3 RIDICULOUSLY INTELLIGENT LIFE

3 RIDICULOUSLY INTELLIGENT LIFE Lunar day 252 Still very early in the morning It was cyanide poisoning, to be precise. Nina had hoped to keep that a secret, because she didn't want to start a panic. However, Roddy also knew exactly what the yellow box with the skull and crossbones meant. Before I could stop him, he announced to the entire moon base, "Someone poisoned Lars Sjoberg!" The base immediately erupted into chaos. Everyone spoke at once, insisting that they couldn't

believe anyone would have done such a thing—and then quickly professing their innocence. I understood exactly why they felt the need to do this. Every single one of them had probably wished Lars Sjoberg dead at some point. Lots of them had even said it out loud in public. (I know that I had. Plenty of times.) The man had been absolutely horrible to every one of us. He had insulted, berated, tormented, and threatened us. In the most loathsome and vile family I had ever encountered, he was the most loathsome and vile by far. So it wasn't too hard to imagine that, faced with the prospect of being cooped up with the king of all jerkwads for another few months, someone had decided to simply bump him off instead. And everyone else seemed to be thinking the exact same thing. So Nina moved quickly to restore order. Once the cyanide in Lars's system was counteracted, she left Dad and Chang to keep an eye on him and exited the medical bay to speak to all of us. "Although Lars has been poisoned by cyanide," she announced, "that does not mean someone actively poisoned him." "Yeah, right," Roddy muttered beside me.

"There are many ways in which Lars might have been exposed to cyanide other than a murder attempt," Nina continued. "Like what?" Dr. Balnikov asked suspiciously. "Yes," Dr. Brahmaputra-Marquez agreed. "Are there any environmental hazards that we need to be aware of at the base?" A murmur of concern rippled through the crowd. "There is no cause for alarm," Nina insisted. "As you know, NASA is constantly monitoring our habitat, and they haven't seen anything to be concerned about." "Today, at least," grumbled Dr. Alvarez. His wife, Dr. Kim, gave him an angry elbow in the ribs. "Shenzu!" she hissed, then glanced toward Roddy, Kira, and me, as though worried we'd overheard him. It occurred to me that I had gotten a lot of worried glances that morning. "We all have a very busy day tomorrow," Nina informed us. "Your residences are safe to return to, so please go home and try to get some sleep. Perpetuating rumors like this is childish and counterproductive." Then she spun around and returned to the medical bay, confident that we

would all dutifully obey her after she had just insulted our behavior. Of course, no one obeyed her. Everyone acted as if they were obeying her, making a show of heading back to their residences, but instead of going inside and returning to bed, they all simply lowered their voices so Nina couldn't hear them from the medical bay. It was kind of like being at camp, after the counselors inform a cabin full of amped-up kids that it's bedtime, but no one wants to sleep. Even Violet was wide awake, given the early hour. "Why would someone poison Lars Sjoberg?" she asked Mom. "No one poisoned Lars," Mom told her. "Didn't you hear Nina?" "Yes, but why would someone do it? To kill him?" "It's very late," Mom said, looking uncomfortable. "You ought to get back to bed." "Would you be happy if Lars died?" Violet asked. "I know Dad would." "Violet!" Mom gasped, glancing around to see if anyone had overheard. Of course, plenty of people had. "Why would you say something like that?" "Because Dad said he wanted to kill Lars the other day. After Lars threatened Dash."

"Let's go," Mom said, taking Violet by the hand. "Back to bed right now." "But I'm not sleepy!" Violet protested. "No one else is going to bed! I still don't even know what cyanide is!" Mom started to rush Violet up the stairs, then paused as she passed me. A look of regret washed over her face as something occurred to her. "Dash, I know this isn't what we'd hoped for on your birthday...." "It's okay," I assured her. In truth, with all the commotion, I'd briefly forgotten about my birthday. Then I lowered my voice so no one else would hear. "Thanks for letting me go outside. It was amazing." "I'm sorry it got interrupted like this." "I think Chang wanted to kill Lars too," Violet said. "I heard him say it a bunch of times." Mom sighed, exasperated, then dragged Violet toward our room. In her haste—or maybe because she felt bad for me—she didn't insist that I return to bed myself. Not that I would have anyhow. Because Zan Perfonic had just appeared to me. Even though Zan communicated with me via thought, she still projected an image of herself into

my mind to make our communication seem more like a normal conversation. Furthermore, she projected herself as a human being, rather than what she actually looked like. The human form she had chosen was that of an extremely beautiful woman, with olive skin and blazing blue eyes. I had no idea what Zan really looked like. She hadn't shared that with me yet, despite my begging her to. But I was quite certain that she didn't look anything like a human being. Zan tried to make her arrivals seem as normal as possible to me. She wouldn't simply pop into existence all of a sudden, as that tended to startle me. (We had learned this through experience. The last time Zan had appeared too quickly, I had yelped in surprise in front of the entire mess hall, and then I'd had to blame my strange behavior on accidentally biting my tongue.) Now she made it seem as though she had walked around the corner from the gym and waved at me through the crowd. "Hey," Kira said to me, unaware that Zan was there. "I almost forgot: Happy birthday." "Thanks," I said. "That was almost a heck of a present someone got you: Lars Sjoberg dead."