CHAPTER TWO

Surprise (But Not the Good Kind)!

Luno sat on an overturned tomato basket and breathed in the dozens of aromas in the garden behind the pizzeria. It still was his favorite place to be—and to get away from Roog. He closed his eyes and let the rays of the three suns warm his face as he leaned against the greenhouse.

“Luno!” his father barked. Luno wheeled around with a start and saw his parents ambling toward him.

“We need to talk to you about something,” said Geo.

The last time his father said that, he had to start working in the kitchen every day before and after school and on weekends and in the summer.

“I still don’t think it’s a good idea,” Connie said, “but your father thinks you’re ready.”

“For what?” Luno asked, his stomach flip-flopping.

“To be Zorgoochi Intergalactic Pizza’s new delivery boy,” said Geo.

Luno suddenly forgot how to blink.

“So?” Geo asked hopefully. “What do you say, son?”

Luno didn’t know what to say. Sure, he was happy about not spending another summer down in the hot kitchen with Roog, wrestling angry sausages, getting shocked by electric olives, or being bitten by wild mushrooms. But driving around the galaxy delivering pizzas—all by himself?

Luno’s parents never allowed him to leave the planet, but he always dreamed of going out into the cosmos ever since he turned twelve and got his galactic driver’s license. He’d been begging his parents to let him drive on his own and now it was actually happening!

GULP!

Luno was about to ask why William10, the Zorgoochi’s outdated robot delivery autopilot, couldn’t do the job, but then he remembered. Sporting a major dent in his side, most likely from a particularly dangerous delivery, William10 was so old and banged-up, they retired him to Rusty Acres on Planet Rur, a planet for old robots, when he could no longer control his radioactive gas emissions. The Zorgoochis couldn’t afford another robot, so not only did his father make the pizzas, he delivered them, too, which was probably why he was so tired and grumpy all the time.

Luno realized he finally did get what he wanted—but only sort of. He felt his heart beat faster and didn’t know whether it was because he was happy or scared … or both.

Zooming around the galaxy could be fun, but he worried he might get lost, not get paid, or, even worse, get eaten by an unhappy customer! Luno even heard that his great-great-great-uncle Tempo went out on a delivery and never came back!

He noticed his mom’s anxious expression, but his father just looked kind of weary. The twinkle in his eye had dulled just about the time Quantum Pizza, Mezzaluna Galaxy’s largest pizza chain, opened a few years ago.

All his life, Luno heard over and over how hard his ancestors had worked to keep Solaro’s dream alive. Luno also knew that now with Quantum Pizza in their galaxy, his family’s little pizzeria had big competition, especially since Quantum had been intercepting Zorgoochi’s pizza orders and delivering them first. Zorgoochi couldn’t beat Quantum’s drive-thru/fly-thru windows, edible delivery boxes, and free gravity with every purchase, either. Quantum even started installing APMs (automatic pizza machines) everywhere, so anyone could have pizza anytime they wanted. Nobody seemed to mind that it just didn’t taste very good.

A few months ago, Quantum had taken so much business away from Zorgoochi Intergalactic Pizza that his dad couldn’t pay the monthly gravity bill. Everything floated around the pizzeria until he got enough money together to pay it. Luno knew they would have to work even harder to keep the family business going and his parents really needed his help. He couldn’t let them down.

Besides, whether he liked it or not, Luno knew it was time he joined the proud Zorgoochi line. Every ancestor had contributed something to Zorgoochi Intergalactic Pizza. But how could he even come close to achieving something like the famous String Cheese Theory of his great-great-great-aunt Genia, the physicist? Or his great-great-great-grandfather Infinito’s invention of the Pizza Ball, which you used to play spaceball but, afterward, ate it.

But what would Luno’s contribution be? When he wasn’t in the kitchen, Luno spent most of his time trying to come up with an idea for the pizzeria that would bring the sparkle back to his father’s eyes, but nothing he ever created made his father happy—or actually worked. The teleportation device that delivered pizza using radio waves, the liquid pizza that filled you up and quenched your thirst at the same time, and the pizza seed that could be planted and harvested—all disasters.

Luno even managed to screw up something as simple as a pizza bagel and accidentally made a pizza beagle, which bit him.

He wasn’t the greatest speller.

Other times Luno just wanted to be an ordinary spacekid, not one who worked in his family business. Maybe he didn’t want to take over the pizzeria someday and toss pizza dough for the rest of his life. Maybe he wanted to do something else.

And that’s where he always got stuck. What did he truly want to do? Luno could never figure that part out. All he knew was pizza. His father said tomato sauce ran through the Zorgoochi veins.

In school, when other kids were voted Most Likely to Succeed or Most Likely to Be the Most Famous Life-Form in Five Dimensions, Luno was voted Most Likely to Make Pizza for the Rest of His Life.

He knew he couldn’t fight it. It was his destiny.

His father looked at him with tired eyes, hoping Luno would agree to be Zorgoochi Intergalactic Pizza’s new delivery boy.

“So?” Geo asked. “What do you say, son?”

“Um, okay,” Luno said. “I guess so.”