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being surrounded by megatons of moon dust, I’d never touched the stuff before.
    I’d been out on the lunar surface myself exactly once: when passing from the rocket landing pad to MBA after arriving on the moon. It had taken ten minutes, tops. Because I’m a kid, I’d never been allowed another chance to go outside.
    I knelt and dragged my fingers through the dust. It felt like slightly gritty powdered sugar. Moon dust isn’t really dust; it’s mostly tiny shards of a strange kind of glass formed in the extreme heat of meteor impacts. It smelled faintly of gunpowder, reminding me of fireworks.
    â€œDid you drop something?”
    I spun around to find Garth Grisan behind me. Mr. Grisan is in his late fifties, which is older than most of thepeople at MBA, but running maintenance for everything on the base requires someone with a lot of knowledge and experience. He seemed nice enough, but he tended to keep to himself. Although I’d been living at the base with him for more than six months, we’d almost never spoken.
    â€œNo,” I said. “I was just . . . um . . . There’s some moon dust on the floor.”
    â€œYeah. I’m about to take care of that.” Mr. Grisan held up a small vacuum. “With all the excitement this morning, I haven’t had a chance yet.”
    I suddenly felt embarrassed. “I wasn’t telling you to clean it up,” I said. “I just noticed it and . . . well . . .” I trailed off, not quite sure what else to say.
    Mr. Grisan smiled warmly, signaling he hadn’t been offended. “It’s all right, Dashiell. We’re all trying to deal with Dr. Holtz in our own way.”
    I nodded agreement, then thought to ask, “You went out and got him?”
    Mr. Grisan’s smile faded. “Yes. With Daphne.”
    â€œDid anything seem strange about him?”
    â€œOther than him being dead on the surface of the moon? The whole thing seemed strange. Strange and wrong.” Mr. Grisan shuddered at the memory.
    â€œWas he . . . ?” I began, but before I could get another word out, Mr. Grisan cut me off.
    â€œTo be honest, I’d prefer to forget all about what it was like. And it’s probably better for a kid like you not to know. So if you’ll excuse me . . .” Mr. Grisan held up the vacuum again and pointed to the floor.
    â€œRight,” I said. “Sorry.” I turned to leave—and caught sight of Nina in her office. She was glaring at me, apparently annoyed that I was still within range of her.
    I took a last glance out the air lock, then hurried off. Behind me I heard the whine of the vacuum as Mr. Grisan sucked up the moon dust.
    Like his father had told me, Rodrigo “Roddy” Marquez was in the rec room. This wasn’t much of a surprise. Roddy was almost always in the rec room. That’s where the best holographic interfaces are.
    As usual, Roddy was seated on an InflatiCube, playing a virtual-reality game. His eyes were covered by thick black hologoggles and his hands were sheathed in sensogloves. Either he hadn’t heard that Nina had ordered everyone to stay off the ComLink or—more likely—he’d decided to ignore her.
    Roddy was my best friend at MBA, although that really didn’t mean much: He was the only other kid my age on the moon. Back on earth we probably wouldn’t have been friends at all. Roddy is a decent guy, but our interests are completely different. He’s what we called a “veeyar” at myold school, short for “virtual resident”—a kid who spends nearly all his time in the computer-generated world.
    I’ve never spent much time in virtual reality myself. We didn’t even have a holographic interface at our house. Meanwhile Roddy logged more than ten hours a day online before he came to the moon. For that reason he doesn’t hate MBA nearly as