You lied to me!” Caleb cried.

Anna shrugged. “We told you the truth first. But you didn’t believe us.”

“Yeah, but who would?” Caleb sputtered, giving the device another dubious look. “I mean, an antigravity machine?”

Anna only smiled at him. Caleb couldn’t deny it anymore. He’d seen the four of them bounding in from the back end of the plane, where the stream passed within a hundred yards of the wreckage trail.

In a funny way, it was scary how close that stream had been. The jungle was so dense that they might never have found it without the gravity device. They could’ve died of thirst right here by the plane, waiting for rescue parties that were probably light-years away.

She cradled the device closer. “Well, now you know.”

He picked up the spear he’d made—really a long, straight stick with a sharpened end—and pointed it at her. “You guys can’t go sneaking off like that. Or stay out in the jungle all night!”

The others didn’t respond. They were all too busy wolfing down pretzels and peanuts. Oliver was passing out potato chips, clearly relieved to see them again.

Anna nibbled at an emergency food bar from one of the survival kits. It was unhealthy to eat too fast when you were hungry.

“We found Yoshi and water,” she said calmly. “We discovered a carnivorous vine, and figured out that we’re on another planet. That’s a pretty useful trip.”

“Another planet?” Caleb groaned. “Are you guys kidding with that?”

Yoshi spoke up from where he stood with Akiko and Kira. “The girls saw the moons, too. This morning, when the mist cleared. They tried to tell you.”

Kira held up her drawing pad, and Anna went over to look. She and Javi had woken up after the mists had rolled back in, and hadn’t seen the moons at all.

The drawing showed two moons, one crescent, one full. Molly had said they were red and green, but Kira didn’t have colored pencils.

“All you saw was lights in the sky,” Caleb said. “They weren’t moons because we’re not on another planet!”

“They looked a lot like moons,” Molly said calmly.

“What if they were rescue airplanes? Did you even try to signal them?”

Molly rolled her eyes. “You mean, wave my arms and yell, Yo, moons, over here?”

Caleb rubbed his temples, like this was giving him a headache.

“You should hear Yoshi’s theory,” Anna said. “It’s way freakier.”

“We don’t need theories—we need food!” Caleb thrust his crude spear up at the white sky. “And a way to signal those rescue aircraft. We should build a big enough fire that the smoke rises above the mist. Away from the plane, so we don’t have to worry about blowing anything up.”

Molly shrugged. “A fire might be a good idea, for when night comes.”

She glanced at Anna, who was pleased she knew right away what Molly was thinking: Don’t mention the creature with the foghorn voice, or whatever was scratching its claws ten feet up on a tree trunk. Not in front of Oliver.

Instead, Anna said, “Cooked food is safer than raw. I’ve got a few ideas about what to try eating first.”

“Today?” Javi asked through a full mouth. “Why would we risk eating alien stuff before the Earth pretzels run out?”

“Because,” Anna said, “you don’t want to be starving when you try your first alien food. It might make you puke your guts up. And you’re going to need some pretzels to come back from that.”

Javi turned pale, and Caleb just walked away, shaking his head.

While Caleb was busy building his signal fire, the others convened at the stream, at a bare spot with no undergrowth for tanglevine to hide in. Kira and Akiko were filling empty water bottles, and Anna stood ready with the plants she’d gathered for the experiment.

There were three piles of berries. The green ones from the bushes along the stream, the blue kind that grew in the undergrowth, and the red ones that were shaped like popcorn.

Hopefully one of them was nutritious, and none was deadly poison.

“It’s best to start with berries,” she said.

Molly crossed her arms. “Why?”

Anna smiled. It was always fun explaining biology to Molly, who hated squishy stuff.

“Berries are supposed to be edible. It’s all about reproduction for them.”

“Sexy times!” Javi said.

Anna ignored him. “Berries taste good so that animals will eat them. Because then the seeds get carried in a stomach to some new place, and plopped on the ground, along with fertilizer. In other words, fruit is a plant’s way of spreading its seeds, while making sure they’re covered with nutritious poo.”

“Not so sexy after all,” Javi said.

Molly nodded. “Nature is weird.”

Yoshi was translating for Akiko and Kira, who also looked dubious.

“So plants want their fruit to get eaten?” Oliver asked. “Then why are some plants poisonous?”

“To keep certain animals away,” Anna explained. “Like, hot peppers have these tiny seeds that get crushed by mammal teeth. Those peppers reproduce better if birds eat them. So they evolved to be too spicy for mammal tongues.”

“Because birds like spicy food?” Molly asked.

Anna smiled. “Fun fact: Birds don’t have taste buds.”

“But I’m a mammal,” Javi said. “And I love hot peppers!”

“That’s a kick-butt thing about humans,” Anna said. “We eat and drink poisonous stuff for fun.”

“True.” Javi wore a smirk. “I ate a whole jar of jalapeños once. Let’s see a tiger do that.”

“Tigers have better things to do,” Anna said.

Molly was frowning. “So if we avoid stuff that tastes bad or burns our tongues, we should be okay?”

Anna hesitated. In nature, there were lots of exceptions to any rule. Evolution was like a gazillion microprocessors—one inside every living cell—all running slight variations of their DNA code at the same time, seeking out the best results. It was bound to be complicated.

But to keep everyone from starving, she had to make it sound simple. Because sometimes lying was okay.

“If it tastes good, it won’t kill you,” she said. “If in doubt, spit it out.”

Yoshi finished his running translation for the girls, then asked, “But if this is really another planet, why would anything be healthy for us?”

“Because it’s all so familiar,” Anna said. “There are birds, trees, insects. For everything to wind up looking the same as life on Earth, it has to be made from the same building blocks. As long as the proteins are the same, we can survive.”

Yoshi translated this for the girls, but he didn’t sound completely convinced. Then again, neither was Anna. Convergent evolution happened all the time on Earth—similar animals emerging from different gene pools, every biome looking more or less the same, from top predators down to bottom feeders.

But on another planet?

All she really knew was that they had to test the theory, or starve. And that she was proud of herself for not saying any of this scary stuff out loud.

But then Oliver said, “So we’re really on another planet?”

“I guess we can’t be sure,” Molly said. “But it’s the only explanation that fits all the facts.”

“So that means we’re light-years away from Earth,” he said softly. “And we’re never getting home.”

“No it doesn’t!” Molly said. “If we got here, there has to be a way back.”

Javi spoke up. “I mean, if someone can teleport us here, or whatever they did, then they can send us back the same way.”

Anna tried to think of something to say, but no words came to her. Maybe Javi was right, and some kind of easy-to-use teleporter had brought them here. But what if they’d been shipped here unconscious and frozen, and the trip had taken a hundred years?

What if they’d lost everything already and didn’t even know it?

But Oliver only sighed. “Okay, let’s eat. Who gets to go first?”

“We choose randomly.” Anna held out five straws from the airplane kitchen, then dipped one into the pile of green berries she’d gathered—the same berries the lucky winner was going to eat.

Kira spoke up, and after some arguing, Yoshi translated. “She says you’re missing two straws. The girls want to help.”

Anna looked at Molly. It was weird enough, having a straw in there for Oliver. But testing possibly poisonous berries on the two young sisters seemed downright wrong. Kira, however, had her fists balled up like she was ready to fight. Even the usually timid Akiko wore a firm expression.

“Sure,” Molly finally said, and Anna pulled two more straws from her pocket.

They were all in this together, she supposed.

“It doesn’t matter who draws,” Javi muttered. “It’s going to be me eating those berries. Randomness hates me.”

“Randomness treats everyone the same,” Oliver said. “That’s what random means.”

“My last words shall be I told you so.”

“Respect the straws,” Oliver said, stepping forward.

Anna stared at him, a little surprised.

Oliver shrugged. “Might as well go first. The odds are the same, and this way I get to stop stressing … probably.”

As he said that last word, he yanked a straw out of Anna’s hand, his eyes wide.

No berry stain.

“Congratulations,” Molly said. “But keep that straw. If these berries aren’t edible, we’re going to keep going till we find some that are.”

Oliver’s smile faded a little, but Anna was glad he wasn’t testing the first batch.

Molly went next. She gazed at the straws for a long moment, muttering, and when she finally pulled one out, it was clean. She looked a little disappointed, like she’d wanted to go first.

But again Anna was relieved, even though Molly’s safety made her own chances worse. They all needed Molly alive and well.

Of course, Anna didn’t want any of them to die. Not any of the younger kids, or Javi, or herself. And especially not Yoshi. It seemed wrong for someone with all those sword skills to die of something as weak-sauce as berry poisoning.

“This is a waste of time,” Javi said. “It’s going to be me!”

Oliver sighed. “You have a twenty percent chance. Same as everyone else who hasn’t gone.”

“Speaking of people who haven’t gone,” Yoshi spoke up, “why isn’t Caleb here?”

“He’d just get in the way,” Molly said.

“But that’s not fair,” Oliver said.

Molly sighed. “He’s in the jungle gathering wood, and he didn’t believe us about tanglevine. That’s probably more dangerous than eating berries.”

“Especially when I’m the one who’s going to wind up …” Javi began, but his voice faded as Kira stepped forward, gazing at the straws.

When she reached out a hand, Anna flinched away. But Kira stared her down, and something about her fierce expression let the numb part of Anna’s mind take over. All of them were alive thanks only to random chance. Any of them could be dead in a week. From hunger or from some alien virus. Or from being torn apart by shredder birds or carnivorous vines or something much worse.

Maybe poisonous berries would be an easier way to go.

Anna held out the straws, and Kira took one.

The end was stained green with berry juice.