MY WHOLE BODY TINGLES WITH CREEPY-CRAWLIES, and my shoulder hits the ground hard. Ouch. I open my eyes. Darkness. But a familiar darkness. I made it to the Ezone.
“Jasper the Bounder has arrived,” Marco says.
“Cole?” I ask.
“He’s over here,” Lucy calls. “And Mira’s here, too.”
Relief floods through me. We all made it. We actually bounded.
“Thank goodness we had our gloves with us,” Lucy says.
Thank goodness is right. I’m not going anywhere without my gloves anymore.
“Well, now, what have we here?” a familiar voice asks.
Oh no. Gedney.
“Finally decided to hurry, did we?” Gedney asks.
Gedney has that wacky professor vibe, so I kind of expect him to be all flustered that the five of us suddenly popped into the Ezone. Nope. Cool and calculating Gedney showed up to the party. I can’t tell at first whether he’s going to be an ally or the one to sell us down the river.
And cool and calculating Jasper definitely did not show up to the party. I barely have the energy to think. None of us do. We’re scattered around the Ezone floor. Only Mira moved from her landing spot. She sits in her lonely corner, rocking.
No one says anything, and I realize they’re all looking at me. Again, people, who made me the spokesperson?
“That’s right,” I say. He knows we bounded, so the best we can hope for is spin. “We wanted to put everything you’ve taught us into practice.”
“I see,” Gedney says.
I brace myself for all the obvious follow-ups: you’re not supposed to bound on your own; you’re not supposed to be out of the dorms; you’re not supposed to be in the Ezone without supervision (which I guess, technically, we’re not). And those don’t even touch the most incriminating questions: Where on earth were you bounding from? And why?
Gedney skips over all of that. “How was it?” he asks.
“What?” He lost me. What are we talking about?
“It was your first bound,” he says. “I want to know how you liked it.”
“Oh,” I say. Bounding was awesome, but how do I describe it?
“Tickly,” Lucy says.
Gedney laughs. “Yes, I suppose so. Marco, what did you think?”
“No words, Geds,” Marco says, “except that I swallowed my stomach and thought I might explode. When can we do it again?”
Gedney smiles and turns to Cole. “Good work, son. I knew you could do it. But I didn’t think you knew. What changed?”
“Ummm . . . ,” Cole starts.
Cole is the worst liar. Ever. He’s seconds away from blowing our cover.
Someone else is a second ahead of him. The door to the Ezone blasts open. The florescent light from the corridor pours in.
Silhouetted by the light, Bad Breath steps over the threshold.
An acidy taste rises in my throat. He does not belong in the Ezone. He must be here for us.
“Can I help you?” Gedney asks.
“No, old man,” Bad Breath says. “I’ve found what I’m looking for.” He marches into the Ezone and yanks Marco up by the shirt collar. “Busted, wise guy.”
A million thoughts race through my brain. Should I say something? Try to defend Marco? Offer myself up? Spit out an admission so we get a few extra points for honesty?
“Take your hand off him,” Gedney says. His voice rings with a steely confidence I’ve never heard him use.
“What’s it to you, gramps?” Bad Breath says. “We’re looking for a group of five who broke into the cellblock. This crew was missing from the dormitories. The shoe fits. It’s a bust.”
“The cellblock, you say?” Gedney’s eyes lock with mine. “You have the wrong group. These kids have been with me all night. We’ve been running extra drills.”
Bad Breath hesitates but doesn’t let go of Marco’s collar. “Drills? There’s no record of that. These kids are supposed to be in the dorms. They’re not.”
Gedney elbows in front of Marco, breaking Bad Breath’s hold. “No record? My mistake. As I said, we were doing drills. How do you think we got to be the top-ranked pod?”
Bad Breath glares at Gedney. His head twitches. Even in the dark Ezone, I can see his cheeks swell. He knows Gedney’s lying. And he knows there’s nothing he can do about it. He shifts his gaze to me—his eyes brimming with threats—and then stomps out of the Ezone.
Marco backs away from Gedney and smooths his shirt. “Thanks, Geds.” Marco looks at me and raises his eyebrows. What are we going to tell Gedney about the cellblock?
I have no clue. If we spin some tale that doesn’t involve the alien, will he buy it? Probably not. His nickname isn’t Einstein for nothing.
Gedney saves me the trouble of deciding what to do. “How did you know he was in the cellblock? How did you know about him at all?” he asks.
Whoa. I guess cool and calculating Gedney is not going to waste time.
I glance back at Marco. We might as well go with the truth. It’s less confusing, and I’m too tired to think up a plausible cover story. “We saw him on the first night,” I say. “In the med room.”
“Ahhh.” Gedney shakes his head. “Everything happened so fast that night. And half the staff was busy with the kickoff for the EarthBound Academy. There wasn’t time to take the necessary precautions. Other than the shield, of course.”
“The alien just got here?” Cole asks. “So he didn’t cause the Incident at Bounding Base 51?”
“Oh, you kids. You’ve put a lot together, haven’t you?” Gedney shuffles across the floor of the Ezone and lowers himself onto the chair we practiced lifting. One of its legs is broken from Mira’s throw, so it wobbles whenever Gedney shifts his weight. “No, of course he didn’t cause the Incident. He’s just one man. The Incident at Bounding Base 51 was a highly orchestrated military event. And he was probably about your age when it occurred.”
“A man?” Lucy says. “All I saw in that room was a green creature with glowing hands and a big pulsing brain.”
“Then perhaps you weren’t looking closely enough,” Gedney says. “Is he a human like you and me? No. But how different is he really?”
“But his race. His kind. Whatever you call it,” I say. “They did cause the Incident at Bounding Base 51, right?”
Gedney nods. “We’ve been at war with his kind for thirteen years.”
I can’t believe what Gedney is saying. We’ve been at war all this time—thirteen years—and no one knew? How is that possible? How could they justify keeping that secret from the billions of people on Earth?
“The alien’s a prisoner of war?” Lucy asks.
Gedney nods again.
“We have their man,” Cole says. “They’re the ones who’ll be looking for revenge now.”
“Oh, I suspect so,” Gedney says.
My breath comes fast, and a low-simmered rage brews in my blood. “If the alien’s a war prisoner, what does that make us?”
Gedney doesn’t answer. He stands and walks away from our group, hunching more and more with each step.
“I said, what does that make us?” I shout. “Soldiers in your war?”
“It’s not my war,” Gedney says. He keeps his eyes fixed on the floor.
What’s that supposed to mean? Not his war. Well, it sure is somebody’s war. “All this time you’ve stuck with the story that Bounders have a special gift at space travel. And all the while you’ve been breeding soldiers!”
I feel like my brain might explode. My body still feels like jelly from the bound, and now Gedney is serving up one nugget of classified planetary security after the next. I squeeze my eyes shut and try to force everything out. When I clear away most of my thoughts, I’m left with one stark image: Mira’s glove pressed against the glass, pulsing to the rhythm of the alien’s hand. Then it dawns on me. The alien’s hands. Gedney’s gloves.
“The gloves,” I say. “They’re the aliens’ technology. We stole it from them. Didn’t we?”
Gedney deflates. He braces himself against the Ezone wall. He won’t look any of us in the eye. “You’ll have to talk to Waters. I’ve said enough tonight. It’s late, and you have a busy few days before you return to Earth.”
The morning pod session is canceled. Waters, Gedney, and the other pod leaders were called to an emergency briefing with Admiral Eames.
“Perfect,” Marco says. “They have to talk strategy about how to defeat the little green men.”
“He wasn’t that little,” Cole says.
We have an hour to kill before our last lecture, so we con a plebe into letting us into our pod room. We sprawl on the beanbags and stare at the starlit ceiling. I drag my fingers along the carpet. I want to talk about what happened, and what it all means for us, but I don’t know where to start.
“Do you think Waters knows we bounded?” Cole asks.
“I’m not sure,” I say. “I actually think Gedney might keep our secret.”
“Why do you care?” Marco says. “An alien war is a much bigger deal than us breaking their silly rules.”
“What do you think they want from us?” I ask. “How do we fit into the war?”
“I don’t even want to know,” Lucy says. “I just want to get home and see my family and my friends and go back to drama class and paint my nails and tie my hair in whatever ribbons I want and forget I ever came to this place.” Lucy’s voice cracks, and this time it’s not an act.
“Come on, Lucy,” I say, “you don’t mean that. We’ve got one another now.”
“You’re right,” Lucy says. “It’s just . . . scary . . . you know?”
Yeah, I know. I’m super scared. I can bound, and I’m decent at Evolution, but I’m not a soldier. Even the gloves scare me. Now that I know what they are and how little we actually know about them, I realize how dangerous they’d be in the wrong hands. Wrong hands, get it? Yeah, it’s not funny. Nothing about stolen alien technology is funny.
“I’m not scared,” Marco says. “I’m mad. They want us to be soldiers in their war, and they never mention it? They don’t even tell the people of the planet they’re fighting a war? How does that fly?”
“Simple,” Cole says. “If they told, there never would have been any Bounders. The people approved breeding kids for space exploration, not for battle.”
“Maybe that’s true,” I say, “but there’s still a lot we don’t know.”
“And a lot we’re not going to know,” Cole says. “Let’s face it. They’re not giving us these answers in the next two days. I read everything I could about Earth Force, and there wasn’t a hint of this. Someone’s gone to great lengths to keep it secret.”
“You’re right about that, Wiki,” Marco says.
We’re quiet. Marco plays with the lava lamps. I run my fingers through the shag carpet.
“Let’s make a pact,” Lucy says. “We don’t have all the answers, and we don’t have many choices, but let’s enjoy the next two days as a pod. Enjoy the field trip to the Paleo Planet. Enjoy being kids. Who knows how much longer we have to do that?”
Marco, Cole, and I nod our agreement.
Mira slips her hands into her gloves. She tips her fingers toward the starry ceiling and fills the air above us with a thousand lights that blink in an intricate pattern. Lucy pulls on her gloves and adds to Mira’s picture. The rest of us follow. A million lights twinkle beneath the ceiling stars of our pod room.
Mira flutters her gloved fingers, and a soft sound like the tinkling of piano keys fills the air. I don’t know where the sound is coming from, but I know enough not to ask.
Then Mira rises and dances in the starlight. One by one, we join her.
As I set my tablet down next to Marco and Cole, I wonder which famous poster-worthy aeronaut will lead our last lecture.
A ripple of whispers makes its way from the rear of the hall. Marco jabs me in the ribs and points. A Tunneler walks down the aisle. When he reaches the podium, he steps onto a stool and plugs his voice-translation box into the projection system.
Grunts and clicks and stutters blast through the speakers. Then the voice box translates: “Good afternoon, cadets. It’s a real honor to speak with you today. My name is Boreeken—Bo, for short. I’m from the planet Gulaga, or P37, as you usually say. The admiral asked me to talk about my home planet and also about the one I just visited, the Paleo Planet. Is everyone excited for the end-of-tour field trip tomorrow?”
All the cadets clap. I can’t believe tomorrow we’ll be on the Paleo Planet.
“As most of you know,” Bo continues through the translator, “the climate on Gulaga is much colder and less hospitable than on your Earth. That’s why we spend most of our lives underground. Our towns and infrastructure are all subterranean. The only common surface endeavors are agriculture and transport.”
Bo explains his planet’s geography and his civilization’s history. He talks about the advanced mining technology the Tunnelers developed after generations of living underground. I try hard to focus. No matter how awesome I am with the gloves, paying attention still isn’t my thing. And I definitely want to hear what Bo has to say, especially when he starts talking about first contact.
“You Earthlings were searching for veins of occludium in our planetary system,” he says. “When we first spotted your ships in the starlit sky, all the Gulagans came above ground. It was the first time our species had been on the surface in those numbers in our recorded history. We didn’t know what was happening. Strange beings appearing in the sky? Many believed it was the day of judgment. That the gods had arrived.”
Bo skips over the early years of Earth relations and the details of the diplomatic envoy. He jumps right to the end: Gulaga signed a treaty with Earth to let us extract occludium in exchange for a technology transfer. They gave us occludium and showed us how to mine it. We gave them technology, including quantum space travel.
“The Paleo Planet was also discovered during one of your ore searches,” Bo says. “Yes, the planet contains rich stores of occludium, but I think the biggest draw for you Earthlings is the Paleo Planet’s close resemblance to your planet in its infant stage.”
That’s true. Paleo Planet is the name Earth Force dreamed up for P63 to promote the tourism initiative that’s slotted to begin later this year. With all the pics and vids on the webs of the green valleys and dense forests and sparkling blue lakes, everyone I know is dying to go there. I can’t count how many times I’ve watched the vids of the wildeboars and the saber cats and the giant hairy beasts that look just like woolly mammoths. The only reason the Tunnelers are linked to the Paleo Planet is because their species run the occludium mines.
When Bo wraps up his speech, the lecture hall bubbles with excitement. We’re leaving for the Paleo Planet tomorrow morning, and we can’t wait!