Haunting with the Stars Read online

  Cleo stood at the edge of the water, pointing: “Look out! I think I see jellyfish!”

  The three of us have been friends for so long, Orly and I don’t give Cleo a hard time about being afraid and timid. And I don’t know. Maybe it’s good to have one friend who is sometimes the sensible one.

  I let go of Cleo’s arm. “We’ll just take a short walk outside the auditorium,” I said. “A minute or two. That’s all. Just to stretch our legs.”

  “You need to stretch your brain,” Cleo said. “We don’t belong out here.”

  I pointed up and down the hall. “There’s no one here. They must all be in the different labs doing their jobs.”

  The endless hallway had a dark marble floor and solid stone walls. Wide wooden doors lined the outer wall. They were all closed. The air was cold and smelled sharply of detergent.

  I could hear Dr. Freed’s droning voice from the loudspeakers in the auditorium. I led the way to the left. “Come on. This is an adventure.”

  “I don’t like adventure,” Cleo grumbled. “You know what adventure means? It means trouble.”

  “It’s so quiet out in this hall, you can hear the air,” Orly said. She stared up ahead. “There’s an open door. Let’s see what’s there.”

  Cleo held back, but Orly and I trotted to the open doorway. It opened into a brightly lit room with several glass display cases.

  I gazed from wall to wall. They were covered with huge maps. “They’re all maps of the universe, I think.”

  I made my way to the nearest display case. Spread out under the glass was an ancient yellowed scroll. It had the faded outline of an island or maybe a continent on it.

  “It must be really old,” Orly said, gazing down at it. “Like maybe one of the first-ever maps.”

  “They should put labels on these maps to identify them,” I said.

  “They’re not really on display, Murphy,” Cleo said. “This is a private room, remember? We’re not supposed to be in here.”

  I ignored her and moved to the next case. “This looks like a map of North America,” I said. “But the writing all over it is in a foreign language.”

  “Awesome,” Orly murmured.

  “Can we go back?” Cleo asked, tugging my arm.

  “One more room,” I said. “I promise. Just one more room.”

  We went back into the hall and followed it, passing several more closed doors. I could hear voices behind some of the doors and the hum of large machines.

  Another open door revealed a tall glass case in the middle of a brightly lit room. I blinked and gazed at the planets that appeared to be floating inside the case.

  “Wow,” I muttered. “Check it out. Do you recognize it? It’s our galaxy.”

  Orly stepped up to the glass. “It’s in 3-D,” she said.

  “It’s a hologram of the galaxy,” I said. “Amazing.”

  Cleo gasped. “Oh no!”

  And then I heard it, too. Footsteps. The click of footsteps approaching the room.

  No time to duck or hide. All three of us spun to the door as a woman hurried in. I recognized her from the auditorium. Dr. Jackson.

  Her expression grew grim as she eyed us in front of the glass case.

  “I—I—I—” I stammered. I couldn’t think of an excuse for why we were there.

  She raised a finger to her lips. “Listen to me,” she said in a choked whisper. She glanced behind her, as if she expected someone to be there.

  Suddenly, I realized she looked frightened.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I know we shouldn’t—”

  “Listen to me,” she repeated. “I can only say it once.”

  She glanced behind her again. “Get out of here.”

  “Okay,” I said. “We’ll go back. We’ll—”

  “No!” she cried. “Get out of here. Go home. Get the others and go home … while you still have the chance.”

  My mouth dropped open. Cleo uttered a low cry.

  I heard voices out in the hall.

  “Dr. Jackson—” I started. But she spun around, her eyes wide with fear, and ran from the room.

  The three of us stood frozen in front of the tall glass case. “W-why did she say that?” I stammered.

  “She was just trying to scare us,” Orly replied.

  Cleo raised her hands to her cheeks. “But why? Why did she want to scare us? And why did she say that and then just run away?”

  “She knew we didn’t belong in here,” I said. “And so—”

  “So she decided to frighten us to death?” Cleo demanded.

  I could see that Orly was thinking hard. “Cleo is right. It’s totally strange. Why didn’t she take us back to the auditorium?”

  I shrugged. “Who knows?” I started to the door. “We’d better get back. Maybe she won’t squeal on us.”

  We stepped into the hallway. In the distance, I saw two women in white lab coats disappear around the curve. I froze and waited to make sure they weren’t returning.

  “Which way do we go?” Cleo asked. “I got turned around.” She shook her head. “I knew we’d get lost.”

  “We’re not lost,” Orly told her. “We just don’t know where we are.”

  That didn’t cheer Cleo up.

  Orly motioned to the right. “Isn’t that the way we came?”

  I gazed in both directions. “No,” I said. “I think we came from the other direction.”

  I led the way. The girls kept shaking their heads. “This doesn’t feel right,” Cleo whispered.

  We passed a few closed doors. A stenciled sign next to a wide glass door read LIBRARY.

  “We definitely didn’t pass a library,” Cleo said. Her voice trembled.

  Orly squeezed her hand. “You’re shaking. We’ll be okay, Cleo. Even if we’re lost, we can still—”

  “We’re not lost,” I snapped. “Follow me.” We started back toward the galaxy hologram room. “The auditorium should be on our left,” I whispered. “We just have to find an entrance.”

  Cleo shook her head. “I can’t believe we did this.” Her voice sounded hollow in the long hallway. “All because Murphy wanted an adventure.”

  “Go ahead. Blame me,” I said. “It’s not like I forced you two to come.”

  “Yes, you did,” Cleo said.

  “Please, don’t argue,” Orly said. “Let’s get back and pretend this didn’t happen. We—”

  She stopped. We all heard the thud of footsteps. Nearby.

  “Over here,” I whispered. We burst through an open doorway. The room had bright overhead lights. I saw a tower of computer monitors against the far wall. Laptops, scanners, all kinds of computer equipment.

  We darted farther into the room and pressed ourselves against the near wall. My heart was pounding so hard, my breath came out in quick wheezes. I kept my back tight against the wall, the two girls beside me.

  We listened as the footsteps passed. “We settled on Florida because it’s nearby,” a man said.

  “And the weather is so nice there,” said a woman walking with him.

  When their voices faded, I let out a long sigh of relief. “That was close,” I said.

  “Very close!” a deep voice said from across the room.

  I gasped and raised my eyes. We weren’t alone.

  A gray-haired man in a tan suit stepped out from behind a tall file cabinet.

  “Ohhh.” Orly let out a startled groan. Cleo stayed pressed against the wall, her eyes wide with fright.

  “What are you kids doing in here?” the man demanded. “This room is forbidden to all visitors.”

  “We—uh—we—” I struggled to speak.

  He picked up some kind of radio transmitter and raised it to his face. “Security! Security!” he shouted into it. “Intruders in 1214. Security!”

  We bolted to the door and took off running.

  If we could only make it back to the auditorium, I knew we could blend in with the other kids and be safe. But I didn’t have a clue how to get back there.

  We rounded a curve and kept running past closed doors. I knew the auditorium was somewhere on the left side of the hall. But there were no entrance doors.

  I uttered a cry when I heard shouts and hard running footsteps behind us. Boots pounding the marble floor.

  “Stop right there!” an angry voice boomed.

  I turned and glanced back. Three guards were thundering after us. They meant business, I saw. These guys had Tasers!

  Cleo was uttering low cries as she ran. Orly was gasping for breath.

  “Freeze, you kids! Freeze! We don’t want to hurt you!”

  We turned a corner, and I stopped at a wide black door. A sign on the door in bold red letters warned: DANGER! PROHIBITED TO ALL!

  With a gasp, I lowered my shoulder—and shoved open the door. The three of us scrambled inside and quickly shut the door behind us.

  Then I lowered my hands to my knees and struggled to catch my breath.

  Cleo and Orly had their eyes closed, mouths open, breathing hard. Their faces were red and drenched in sweat. Their hair stood wild around their faces.

  I’ve never run so hard in my life, I thought, trying to force away the pain in my side. I grabbed my inhaler and gave myself a few fast sprays. Finally, I raised myself back up and gazed around.

  The room was filled with awesome electronic equipment. Flashing monitor screens … tubes and cables, dark metal machines that hummed and rumbled and clicked.

  “Now what?” Cleo cried. “Now what? Now what?”

  Orly put a hand on Cleo’s shoulder to try to calm her down. But Cleo spun away from her. “Now what? Tell us, Murphy. What’s your next bright idea?”

  I didn’t have a chance to answer.

  The door swung open and Dr. Rayburne burst in. He was followed by the three security guards. And they were followed by Dr. Jackson.

  Rayburne squinted at us, studying us one at a time. He took several steps into the room. The security guards stood blocking the door. Dr. Jackson stayed a few feet behind Dr. Rayburne.

  “Trespassers in the Transition Room,” Rayburne said finally. He tsk-tsked. “That’s very serious.”

  “We—we’re sorry,” I stammered. “We didn’t mean to—”

  “I found them wandering earlier,” Dr. Jackson said. “I told them to get back to the auditorium.”

  “We’ll go back now,” Cleo said. “Sorry about the trouble.”

  “Yes. We apologize for any trouble we caused,” Orly added.

  I stared hard at Dr. Jackson. “You didn’t tell us to go back to our class,” I said. “You told us to get away from here as fast as we could.”

  Dr. Jackson blinked. “No, I didn’t. I didn’t say that.”

  “You said we should go home while we still had the chance,” I insisted.

  She shook her head. “You must have misunderstood me. Why would I say that?”

  Dr. Rayburne was studying her now.

  “I told you to go back to the auditorium,” Dr. Jackson said. “I never said anything about getting away.”

  Why was she lying?

  She and Rayburne stared hard at each other. I could see that Dr. Jackson was afraid of him.

  “I’m really sorry, Dr. Rayburne,” I said. “We went exploring and got lost. It’s just that I’m so totally excited by planets and stars and space travel. I couldn’t sit still. And I wanted to explore everything.”

  “Can we go back to our class now?” Cleo asked.

  “I’m sorry. You can’t,” Rayburne answered. “Your class left. The bus pulled out a few minutes ago.”

  I gasped. A chill tightened the back of my neck. “N-no!” I stammered.

  “That can’t be true,” Cleo said. “Our class is supposed to stay all day.”

  Rayburne shook his head. “I know. But sadly, one of the kids got sick, and your teacher had to get everyone on the bus as fast as he could.”

  “But—but—” I sputtered. “Didn’t he see that the three of us—?”

  “They left in such a hurry,” Rayburne said. “It was an emergency.”

  Dr. Jackson backed up to the door. She clenched her hands tightly in front of her. Her eyes were wide and kept darting from side to side.

  She was definitely frightened.

  Behind her, the three security guards stared straight ahead and didn’t move.

  “We have to get back to school,” Orly said. “Can you call the school bus? Call Mr. Hawkins and tell him to turn around?”

  Rayburne rubbed a finger over his mustache. “I’m afraid I don’t have a phone number for your teacher,” he said softly.

  “Are there any taxis that could take us back to school?” I asked.

  He snickered. “Taxis? At the top of the mountain? I don’t think so.”

  “Well … tell us,” Cleo said. “Tell us what to do. We have to get back.”

  Rayburne’s blue eyes flashed behind his eyeglasses. “I have a different destination for you.”

  “Huh? What do you mean?” I cried.

  “You can’t go home,” he said. “You’ve seen my Transition Room. You’ve seen too much.”

  I could feel panic choking my throat. “But we can’t tell anyone about it,” I said. “We don’t know what any of this equipment does.”

  “You—you have to send us home!” Cleo’s voice cracked with her cry. “Why are you trying to scare us?”

  Orly turned to Dr. Jackson. “Will you help us?”

  Jackson didn’t reply. She backed into the hallway, shaking her head, and vanished from sight.

  “This room must remain a secret,” Rayburne said. “No one can know about it until I am ready to reveal it to the world—and take my place as one of the greatest scientists in history.”

  “But—but—you are already one of the greatest scientists!” I cried.

  A thin smile crossed his face. He tugged at the ends of his white mustache. “I’ve only just begun,” he said. “And now I have you here to make me even more famous.”

  “But … our parents—” I started.

  “You can’t keep us here!” Cleo shouted.

  Orly had her fists balled tightly at her sides. She looked ready for a fight. But I knew that even brave Orly wouldn’t try to fight Dr. Rayburne.

  Rayburne ignored our protests. “It’s lucky that you are interested in outer space,” he said. “I am going to honor the three of you and make you famous, too. I’m going to send you haunting with the stars!” He chuckled as if he’d just made a great joke.

  “Huh? Haunting? Honor us? Wh-what do you mean?” I stammered.

  “I’m going to honor you by allowing you to be the very first to travel to a distant planet.”

  I realized I was wheezing for breath. I pulled out my inhaler and gave myself a few sprays. It helped me feel a little more normal.

  Dr. Rayburne was one of the top astronomers in the country. Everyone agreed that his telescope was far more advanced than all the others.

  He was a brilliant scientist. So he couldn’t be an evil villain.

  I suddenly realized what was going on.

  “I know what you’re doing,” I said. “You’re deliberately scaring us because you want to punish us. You want to teach us a lesson because we sneaked out of the auditorium and didn’t follow instructions.”

  He pushed the square eyeglasses up on his nose. His eyes narrowed at me. “I’m not trying to scare you,” he said. “Didn’t you listen to me? I’m going to honor you. This is a prize that people would pay millions to win.”

  “A—a prize?” I replied.

  He nodded. “Think of it, young man. The three of you will be space pioneers. You will be in the history books for all time.”

  Orly turned to me, her eyes wide, her chin trembling. “He’s serious, Murphy,” she whispered. “He isn’t joking.”

  Cleo stared hard at Rayburne. “You’re going to put us in a rocket ship and send us to another planet?”

  For some reason, that made Rayburne chuckle. “A rocket ship?” he said. “How quaint. Rocket ships are too slow for deep space travel.”

  My mouth dropped open. “Then … what—?”

  “I knew there had to be a way for people to travel to space without primitive rockets,” Rayburne said. He walked up to a tall, gray metal machine covered in dials and twisting cables. He patted it with one hand. “This is it. This is my answer.”

  The three of us didn’t speak. We waited for him to explain.

  I kept glancing back at the door. Was there any chance we could escape this room? No. Not with the three guards standing at attention, blocking the whole doorway.

  “I can transport people to other planets instantly,” Rayburne said. He snapped his fingers. “Instantly.”

  He’s crazy, I thought. We are trapped here with him, and he’s crazy!

  He tapped the side of the machine again. “Let me explain. This transition machine will break down your molecules. Then it will send your molecules to the planet I have chosen.”

  Really crazy.

  “Once your molecules have arrived at the other planet, your bodies will quickly re-form.”

  “I think I saw this on Star Trek,” I said.

  Rayburne slammed his fist angrily against the machine. “Don’t make jokes, kid. You are about to see historic greatness. Don’t make jokes in my presence.”

  “But that’s impossible,” Orly said. “Breaking down our molecules? Sending molecules to outer space? Please. Give us a break. Let us go—”

  “I am letting you go,” Rayburne said. “I’m letting you go to a planet I believe is populated—Zoromisis 12.”

  “Please—” Orly begged again.

  “Let us go. It can’t work,” Cleo said.

  “Can’t work?” Rayburne tossed both hands in the air. “Can’t work? I sent a hippo to Mars! I’ve sent monkeys to the moon! It works. You will see. You will be the first human space travelers. You will be famous forever—and so will I!”

  He motioned to the three security guards. “Hook them up.”

  No way to escape. My legs were shaking so hard, I didn’t think I could even walk.

  The guards quickly handcuffed us. A few seconds later, we stood with our backs pressed against a huge machine. I stood between the two girls. All three of us were silent, too frightened to protest or plead or argue with Rayburne.