar to that on a ziplock bag, so that it could be reopened, probably for ease of getting the contents out to mix with the plants.

  Violet poked one experimentally. It appeared firm under her touch, indicating that the water had been removed (and almost certainly recycled into our water supply). “Why do they have to say ‘excrement’?” she asked. “Why not just say ‘poop’?”

  “Maybe because ‘excrement’ sounds more scientific?” I guessed. I really had no idea.

  “Or maybe because everyone at NASA has excrement for brains,” Cesar said, and Violet giggled.

  I picked up one of the bags, just to check it out. Although it was small enough to fit in a pocket of my cargo shorts, it was packed pretty solid. It probably had dozens of dehydrated poops crammed inside, meaning it represented the digested meals of multiple Moonies. (The toilet system simply filled the bags with poop, then automatically sealed the old ones and slotted fresh ones into place.) And yet, without the water, it didn’t weigh that much, only about two pounds.

  “Here we go!” Kira exclaimed triumphantly. “Seeds!” At the far end of the greenhouse from the entrance, beneath a planting bed full of snap-pea vines and tomato plants, was a storage unit filled with long, flat, shallow drawers. The top one was labeled FRUITS while the bottom two were labeled VEGETABLES.

  I replaced the bag of poop, then joined Kira as she slid the top drawer open.

  There were thousands of seeds inside, possibly tens of thousands, organized by type in airtight containers, each of which had been labeled as well. Many represented fruits Dr. Goldstein hadn’t even tried growing yet. Perhaps she hadn’t had the time or space; perhaps they were being stored for the larger greenhouse that would be part of Moon Base Beta. There were seeds for watermelons, cantaloupes, strawberries, kiwis, mangoes, papayas, guavas, grapes, lemons, limes, kumquats, tomatoes, and cucumbers. (Dr. Goldstein, being a botanist, had put the last two where they belonged scientifically, instead of with the vegetables.)

  “Here we go,” Kira said. “Apples.” She grabbed the container out of the drawer.

  Cesar started laughing when he saw it. “Looks like you’re gonna have to do a different science project.”

  The container was empty. All the apple seeds were gone.

  Excerpt from The Official NASA Procedures for Contact with Intelligent Extraterrestrial Life © National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Department of Extraterrestrial Affairs, 2029 (Classification Level AAA)

  TRANSLATION

  Translation of an incoming communication from IEL will probably not be easy. Consider that there are thousands of human languages on our own planet, most of which are impossible for the speaker of another language to understand.I The task of translating these communications should be directed to NASA’s Alien Communication Office, which is staffed by many distinguished mathematicians and linguists who have had extensive training in interpreting potential alien communication.

  DO NOT, under any circumstances, attempt to formulate a response or communicate with the IEL on your own. Until their language is properly understood, even the slightest gesture or inflection, no matter how innocuous, could be considered threatening or hostile.

  * * *

  I. Not to m
ention the hundreds of thousands of forms of nonhuman communication. Whether or not these qualify as language, the fact stands that it is extremely difficult to communicate between species on our planet.

  8

  BAD NEWS

  Lunar day 252

  Right after breakfast

  “We have to tell Nina,” I said, exiting the greenhouse. “Right away.”

  “Nina?” Cesar asked, following me with Kira and Violet. “She’s not gonna care about your dumb science project.”

  Kira didn’t bother trying to explain what was really going on to Cesar. Instead she said, “I think telling Nina is a mistake.”

  “Yeah,” Violet said. “Telling Nina is a mistake.”

  “Nina ordered me to tell her about anything important immediately,” I said. “Well, this is important.”

  “No it’s not,” Cesar said. “It’s just a bunch of stupid seeds.”

  I stopped suddenly, having noticed something highly unusual.

  The doors to the science pod were closed.

  It was the first time the doors had been closed in the eight months I had been at MBA. I had known they could be closed: If there was an emergency, there were several areas at MBA that could be sealed off from the rest of the base, and the science pod was one of them. But the doors had been open for so long, I had forgotten they even existed. It was unsettling to see them closed, kind of like walking into your house and finding a room missing. It made MBA feel even smaller and more claustrophobic than before.

  “Why’s the pod closed off?” Kira asked, echoing my thoughts.

  “Mom said she had a call with earth this morning,” I said. “Maybe everyone else is on it too.”

  “What kind of call would all the adults have to be on?” Cesar asked.

  “Maybe they’re asking for more apple seeds,” Violet suggested.

  Kira walked up to the doors and pressed her ear against them. She listened a few seconds, then frowned. “I can’t hear anything. These are totally soundproof.”

  That made sense. The science-pod doors had to be thick and sturdy, because they needed to hold up in emergency situations. Unlike the walls of our residences, which were so cheap and thin that I could currently hear my father and Nina arguing in Nina’s room on the other side of the base. I couldn’t hear them well enough to make out exactly what they were saying, but I could guess: My father was berating Nina for bringing me into the murder investigation, and Nina was annoyed that this was keeping them off their important call with NASA.