Si in Space (13 page)

OPENING THE DOOR APPEARS
to produce some kind of chain reaction. First comes the smoke. Then the glowing, trembling lights. Then the low, pulsing sound.

“Hey, Jack, this is like a Led Zeppelin concert.”

“Stay focused, Si,” Wade says.

“Buddy, focus is my middle name.” You lead the way into the foggy, disorienting room. You can barely see the floor you’re stepping on.

You try to reassure yourself. “There’s no sneakin’ up on me.” But after a few more steps, you turn around.

“Wade?”

You shine your flashlight here and there but can’t see Wade or anything else. You decide to head back in the direction you came, only to find the door closed. You try to open it, but it doesn’t have a handle or a button to work with.

“Wade? Wade, you hear me? You out there?”

Nothing.

“Commander? John Luke? Hello? Is
anybody
out there?”

But nobody’s responding over the headset.

Great.

“Wade, you around?”

The smoke is starting to disperse, revealing an orangey glow from several lights in the ceiling.

Good news.

Until you see the center of the room.

It’s more skeletons. Maybe half a dozen of them.

All piled on top of each other.

Like in the longest wrestling match you’ve ever seen.

“Uh, Wade, we got a problem here.”

You scan the walls for any way out, but there’s nothing. This room looks like it used to be the sleeping chamber for whatever these things were.

There’s a set of drawers built into the wall. In one of them, you find what appears to be some type of weapon. A gun. A laser pistol. Or maybe a space blaster. Whatever it might be called.

A door on the other side of the room opens. A figure in a black suit of body armor walks into the room, aiming a rifle at you. He’s got on a space helmet that looks sinister, just like the barrel of his weapon.

You grab the blaster from the drawer, expecting it to fire some colorful laser shots. And of course, you expect to hit him and take him down.

That’s what happens in the movies, Jack.

But in this story, your “blaster” only emits a little stream of black stuff. Like you’re spraying some soy sauce on this stranger with the rifle. It barely makes it onto him. Jason Bourne would be better prepared.

You look down at the gun, then throw it as hard as you can at the armed stranger. He doesn’t seem to notice. So much for being a hero.

“Silas, you’re a fool,” you hear Wade say.

Hold on! That’s coming from the figure right in front of me.
Is this the big twist? The double-crossed fist?

You always thought this guy was trouble. And, as usual, you were right. You could have avoided this situation. Maybe next time.

Good thing this isn’t really . . .

THE END

Start over.

Read “Look at the Stars: A Note from John Luke Robertson.”

“JOHN LUKE, TRY TO OPEN THE DOOR AGAIN,”
you tell him as you feel the shifting, wet, slushy goop underneath you.

Junk of all sorts surrounds you. Engine parts. Pieces of metal and plastic. Cans of Chef Boyardee beef ravioli (wait, huh?). All in a juicy, sticky soup.

Yummy. I’m hungry now!

“But if I open the door, won’t they find us?” John Luke asks.

You hear the sound of something deep and deadly underneath you again.

“We better get out of here. I don’t think that belongs to someone friendly.”

Maybe it’s a corny time to pray, but why not?
Heavenly Father, we got ourselves into a little pickle. Sure would be nice to let us out of here.

The grumbling noise is getting louder.

You look around the garbage dump you’re mired in. There’s the door where you came (or fell) in. And wait
 
—there’s another door on the opposite side of the chamber. You didn’t notice it before.

You slog through the garbage and stand in front of the other door. You can hear some sounds right outside.

You wait to see if your prayer has been answered.

Sometimes God seems silent. But you know those are the times he’s helping you get out of the messes you’ve made for yourself.

“What should we do?” John Luke asks, his pants covered in sludge and slime.

You smile for a moment. Think for a second. Then start pounding on the door and screaming.

Suddenly the door opens.

At first you can only see the shadows of a couple people.

“Whew, that was a close one, Jack,” you say.

Then, when you get a good glimpse of the two figures at the door, you shake your head.

First pirates and now this? What’s going on? Like a Halloween convention?

“What’s up, guys?” you ask.

The two figures don’t say a word, however. They do raise round, shiny guns at you and John Luke and blast you.

End of story.

So you assume.

But it’s not over.

The first thing you hear, almost before you wake up, is heavy breathing. Then coughing.

You open your eyes and see you’re in a chair with your hands tied behind your back. John Luke is in the same position in a chair right next to you.

Come on, what’s this all about?

“Welcome, Silas Robertson.”

The two figures who were standing at the doorway are now right in front of you. And they’re still in costume
 
—dressed all in black, wearing motorcycle-type helmets. One helmet is silver and the other gold.

“John Luke, did you know we’d been kidnapped by Daft Punk?” you joke.

“Uncle Si, you know about Daft Punk?”

“Know? Are you kiddin’, Jack? Come on. I know my Grammy winners.” You turn back to the disguised men. “So what’s happening?”

“Is this the moment, D.?” the silver helmet says.

“I think so, P.”

D. and P.
That’s cute, really funny.

“I know you’re suspicious, and that’s fine,” Silver
 
—aka P.
 
—says.

“But we might as well give you your options now,” Gold
 
—aka D.
 
—says. “So, Silas, or Uncle Si. And John Luke. Two of our beloved Robertsons. Do you want to hear the truth about our plans? Or would you like to simply be shipped back home without knowing anything?”

“Maybe I wanna hear the truth,” you say.

“And maybe the ducks wanna hear something besides those calls
y’all
make.”

You think P. might be making fun of you a little bit.

“So you guys pick. Which will it be?”

Do you ask for the truth?
Go here
.

Do you decide to be sent back home without remembering anything that happened here in space?
Go here
.

IT’S SO HARD TO SAY NO
to John Luke when his face looks like that. You give in. It might be nice to have him along.

There’s something really strange about this moon. Your spaceship landed in a barren field made of stone. Hey, looks like everything’s made of stone here. Commander Noble leads your group of five
 
—himself, you, John Luke, Wade, and Kim
 
—toward where the distress signal is coming from. The worst part is that this place happens to be full of the thing you hate the most.

“You okay, Silas?” Noble says over the radio.

“It’s the dark.”

You’re all carrying heavy-duty flashlights that brighten twenty yards in front of you. But it’s not enough. Not for you.

Silence presses in. Darkness creeps. Some gremlins gotta be close by.

“What about the dark?” Kim Sampson says after a minute.

“I hate the dark. Always have.”

“So naturally you end up going into
space
, which is completely black, you know.”

You nod and stare out of your helmet. “I can deal with space and the stars. It’s just this kind of darkness I’m not a big fan of.”

There’s something else on this moon that you’re not crazy about. It’s not the craters or the swirls of dust. It’s the odd shapes you can see all around you in the dimness. “What are those things?”

Rows of the tall, pointed objects tower above your path like monster skeletons guarding a mysterious castle.

“They look like dead tree limbs,” Kim says in her pleasant voice.

“Dead tree limbs?” you reply. “Look, I know tree limbs, and those aren’t limbs. Those look like deer antlers.”

“They
look
like that, but they can’t be,” Wade says, breaking his habitual silence. “I don’t see any signs of wildlife here, do you?”

“Listen, Jack, do you see any signs of trees here?”

“They look like antlers to me,” John Luke chimes in.

Ha,
you think to yourself.
This boy recognizes an antler when he sees one. These space guys don’t know anything about wildlife.

But they’re pretty big antlers, you have to admit. The deer would have to be ten times the size of regular deer on Earth. Then again, this ain’t no Earth, is it?

The temperature feels like negative one hundred and seems to be getting colder. You hope the source of the distress signal can be located soon.

“Over here,” Kim says, standing at the edge of some deep pit in the rugged terrain.

“What did you find?” Commander Noble hurries over.

“I’ll let you see for yourself.”

You and John Luke peer over the edge, and you can barely make out what appears to be half a spaceship buried in the ground.

“I think I might have seen something like that on the TV show
Lost in Space
,” you tell them.

No one replies. Even John Luke gives you a blank stare on that one.

Hey, you gotta keep things light. Levity sure beats negativity.

The incline of this pit you’re standing by is steep, and it’s probably thirty or forty feet deep.

“We need a couple of people to go down there with cables and check it out,” Commander Noble says. “The rest of us will stay up here.”

Do you investigate the crashed spaceship?
Go here
.

Do you stay up on the edge of the pit and play it safe?
Go here
.