Seventh Grade vs. the Galaxy Read online

  Instead, here we are, covered in fake rashes, squirming around on the cold ground. Not my idea of a great plan either. But at least the risk of sparking a shootout is relatively low.

  “We . . .” Becka croaks, “we’re siiiiiicccckkkk.”

  I’ve got to admit it: Becka sounds great. Her sick voice is very believable.

  “Soooo ssssiiiiiiccccck,” Ari bellows.

  Um. Yeah.

  If we were in human school, any teacher would see right through him. But all he needs to do is fool an alien, right?

  “Cough, cough,” Ari says, as if he’s reading the words from a book. “Sneeze, sneeze.”

  Ugh.

  “What’s wrong?” the guard asks, putting down the food and water. He steps a foot closer to us and I shout: “No! Stay back.”

  He listens.

  “We have—”

  Uh oh. We made all these plans. Ran through every possible scenario. But we never came up with a name for our fake disease. I glance over at Becka, who’s got “Don’t look at me!” eyes, then over at Ari, who just says:

  “Cough sneeze?”

  Think, Jack. Come on! You know the name of at least one disease. Your mom is a doctor! “We have the . . . cold?”

  Becka snorts and almost cracks up—but spins her fit of laughing into a fit of coughing.

  “The Collllllld,” she repeats, drawing the word out like she’s telling a ghost story. “It’s the worst disease there is. Super contagious.”

  “Even aliens can catch it!” Ari screams.

  The guard steps back. “I . . .” he stutters, “I’ll get a doctor.”

  “No!” we all yell.

  “You’re already infected,” I explain. “It’s airborne. We have medicine—a cure—on our ship. We need to get to it right away.”

  He looks down at me through his shiny black helmet. His face is covered—not that I’m great at reading Elvidian expressions anyway—but I know a skeptical head tilt when I see one.

  “And how can you possibly know that I’ve been infected?” he asks.

  This is where we really have to sell it. I remind myself that this guy doesn’t know anything about humans and that he can’t afford to take any chances. Who knows what the umjerrylochners are capable of?

  “Didn’t you hear her?” Ari responds without missing a beat. “Super. Contagious. Like, if we were home, they’d already have quarantined us.”

  I nod at him. Good callback.

  “And tell me,” Becka adds, “how are you feeling?”

  “Fine,” the guard says.

  “Are you sure?” she asks. “You’re not”—she shivers for effect—“cold?”

  He shuffles his clanky armor feet. “I—maybe? Maybe a little.”

  Becka glances over at Ari, concerned.

  “It’s begun,” she says, shaking her head. “He’ll be frozen solid in hours.”

  Ari nods. “He’ll make a beautiful ice sculpture.” The two of them are playing pretty well off each other. Not that I’d ever tell Ari that.

  “Enough!” the guard shouts. “Where is this medicine?” He lifts his wrist up to his helmet. His translator bracelet doubles as a communicator, I guess. “Tell me and I’ll call one of my superiors so that it can be brought here at once. And the Minister must be informed immediately.”

  “No!” I yell again. The Elvidians are obsessed with the Minister, if you haven’t noticed. “You can’t call anyone.”

  This is it. The icing on top of our lie cake. We figured the guard would try to call for backup. But we need him to take us to the ship. Alone.

  “The disease,” I explain, pretending it’s hard for me to sit up. “The Cold. It’s so contagious that you can even catch it through computers!”

  “You mean . . .” the guard says, sounding horrified, “that if I word to someone through my comm . . . the person on the other end could catch the disease?”

  “No,” Becka tells him. “If you word to someone, they will catch it. And soon this whole planet will be infected.”

  “I mean,” Ari chimes in, “if you don’t think that the Minister will mind getting sick and dying a super painful death and absolutely knowing that it was your fault, then go ahead. Give her a cough—er, a call. But if not, we should go get the medicine ourselves before anyone else gets sick. And we need to hurry!”

  The guard stares at us, silent for ten seconds. Twenty.

  “Get to your floor-walkers,” he finally says, swiveling his helmet to look at all three of us in turn and nudging his gun into our chests. “We will go. But I swear on the life of the Minister that if this is some kind of trick, you will quickly learn that there are much, much worse things in this universe than going to school.”

  12

  I can’t believe this is working.

  The guard leads us out of our cell and down the corridor. As we reach the end of the hallway—the one opposite the gigantic courtroom chamber—we see rooms to his right and left: guard stations, each with a dozen armored soldiers looking at holograms and screens. They immediately stop what they’re doing and silently stare in our direction. A few draw their weapons.

  “We’re fine here,” our guard says, stepping forward and waving his wrist-cuff in front of some invisible scanner. I was definitely right about not coming up here guns blazing. Wouldn’t have gone well.

  The wall in front of us dissolves and we step into a small, boxy chamber. Ari mouths a word to me: “Elevator.”

  I nod as the opening closes behind us and we shoot up toward the roof of the building. This guard doesn’t trust us. He keeps his gun jabbed into one of our backs at all times. But so far, so good.

  The elevator comes to a sudden stop and opens up onto the roof. Thanks to the school pods, I know that Elvid IV’s atmosphere is breathable, but I’m still nervous as I step forward. I’ve never been outside on the surface of a planet, directly underneath a sun. On Ganymede, most of the public spaces are covered by large domes that keep in the recycled air. Sometimes, if you squint, you can make out the pinprick sun through the glass, far off in the distance. They also pump in UV light during the day to keep us from going bonkers. But it’s not the same.

  There’s only one place in our solar system where you can breathe real air and feel real sunshine. And you can’t grow up in space—breathing stale oxygen and looking at pictures of kids playing football on real, grows-from-the-actual-ground grass—without dreaming of one day going to Earth.

  Most families in the outer colonies spend years saving up for one trip. My parents always hinted that we’d go sometime before I started high school—though they stopped dropping those hints as soon as they got divorced. When my mom took her new job in California, not only did she not invite me to live with her, she didn’t even ask if I wanted to come out for the summer. And once my dad was fired, our finances were even tighter than usual, so a round-trip Ganymede/Earth flight wasn’t in our budget.

  In the end, it was probably for the best. I’m not sure “alien abduction” is a valid excuse for getting tickets refunded.

  My eyes adjust to the light and I look up at the two—is that three?—suns rising in the reddish/orange sky above Elvid IV. Closing my eyes for a moment, I feel the heat against my cheeks. It’s not California, but it’ll do. I exhale and open my eyes to get a better look at—hello!—the first alien planet humans have ever visited.

  We’re close to the edge of the roof, standing on the flat top of a black skyscraper. Actually it’s more like a huge glass rock sticking up and out of the planet’s surface a hundred stories into the air. It doesn’t look human-made (or, Elvidian-made, I guess). It looks like it’s been here forever. Like the alien construction workers carved rooms out of an already existing pillar.

  “Whoa,” Ari says.

  Yeah. Whoa.

  We’re really high up and can see for miles. Jagged black crystals—like the one we’re standing on—blanket the horizon, twisting in and around themselves, crisscrossing at weird angles. It’s hard to
describe: A million black, overlapping Washington Monuments? A forest of dark glass? Something like that.

  “The planet looks like a giant sea urchin,” Ari says.

  Or that.

  It’s not like everything’s a crystal: There are landing pads and tarmacs dotting lots of flat-topped skyscrapers like ours. And, leaning over the edge, I can see the stadium at the foot of this building. But yeah, mostly, Ari nailed it: giant sea urchin.

  I look up again into the sky, which is starting to turn a dark shade of blue. Four moons—which remind me of home and make me a little sick for a second—dot the space between the three suns. There are a few ships flying around in the distance. But there isn’t much going on up here, above the surface. It’s a lot emptier and quieter than I would have thought.

  “We aren’t sightseeing,” the guard says, pushing his gun into Ari’s back.

  “Right,” Ari agrees. “Cough.”

  There are eight or nine ships parked on this platform, each one weirder than the next. To the left of the 118 is a ship that looks like a sideways letter H, with a hull painted the colors of snakeskin. The body of the ship is so thin, it seems impossible that anyone or anything could actually fit inside except a snake. And to the right of the 118 is a smaller ship that looks like a smooth, purple egg with one giant jet engine sticking out the back.

  I’ve never seen the PSS 118 on the ground before, only from a shuttle. From this perspective I barely recognize it. It’s bigger than I thought it was, for one thing. It’s also even junkier than I realized. The hull has been banged up by years of encounters with stray meteoroids and space parts—not to mention whatever attacked us before we got here. Crewmembers Tim and Georgia (known among the teachers as “not the brightest stars in the galaxy”) are constantly taking space walks to repair the hull, which probably accounts for all the misshapen panels with the wrong color paint and screws that haven’t been screwed in all the way.

  I smile. I’ve kind of missed our terrible ship.

  “How do we get inside?” the guard asks, even though we’re standing right in front of the main entrance—the door with a sign that says Main Entrance.

  Okay, so thanks to the contacts they gave us, I can read the Elvidian language, but this guy can’t read mine. Which might come in handy.

  “This way,” I say, trying to walk with a fake limp. With all the distractions, I have to remind myself to be sick. I look at Ari, who’s totally forgotten. He’s practically skipping. Becka, on the other hand—’cause she’s a total pro—has continued to play it up. She’s shivering and chattering her teeth, and can’t seem to stop scratching herself. She’s popped at least half the stickers on her skin.

  I step over to the control panel next to the main door and press my hand to the screen. Students aren’t supposed to have this kind of access to the ship, but thanks to my dad, the panel lights up for me right away. Unfortunately, access to the ship means access to the ship.

  “WELCOME, JACKSONVILLE GRAHAM,” it says. Followed by: “HOLD ON. WHAT IN THE—”

  “Ship,” I say, mustering all the confidence I’ve got. It needs to understand that now’s not the time for shenanigans. “Please open this door. And I’m going to need you to stay absolutely quiet, for our guest here. It’s the Cold. You understand. Too much noise causes, um, headaches.”

  It says nothing back: Probably a first. But it’s also not opening the door.

  “Open,” I say again. “Please.”

  Still nothing. I stare at the panel, wondering how to convince it to trust us. It’s got to know we’re not in our own solar system anymore. That something’s happened. Something that needs to unhappen.

  I get an idea and subtly touch a finger to the screen, hoping that the guard’s inability to read the sign at the entrance means what I think it means. I write, “911.”

  And instantly, the door slides open and a ramp unravels at our feet.

  For the second time in two minutes, I exhale a long breath.

  The hatch leads straight into the hangar bay. As we walk in, the overhead lights turn on—thunk thunk thunk, front to back—illuminating the five shuttles parked tightly inside.

  “Where’s the medicine?” the guard asks. “Quickly.”

  “This way,” I lead, squeezing past some metal storage containers. “There’s a hatch that accesses the main corridor.” We’re only going to have one shot at this. The moment he suspects we’re lying to him is the moment our plan ends. Good thing the guard can’t read English, since on our quest to get the “medicine,” we pass right by a door that says Infirmary/Nurse’s Office.

  Because we’re on our way back to the cafeteria instead.

  It’s just as we left it, with furniture and food scattered everywhere. I have to sidestep a heap of mashed potatoes to reach the control panel.

  “We keep the medicine locked in here,” I lie, stepping away from the group and putting my hand against the screen. I don’t get shot right away, so that’s something. And the panel lights up and shows me the display—but the ship stays quiet, just like I’d asked.

  “I need to find the right screen,” I say, glancing behind me. The guard is pointing his gun right at my back, waiting for an excuse to pull the trigger.

  And I’m about to give him one.

  “Hurry up,” he says.

  We talked about the hidden cameras in the cafeteria, right? They’re all over the place, watching us from every corner, so small that they’re invisible to the naked eye. But it isn’t the cameras I need. It’s what the cameras are looking at.

  Following Becka’s instructions—which were frighteningly specific—I finish rerouting the feed of the room back into the room, streaming the images into the digital paper lining the walls, floor, and ceiling.

  “I’ve got it,” I announce, pressing one last button and spinning around.

  As planned, the screens around the room begin displaying the room itself, projecting images of us back out again. The cameras pick up what’s inside the cafeteria and the walls display what the cameras pick up, which turns our surroundings into a 3D funhouse-version of what happens when you stand between two mirrors. So instead of just Ari, Becka, me, and the guard, there are a whole bunch of Aris, Beckas, mes, and guards scattered around the room.

  I look left and, because the cameras are recording me from different angles, some of the images and projections of me look left too, while others look right or up or down. It’s dizzying. Even though I’m trying to focus on the real Ari, Becka, and guard, I’m having trouble telling the people apart from the holograms.

  But the guard isn’t having the same problem. I watch as all the versions of him—real and fake—calmly press down onto their silver wrist cuffs.

  “I thought you might try something foolish,” he says, training his huge gun right at (the real) me. “But I assumed it wouldn’t be this foolish. Do you really think that my helmet is all for show?”

  He taps the side of his head. “Heat vision,” he explains. “Your little display is absolutely useless. I know exactly where you are.”

  I hear him charge up his gun.

  “And I warned you that if this was a trick, you would regret it.”

  A shot rings out and a body slumps to the floor.

  But it isn’t my body.

  The projections? The holograms? They were all a distraction to get the guard to look away from Ari and Becka long enough for Ari to make one more thing with his Pencil.

  See, when I first switched on the projections, the guard focused his attention on me. Ari took out his Pencil and double-clicked, and then Becka grabbed the small item created by the last of the preprogrammed nanorobots in Ari’s Pencil and fired one shot.

  Like I said: When we came up with this plan, I told Becka no guns. At least, no guns right away.

  “Bull’s-eye,” she says, blowing at the barrel of her tiny stun pistol like she just won a duel in an old Western.

  I shut off the wallpaper, and Ari triple-clicks his Pencil. The na
norobot pimples on our skin dissolve and so does Becka’s stun gun. Dismayed, she turns toward Ari and opens up her empty hand.

  “It might be a good idea for me to have a weapon on me all the time. For protection.”

  But I shake my head. “Let’s think about that one later,” I say.

  She grumbles but lets it go. No time to waste.

  The three of us—well, okay, mostly Becka—drag the unconscious guard out of the cafeteria, down the hallway, and into Principal Lochner’s office. He’s the only faculty member whose office has a chair bolted down to the floor. We heave the guard into it. Ari grabs a bunch of duct tape from the supply closet in the hangar bay and straps him down, using almost an entire roll for each arm and leg.

  “I don’t think he’s going anywhere,” Becka says.

  Ari steps back to assess the job. “Can’t be too careful.”

  We have no idea how long we’ve got before someone comes looking for us. If we weren’t, you know, prisoners on a hostile alien planet, maybe we’d just try to take off now and hope for the best. But even if the sky looks empty, there’s no way that it actually is empty. If we’re going to pull this off, we need a little more information than what Ari was able to get by snooping around inside the school computer.

  I look over at Becka, who has that gleam in her eye.

  “Now for the fun part,” she says, cracking her knuckles.

  13

  “Tell us!” Becka screams. “Or else!”

  This interrogation isn’t going as well as I’d hoped. The guard woke up a few minutes ago, right after we removed his helmet. And he was not super pleased to see us.

  I look around at all the posters on Principal Lochner’s wall—“Settle it with a smile!” “Your moon is where the heart is.” “There’s no ‘I’ in Outer Space!”—and wonder whether they might be spoiling the mood.

  “You don’t frighten me, you puny umjerrylochner,” the guard growls, his long Elvidian hair whipping around as he tries to free himself. Good thing Ari used all that tape.