Please Don't Tell My Parents I Blew Up the Moon (13 page)

Wait. I was on the Moon. I was on the Moon! Why not look around?

Because, Penelope Akk, on the other side of that door is someplace so cool it makes the Moon look like a big ball of dead rock.

Cool metaphorically. My jumpsuit insulated me pretty well, but Claire rushed past me, skating on frictionless soles as easily as she did in regular gravity. She slid to a spinning halt on the other side of the doorway and let out a sigh of exaggerated relief at how warm it was over there.

I followed, but stepped really carefully over the edge. My foot got heavier on the other side, and I walked several paces past Claire just to enjoy having solid weight again. Earth normal? Hard to be sure.

What I was sure about was where this artificial gravity came from. In the center of the domed chamber, surrounded by wiring and high-tech looking boxes, floated a crystal the size and shape of a beach ball. Inside the glass, orange and red swirled, almost like fire, and a big black dot of a pupil stared across the room right at me.

That, girls and boys and me, was the Orb of the Heavens, the most powerful alien artifact mankind had ever encountered. Apparently, Spider had gotten it working. The Orb would be the source of both portals, the artificial gravity, probably all the electricity running this place, the heating, might be deflecting meteors right now… and much more besides.

Hey, superpower, you could make one of those, right?

OW. Right, right. I had a head full of biospaceship. At least the facemask hid my wince.

I wandered over to look through the windows. The dome had a lot of windows.

We were in
space
, and I had to see it.

I pressed my gloved hands up against the glass, and stared out. We were on a planet. No, the Moon. No, that couldn’t be right. Just what was it I was looking at?

A barren plain of grey dust stretched off into the distance. The horizon had a visible curve, but looked hazy. Misty. From around our dome, tunnels spread to other buildings and big pieces of lurching factory equipment, all frosted with ice. The alien scenery came complete with a frozen lake that spread around the outpost.

Above us, stars. So many stars. The sky wasn’t black, but painted with colors and glitter. A little shiny ball, or a really honking big star, caught my attention. The sun? No, not bright enough. Jupiter? Had to be. Spider would send us somewhere closer to Jupiter than Earth.

Or that other round thing that lit up suddenly could be Jupiter, but… no, that was moving.

My eyes darted around. Visibly moving stars. Spots of roving blackness that blocked stars out.

We were in the asteroid belt, which made this Ceres, the biggest asteroid. No other asteroid was big enough to pretend to be a planet. We were way past Mars. My knees felt weak, and I leaned harder against the glass, even though cold had begun to seep through my gloves. Oh, wow.

Some people do not appreciate a moment of semi-religious bliss. Behind me, Claire asked, “So, can you talk?”

Clonk
, like a muffled church bell. She was talking to the Orb of the Heavens. Vera had been sort of a Conquerer Orb, and talked with little chimes. So, that made sense.

“But you understand English?”

I didn’t look back, but it must have nodded or something, because Claire kept going. “Are you happy doing this? I mean, can you like things and not like things?”

Did I want to listen, or shut her out? My decision was made by a spaceship drifting up to one of the moving factory towers. ‘Spaceship’ might be stretching the point. In the dim light, it looked like a frame of copper pipes holding a big rock. It released the rock into the tower, and then flew off on a little puffing jet.

Asteroid mining. Cool.

A finger tapped my shoulder. I looked back into Ray’s unmasked, slyly hopeful face. For a second I thought he was about to hit on me, but instead he said, “I checked the side tunnels. There’s nobody else here.”

“
Is
there anybody else here?” Claire asked. Me and Ray looked over to see the Conqueror orb swivel, as if it were shaking its head.

Ray swept off his hat and rubbed his fingers over his face. “Check me if I’m right, Dark Mistress. We’re millions of miles from the nearest human. This whole mission will be taking us even farther out, where there is absolutely zero chance of anyone hearing us who would recognize my accent, right?”

Claire argued, “I’m not really sure it’s your accent. I’ve heard you fake other accents. It’s still you.”

I was a little more sensitive to his actual point. “You can talk all you want on this mission, Ray. Reviled. We should probably still use our villain names.”

“YES!” Ray danced around in a circle, pumping one fist. He grabbed me by my shoulders, threw me up in the air, caught me, gave me a painful hug, and set me back on my feet. While I waited for the world to stop spinning, he threw back his head and growled, “You have no idea how sick I am of keeping my mouth shut. Strong and silent stopped being fun after two jobs, tops.” Drawing in a deep breath, he turned and yelled at the ceiling, “AGLAGLAGLAGL! ECHO echo echo echo!”

A helpless giggle forced its way out of me, but he’d made a thought spark. “That doesn’t mean no one can hear us, but the person who’s listening knows our identities anyway. Right, Spider?”

“Correct. I was letting you enjoy the moment.” Her voice came from the Orb of the Heavens. That made sense.

“Spill the beans. What couldn’t you tell us back on Earth?” I demanded, all business, like a serious supervillain leader.

“For starters, I am keeping the existence of this Ceres facility as secret as possible.” Claire clasped her hands to her mouth and gasped. She hadn’t figured out where we were yet. Ray had. He didn’t react.

Well, he didn’t react with surprise. He did point out, “Asteroid mining seems a little legit for LA’s godspider of crime.”

She answered, briskly but in good humor. “Partly, I enjoy playing with the toys I collect, Reviled. Partly, I enjoy low-overhead, regulation-free, competition-free industry.”

Hmmm. “But the Orb of the Heavens can’t take you all the way to Jupiter?”

“The Orb of the Heavens has limits. Distance does not seem to be one of them. It makes complicated vector calculations with ease, but it still needs a beacon at the other end to reliably and safely open a portal. I had ways of reaching Jupiter’s moons in mind, but was satisfied with Ceres for the moment… until I received this.”

A little girl’s staticky voice complained, “You can’t see it w―” The rest of the last word was probably ‘work’, but the beginning and end of the sentence got real quiet. Only the middle had been loud and clear.

Ray pointed out the window. “Human voice transmission in English from Jupiter?” He blurted it out, too eager to get an answer to even construct a full sentence.

“Correct, and on an impractically high frequency. It could not possibly be heard on Earth. We picked up the transmission only because it swept momentarily past Ceres. The Orb of the Heavens is always listening.” Mentally, I applauded. Spider had phrased that in the absolute creepiest way possible.

Glancing back at the window and the luminous blob of Jupiter, I filled in, “And suddenly exploring Jupiter’s moons is top priority.”

An emphatic note of approval colored Spider’s normally dry tone. “Correct. I believed we would be alone out here. Now I am not even certain we are alone in this asteroid belt. I need you to build a spaceship, explore the belt near Ceres to be sure my facility is safe, then travel to Jupiter and investigate it and its moons for life. I have come to trust the Inscrutable Machine as being at least as competent as adult supervillains, but this is still too dangerous to send you out without backup. Orb of the Heavens, if you will send the activation signal, please.”

The Orb didn’t do anything visible, but a pale grey ball the size of a baseball fell out of the ceiling. It shattered as it fell, revealing a pink crystal sphere. The flakes hovering underneath whirled around, forming an abstract fairy-like body.

It had taken me half a second to recognize her. I felt guilty it even took that long. “VERA!” I ran forward, arms spread. It was a reflex, and as soon as I began I realized it was a stupid reflex… but then it turned out it wasn’t. Vera zipped across the intervening space and pressed her hard face and detached arms against my chest. I hugged her gently, although I didn’t need to be gentle. Her wings and body might float in midair, but they didn’t move when I pressed against them. They just got lost in Archimedes’ black fluff.

If Vera was here―“Is The Apparition coming with us?” I hadn’t been sure I’d ever see either of them again.

Spider’s voice answered, “She volunteered, but we discovered she cannot leave Earth. ‘Why’ is a question I leave to experts. She agreed to send Vera with you. In addition to her other more obvious uses, Vera is capable of communicating with the Orb of the Heavens as if she were an actual Conqueror Orb. She can act as a portal beacon, and if things get desperate enough, will send an emergency signal to the Orb of the Heavens to teleport you back here. I have great faith in Bad Penny’s technical skills, but space travel is hazardous in the extreme.”

She had a point. I couldn’t be sure how my spaceship would―

OW.

I gripped the back of my skull, and forced myself to stand up straight.

The pain was a message from my superpower. “I’m going to get building. I need to get this out of my head.”

Ray’s hand caught my wrist as I stepped forward. I looked back in surprise, and met an uncharacteristically haunted stare. “Are you sure this is safe? I mean your head. Your power is acting strange.”

A faint, cold shiver crept up my spine, and Archimedes mewed, so quiet I wasn’t sure anyone but me heard him. Not the kind of sentiment I wanted to hear two days after Mourning Dove pulled her creepy prediction of doom routine. I started to say something completely snarky, and bit it back. Poor Ray really looked worried for me.

I split it down the middle, and asked, as neutrally as I could, “Do you want to go to space?”

His fingers loosened, but didn’t let go. I stepped the emphasis up just one notch. “Because I do.”

He let go to wave his hand at a big sliding metal door. “The equipment’s in the hangar over there.”

Personally, I was less worried about my power than about denying it. That was where the headaches could get nasty. I picked up my pace and hurried through that door, leaving Ray, Vera, and Claire all behind. I passed through a hallway with a lot of empty lockers that should have contained space suits but didn’t, and an airlock after that.

The air pressure didn’t need cycling, so the opposite door opened immediately. I got a vague impression of another really big room, but all that mattered was the same set of bioengineering tools I’d used two days ago, plugged into sockets in the middle of the floor.

I remembered pricking my finger on a sterile needle, adding a drop of blood to a tank of water, and then dropping in one of my cursed pennies. Even those were vague impressions of physical actions. After that, it was like I fell asleep.

I didn’t actually fall asleep. I just couldn’t remember what it was like to be so deep in my power. I only understood what I was doing when I sagged back tiredly into Ray’s arms. A gooey tadpole, crimson and veiny, flopped around on the hangar floor in front of us. It was disgustingly ugly and yet a perfect thing at the same time.

I looked up at Ray, and croaked, “It needs food. Tons of it. Fresh meat or plant matter. Intact cells.” My throat hurt. I’d been laughing too much.

“We’ll take care of it,” Ray promised.

Now
, I fell asleep.

I woke up in Ray’s lap, with his arms around me. It was sweet, and warm, and a little exciting, and then the embarrassment hit me like a red-hot hammer.

I leaped to my feet, tried to say something that came out as, “Og!” My hands groped until I found Archimedes. I’d moved him to my shoulder, apparently. And where was my helmet? My uncovered face had been way too close to Ray’s!

Fortunately, Ray had also been asleep, propped against the wall of the hangar bay. He woke with a start, but after I stood up, and he missed my antics because he was staring past me.