Benny Love stared at Earth through a floor-to-ceiling window inside the Lunar Taj. He’d seen plenty of pictures of the planet taken from space, but he’d had no idea how large it would loom above him from the surface of the Moon until he’d got there. It took up so much of the sky, a rotating ball of sand and water and rock and life that seemed so close, like he could be back there in no time if he just walked out onto the lunar landscape and jumped hard enough. Somewhere – most likely in the golden swathe of the Drylands in the western United States – his caravan was on the move or setting up camp. His grandmother and two younger brothers were probably in the ramshackle RV they called home.
He didn’t know exactly where they were at the moment, but that didn’t matter. The important thing – the reason Benny couldn’t take his eyes off the planet, could hardly even blink as he looked at it – was that Earth was still there. Humanity still existed, still endured.
For now, at least.
He and his friends may have stopped the asteroid storm, but he still couldn’t help but imagine what Earth would have looked like from the Moon if they hadn’t flown into deep space that morning. Would there have been fire? A wall of water so huge that it destroyed cities and mountains? Would he have seen it all the way across the expanse of space?
A voice cut through the hallway Benny stood in, interrupting his thoughts. Drue.
“Uh, so, you haven’t moved since I checked on you, like, five minutes ago,” he said as he came up to Benny’s side. He crossed his arms over the chest of his sleek grey space suit. All the other scholarship winners at the Taj wore the dark blue coveralls with gold stitching that had been waiting for them at the resort, but Drue had brought what seemed like a closet full of expensive clothes with him from Earth. It had been one of the first things Benny had noticed about him.
“It’s kind of creepy,” Drue continued when Benny didn’t respond. Then he pursed his lips a bit and jabbed Benny in the shoulder with an index finger.
“Ow,” Benny said, finally turning to him. “Why would you do that?”
“Oh, so you are real. I kinda thought you were using that bracelet Elijah gave you again and this was some glitched-out, frozen hologram.” Drue put his hands on his hips and shook his head. “You’ve got to lighten up, man. We saved the world this morning. You should be exploding with excitement about that.”
“Exploding is kind of the last word I want to hear,” Benny said. He couldn’t help but remember the image of Elijah’s car being sucked inside the alien mother ship – how the creator of the Space Runners and the Lunar Taj had overheated his hyperdrive and sacrificed himself to save them, or at least buy Earth some more time. To buy Benny’s family more time.
He wondered what they were doing in the RV. Maybe still sleeping or waking up to sustenance squares for breakfast or trying to find some shade to park in to get a break from the dust and heat. Maybe they were even thinking of him, wondering what he was doing. Counting down the days until he was supposed to come home.
Drue rolled his eyes. “You know what I mean. We beat some alien butt!”
“Yeah,” Benny said. “But it’s not over. We don’t know what they’re going to do next.”
Drue let out an exaggerated sigh. “You sound like Jazz. You two are really killing my Moon buzz.” He turned away and started down the hall. “Pinky wrote a message like we talked about and sent it to all the HoloTeks. Jazz and everyone are waiting for you in the meeting room. Now’s your chance to talk about all the work we have to do next, which I can’t wait to hear about.” He looked back over his shoulder. “There’d better be more lasers involved is all I’m saying.”
Benny’s pulse thrummed as he considered all the things he’d learned in the past few days, trying to figure out which of the many problems they needed to address first. So much of it had seemed impossible. Just hours before he’d stood inside an Alpha Maraudi ship shaped like a giant asteroid. He’d actually talked to an alien, Commander Tull, who was still out there somewhere. Still after Earth.
They’d saved the planet, but they had no way of knowing when the aliens would be back – and they’d lost Elijah.
He took a few deep breaths as he tried to remind himself that the first part was what was really important. All he wanted was to stay in the hallway, staring at his home planet, reassuring himself that it was still there, but his friends were waiting for him. So he swallowed hard, trying to push all the concern out of his mind. Everyone at the Taj was worried, even if that was somewhat hidden by the morning’s success right now. The least he could do to help was try to look like he wasn’t scared.
He found his friends in the meeting room that Elijah West had locked them inside just a few days before when they’d discovered that he had given up on Earth and planned to allow the aliens to destroy it, leaving the EW-SCABers as the last remnants of humanity. Hot Dog Wilkinson peered out of a window overlooking the Sea of Tranquility, twirling a strand of curly blonde hair between two fingers. Drue had plopped down in one of the floating chairs surrounding the holodesk in the centre of the room. Trevone, the only member of Elijah’s Pit Crew to help them out during their preparations over the last few days, sat a few seats over, swiping through holographic maps floating in the air in front of him. Jasmine Wu stood a metre or so behind the older boy, mumbling to herself, her eyes scanning the charts as they passed by.
“Hey,” Benny said as he walked in, coming to a stop at one end of the circular desk. “Sorry. I got a little distracted.”
Hot Dog turned from the window and let out a breath. “There you are. I was starting to think our fearless leader was abandoning us.”
Benny shoved his hands into his space-suit pockets. “I’m not the leader here. We all helped—”
“I know, I know.” Hot Dog walked over to the holodesk. “You keep telling us that, but you really should learn to take some credit.” She frowned. “I hate to say this, but Drue might be right. Maybe you do need to chill out a little.”
Benny looked at Drue and raised his arms out to his side, but his friend just shrugged and spun in his chair.
Pinky, the artificial intelligence in charge of running the Taj, appeared as a hologram in one of the empty seats. Benny had got so used to her popping up out of nowhere that he barely gave the incredible nanotech projectors that brought her to life a second’s thought any more.
“Shall we begin?” Pinky asked, adjusting her black-rimmed glasses. “Or should I send for my favourite scholarship winner, Ramona? She’s currently in one of the basement labs, staying far away from my programming, for once.”
“Let’s not interrupt her,” Jasmine said. She looked to Benny. “Ramona’s working on turning a few Space Runners into makeshift satellites so we can re-establish contact with Earth. Once we find a safe flight path, we can launch them. The problem is that there are still alien asteroids positioned between us and the planet. We’ve sent several unmanned Space Runners to run scans, looking for a way past them, but so far we haven’t had any luck.”
“And we can’t just … go round those asteroids?” Benny asked.
“Obviously the entirety of space isn’t blocked off. There has to be a way to avoid them, but it’s a slow scanning process. We’ve already lost two SRs. These asteroids seem to be – for lack of a better word – programmed to hit anything that gets too close. They’re basically space mines. The Maraudi knew what they were doing when they set them up.”
“Speaking of being blocked off,” Drue said, “how am I still banned from the garage? I’m a space hero now!”
“Because as soon as you got back from the asteroid field you tried and failed to hot-wire one of Elijah’s prototype muscle cars,” Trevone said.
Hot Dog glanced at Benny. “He obviously didn’t take notes whenever you stole that Chevelle.”
“Borrowed,”