Mike Stellar (6 page)

I held up the mapper for her. “Yep. Pretty cool,” she said.

“Come on, let’s get going, you two,” Dad said. He acted impatient, but I could tell he liked the mapper, too.

The hologram showed a hovering arrow over a doorway in the back of the projected little ship. The arrow was labeled “Stellar Residence.”

I pointed and said, “Home sweet home.” We started walking to our new apartment. We passed the cafeteria
and the public bathrooms and even what looked like the captain’s quarters. We kept walking and walking, down one hallway and up another … around one corner and through a doorway … Finally it seemed like we were getting close. I noticed the only people still hunting around were us and Jim and Larc.

Jim was chatting with Dad about simulated nerve impulses or something boring like that when I caught a glimpse of a figure behind our little group.

Mr. Shugabert was tailing us.

I tugged on Mom’s flight suit and jerked my head in Mr. Shugabert’s direction.

“Why’s Sugar Bear lurking back there?” I asked.

“Oh, Mike,” Mom said, laughing. “He’s not lurking; he’s following us.” She turned around and waved at him. “His apartment should be right next to ours. Adjoining, probably.”

My eyes widened. Chewing Gum Commercial Dude was going to be practically living with us? Bleh. Who needs extra grown-ups around, anyway?

When we went up to our doorway, the mapper beeped and a little drawer opened from the side. Inside was a flash key.

“For emergency use only” was written across both sides of the flash key. Dad grabbed my hand.

“Hey. Don’t use that. Look: the apartments are equipped with a retinal scanner.”

He pressed his right eye into a small indentation on the door frame. We heard a buzz and a ding, and the door whooshed open.

We waved to Larc and Jim; then Dad swept around and grabbed Mom. He picked her up with her legs hanging over his arm, her arm around his neck, and her butt sagging in the middle. I covered my eyes with my hands.

She hooted. Dad said very solemnly, “I must carry my bride over the threshold of a new home.”

He marched inside with Mom kicking her legs happily. I wanted to make a smart-mouth comment, but it felt weird without Nita. I actually missed her.

Dad set Mom down and smiled at me. “Well, get in here, Mike.”

I walked through the doorway and into the apartment. I glanced over my shoulder just as the door was shutting behind me, and I saw Mr. Shugabert walking into the apartment next to ours. He caught my eye and this time he wasn’t smiling.

The door closed and I felt a chill. The exact kind of chill you’re not supposed to feel on a seventy-two-degree climate-controlled ship.

I have to
say, I was not impressed. This apartment was teeny-weeny. Wait. Not teeny-weeny. Teeeeeeeeeeny. Weeeeeeeeeeeny. Especially compared with the size of the ship. If every apartment on the ship was this size, they could stuff the entire population of Star City in here. As it was, there were only about fifty people on this mission—with maybe ten kids added to that. It seemed crazy for the ship to be so huge, with so many tiny apartments. What did the Project think, we were going to go to Mars and find a colony of aliens to ship home? Heck, even then we could all have our
own
apartments. Actually, that would be spankin’ awesome.

I walked over to a wall and pushed a small square button. A table floated down from the ceiling and two benches slid out from under it. They were the color of
scorched metal. And I would know. Stinky and I once tried to smelt some old MonsterMetalMachines with Hubble’s plasma laser. It didn’t work.

Dad patted the tabletop and I pushed the button again. The benches slid back and the whole thing floated back up. It was crazy cool.

With a goofy I’m-a-dork-and-I-love-gadgets grin, I pushed another button and a small viserator popped out of the wall. My mouth fell open. I had never seen such a little viserator. This thing was the definition of “teeny-weeny” (emphasis on “weeny”). I started to complain about the obvious futility of such a small vis, but Mom held up her hand.

“I don’t want to hear it,” she said. “You’re lucky we have one at all. Not everyone does. And you watch too much vis as it is. Now you’ll have more time to concentrate on school.”

Great.

Dad hollered, “Hey, Mike, come look at this!” He was in front of an enormous window. It took up the entire back wall of the room. We could see white stars and red stars and blue stars and even a little bit of Earth up in the corner. Dad flipped a switch and the lights went out. This made everything outside the window seem even brighter and more sparkly.

“Spectacular,” he breathed.

Mom walked up to the window and put her hand on
it. I did the same thing and for a moment all three of us were quiet, just staring out at the stars and the Earth and the black void around us.

“Well, Marie …”,’ Dad said a few minutes later as he randomly pressed on a wall, looking for more buttons. “I’m flummoxed. Where are the bedrooms and bathrooms?”

Mom smiled. She walked over to the super-giant window and pushed a small button on the sill—a button I had missed in my button-pushing parade.

Now, really, this was the coolest thing so far. The window slid out into space! As it slid, windows appeared on both sides of it so that it was a kind of three-walled window—like a pop-out wall on those antique campers in the Star City RV Museum.

Then those side windows started to slide out to the right and the left as the big window stretched along with them, making a long, clear tube. Finally a new wall popped out of the floor on each side of us. This whole new section of window-rooms expanded our apartment so that it looked like these rooms were a very big blob of dew hanging on to the side of the ship.

Mom motioned at the new space. “This,” she said, “is where our rooms are.”

We stepped over the sill into the new space. The whole thing was clear, so when I looked down, I could see stars and deep black space. It made my stomach
jump. This window-room was a kind of foyer. To the right was a doorway. This was Mom and Dad’s room. Once through the doorway, Dad moved around the room, pushing little clear buttons on the walls. Bedroom furniture appeared. When the bed rolled out, there was an old-fashioned book lying on the mattress.

“Hey, look at this, Marie!” Dad picked the book up. “A gift from the captain.” He ran his hand over the pages. I tried to see but he clapped it shut and stuck it on a bookshelf attached to the bed’s headboard.

Dad pushed another button. In a corner, a nozzle stuck out of the wall. It looked like a showerhead. “You can’t just take a shower in the corner of the room,” I said, confused.

Mom came over. “Push the button next to the nozzle, Mike.”

I pushed it and two more walls whooshed up beside me, enclosing me in a triangle of clear plastic. The walls mottled themselves so that no one could see in. A seat appeared and I thought,
Oh, boy, I hope that’s a toilet.
I lifted the lid. Yep. A toilet. A weird one, made of plastic and with no water, but a toilet just the same.

“Hey, Dad,” I said, “I found the bathroom.”

I heard mumbling between Mom and Dad but I couldn’t make out exact words. I pushed the button on top of the toilet and it disappeared into the wall. I really
hope it flushed. Then the bathroom walls slid down into the floor. Mom and Dad were huddled in the far corner of the room, whispering.

“I don’t know why you gave it to him,” Mom said, sounding a little distressed.

“It was just precautionary,” said Dad.

“It’s dangerous, that’s what it is,” she snapped. But right then she saw me.

“Hey, you!” She smiled a bit crazily. “What’d you think of the bathroom?”

I stared at them for a minute and said, “Um, it’s pretty cool. I’ve never whizzed in a toilet like that before.”

Mom’s smile faded in a flash and she rolled her eyes. She’s not a fan of the word “whizzed” when it refers to peeing. (She likes “whizzed” to describe something you’d do to a test. Like “Hey, I got every answer right and totally whizzed that test.” How dumb is that? It sounds like you peed on your test.)

Across the hall was my room. When I stepped into it, I was happy to see that the floor was mottled just like the bathroom walls had been. I was also happy to see a shower nozzle sticking out of the far corner. My own bathroom. Wow. I didn’t even have my own bathroom on Earth. Nita would be jealous. (Gram only has one bathroom and it’s pink and reeks of cream deodorant.)

I started pushing various buttons on the walls. Bed.
Desk. Chair. Computer thing labeled “Personal Homework Station.” What the heck was
that?
A fake computer? I made a face and was on my way to investigate it further when I heard a voice.

“Hi, Mike.”

I whirled around. There was no one in the room with me.

“The time is five-twenty-three. Are you ready for dinner?”

“Who’s there?” I asked quietly. “Is that … is that you, Mr. Shugabert?”

“Dinner will be ready in approximately twenty-two minutes,” the voice drawled.

“Uh, okay,” I whispered, looking around. I backed slowly out of my room and ran back into the living area. Disembodied voices—especially one
in my bedroom
—generally scare the bejeebers out of me.

Mom and Dad were milling around near the viserator, talking quietly again. Mom came over and put her hand on my shoulder. “Mike? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“Nah.” I shrugged. “It’s only Mr. Shugabert
spying on me in my room.”
I shivered. “That’s all.”

“Oh, Mike. He’s not spying,” Dad said. “Mr. Shugabert has just prepared the apartment for us. That’s all.” ‘Prepared’?” I asked.

Dad sounded like he was explaining something I
should know already. “For our convenience, Mike. He’s rigged the place with voice-automated systems to work as your alarm clock, study guide, channel-changer, et cetera, et cetera.”

Mom chimed in. “This way Mr. Shugabert is omnipresent, Mike. Anything we need, he’s here to get it for us.” She nervously shuffled her feet, but then she smiled. “Cool, huh?”

I didn’t care what Mom said. Having a weird, overly friendly dude always at my beck and call gave me a creepy crawly feeling. Especially when his disembodied voice was eager to help me out, too.

Pitch-black.

Where was I? My heart thumped a million miles a minute. I sat bolt upright, whipping my head around. As the sleep drained from my brain, I remembered that I was in my room on the
Sojourner.
I gave my nose a quick tug and wondered why my eyes weren’t adjusting. I couldn’t see
anything.

“You rise early, Mike,” said the voice of Shugabert. “Your breakfast isn’t ready yet.”

“What …,” I said, pulling the covers closer. “Why are you in my room, Sugar Bear?”

“You rise early, Mike,” the voice of Shugabert said again. “Your breakfast isn’t ready yet.”

It was a recording.

“Mr. Shugabert?” I asked again, tentatively.

“It is approximately four-thirty-one in the morning. Mr. Shoo-
gah
-bear is still sleeping. Should you need him, please knock gently on the adjoining door.”

“Lights,” I said.

A soft glow filled the room and I could see the windows and my partially unpacked box.

“Mr. Shoo-
gah
-bear is still sleeping,” the recording repeated.

“Off,” I commanded. “Stop. End program.”

“I do not understand your request,” the creepy voice said. “This voice-automated system only serves as a complimentary notification servi—”

“Go away, vamoose, get out of here! Turn off!” This voice was creeping me out.

“Please rephrase your request.”

“Leave!”
I shouted.

“Leaves are green, flattened, lateral structures attached to stems and functioning as principal organs of photosynthesis and transpiration in most plants.”

“Wha—No, not ‘leaf,’ you moron.
Leave. L-e-a-v-e
”

“For your convenience, please knock on the adjoining door. Mr. Shoo-
gah
-bear will be with you as soon as he’s available.”