“Lendur!”
Captain Donahue, the drill sergeant grandma commanding House Azure’s shuttle fleet, blew into the pilots’ ready room like a southern hurricane.
Lachlan set down his dripping mug and gave her a jaunty salute, left hand behind his back to hide the coffee-stained sleeve. He hated that his boss’s voice made him jump like
“I hired a mechanic, not a food service worker. What’s with the hairnet?” Greg Hahn sniffed, as if I were trying to smuggle improperly preserved twentieth century school lunches from my shuttle onto his shiny space station and he smelled something foul.
Don’t let his attitude bother you, Joe. You can handle another Z Job.
Elianna released two bursts from her jet pack and realigned with Polaris.
The jarring incineration alarm blared on her exosuit, triggering her heart to beat a staccato. She suppressed a squeal. I’m actually saving the North Star!
Geysers popped and spewed gas on the yellow giant’s surface, hundreds of miles away, but she could
“Shush, Abigail! I’m just getting to the good part!”
I sigh and lean back in my ancient rocker. To my right, blasts of heat from the open fireplace roll over me like the flames of Hades. Toasty, Jack calls it.
I feel like I’ve been here before.
Across the room, my brother Jack leans forward in his chair, propping his elbows against the massive oak slab we call a dining table.
“Rope secure?”
“Check.”
“Snacks on hand?”
“Check.”
I passed a bag of freeze-dried oranges to the shadow shaped like my roommate and watched him fumble to open it in the dark.
“Ugh. Connor. This is the best you have?”
“We’re in space, Barrett. Not many options.”
He sighed and shifted on the lumpy mattress.
“Once upon a time” is how the inhabitants of Earth begin their tales. But we are not Earthlings, and this is not a story of fiction. Gather ‘round as I recount how Moonfolk first encountered these aliens and how cunning and wit kept our world safe.
It was an ordinary day. Children were at school in the lunar craters.
The summer I first traveled to America, my father wore a red shirt so I could spot him in the crowds. Let’s just say that system doesn’t work if other people are wearing red shirts and you’re a five-year-old who can’t see above anyone’s butt.
As soon as we joined the mob in front of JFK to catch a cab, I got separated from Dad.
On the evening of June 20, the president sat alone in the Oval Office, reviewing intelligence reports. The peace talks in Paris were going well—at least enough to silence the protesters at home. His reelection committee had hit a minor snag, but they were managing it. As long as he could distract the public…
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“Night, Alex,” my buddies called as they climbed into their car.
I waved as they drove away, then headed inside to clean up. I brushed popcorn off the sofa and collected plates of half-finished pizza. The end credits of the sixth movie continued scrolling on the TV and I bobbed my head with the music.
In my defense, when the aliens have the size and consistency of ketchup packets, it’s very easy to forget one in a flight suit pocket.
You know, that little bicep pocket where you stash the neural-connection ear buds?
On top of that, we’d been celebrating Zenibrian New Year—which is a pretty big deal…
Snowflakes swarm the shuttle I’m flying to my first assignment. Scientific Outpost Six—wonder if those SOS initials are a coincidence? If so, they’re appropriate now. I shiver as I struggle with the controls. It’s winter on this world and though I’m dressed accordingly, this much-used craft has a broken heater. I grimace.
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Time has no meaning out here, but according to our shipboard computer, it is two minutes before noon. In a few seconds, my co-pilot and I will be the first humans to travel through a wormhole—a black hole, which is kept from collapsing by the greatest feat of engineering the universe has yet witnessed.
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