Mike Stellar (7 page)

“Great,” I muttered, hopping out of bed and searching my box for my favorite
MonsterMetalMachines
towel. “I’m living in a perpetual voice mail system.”

While I showered, I had a brain wave that I should
go out and explore the ship a bit. So after my shower, I pulled on my jumpsuit and shoes. I snuck out of the apartment and headed for the lobby.

After rounding a corner, I jogged down the stairs—and felt a hand on my shoulder. I turned. Mr. Shugabert was standing there, his red jacket spotless, a little doodad in his ear almost completely hidden. He looked refreshed, as if he always stood around on stairways at four-thirty in the morning.

“Where are you off to so early?” he asked cheerfully, though it seemed like his eyes narrowed a bit when he looked at me.

“Just out for a jog,” I said, feeling my face flush. I hated that. I wasn’t even doing anything wrong. Well, except for the sneaking-out-of-the-apartment-at-four-thirty part.

“A jog?” He raised his eyebrows.

I shrugged. “Sure.”

“Do your parents know where you are?” His voice sounded as if he was talking to a three-year-old who was just caught eating cookies before dinner.

I didn’t say anything. He leaned over so that we were face to face.

He smiled another one of those chewing-gum-commercial smiles. “You really shouldn’t be out here like this, Mike. Spaceships can be dangerous for little boys. You don’t want to get hurt, do you?” I could smell
his hot breath. It did not smell like fresh mint. And I did not appreciate being called a little boy.

“I’ll be fine,” I finally managed to sputter.

Shugabert stood up and placed both hands on my shoulders. With more pressure than he really needed, he twisted me around until I was facing the opposite direction. “Go back to your apartment, Mike, and I’ll pretend like this never happened.”

“I told you, Sugar Bear,” I said, starting to get mad, “I’m just out for a … a jog. I couldn’t sleep.”

Another red-jacketed guy I’d never seen before came up to us. He frowned at me and whispered something into Mr. Shugabert’s ear. I felt Mr. Shugabert’s hands release my shoulders.

“I have to go take care of something, Mike,” Mr. Shugabert said. “I’ll see you back at your apartment.” He nodded slowly, as if the movement of his head would make me nod, too. He started to walk away but stopped and turned around. “I’d hate for your parents to find out about you sneaking out. That’d be a shame, wouldn’t it? Getting punished on your first day as a space traveler?” He was smiling the whole time he talked, but he somehow didn’t look all that happy. There was something more than just condescending about that guy Then he was up the stairs and out of sight.

My heart beating a little faster than normal, I stood there, thinking about going back to the apartment and
getting into bed. But something inside me started to burn, like the glow on a handheld screen just after you turn it off. I felt my cheeks warming. Who was he to tell me what to do? He wasn’t my dad. He wasn’t my teacher. Heck, my mom was the mission coordinator. I should be able to do anything I want.

I narrowed my eyes and continued down the stairs, directly into the lobby. I admit, I did throw a quick glance over my shoulder to make sure Mr. Shugabert was gone. But when I was positive he was nowhere in sight, I felt braver. Though as I got farther into the lobby, what I mostly felt was disappointment. It looked the same as it had when I’d first seen it. I thought there might be some fun things I’d initially missed—like a waterfall or an antigravity chamber. But there was nothing like that. Just some trees, a few bushes, and holograms of different solar systems floating over benches. Bo-oring.

I jogged in place and decided to check out the school. Best to familiarize yourself with the enemy as soon as possible. I was leaving the lobby when, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a narrow hallway jutting back behind one of the benches. I got this funny feeling in my stomach: the hallway was probably blocked off for a reason, but my curiosity got the better of me.

At home my curiosity was always getting the better of me. I’d sneak into Nita’s room so that I could find all
her EFE propaganda and hide it. And Stinky and I used to bust into Hubble’s room and look for dirty reader cards under his mattress. Just the idea that someone was trying to hide something from me made me want to tear down walls to find it.

I followed my pounding gut. Why did I feel so nervous? I did stuff like this all the time. And yet I caught myself breathing shallowly and looking over my shoulder. It was that stupid Sugar Bear. I didn’t think my parents would be thrilled with me for sneaking out if he caught me and brought me back to them.

I grabbed the bench with one hand and stuffed the other in my pocket, trying a one-handed bench-hopping maneuver popular with the
MonsterMetalMachine
skateboarding mandroid, PunkBot. Woo! I successfully hopped the bench and tried to go down the hallway, but
ooooof.
It was like I suddenly weighed forty-five thousand pounds. I couldn’t lift my feet, and my arms felt like they were being stretched to the floor. It was like I was stuck in an invisible tar pit or something.

After ten minutes I hadn’t even made it an inch. It must be a gravity enhancement net. Fantastic. These stupid gravity enhancers were the newest in security, at least according to a thing I saw on the vis.

I sighed hopelessly. I couldn’t even yell for help; it felt like I’d need at least twenty strong dudes hefting a crowbar to get my mouth open. I struggled to move my
eyes around so that I could get a better sense of my surroundings. I was only about half a foot away from the bench, so that meant anyone walking through the lobby would see me. I was so busted.

Then, on the wall, about three feet above me and two feet ahead of me, I saw a spider skitter up onto the ceiling. I had never been so happy to see a spider before in my life! Thank goodness for spaceships with “natural” atmospheres. That spider proved that the net I was caught in wasn’t very big. So if I could just wiggle forward or up or … I noticed that there was a small grate under my left foot. It was smaller than my foot, actually, so there was no way I could escape that way, unless …

I used all my strength to wiggle a finger in my pocket. It barely grazed a grasshrinker. If I could pop it and get some juice on my fingertip, it might be enough to get me through the grate. Or it might be too much and disappear me completely.

I took as deep a breath as I could muster underneath all the pressure of the net and I scraped my fingernail against the skin of the grasshrinker. It didn’t work. Those things have thick skins for a reason. I had nothing else to do, though, and nowhere else to go, so I stood there for what felt like forever, scritch-scratching at the grasshrinker in my pocket until I felt a little moisture on my finger. Then a gush. And then …

I was falling.

Falling.

Freaking out.

Falling some more. And
oof
I landed with a tiny thump. I had fallen through the grate and was free of the gravity net. Of course, I was also now about six inches tall. Sigh.

Well, from past experience, I knew that it took a couple of hours to resize after, uh, “accidentally” shrinking oneself. So I hustled as fast as my tiny, tiny legs could carry me, searching for an escape.

After a while, I looked up and saw another grate. I climbed up some wires, pretending they were those awful ropes from gym class, and once I was at the top, I scrambled through the grate. Just in time, too, because I felt my body lurch as it began the resizing process.

I was now about two feet tall. I looked around and saw that I was back in the hallway but past the net. Yay! I made my way forward, feeling more and more curious. It felt like I was moving downhill, into the belly of the ship. Down, down, down I walked, losing all sense of where I was in the ship.
This is probably just a shortcut to the mainframe
, I thought. But, no, that couldn’t be it. Because up ahead I saw a soft blue glow. And a noise like a faraway hive of bees. I felt another lurch as I resized some more. I was already almost normal size.

The hallway made a sharp right turn. The glow
seemed brighter. I held my breath as I inched toward the turn…. The light grew deeper, the buzzing louder.

Wait. What was—?

Oh no.

No. No. No.

“Arrrghhhh!”

Someone had tapped
me on the shoulder. Hard. How had anyone gotten past that net? Expecting to see Shugabert—or a floating antigravity monster—I swallowed and hastily prepared a lame speech about how I was miserably lost and my mapper was broken and I was on my way back to my apartment, et cetera, et cetera. But when I turned around to see who it was …

Dad!

And he did not look happy.

“Michael,” he said gruffly, “what are you doing?” “I …,” I said, completely forgetting the lie. “Uh …” “Let’s go.” He stepped behind me and poked me in the back. “March.”

“But, Dad,” I whined, sort of regaining my composure. “What’s down there? What’s that noise?”

“What’s down there?” he asked, his eyes shooting sparks and narrowing into two small slits. “You want to know what’s down there?”

I hesitated, not liking how red his face was.

Dad huffed, “Three weeks of no viserator is down that hallway.”

“Da-ad!”

“Shhh!” He glanced around nervously and grabbed my arm. He growled in a low voice, “Never being trusted by your parents again.
That’s
what’s down that hallway.”

“But … !” I said, tripping as he dragged me closer to the doorway.

“But nothing!” Dad spat. “You don’t get to talk right now.” He stopped and looked me straight in the eyes. “Did you even
think
about how your mom and I would feel when we woke up and you weren’t there?”

He was blowing this way out of proportion. I mean, come on. This was a spaceship. It wasn’t like I could get lost or hit by an electri-bus. I looked at the floor, feeling ashamed and then feeling angry at feeling ashamed.

His grip tightened on my arm as he used his other hand to punch a concealed button. The gravity enhancement net powered down with a dying buzz. We walked through the doorway and he dragged me over the bench. He pushed another button hidden right in the middle of the wall and I heard the doorway buzz
back to life. He looked both ways before we set out into the lobby, like there really
was
a chance of us getting hit by an electri-bus. Then we walked briskly and silently back to the apartment.

Inside, Mom nearly suffocated me with a bone-crushing hug.

“Thank God,” she sighed into my ear, and I felt her wet cheek pressed against my face. “Don’t ever,
ever
do anything like that again,” she said, and her vise-grip hug softened. “We
told
you not to go out on your own. What were you thinking?”

I wiggled out of her grip. “I was thinking that I’m on a spaceship and it’s not like I can get lost or anything. Plus, you never said anything about me not going out! Ask the robotic, disembodied Sugar Bear. He probably has recordings of all our conversations. You never said anything.” I pouted and no one spoke for a minute. Mom blew her nose. “What is the
deal
with you guys?” I asked. “I just went to check things out. That’s all.”

The parentals stared angrily, so I added, “I was, uh, just trying to map out a good way to get to class. You know, so that I won’t be late on my first day.”

“Ever heard of a mapper?” Mom asked icily, swiping at her cheeks. I stood there wondering why they were making such a big deal out of this.

Then I thought of something peculiar.

“How did you know where I was? I mean, you woke up and just knew to go look in a secret hallway at the other end of the lobby? Did Mr. Shugabert tell you where I was? And how did you know where those buttons were?”

“We haven’t seen Mr. Shugabert this morning,” Mom said. “And how did
you
get past the security measures?”

Ignoring her question (Mom thinks shrinking yourself is dangerous, no matter what the commercials say), I answered, “Well,
I
saw Sugar Bear and he was creepy. He was all trying to get me to go back to the apartment and threatening to snitch on me.”

“He’s just doing his job, Mike,” Mom said, rolling her eyes. “He’s not creepy; he’s looking
out
for you.”

After a few seconds Dad cleared his throat. “Anyway, Mr. Shugabert didn’t say anything. I just woke up and you were gone. When I went to look for you, I saw that the gravity net had changed color, indicating an anomaly. When I went to check it out, I saw you ducking around a corner.” He talked quickly and scratched his nose as he spoke.

Then Mom broke in. “It doesn’t matter how we found you, Michael. What matters is that you are in big trouble. Big trouble. Now eat something and get to class. We’ll talk about this …
incident
later.” She gave me an and-I-mean-business look and went to her room.

Dad threw a plate of cold eggs onto the table and said stiffly, “Eat.”

I had choked down about two forkfuls when he thrust another vial of the vitamin serum at me.