12 SPACE JERK REBELLION

12 SPACE JERK REBELLION Lunar day 217 Lunchtime Almost every adult at MBA was recruited to the search party. Only three stayed behind. Lars and Sonja Sjoberg were two of them, of course; the Sjobergs never thought about anyone but themselves. They hadn't emerged from their suite since Nina's disappearance had been discovered. Either they didn't know Nina was missing, or they didn't care. The other adult who stayed at MBA was Dr. Marquez. The official reason for this was that someone had to keep an eye on all the kids and that Dr. Marquez, as our base psychiatrist, was best

equipped to help all of us deal with the potential trauma of Nina's disappearance. The unofficial reason was that Chang thought Dr. Marquez was an idiot. He believed Marquez was a lousy psychiatrist who'd only been brought to the moon because NASA wanted his wife up there and because he was famous. (Dr. Marquez had published a bestselling self-help book back on earth and was now working on one about mental health on the moon called Lunarnauts and Lunatics.) However, Dr. Marquez didn't seem too upset about being asked to stay behind. In fact, he seemed almost relieved. I'd heard rumors that he'd had some claustrophobia issues with his space suit on the trip up to the moon— panicking that he was running out of air and flipping out—and so he wasn't in any hurry to suit up again and go out onto the lunar surface. The rest of the adults were all extremely competent, though. They quickly assigned themselves to teams and set out in search of Nina. There were twelve of them, so they broke up into six groups of two to cover more ground. Four adults stayed close to the base: Drs. Brahmaputra- Marquez, Janke, Goldstein, and Iwanyi. The other eight adults took moon rovers and spread out

farther. The moon rover garage had been badly damaged a month before, when Garth Grisan had tried to kill me with the base's giant robot arm. Luckily, two of the three main rovers had survived the attack, only needing minor repairs. The third had been totaled, although the truth was, we had never needed all three big rovers at once anyhow. The rovers were going to be far more important once Moon Base Beta began construction. (NASA was working feverishly to get us a new one before then.) In the meantime, there was a smaller emergency backup rover that could fill in. The big rovers could seat four adults at once. They weren't much different from the ones the Apollo missions had brought to the moon seventy years before. They looked like souped-up go-karts: basically a chassis, four tires, and a small engine. They weren't fancy, but they didn't have to be. All they really had to do was get everyone from place to place. Dr. Kim and Dr. Alvarez, along with Dr. Merritt and Dr. Balnikov, set off to the north in one, planning to search Solar Arrays 1 and 2. Meanwhile, Mom and Dad and Chang and Dr. Howard went off

toward the future site of Moon Base Beta. This seemed pointless to me; Nina obviously hadn't taken a rover herself, so she probably wouldn't have ranged too far away, especially when there were moon rocks all over the place. That was all the moon was, really—a massive ball of rocks. But Chang argued that there was no guessing what Nina might have done. After all, no one had figured she would ever leave the base solo to steal moon rocks. Therefore, if she could have gone to the Moon Base Beta site, then it was worth checking out. In the meantime, all the kids had been assigned to go back to school. We didn't, though. First of all, none of us could concentrate. Second, none of us wanted to do it. Having your moon-base commander disappear seemed as good an excuse as any for a holiday, and Dr. Marquez was powerless to stop us. In fact, his own children led the rebellion. We had all gathered in the rec room for school as ordered, but Patton and Lily Sjoberg didn't even bother to show up, and once Cesar realized they were playing hooky, he decided to join them. Dr. Marquez was one of those parents who didn't really believe in discipline, so the only threat he could

muster against Cesar was: "If you don't come back here, I will be very disappointed with you." "Deal," Cesar had said, and then walked out. After that, Roddy had complained that he shouldn't have to stay in school if Cesar wasn't there, and Inez said that if Roddy didn't have to go, then she wouldn't either. The two younger Marquez kids stormed off, ignoring their father's weak warnings for them to not disobey him. After that, the rest of us went on strike as well. In truth, Dr. Marquez didn't seem that disappointed in his children—or any of the rest of us. Instead, he seemed rather pleased to have some time to himself, and went to his residence to watch television. Violet and Kamoze turned on the main SlimScreen in the rec room and started to watch Squirrel Force, their favorite TV show. I went with Kira to the mess hall to get lunch. I'd expected Roddy to go off to play veeyar games someplace, but instead he followed us. The only thing that interested Roddy more than virtual reality at MBA was girls. Lily Sjoberg and Kira couldn't have been any more different, but Roddy didn't seem to care. His

interest was constantly ping-ponging from one to the other, usually based upon whoever was closest to him. The fact that neither one liked him did nothing to deter him. He did seem to realize that Lily Sjoberg was a long shot, but he kept lurking around her anyhow, as if hoping that someday she'd see the light. As for Kira, he truly appeared to believe that her disdain for him was merely covering up her real feelings of affection. So he tried harder with her, doing everything he could to break down her resolve, unaware that this only made her dislike him even more. On this day, as usual, he made the mistake of thinking the best way to impress her was to show how brilliant he was. He cornered us while we were rehydrating our lunches and said, "You know, statistically, the chances of them finding Nina out there are extremely slim." Kira regarded him with her usual distaste. "No, they're not. There's twelve people looking for her." "Twelve people can barely cover any ground at all," Roddy sniffed. "Do you have any idea how staggeringly large the search area is?" "If I say yes, do you promise not to tell us?" I asked.