1

“Who wants to go to Mars?” Mrs. Ramanujan asked once all the kids in S.M.A.R.T.S. — Science, Maker, and Real Technology Students — were on the field trip bus.

“Me! Me! Me! Did I say me?” Zoe Branson exclaimed. She wasn’t sure if Mrs. Ram — that was what they usually called Hubble Middle School’s fifth grade science teacher and the club’s sponsor — could hear her. The other ten kids in S.M.A.R.T.S., including Zoe’s best friends Caleb Quinn and Jaden Thompson, were shouting pretty much the same thing.

Joining S.M.A.R.T.S. was how Zoe, Caleb, and Jaden had become best friends. They’d been in classes together off and on since kindergarten. But this year, when they’d started the fifth grade, the three of them had joined the club. That’s when they’d realized they all loved science and anything science-fiction related, including comics, video games, and movies.

Mrs. Ram grinned. “I really didn’t need to ask, did I?”

Zoe grinned too. The S.M.A.R.T.S. had entered a contest for middle school science clubs and were one of four clubs that had won the chance to take part in a Mars mission simulation. Although they weren’t actually going to Mars, this simulation was the next best thing.

The Mars Commission, the company who’d come up with the contest, wanted to put a colony on Mars one day and make the red planet a place where humans could live. Their headquarters were in Oregon’s Alvord Desert, only a few hours from Hubble Middle School. The desert had some of the same environmental conditions as Mars. It was a great place to try out the habitats — the small buildings that Mars colonists would live in.

Four S.M.A.R.T.S. kids would actually be able to live in one of the habitats — habs for short — for four days. The rest of the club would be part of Mission Control, the group responsible for monitoring equipment and helping with any problems that came up. The other three clubs would each have their own habs and control centers.

As the bus pulled out of the parking lot, Mrs. Ram took an iPad out of her blue felt TARDIS purse. She was as big a nerd as the kids in the club, which made her all kinds of awesome.

“We’ll use the Pick Me app to decide who our colonists will be,” she told them. Mrs. Ram had preloaded the names of everyone in S.M.A.R.T.S. into the app and used it to select four kids at random. “Our Martians are … Goo, Samuel, Dylan, and Zoe!”

Goo — whose real name was Maya — turned around in her seat and slapped Zoe a high five. Everyone called her Goo because she could answer questions faster than Google. Dylan let out a whoop. Samuel looked like someone had switched on a light inside him.

“Big yay!” Zoe exclaimed. “But I wish you guys could be in the hab too,” she told Caleb and Jaden, who were sharing the bus’s long back seat with her.

“I’m good with it,” Jaden answered. “The control centers have some of the same equipment NASA uses.”

Caleb nodded. “Plus, we get a rover. It’s like the most awesome remote-controlled car ever.”

“Somebody needs to —” Benjamin started to yell out.

He looked at his twin, Samuel, but Samuel didn’t say anything. The twins almost always completed each other’s sentences. They were so alike that their nicknames were Thing One and Thing Two, after the Dr. Seuss characters.

Benjamin started again. “Somebody needs to —” He hesitated, waiting for Samuel to jump in. Then he finished the sentence himself. “— trade with Samuel.”

“No, they don’t,” Samuel answered.

“But we need to —” Benjamin took a breath. “— be together.”

“No, we don’t,” Samuel said, crossing his arms. “I want to be a Martian. I can be on my own.”

“You’re crazy! Mr. Leavey, tell Samuel he has to be on Mission Control with me,” Benjamin said to the Hubble Middle School librarian.

Mr. Leavey turned around in his seat. He was almost like a second sponsor for S.M.A.R.T.S., which was why he was also on the field trip. He’d helped set up a makerspace with all kinds of tools and materials in the back of the media center for the kids to work on their projects.

“It’s Samuel’s decision,” Mr. Leavey answered.

Zoe noticed that the librarian was wearing one green sock and one plaid sock. Typical Mr. Leavey. He always kept the library super neat, but he had trouble keeping himself the same way.

As the brothers argued quietly with each other, Jaden tried to remember if he’d ever seen one twin without the other. He was pretty sure he hadn’t.

“There’s no way the two of them can function apart,” Caleb whispered to his friends.

Zoe nibbled on her bottom lip. She was afraid Caleb was right. What if Samuel couldn’t handle the four days in the hab without Benjamin?