19 IMAGINARY FRIENDS

19 IMAGINARY FRIENDS Lunar day 217 Late afternoon My parents went back out onto the surface again. So did most of the other adults. Once Dr. Kim mapped out the possible locations that Nina might have gone to find armalcolite, they decided to fan out to hit all of them as quickly as possible. Daphne's robots moved much slower than humans could, and we were running out of time. I think everyone suspected this might be a wild-goose chase, but they all still felt like they had to do something, and searching the base for the three- hundredth time wasn't particularly useful. Nina obviously wasn't there, so she had to be somewhere

out on the surface. This time, Chang was the only adult who stayed behind. Chang was annoyed by this, but even he realized that he needed to be around to make sure the Sjobergs didn't revolt again. "Now that you've provoked them," Mom had warned, "who knows what they'll do if we're all gone?" "Probably eat our entire stash of chocolate bars," Dad suggested. I was really worried about everyone going back out, but my parents did their best to reassure me that their helmets were now in perfect shape. Plus, NASA had pinpointed the location of the cloud of space junk that had rained down before and assured us it was too far away to be a problem again. So I had no choice but to let my folks go and hope for the best. I spent the first few minutes with Chang in the control room, keeping tabs on my parents, but this turned out to be more nerve-racking than I'd expected. Their progress in the rover was agonizingly slow and I kept imagining incoming showers of space junk. Meanwhile, Chang had his hands full talking to the Johnson Space Center, asking them to look into the Sjobergs" connection to

Maximum Adventure, updating them on the search for Nina, and listing what the rain of space junk had ruined so that repairs could be initiated. So I returned to my family's residence, looking for a quiet place to think. Instead I found Zan. She appeared to me the moment I walked through the door. "Hey!" I said, locking it behind me. "Thanks for helping me out with Patton today." Zan frowned. "I'll never be able to do something like that again." "I don't think you'll have to. Patton's still terrified. I convinced him I can summon that snake thing whenever I want." I'd been hoping Zan might find this amusing, but she seemed saddened by it instead. "My behavior in that instance was wrong." "No, his behavior was wrong," I pointed out. "He was trying to beat me up! You saved me!" "Even so, it violated so many rules... Many of my fellow beings were not pleased." "How did they even know you did it?" I asked. "Can they see us?" "It's difficult to explain. But...there were some

on my planet who felt I shouldn't be allowed to come back." "No!" I exclaimed. Zan smiled, seeming touched by my response. "They didn't prevail, obviously. I'm here. But I must be very careful from now on. I take it from your mental state that this has been a very difficult day." "I'll say. Kira and I almost died in a meteoroid shower." Now it was Zan's turn to look worried. "You went out on the surface again?" "It was an emergency." I filled Zan in quickly on what had happened. She listened intently to my whole story, then asked, "So everyone has gone back onto the surface to look for Nina once more?" "Yes. They didn't get to finish the search before, with the helmets being damaged and all...." "Even so, given what I know about your species, it seems as though it would be dangerous for Nina to range very far from the base." "It is, but she's obviously not close by." "That may not be the case." "Yes, it is. We've looked everywhere." "Perhaps not."

"We have," I snapped. "Unless she shrank herself —which isn't possible—there's nowhere else on this base she could be!" "Please don't get upset with me, Dashiell. I'm only trying to help." "Well, you're not doing a very good job of it." Zan didn't say anything for a while. Then she asked, "Why are you upset with me?" I turned away from her, annoyed at myself for how I'd spoken to her. "I'm not. I'm upset with everything else. Nina and the Sjobergs and nearly dying because of some stupid space junk..." "No, Dashiell, you're also upset with me. Remember, I'm connected to your mind. I can sense your emotions." I realized she was right. It was disconcerting to be talking to someone who could figure out what I was feeling better than I could myself. "I guess I'm just frustrated." "Why?" "Because you're from this super-advanced alien race and you can't even help me. You can beam your thoughts all the way across the galaxy but you can't figure out where Nina is? You can read my emotions but you can't warn me that satellite debris

is about to rain down on the moon?" "I can't predict the future." "Well, what can you do? Because all you ever seem to do is ask me questions! You don't tell me about you, or your planet, or what kind of danger humans are in...." "I never said humanity was in danger." "But we are, aren't we? That's the whole point of this, right?" Zan hesitated, trying to figure out how to respond. "Not exactly." "What's going to happen?" I demanded. "Is there a giant asteroid heading toward earth? Is the sun about to explode? Are we all going to blow ourselves up?" "None of those things are going to happen," Zan said, so calmly that it was maddening. "Then what is?!" I shouted. "You tell me it's incredibly important that we stay in contact, but you won't tell me why—and then you wonder why I'm frustrated with you? Do you have any idea what this is like?" Zan locked eyes with me, and for a moment, it was almost as though I could feel her inside my head. "It appears to be very stressful for you," Zan