Mike Stellar Read Online Free Page B

want—I’m not go—”
    “Oh, everything is going to be fine, honey,” Mom said, patting my arm as she gently pushed me into my seat. “Don’t you worry about a thing. Belt.”
    A chorus of “belt”s filled the e.c. My mind raced and my heart careened around my chest. Why didn’t Nita pack any of her stuff to bring to Gram’s? Come to think of it, what was going to happen to all our stuff back home while we were gone? What about my simulator games and the vis recorder? How was I going to record all the
MonsterMetalMachines
episodes? Therewere so many questions; it was all happening too fast. I mean, if I’d had more time to think about it, I might have been possibly, sort of, maybe
excited
about becoming a space traveler. But right now it was like everything was spinning away from me. There wasn’t time to grapple with what was happening. I felt lost and we were still in the driveway.
    Mr. Shugabert leaned around from the passenger’s seat and said, “Everyone comfortable?” He didn’t wait for a response. “Excellent.” He flashed a beaming smile of what looked like hundreds of teeth. “I am so
stoked.”
    The e.c. whirred to life. I took one last look at our house, at the light blue shutters I’d helped Dad paint last summer, at the unshrunken grass. And then we were off.

It didn’t take very long to drive to the Project. That was why Mom and Dad had bought our house in the first place. It was close to their work and they could get there quickly in case of an emergency. Mom’s a mission coordinator and Dad’s a mission doctor. And when bad things started happening with the first Mars mission, it was lucky they lived so close. They practically took sleeping bags to the office. Those times really stunk.
    My mind snapped back in gear as the electri-car slowed. All our seat belts popped off at the same time. The doors slid open and we stepped out in front of the Project. Mr. Shugabert got our boxes from the trunk. Mom and Dad and Nita hugged and Mom said they’d be checking in on her during the once-a-week Earth-bound communication each family was allowed. It waslike Nita was going to summer camp. I just glared at her, not really thinking about the fact that it would literally take engineering feats of spaceflight to see her again.
    Finally she grabbed me, gave me a big hug, and whispered in my ear, “Watch out for anything strange.” She kissed the top of my head and said in a low voice, “Help me try to find Hubble.”
    Then she got back into the electri-car. What was she talking about? How could we find Hubble? We’d already tried. He was gone, along with everyone else who had been on the
Spirit.
    Nita sped off.
    Mom and Dad walked to the front doors of the Project with their heads high and smiles on their faces. It was like they abandoned their firstborn child every day. Mr. Shugabert led the way, carrying our boxes. The Project’s doors slid open as he scanned his ID badge. I watched Mom and Dad walk into the building and I felt sick to my stomach.
    Inside, it was killer. I momentarily forgot my sick feeling as I felt a glimmer of excitement bubble up from my toes. The control room blinked and glittered like a supernova. People ran around with handhelds and shouted into their collartalks. Huge holoboards hung on the far wall. One holoboard showed the shuttle preparing for liftoff.Another showed SpacePort and the
Sojourner
spacecraft orbiting around the moon.
    The last one had a grainy picture on it. It looked like just a blank black screen until you really stared at it. In the middle floated a seething mass. It looked kind of like the vapors you see rising from the road on a hot day. The Fold. Every now and then a shimmer of color shot around the Fold’s edges. As scary as it seemed, it looked awesome. That was our shortcut to Mars, and I still couldn’t believe our ship was going into that thing. It looked like it was just waiting to eat us and then give a yellow burp.
    Then the Fold