Mike Stellar (17 page)

I yanked Mr. Shugabert’s handheld from my pocket and grinned.

Larc’s mouth fell open and her blue braces glinted. “Michael Stellar, you have quite the sticky digits!”

I felt my chest puff out. “Hey, I’m just trying to find out what’s going on arou—”

“Mike, look….” Larc cut me off and pointed out the window. The stars were streaking by. The ship had picked up considerable speed in just the past few minutes.

“We’re going to be at the Fold practically any minute now,” Larc said somberly, watching the stars fly by outside the window.

“I guess I have to talk to my parents,” I said, stuffing the handheld in my pocket and mustering my courage.

“You have to, Mike. Just tell them what you know. They can’t deny everything. Especially when you tell them you’ve heard from Nita.”

I took a deep breath and said, “I know. I know.”

“Find me before school tomorrow. Tell me everything you find out. I want to help, Mike. I—” She stopped talking and grabbed me in a slightly off-balance hug. I hugged her back and started feeling warm in places I didn’t want to feel warm in.

I backed away and said, “Okay. I’ll find you in the morning.”

“Good luck, Mike.”

“Thanks,” I said, turning toward the hallway to my apartment. “And now that I know Sugar Bear isn’t a good guy … well, by default that makes Mom and Dad good guys.”

Maybe.

I looked at
Mom rubbing her temple and quietly spooning a sloppy soy patty into her mouth. There was just no way she could be part of an evil conspiracy to sabotage this mission.

“Mike?” Mom looked up from her dinner. “You do realize you are completely and utterly grounded until we get to Mars, right?”

I swallowed. This was it.

“Hey.” Dad walked up behind me and put his hand on my shoulder. “Your mom and I are incredibly anxious to hear why you’re so late.” The quietness in his voice scared me.

“Um,” I mumbled. I gave furious thought to what I should say. “Mom … Dad …,” I began, gathering all my courage. “I have something to ask you—”

A voice crackled through Dad’s handheld. “Mr. Stellar, you have an emergency patient at your office.”

Dad stood up, dropping his napkin onto his plate and wiping his hands on the front of his jumpsuit instead. “Uh-oh. I wonder what that’s all about.” He started walking out of the room.

“But, Dad, wait. I need to—”

“I have to go, Mike,” he said impatiently, looking suddenly more worried than angry. “There’s an emergency. Here, I almost forgot.” Dad reached into his pocket and handed me my evening vial of stomach-settling vitamin gunk.

“But it’s important, Dad…. I—”

“Mrs. Stellar, you are wanted on the flight deck.” This time it was Mom’s handheld crackling to life.

“Great,” said Mom, shooting Dad a look I couldn’t figure out. “Mike, are you going to be okay by yourself? No sneaking around, no getting into trouble?” She gave me a threatening look.

“I’ll be fine,” I answered hastily, sensing that the time for me to ask my parents about the sabotage was quickly slipping away. But I had to talk to them
now.
With the ship moving so fast and the Fold coming up so quickly … If they really were sabotaging the ship like they sabotaged the
Spirit
, then it would all be happening when we entered the Fold. And that was only hours away.

“Please inform flight deck I’m on my way,” Mom said into her handheld, and then stuffed it into her workbag.

Before I could say anything, Mom was out the door. Then Dad came rushing by in such a hurry that his medical bag banged against his leg.

He pointed threateningly at me and said, “Stay here. Don’t move. We’ll talk when Mom and I get back.” Then he was out the door, too.

I just sat there at the kitchen table, blinking in astonishment. I was ready for a confrontation, and now I was all alone. Should I follow them? Just shout things at them down the hallway?

I dropped my head onto the table and groaned. We were all about to be lost in space—or vaporized—and I was the only one who could do anything to stop it. I jumped up, swallowing my fear of parental retribution, and decided to chase after them. On my way to the front door, though, I passed the door to Mom and Dad’s bedroom. For the first time in days, the door was ajar and I could see in.

Forgetting about my plan to run screaming like a maniac down the halls of the ship, I crept to the bedroom doorway and peered into their room. I’d been trying for so long to hear what was going on in this room; it felt strange to see into it. I didn’t know what
I’d expected, but it didn’t look weird. Just … normal. Like on the first day we arrived on the ship.

Feeling stupid for creeping around when no one was in the apartment to catch me, I tried to prove to myself that I was brave by giving the bedroom door a kick and causing it to whoosh open all the way.

I stepped into their bedroom. All the furniture was tucked away, so it looked like an empty room right now. I couldn’t help glancing over my shoulder as I walked farther into their room. Now that I knew that Mr. Shugabert really
had
been spying on us, I had this creepy, continual feeling of being watched. I punched a couple of buttons, and a chair and a small bookcase appeared.

I knelt by the bookcase. It didn’t surprise me that it was full. Dad’s box from home had been almost totally filled with books to bring on the move.

Running my finger down the spine of the first book, I felt … confused. I’d never bothered to actually read the book Mrs. H gave me for my research paper, but I could swear that this book on Dad’s shelf was the exact same one she’d given to me. But why would Dad put it on his shelf? He knew I was going to have to give it back.

I had that puzzle-piece feeling again. Something was going on, but I couldn’t quite … I ran my finger down
the spines of all the books, reading their titles. My heartbeat quickened. Right there in front of me was
anthology: the life works of e. e. cummings.

I gasped and looked at the next book, and the next one, and the next one. Every single book on Dad’s shelf was an anthology of some twentieth-century poet—just like all the books had been in Mrs. H’s apartment. I sat there, stunned.

I pulled the e. e. cummings book off the shelf and opened it. The first hundred pages or so had been ripped out, the same as with Mrs. Halebopp’s! I pulled the wadded-up pages from my pocket and spread them out on the floor in front of me. First there was the one from the frame in Mrs. H’s apartment and then there was the one I’d ripped out of the book while I was in detention.

As I felt excitement rise from my toes, I looked at the number of the first page in Dad’s book: 261.

I did one of those exhale-laugh things and abandoned the awkward crouch I’d been in. I sat hard on the floor. How did a page from Dad’s book get into a frame in Mrs. H’s apartment? I started yanking books off the shelf and opening them.

Every single book was missing pages.

Every.

Single.

Book.

“What does this mean?” I kept whispering as I thumbed through the books. I couldn’t see anything weird about them—other than that they were missing pages. I sat there, stumped.

It felt like I’d been sitting there for hours, my excitement turning to frustration. The ship would be reaching the Fold practically any minute now. Mom and Dad had disappeared—probably to begin the sabotage, I realized with a sick feeling. Evil Mrs. Halebopp was probably somehow involved, too, and I was stuck here in this stupid apartment, with these stupid books. There was nothing I could do about anything.

I helplessly fanned through the pages of one book after another, thinking of those antique flip-books where a little cartoon of a man or a dog dances a jig as you fly through the pages. There were no cartoons in any of these books. But I did notice something weird. As I flipped, I could feel the texture of the paper changing from page to page. I stopped flipping and ran my hand over the surface of a page.

The page felt … what was it? Bumpy? I couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary, but I could definitely feel something strange. The bumps weren’t everywhere, just here and there. I grabbed Mrs. H’s pages off the floor and felt them. They had bumps, too!

Now things were getting interesting.

I ripped a page from one of the books and rubbed it
again and again, feeling the bumps and trying to figure out what the heck they were. It was as if someone had stabbed them with a straight pin, leaving eeny-weeny holes everywhere.

Suddenly my brain flashed on something Larc had said—about Mrs. H. “She says she likes the way the pages feel between her fingers.” Larc’s voice echoed in my head.

“It’s a code!” I shouted into the empty room. “It has to be! Just like on
MonsterMetalMachines
#732 when Preditator is taken hostage by the Extermibus! Preditator used some old thing called Morse code,” I muttered to myself. “Maybe that’s what this is.”

I sat for what felt like forever, staring at the bumps, feeling the bumps, rubbing the pages over my face, growling into my hands…. Finally I turned each of the three ripped-out pages over and stared at the poems.

Maybe this is all a trick to get me to read more poetry.
I held the pages up one at a time and read them.

What the …?

In my surprise, I jumped up. My white-hot intensity had worked! I’d just seen tiny little pinpricks of light shooting through the page. Almost imperceptible, under certain letters there was definitely a tiny pinprick. The light from the ambient lamp on the wall had shone through the holes when I’d held the page up.

“Aha!”
I shouted crazily, and laughed out loud. I started trying to decipher the code.

I smacked a button on the wall and Mom’s desk appeared. I grabbed the nearest household handheld and activated the voice-recognition application. I read out loud all the letters from Mrs. H’s page that had a pinprick underneath them.

“ANEWMISSIONVENUSALDRINREACTIVATED UNDERCOVERTEACHERHALEBOPPHAVEINSTIGATED CONTACTWITHSPIRITNEEDHELPLOCATING SHIPTOPSECRET”

It took only a few minutes for me to figure out the words.

“A new mission. Venus Aldrin reactivated. Undercover teacher Halebopp. Have instigated contact with
Spirit.
Need help locating ship. Top-secret.”

“Holy mother of donkeys,” I gasped. “Mrs. Halebopp is Venus Aldrin.”

Venus Aldrin was
the most decorated search-and-rescue astronaut the Project had ever employed. We’d studied her in school. In fact, I’d probably just failed that pop quiz on her. She was supposed to be retired—living anonymously in a village somewhere in the desert.

I started opening all the books and feeling their pages. The first page of every book had pinpricks. Time stood still as I sat, decoding the messages.

One of them said something about the
Spirit
confirming David Hazelwood’s presence. Another said, “Food dwindling, Aurora refuses to send S&R crew.” Another had a bit that said, “Hubble Hawking confirmed alive.”

“Hubble’s alive!”
I said.

Another message read, “NS deep cover planned. EFE infiltration to commence 6/1.” I slapped myself on the forehead.
That
was why Nita hadn’t come on the trip. She was undercover with the EFEs? Then why not just contact Mom and Dad and tell them what she’d found out?

The next book’s message said, “Aurora hand in sabotage confirmed. Her transmission of virus succeeded.
Spirit
not repairable.” I swallowed, wondering what the next book would tell me.

It said, “A&M chosen. J’s assistance vital. V reached agreement with school, is on board. Operation Fight Back to commence.”

So this confirmed it. “A&M” had to be Mom and Dad—Albert and Marie. “J” was probably Jim—Larc’s dad. And “V” was Venus. The “agreement with school” part proved that Mrs. Halebopp really was Venus Aldrin.

I sat back, stunned. It was all starting to make sense. Venus Aldrin would
have
to be undercover; there was no way Aurora would have let her come back to the Project, if Aurora was preventing a search-and-rescue mission to the
Spirit.
Mom and Dad must have contacted her to ask for help. These books were a way for their little alliance to communicate without being discovered. Low-tech always trumps high-tech. At least that’s what Dad says.