This Place Has No Atmosphere by Paula Danziger Read Free Book Online Page A

at my parents.
    They look back.
    I read my father’s lips. “We’re going!”
    Buzz looks at the group. “It’s only two weeks. By then most of you will be ready to go . . . . Also, a new team is in final stages of training at the JohnsonSpace Center, and the crew will be ready to fly in two weeks.”
    Emily Doowinkle waves her hand.
    “We’re going to have to go up with a new team?
    That makes me so nervous, I could just scream.”
    Being writer in residence, Emily rhymes every-thing.
    She’s so weird.
    Buzz shakes his head. “Don’t worry. They’ll be assisting our regular crew. We need more trained personnel, since the Space Travel Program is growing in leaps and bounds.”
    Emily shakes her head.
    “I wish about the shuttle, you wouldn’t say leaps and bounds.
    Language like that and my heart just pounds.”
    Buzz reassures her. “Don’t worry. Let’s just see the film about the very first man on the moon.” He pushes the button on the giant screen monitor so that we can watch the film.
    Just as the movie starts, the computoprojector breaks down.
    Waiting for someone to get the machine to work,I practice writing backwards, which was what I always did when the projector at school broke down.

    I look over and notice that Vern Verne has a runny nose. At least he’s not picking that.
    I really miss Matthew.
    The projector is fixed.
    “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind,” Neil Armstrong is saying.
    Buzz explains how the line was later changed to add the article
a
, to make it “One small step for a man.”
    I wonder what Matthew is doing right this very second. He’s the only man whose small step I’m interested in right now.
    I also wonder what color(s) Juna’s hair is this week.
    I continue to practice writing backwards. Starr kicks at my foot to remind me to pay attention.
    I stick my tongue out at her, but I listen to Buzz,who is telling us how the astronauts left stuff on the moon—a U.S. flag, a laser reflector, a seismometer, and a sheet of aluminum foil.
    Litterbugs, I think.
    It’s not enough that we mess up our own planet; we leave junk on the first place we land.
    Buzz says, “Now it’s time for another simulation exercise.”
    He reminds us of the first day’s lesson, how the space shuttle spins so that the passengers don’t have to experience zero gravity.
    Flicking on pictures of a shuttle interior, he says, “Look at the walls. They’re covered with stick-a-bob, a material that adheres to itself. There are toe and hand locks added to the wall. Each of you will be issued life suits to be put on in case of loss of centrifugal force.”
    “Oh, oh,” someone says—me, I think.
    If it had been Emily, she would have said,
    “Oh,
    no.”
    “Don’t worry.” Buzz smiles at us. “In the ten years that we have been shuttling colonists to the moon,there’s been no major problem. This is just a precaution.”
    As the assistants hand out the life suits, which are also made of stick-a-bob, I wonder what the minor problems were.
    As we get into the suits, Buzz explains. “As soon as you are all ready, it’s into the simulation chamber.”
    Emily exclaims,
    “With stick-a-bob, we’ll all be ready,
    It’ll hold us to the wall nice and steady.”
    Salvador Arply butts in with
    “If it doesn’t, it’ll make us very deady.”
    No one seems to appreciate his joke except Vern, who goes “Are. Are. Are.”
    Emily calls Salvadore
    “A philistine,
    Oh, so mean.”
    Buzz continues. “As soon as the centrifugal force is turned off, zero gravity will occur. When it does, throw yourself against the stick-a-bob wall so that the stick-a-bob jackets stick to it. Get into the toe and hand holds. Remain there until you get used to the sensation.”
    That should take about fifty years.
    My father says, “What if this really happened in space? What good would it do to be stuck to the wall?”
    Buzz explains. “That would just be until the backup force is generated.