Lunar day 217
Late afternoon
Chang immediately stopped what he was doing and looked to me expectantly.
“Where?” he asked.
“Under the girls’ bathroom!” Violet announced.
Chang frowned. “Violet, this is no time for jokes.”
“She’s not joking,” I said. “I think she talked to Nina in there this morning. Only she didn’t realize who it was.”
“I thought it was a walrus in the toilet,” Violet explained.
Chang looked at her quizzically. “Why would there be a walrus in the toilet in the moon base?”
“Because there’s water in the toilet,” Violet told him. “And walruses like the water. Duh.”
“Violet heard Nina calling for help,” I said. “But it was probably hard to hear her down through the floor, so it didn’t sound like ‘help.’ ”
“It sounded like ‘Mmmmmmeeeeeelllllllpppppp,’ ” Violet added.
“And then Violet asked who it was and she said, ‘Nina,’ ” I continued. “Only Violet misunderstood and thought she said, ‘DeeDah.’ ”
“And then I told her who I was,” Violet said. “And she said to tell someone she was down there.”
“So why didn’t you?” Chang asked.
“I did,” Violet said pointedly. “I told lots of people there was a walrus in the bathroom. Mom and Dad and Dr. Marquez and Dr. Janke and Dr. Balnikov and Inez and Roddy.” She gave me a hard stare. “I even told you.”
“You did,” I admitted, then looked to Chang. “None of us took her seriously.”
“Oh,” Chang said. “But how could she be under the bathroom? I’ve checked the blueprints a dozen times. There’s nothing under the floors here. The base sits directly on the lunar surface.”
“But what’s under the lunar surface?” I asked.
Chang gave me a curious look. “What do you mean?”
“The blueprints only show the base itself,” I explained. “They don’t show what it was built on. Back when we were in the operations pod for Moon Base Beta, Mom told me that they had a similar pod for the construction of this base. Well, where was it?”
Chang’s mouth fell open. “Oh my God,” he gasped. He immediately turned to the computer screen and demanded, “Computer, do we have an image of the lunar surface here before MBA was built?”
“Certainly,” the computer replied. “Loading it now.”
A high-resolution satellite photo of the lunar surface appeared on the screen, huge swaths of gray dust marked by occasional islands of dark rock.
“Now mark the outline of where MBA is located,” Chang ordered.
“It would be my pleasure,” the computer said. The connected octagons of MBA appeared on the photo. At the top of the larger one, directly below where the bathrooms and the air-lock staging area were, there was a long streak of dark rock.
“Is that a lava tube?” I asked.
“It’s the lava tube,” Chang corrected. “The one where the operations pod was.” He snapped to his feet and hurried out of the control room, making a beeline for the girls’ room.
Violet and I followed him.
“If I recall correctly, this wasn’t originally the planned site for MBA,” Chang explained. “I wasn’t involved at that point, so I don’t know for sure, but I think it was supposed to be close by. Only once the operations team got here, they found there was some sort of problem with the original site and that it was more structurally sound to put MBA here, right above where they were living.”
“So the pod itself is still down there?” I asked.
“There wouldn’t be any point in removing it.” Chang led us back into the girls’ room.
I could still see Lily Sjoberg’s ankles underneath the door of the first toilet stall.
“Hi, Lily!” Violet called. “We’re back!”
“Oh no,” Lily groaned.
“Are you almost done?” Violet asked. “You’ve been in here forever!”
I asked Chang, “Do you really think the pod’s life-support systems are still working?”
“I wouldn’t have expected it,” Chang replied, “but they must be if Nina’s down there.”
“Hey!” Lily cried. “There’s not supposed to be any men in the women’s room! What is going on here today?”
“Sorry,” Chang told her. “It’s an emergency.”
“Another one?” Lily grumped. “What’s a girl have to do to get a little peace around here?”
“Nina!” Chang shouted at the floor. “Can you hear me? It’s Chang!”
“Hi, Nina!” Violet yelled. “This is Violet! I’m here too!”
There was no response.
“Nina!” Chang yelled again. “Are you there? Please respond!”
Nothing.
“Maybe she left,” Violet said.
“No,” Chang said, looking worried. “There’s nowhere else she could go. But whatever life-support system is down there wasn’t designed to be working this long. If Nina’s oxygen has run low, she might be in an unresponsive state.”
“Like what?” Violet asked. “Texas?”
“Er . . . no,” I explained. “Chang means that Nina might have gone to sleep.”
“Oh,” Violet said, seeming pleased with this answer.
I was worried, though. If Nina was running low on oxygen, she was probably unconscious. Or in a coma. Whichever one, it wasn’t good.
Then suddenly, there was a noise from below us. A slow, rhythmic clanking of metal on metal. There were three clanks close together, followed by three spaced farther apart, followed by three close together again.
“Sounds like the toilet’s acting up,” Violet said.
“No,” Chang told her happily. “That’s Morse code. Three short, three long, three short. SOS! That’s Nina! She’s alive!” He turned back to the floor and yelled, “We hear you, Nina! Sit tight! We’re coming!”
The clanking shifted and became a simple rhythm. Bang bang bang bang bang.
“That means she heard us,” Chang reported, then led us back out of the bathroom.
“Bye-bye, Lily!” Violet called.
Once we were out the door, Chang turned to me and said, “Your suit’s still in the air lock, right?”
“Yes.” There had been no time to clean and remove it.
“Good,” Chang said. “Get in there and suit up. I’ll join you in a minute.”
“Suit up for what?” I gulped.
“The rescue mission,” Chang told me.
My heart began to race. It seemed as though I started sweating in an instant. “Why me?”
“Because Nina is in desperate circumstances and we need to move fast.” Chang opened a storage unit and pulled out a helmet repair kit and a backup oxygen tank. “I wouldn’t take you out there if I thought I didn’t have to, but I have to get Nina now, it’s too dangerous to solo, no other adults are around, and I trust you with my life. Okay?”
“Okay,” I said. I wasn’t in any hurry to head back outside, but Chang’s faith in me was heartening. I turned to Violet and told her, “You did good work.”
“I know,” she said.
“Sorry I got upset at you earlier. You were only trying to cheer me up and I was a jerk.”
“You were.”
“I’ll be back soon,” I said, hoping that was true. Then I gave her a hug and headed for the air lock.