The Dark Side of the Moon. Jeramey Kraatz

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СКАЧАТЬ – if he’s even there – can be almost a hundred kilometres in diameter.”

      “Uh, can you talk to me in miles, Jazz?” Benny asked. “Or, better yet, how many Tajs is that?”

      “The search area is the size of two or three cities. Big ones.” She shook her head. “Honestly, how has everyone not picked up the metric system yet?”

      “Don’t lump me into your science shaming,” Drue said. “My tutors taught me both. This should still be pretty easy, though. It’s a whole lot of nothing out there, right? Plus, don’t we have sensors and stuff like that?”

      “Heat sensors, energy sensors, you name it,” Ash said. “But if Bale has a way of messing with those, you kids are on your own.”

      “So what are we waiting for?” Drue asked.

      “One last thing,” Pinky said, furrowing her eyebrows a bit. “Remember that Dr Bale and Elijah don’t have the greatest history together. And in a way … you are sort of intruding on his territory.”

      “Yeah,” Benny said. He looked at Drue. “We’ll be careful.”

      Even as Benny spoke, though, Drue was racing towards the Space Runners. “I call whatever goes fastest!”

      “You’ll take the laser-armed SRs or you’ll stay here,” Ash yelled after him. She wiped her hands on her coveralls. “That boy’ll be the death of me.”

      “Jazz, you’ll navigate us, yeah?” Benny asked as they made their way to the vehicles.

      “Sure,” she said, but her cheeks flushed a little. “Just, uh, don’t mind me if I get a little behind. I haven’t had much actual experience flying these things.”

      Hot Dog winked at her. “Don’t worry, we’ll take care of you.”

      They slid into four of the Space Runners with Mustang-red stripes painted across them. A holographic map appeared on Benny’s windshield, a blinking line cutting across the projected lunar surface.

      “Here’s our path,” Jasmine’s voice came through the comms, filling the cabin of Benny’s vehicle. “I suggest a diamond flight pattern so we can keep an eye on the surface and each other.”

      “Agreed,” Hot Dog said. “Benny, you take the front, Drue and I will take the sides, and Jasmine can bring up the rear.”

      Benny waited for Drue to protest that he should take the lead, but he didn’t say anything.

      “All right,” Benny said. “Pinky, open up the auxiliary pressurisation tunnel. Uh, please.”

      And then they were off, shooting one by one out of the Grand Dome and into the stillness of the Moon’s imperceptible atmosphere.

      “Race you guys to the mare,” Drue said over the comms. His Space Runner shot forward. “Last one there has to tell Ricardo we left.”

      “Formation, Drue,” Hot Dog said. “We went over this.”

      “Oh. Yeah.” He took his spot at Benny’s right again.

      “We’re a good half-hour away from this search zone,” Jasmine said, “but we should keep an eye out for anything odd, just in case.”

      Benny laughed a little to himself, thinking what a strange thing this was to hear, considering the fact that they were setting out to hunt for a mysterious doctor hiding on the dark side of the Moon to possibly recruit him in their effort to save the Earth from aliens. All of it was odd. Even the fact that Benny was sitting in a Space Runner. Despite the fact that this car had been in battle earlier that day, the inside was still sleek and clean, the surfaces all polished and the artificial-leather seats buffed. He caught his reflection in the rearview mirror and realised that he was pretty clean, too. At least compared to what he usually looked like in the Drylands, where it was impossible to scrub off all the dust even when they did have enough water to bathe, and his black hair was usually stiff with dried sweat, sprouting out in all directions. When he’d first got to the Taj, he’d felt so out of place. Even in the Space Runner on the way up to the Moon, he’d managed to get dirt everywhere because it had spilled out of his bag.

      But now he’d changed. And for some reason that made him miss home even more.

      Eventually, they were flying across the far side of the Moon. Benny pressed his face against the passenger window, looking at the pockmarked landscape below him.

      “I thought it’d be darker,” he said. “I mean, it seemed darker when we were by that alien base.”

      “Probably because we were in a crater,” Jasmine said. “The dark side of the Moon isn’t really dark. It’s just the side we can’t see from Earth.”

      “Hey, remember when Iyabo was telling us that story about skeletons roaming the dark side?” Drue asked.

      Benny did. How could he forget? The girl from Cameroon had painted such a clear picture of long-forgotten scientists pounding on the Grand Dome, desperate to get back inside the artificial environment. He’d tried to remember every detail to tell his brothers when he got back home – the perfect scary bedtime story.

      “Well,” Drue continued, “what if it wasn’t an urban legend? What if that’s what this doctor and his friends are? Moon zombies.”

      “Drue, are you getting enough oxygen in your Space Runner?” Benny asked.

      “I’m just saying. They’ve got to get out of their space suits and wash them sometimes. Maybe all the radiation out here messed them up. Haven’t you ever seen a horror movie? This is a classic zombie setup.”

      “That’s actually kind of true,” Hot Dog said.

      “Not you, too,” Benny said.

      “What? After everything that’s happened to us today, you want to draw the line of impossibility at Moon zombies? I head-butted a space Medusa earlier.”

      “OK. Good point.”

      Benny looked down at the craggy surface, imagining a dozen decomposing figures clawing their way out of the dust, mouths gaping as they reached towards the sky, towards them. He couldn’t help but think of the skeletal faces of the flying robots they’d blasted in the video-game room, which seemed like forever ago. Surely Elijah hadn’t modelled them on Dr Bale and his assistants … right?

      “I’m not even going to begin to poke holes in this idea,” Jasmine said. Then, after a pause, she continued. “But if I were going to, I’d start by—”

      “Hey, guys,” Hot Dog said, cutting into the comm feed. “I think I see something.”

      “Strange,” Jasmine replied. “The scanners aren’t picking anything up, and we’re not very close to the mare.”

      “Not on the ground.” Her voice was wavering now. “Above us.”

      It took Benny a moment to see what she was talking about, but then there it was. A dark spot, blotting out a few stars. A smudge of deep purple against the black sky.

      And СКАЧАТЬ