16 VIDEO TRANSMISSION

16 VIDEO TRANSMISSION Lunar day 217 Post-traumatic experience recovery period The helmet repair kit had survived the trip through the meteor shower. Chang, Mom, and Dr. Howard went right to work replacing their visors. Meanwhile, Dad patched my suit the best he could. The meteor shower was letting up—Kira and I were unlucky to have been outside for the worst of it— and everyone wanted to resume the search for Nina as soon as it was over. The pod was cramped with all of us in it. It was much smaller than I'd expected, given that four people were going to be living there once construction for MBB was under way. Most of the

actual work would be done by robots, but humans were still needed there. Even though the site wasn't that far from MBA, it still took time and energy to go from one to the other—and as Kira and I had just learned firsthand, the less time you had to spend in transit on the lunar surface, the better. Inside the pod, there were four bunks against the side wall, four workstations, some storage areas, a tiny kitchen, and a toilet that looked even more awful than the ones we had back at MBA. This was all crammed into a tubular space smaller than my bedroom back on earth. There wasn't even a separate space for the toilet. You could draw a curtain around you, but that was it for privacy. If anyone got bad gas, they'd stink up the whole pod for days. "This place makes Moon Base Alpha look like the Four Seasons," I told Mom. "If you think this is bad, imagine what it was like for the crew who built MBA." Mom popped her old, cracked visor off her helmet and tossed it aside. "At least the people staying here will have the option of visiting MBA now and then for showers and time off. The MBA construction crew had to stay in a pod like this for an entire year."

"Four people? In something this small for a year?" I echoed. "I'm surprised no one went nuts." "They might have," Dad said. "NASA was awfully secretive about the whole project." My smartwatch suddenly vibrated on my wrist. Riley Bock was calling from Hawaii. "It's Riley," I said. "Mind if I take it?" "Sure," Mom told me. "We're not going anywhere until these helmets are fixed." I accepted the call. Video of Riley sprang up on the face of my watch. She was outside my old middle school, passing from one classroom to another. As usual, it was a beautiful day in Hawaii— even though it was the middle of winter in the rest of the United States. Riley was dressed in a T-shirt and shorts, and the sun was so bright, the image was almost blinding in the darkness of the pod. "Aloha, Moonie!" she said. "Is something wrong up there?" It took me a moment to realize she was asking this jokingly. "Why?" "'Cause I've sent you, like, thirty texts since last night and I called once and I haven't heard boo from you today." "Sorry. Things have been kind of hectic." I picked my words very carefully. NASA monitored all our

calls, making sure that no one said anything bad about the moon program or leaked classified information. If I did that, they'd stop the conversation immediately—putting a fake "transmission failure" notice up to fool Riley—and I could lose my phone privileges completely. For example, even though there'd been a murder at MBA a month before, I and all the other Moonies had been barred from saying a single word about it to anyone on earth. The entire story had been buried by NASA. Riley asked, "Did you watch that video I sent you last night yet?" "Video?... No." It occurred to me that, in all the events of the day, I hadn't bothered reading through all the texts from Riley. "I didn't even realize you'd sent one." "Well, you should watch it...." The video feed suddenly began to cut out, reducing the image to jumbled pixels and garbled sounds for a few seconds. The decaying feed wasn't really surprising, given that I was receiving it in an underground tube 250,000 miles from earth. Frankly, it was astonishing that I'd received a clear image for as long as I had.

"Hold on," I said. "You're breaking up." Riley seemed to still be talking, unaware that I couldn't hear or see her, but it was hard to tell for sure—because I couldn't see or hear her. And then, a single brief burst of audible speech came through:"...the Sjobergs..." I moved toward the air lock, where I figured the reception might be slightly better. "Can you repeat that?" Sure enough, the image cleared up a bit as I neared the air lock. For a few seconds, I could see Riley bright and clear again, as if I were right back on earth. She was standing outside the gymnasium. A lot of students had now gathered behind her, realizing she was talking to me on the moon, and were either waving hello or mugging for the camera. Riley repeated herself. "I said, I guess you're getting along better with the Sjobergs now, huh?" While NASA would never have let me bad-mouth the space tourists, I hadn't ever made it a secret that we didn't get along. "Um... why would you say that?" "Watch the video! And if they ever invite you to one of their fancy homes for vacation, tell them your best friend needs to come too!"

The picture fuzzed out again before I could respond, and was then replaced by a screen saying TRANSMISSION FAILURE. I guessed this was legit and that NASA hadn't intervened—transmitting between earth and the moon wasn't exactly easy—but the truth was, I had no idea. Kira pointed to a computer station crammed between two storage units near the air lock. "Think we can watch the video on that?" She wasn't even trying to pretend she hadn't overheard my conversation. In the cramped pod, it would have been impossible not to. "It might be private," Mom told her. "I don't mind," I said. I didn't want to wait to see it. On my watch, I brought up the list of texts Riley had sent, searching for the one with the video attached. I could see why Riley had called. She'd sent the video the night before, but had then fired off plenty more texts that morning. I hadn't responded to any of them, because I'd been busy trying to not get killed by Patton Sjoberg. Or meteorites. I located the video and transferred the file to the computer. It popped up on the screen and instantly started playing. It began with the logo of